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- Here we find further evidence that Aramaic was the language spoken by everyone in Babylon. The verse explicitly says that the Chaldeans spoke to the king in Syriac, or Aramaic. The king speaks Aramaic. Those around him - the magicians, astrologers, sorcerers and the Chaldeans - all spoke to the king in Aramaic. And, when Daniel appears before the king to tell him the meaning of the dream, he also speaks to the king in Aramaic, a language in which he has now been thoroughly immersed. In fact, in the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, these entire chapters in Daniel - Daniel 2:4 to Daniel 7:28, are all written in Aramaic because that was the language spoken by the Jews at this time, as well as the language of Babylon.
- And so, as we have seen, the Jews were now in exile, in the diaspora, in Babylon. But, as Jeremiah had prophesied, the captivity in Babylon was not permanent, but would last for seventy years.