by Kenneth F. Sheets
The term “400 Silent Years” is just another of the many inaccurate names which humans have given to periods of time in the history of the world. This name was given to describe the time period between the last of Malachi’s written prophecies, within a few years after 420 BC, and the first historical references of the Gospels, the first of which refers to the birth of Jesus about 5 BC during the reign of Herod the Great (under Roman rule). The name is understandable because God did not see fit to add to His Hebrew Scriptures during this period, but, because it has been understood by most as indicating that God was not saying or doing anything during this “400 years,” this designation is not accurate and should not be used.
Actually, many periods of time have existed when God’s holy men recorded only a very small part of all that the Creator was doing in His creation, but that does not mean that He was ever “silent” in any place or any time. Though the people, and the places where they lived in the world, were often very far from the Ancient Near East where His men were recording His revelation, God was never “not there” and He was “never silent,” because He had perfectly built into His creation a perfect testimony of both His existence and His perfect design.
Thus, during the 400 years which are wrongly called “silent,” God was still completely active both around the world and in the existence of His Hebrew people. Though many of them, perhaps even most of them, had turned from Him, He had never “cast them off” completely, but He had warned them that if they continued in their rejection, then He would “cast them out of His sight and make them a proverb and a byword among all peoples” (1 Kings 9:7 and many others). After the Hebrews continued to reject after Malachi’s words to them, this “casting away” is what He brought upon them, and, though the details are not recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures, they recorded much of this 400 year history in their own non-Scripture records, and this is supplemented by secular world history.
God was not “silent”; He was continuing to work in all the nations . . . Persia, Greece, Rome, etc. . . . which were inflicting upon them the destructions of which He had warned them. The Hebrews were still writing as they could, and many of these records were destroyed as the unGodly world powers were bringing upon them what the Creator had warned. In that sense, though He seemed to be “silent,” God was still very much “speaking” and revealing Himself and His perfect design, as He always is, in the things that were happening to His people.