The number twenty-one has very impactful and positive meanings in Scripture, but we must first understand its negative. Distress is the meaning of twenty-one when used in context.
The Hebrew word for distress or trouble is tsarah, pronounced (sah-raw) used in Jeremiah 30:7, where it speaks of “the time of Jacob’s distress or trouble.”
Jacob’s Three Seasons Of Trouble
When we carefully dig into Jacob’s Biblical account, we see that there are three seasons of 21 years of trouble or “tsarah” that he endured. Each of these produced something life-altering for him.
The first cycle finds him driven out of his own country. This fear-compelled organic action caused Jacob to run from his brother Esau who was plotting to kill him for the manipulation out of both his birthright and blessing by Jacob’s plotting. After fleeing to a far-off land, Jacob finds work with Laban, a distant relative, and for him, Jacob worked twenty years. During this period, he received two wives and riches. However, it was in the 21st year (a Sabbath rest year) when he returned to Canaan.
The pain he felt under Laban’s twenty years of bondage was overcome by the joy in his 21st Year.
In the 21st Year, Jacob returned to the country he remembered.
How many of us have said, “This is not the country I remembered that I grew up in?” They called the generation who fought to birth America the Founding Fathers. They called the generation who defeated fascism “great,” but our generation has never faced such a time of trouble. We are in that crisis now.
Jacob’s story is a clarion call to those forced from their homeland, the one they remembered. It was not by their choice when urged to leave the everyday blessings upon which they were raised: those of liberty and peace.
But in the 21st year, the country we remembered is the one to which we will return by prophetically declaring, “It’s the 21st year!”
The Second 21 Years
Though his next 21-year cycle overlapped a portion of the first, it was distinct as it had a specific starting and ending point.
Jacob would count 21 years between his trips to Bethel. During his first encounter, the Lord gave him the dream of the angels ascending and descending. But during his second, he buried the household idols and built an altar to God. Jacob’s second trip to Bethel ended 21 years of his “time of distress.”
Where it began: Jacob dreamed and saw a ladder going to heaven with angels ascending and descending on it.
“How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!” Genesis 28:17
Where it ended: Jacob finally built a house where he had the vision of God’s presence.
“and let us arise and go up to Bethel; and I will make an altar there to God, who answered me in the day of my distress [tsarah] and has been with me wherever I have gone.” Genesis 35:3
He returned to the place where he first encountered God and dwelt there.
So as we can see, it is always in the 21st Year where God restores a blessing.
The Third 21 Years
Jacob had another period of distress when he and Joseph were separated. From the time his brothers sold Joseph into slavery, telling his father, Jacob, that he was dead until their reunion in Egypt, twenty-one years passed.
In the third “twenty-one” year period of Jacob’s distress and trouble, he received back his “dead” son.
How many of us have lost children, considering them “dead to me” who will not receive them back in their 21st year?
This is the Lord’s decree.
The speaks of the FAMILY in the 21st year, Who were reunited in one place though they were impossibly separated.
This then becomes the prophetic declaration: – I will return to the country I remembered because “It is the 21st year!” – I will return to the presence of the Lord and dwell there because “It is the 21st year!” – I will be reunited with my lost family because “It is the 21st year!” – My time of trouble will end because “It is the 21st year!”
“It is the 21st year!”
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