Did these Biblical Prophecies fail?

Question

Joshua 15:63 God will give Israel 7 nations
Deut. 7:1 He is unable to drive some out.

Isaiah 17:1 Damascus will be destroyed

Isaiah 19:5 The Nile will dry up.

Jeremiah 50:39 Babylon will be uninhabited.

Ezekiel 29:10-13 Egypt will be uninhabited for forty years.
29:19(after being destroyed by Nebudchadnezzar)
According to history these things never happened.

Joshua 15:63 God will give Israel 7 nations
Deut. 7:1 He is unable to drive some out.

Isaiah 17:1 Damascus will be destroyed

Isaiah 19:5 The Nile will dry up.

Jeremiah 50:39 Babylon will be uninhabited.

Ezekiel 29:10-13 Egypt will be uninhabited for forty
years.
29:19(after being destroyed by Nebudchadnezzar)
According to history these things never happened.

There IS an expiration date associated with the last one. It would have had to happen under Nebudchadnezzar's rule!

Answer 1

Joshua 15:63: "Judah could not dislodge the Jebusites who were living in Jerusalem; to this day the Jebusites live there with the people of Judah." The men of Judah DID have a victory over the city of the Jebusites (Judges 1:8 & 21) though Jebusites continued living alongside them. By linking this with Deut. 7:1 the explanation becomes clear:

This was not a prophecy. It was a conditional promise. The realisation of the promise depended on the Israelites doing what God commanded of them. They failed to do this, so their victories were partial. As the Israelites started failing to carry out all God's instructions regarding the captives at the start, so God withdrew his support and they began to fail. In some wars they were utterly defeated. But they couldn't say God had not warned them!

Damascus, the Nile, Babylon and Egypt being uninhabited: There's a real mixture here of history and future events. Many references to Egypt and Babylon hark back to when God dramatically broke into events to deliver his people, or to send them off as captives. Certain prophecies clearly did happen (though Egyptian history says nothing of its humiliations at the hand of Yahweh - that doesn't prove nothing happened!) The Babylonian events have much clearer evidence. Other statements relate to future events; still others to the massive end-times when the Lord comes in judment of his people and all the nations. Don't forget also that God has a way of speaking about 'Egypt' as a symbol for 'the world', and warns his people not to 'go down to Egypt for help'. And Bablyon likewise is spoken of a a spiritual harlot. Symbolism proliferates all the prophecies of the Old testament. There isn't space here to delve into all of that. Suffice to say that God will have the last word!

Answer 2

Religious believers tend to deal with the lack of fulfillment of prophecy by pushing fulfillment into the future. Just think of the predictions that Jesus would return within the lifetime of the generation present when he spoke. If Christians can hold to those with a specific timeframe almost 2,000 years later, how much easier is it to do with ones that don't specify the timeframe?

What makes matters worse is that most Christians don't even realize when they are reading "prophetic" books that talk about things that already happened. One might be able to debate whether the second part of the Book of Daniel is a genuine prophecy or a pseudo-prophecy, but no one well versed in Jewish history could deny it refers to the period when the Jewish homeland was caught between the Syrians and Egypt during the late Hellenistic age, leading up to the time of the rule of Antiochus Epiphanes. Yet your average believer never reads a history book or commentary and assumes it is all still future.

Answer 3

Prophecies are often conditional. You have to search the scriptures to see if the related events also occured.

Some prophecies are also pertaining to the age to come, the one after Christ comes again, and not this one.

Answer 4

Was there a date and time associated with them?

Answer 5

Shhh.

They are going to happen real soon now.

Answer 6

Maybe they're still to come.

Answer 7

no