Tag: KingdomOfGod

Understanding Daniel’s 70 “Weeks” Prophecy (pt. 3)

Understanding Daniel’s 70 “Weeks” Prophecy (pt. 3)

We continue our look at the great prophecy of Daniel 9:24-27. Read the rest of the series.

As we march onward in our study of Daniel 9:24-27, we’ve arrived at Daniel 9:26. What happens after the 69th “seven”? That is, after Daniel 9:25? There is still one “seven” left, and a lot of stuff still to be fulfilled from the six-item list Gabriel revealed in Daniel 9:24. As the prophecy goes on, in Daniel 9:26, two key events happen:

  1. The Messiah will be “cut off,” and
  2. “the people of the prince who is to come” will destroy Jerusalem and its temple.

Let’s look at these one at a time.

Messiah and the “gap” between “weeks” 69 and 70

Then after the sixty-two weeks, the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined (Daniel 9:26).

When will the Messiah be “cut off and have nothing”? What does it mean? Considering the bible’s whole story, it seems to suggest Messiah’s death:

He was despised and abandoned by men, A man of great pain and familiar with sickness; And like one from whom people hide their faces, He was despised, and we had no regard for Him … By oppression and judgment He was taken away; And as for His generation, who considered that He was cut off from the land of the living, for the wrongdoing of my people, to whom the blow was due? (Isaiah 53:3, 8).

Jesus was despised, rejected, and abandoned—he had nothing. Then he was “cut off”—the Romans executed him. According to Daniel 9:26, this will occur “after the sixty-two weeks …” Remember, there are two sets of “sevens” in Daniel 9:25—(a) seven “sevens,” and then (b) 62 “sevens. The Messiah’s death happens after this second set—the 62 “sevens,” like this:

So, while the phrasing is awkward, it seems that the Messiah’s death will happen after the 62 “sevens,” which means after the 69 “sevens.”[1] However, because the 70th “seven” will not begin until Daniel 9:27 (“And he will confirm a covenant with the many for one week …”) it seems there is a “gap” of time here between the 69th and 70th “seven.” If there is no gap, then the 70th “seven” happens immediately—the Messiah dies during the 70th “seven,” because it happened after the 69th “seven.

Figure 2. In which “week” does Daniel 9:26 and Messiah’s death occur?

Evidence suggests there is a gap between “weeks” 69 and 70 because of this chain of logic:

  • Because the evidence for the first 69 “sevens” suggests each “seven” is a set of seven years, we are obligated to see the 70th “seven” as also being a set of seven years.
  • Because Messiah was “cut off” after the 69th “seven,” we might assume this happened during the 70th “seven.”
  • If true, then Jesus was “cut off” at his crucifixion in ≈ A.D. 30.

But …

  • This would mean all six tasks in Daniel 9:24 (“Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city …”) must take place within seven years of Messiah being “cut off” (A.D. 37-ish)—which must be the case if the 70th “seven” truly followed right on the heels of the 69th.

In other words, if there is no gap between the 69th and 70th seven, then …

  • Because each “seven” is seven years,
  • and the 70th “seven” begins with Jesus’ death in ≈ A.D. 30 (when he is “cut off”),
  • then the 70th “seven” would have ended in ≈ A.D. 37,
  • and so all six promises from Daniel 9:24 would have to be fulfilled by A.D. 37.

That did not happen! So, there must be a gap between the 69th and 70th “seven.” Bible-believing interpreters who do not account for this gap are left with an impossible dating problem. So, they are generally forced to take one of two options:

  • Option 1: Push the entire thing backwards and make the sinister figure at Daniel 9:27 the wicked Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes IV, who ruled in the early 2nd century B.C. (read about him in 1 Maccabees 1).[2]
  • Option 2: Make the mysterious ruler at Daniel 9:27 be Jesus and wrap the entire prophecy up with Jesus’ ascension to heaven.

Neither of these make the best sense of a straightforward reading of the bible. The “gap” between the 69th and 70th “seven” seems to be the best solution. If true, then the 70th “seven” doesn’t begin until the events of Daniel 9:27, which is yet future. I can’t yet make a full case for the “gap theory” of the 70th “seven” until we wrestle with Daniel 9:27, and that must wait for the next article.

The mystery prince

We now turn to the second event from Daniel 9:26:

Then after the sixty-two weeks, the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined (Daniel 9:26).

The word translated as “prince” means leader, ruler, or a male sovereign other thanthe ruling king (i.e., “the prince”). This means that some ruler will come along one day, whose people will destroy Jerusalem and the temple the Jewish people just re-constructed in Daniel 9:25—the tale told to us in the books of Haggai, Ezra, and Nehemiah.

Well, this makes identification pretty simple—who destroyed Jerusalem (“the city and its sanctuary”) and when did they destroy it?

Daniel says it was “the people of the prince who is to come” (Dan 9:26) who will destroy Jerusalem and its sanctuary. Because the Roman army later destroyed this very city and that very temple in A.D. 70 (some ≈ 600 years after Daniel wrote this prophecy), this means our “prince” in Daniel 9:26 is somehow connected to the Roman empire—which Daniel 7 suggested will exist in three phases.[3]

  • Phase 1: The old Roman Empire under whose jurisdiction Jesus and Pontius Pilate lived (Dan 7:23).
  • Phase 2: Sometime after Jesus’ day, a splintered remnant that has divided into various pieces (the “10 horns” of the scary fourth beast, Dan 7:23-24).
  • Phase 3: A very powerful king who will arise from among the splintered bits of Phase 2 (Dan 7:24-26).

History tells that a Roman general (and later emperor) named Titus Vespasianus destroyed Jerusalem during the First Jewish War,[4] when the Roman empire was still intact in its original form (Phase 1, above). This will be a nasty finish to a brutal war. Gabriel tells Daniel: “… its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined” (Dan 9:26). Now, on the other side of this event, we know that God brought this judgment on his people in A.D. 70 because they rejected the Messiah and Savior whom he sent to rescue them.

The Roman (and Jewish) writer Josephus tells us what happened to Jerusalem when the Romans destroyed it. He knows, because he was there that day.

There was no one left for the soldiers to kill or plunder, not a soul on which to vent their fury; for mercy would never have made them keep their hands off anyone if action was possible. So Caesar now ordered them to raze the whole City and Sanctuary to the ground … [a]ll the rest of the fortifications encircling the City were so completely leveled with the ground that no one visiting the spot would believe it had once been inhabited. This then was the end to which the mad folly of revolutionaries brought Jerusalem, a magnificent city renowned to the ends of the earth.[5]

Josephus tells of one Jewish woman named Mary, driven mad by hunger, who killed her infant son, roasted him, ate one half of him and saved the rest for later[6] (cp. Deut 28:53-57). The temple itself was destroyed by fire in a frenzy of rage by Roman legionnaires who ignored their commander’s orders.

All the prisoners taken from beginning to end of the war totalled 97,000; those who perished in the long siege 1,100,000 … No destruction ever wrought by God or man approached the wholesale carnage of this war.[7]

This must be very hard to hear and understand. We wonder what Daniel thought when he heard this news!

  • Daniel asks for assurance from God that he will set everything right (Dan 9:3-19)
  • God sends the angel Gabriel to say that he will make it right (Dan 9:20-23).
  • In fact, things will be set so right that the six-item list at Daniel 9:24 shows us paradise restored.
  • This shakes out with (a) Jerusalem being rebuilt, and then (b) Messiah the prince arriving on the scene (Dan 9:25). This will take 69 “sevens” to happen, but it’ll happen.

Everything sounds great. But then, after the 62nd “seven” (i.e., 69 “sevens” in total):

  • The Messiah will be cut off and have nothing (Dan 9:26).
  • Jerusalem and its (as yet) un-rebuilt temple will be totally destroyed (Dan 9:26)!

This is a shock. What can it mean? Why will it happen? Why this bizarre reversal? Who is this mysterious prince who is to come? At this rate, Daniel may be thinking, the glorious six-item promise list from Daniel 9:24 seems far, far away. Clearly this is a one step forward, two steps back kind of thing. What is the endgame, here?

Evidence suggests there will be a long series of events after Messiah’s arrival at his baptism at Daniel 9:25 (the end of the first 69 “sevens”), and before the 70th “seven” begins in Daniel 9:27.

  • At least one of those events will be Messiah’s seeming abandonment (“have nothing”), and his execution by Roman soldiers (“be cut off”).
  • Another event will be the destruction of the rebuilt temple and the city of Jerusalem by the people of the Roman ruler who will come on the scene (Dan 9:26)—the general Titus, who indeed razed the city in A.D. 70.
  • This “intermission” seems to best explain the “gap” between the 69th and 70th unit of seven years in the prophecy.

Nevertheless, in our next article on Daniel 9:27, the angel Gabriel tells us how God plans to make good on his six-item list of promises.

[1] John Gill: “To be reckoned from the end of the seven weeks, or 49 years, which, added to them, make 483 years” (Exposition of the Old Testament, 6:346). Stephen Miller writes: “After the reconstruction of Jerusalem in the first seven sevens (forty-nine years), another ‘sixty-two sevens’ (434 years) would pass” (Stephen R. Miller, Daniel, vol. 18, in New American Commentary (Nashville: B&H, 1994), 267).

[2] This is why Moses Stuart, an outstanding American bible scholar from the early 19th century, remarks: “The third period (one week) of course begins with the same excision of an anointed one, and continues seven years, during which a foreign prince shall come, and lay waste the city and sanctuary of Jerusalem, and cause the offerings to cease for three and a half years, after which utter destruction shall come upon him, vs. 26, 27” (Daniel, 274; emphasis added). Stuart does not consider the possibility of a gap between the 69th and 70th “seven.”

[3] Young, Daniel, 147-50. He is excellent, here.

[4] See this video for free background.

[5] Josephus, The Jewish War, trans. G.A. Williamson, rev. ed. (New York: Penguin, 1969), 7:1 (361). Chrysostom suggests, “And let not any man suppose this to have been spoken hyperbolically; but let him study the writings of Josephus, and learn the truth of the sayings. For neither can any one say, that the man being a believer, in order to establish Christ’s words, hath exaggerated the tragical history,” (“Homily 76,” in NPNF 1.10, 457).

[6] Josephus, The Jewish War, 6:199-219 (341-342). 

[7] Josephus, The Jewish War, 6:420f. See ch(s). 13-21 (i.e., 3:422 – 6:429).

Understanding Daniel’s 70 “Weeks” Prophecy (pt. 2)

Understanding Daniel’s 70 “Weeks” Prophecy (pt. 2)

We continue our look at the great prophecy of Daniel 9:24-27. Read the rest of the series.

Now we come to the fun part of this prophecy. Some of the details from the sweeping vision of Daniel 9:24 will now be spelled out. Daniel wants to know when God will bring his people back from exile and restore his kingdom that has fallen. So, Gabriel gives him God’s answer:

So you are to know and understand that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, until Messiah the Prince, there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with streets and moat, even in times of distress (Daniel 9:25).

There are two big events in Daniel 9:25: (a) the decree “to restore and rebuild Jerusalem,” and (b) Messiah the prince’s arrival on the scene. Fair enough. But there is controversy about how to translate this passage. I mention this because your bible translation may differ from the NASB (2020) which I’m using in this article.

  • Option 1 suggests (a) Messiah’s arrival = seven “sevens,” and (b) Jerusalem’s re-building = 62 “sevens”—a total of 69 “sevens” (ESV; also RSV, NEB, REB, CEB, NRSV).
  • Option 2 says (a) Messiah’s arrival, and (b) the rebuilding of Jerusalem = 69 “sevens.” The specific timeframes of each are undefined (NASB; also NLT, NET, KJV, NIV, CSB).

You can see the difference in these two examples:

Figure 1. Translation differences at Daniel 9:25.

Many good Christians are on each side of this translation issue.[1] Regardless, it’s clear that by the end of the 69 “sevens” Messiah will have arrived on the scene, and Jerusalem will have been re-built. In Daniel’s day, Jerusalem lies in ruins (Lam 5:17-18). Although Daniel couldn’t have known this at the time, bible history tells us that first the exiles returned and rebuilt the city and its temple, and then Messiah arrived on the scene in the opening pages of the New Covenant scriptures. So, it’s best to understand these events as being keyed to the two time-periods, so the 69 “sevens” shake out like this:[2]

At the end of these 69 “sevens” (more on that in a minute), both these events will have happened.

Or have they?

Some otherwise solid bible teachers say that Jerusalem’s “rebuilding” is really about the “spiritual kingdom” of God advancing in the world.[3] This unlikely. There’s no good reason to dismiss the straightforward interpretation that Jerusalem means Jerusalem here—Daniel is talking about the actual city being truly rebuilt.

Of course, that’s exactly what happened. The city and its walls and its temple were rebuilt, “even in times of distress” (Dan 9:25)—just as Gabriel said it would be. Later, in Nehemiah 4:11, the bible tells us about these troublesome times as they tried to re-build the city in the years after Ezra led people back to Israel: “And our enemies said, ‘They will not know or see until we come among them, kill them, and put a stop to the work.’”

What are the “sevens”?

The word your bible may translate as “weeks” means “sevens” (שִׁבְעִ֜ים), which is a vague time marker that context must explain. Sometimes it means years (Dan 9:3). Sometimes it doesn’t. This “sevens” business is weird—why does God communicate to Daniel this way?

The simplest explanation is that God is riffing off the “70 years (שִׁבְעִ֜ים) of captivity before I bring you back to the promised land” thing which promoted Daniel to pray in the first place (see Dan 9:2; cp. Jer 25:11-12, 29:10). That is, God is basically saying:[4]

  • “Yes, Daniel, you’re right—70 “sevens” (שִׁבְעִ֜ים) will elapse before I start to bring y’all back to the promised land.”
  • “But, 70 other “sevens” (שִׁבְעִ֜ים) will elapse before I really, truly fix the root problem.”

And it’s the end of these 70 “sevens” that brings us to paradise in the better tomorrow (Rev 20:21-22).

So, what are the 70 “sevens” from our prophecy in Daniel 9:24-27? We should interpret the bible plainly unless there is reason not to do so. Again, the word your bible may translate as “weeks” means “sevens” (שִׁבְעִ֜ים), which is a vague time marker that context must explain. There are 70 “sevens” or “units of [something]” in this entire prophecy (Dan 9:24). Here are four common options:

  • 70 sets of days (70 days).
  • 70 sets of years (70 years).
  • 70 sets of seven years (490 years).
  • 70 symbolic numbers that have no literal sense of time.

How do we know how to understand these “sevens?”[5] The clearest measure is the 69 “sevens” that elapse from (a) the order to rebuild Jerusalem, until (b) the anointed one (“Messiah”) arrives. However long this time is, it equals 69 “sevens.” So, if we figure out this time-period, we can figure out what a “seven” is. You must first determine the date of one of these two events—the beginning point is the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, and the end point is Messiah’s arrival.

  • Don’t start at the beginning! Many bible teachers (and students!) drown in dates and charts at this point because they try to first determine the date of the decree to rebuild Jerusalem. This is not a good place to start. There are at least four plausible options in the old covenant scriptures, and it all becomes very complicated.
  • So, if there is an easier option to figure this out, we ought to take it and run with it.
  • Fortunately, there is a better option. It’s simpler to begin with the end point (the arrival of Messiah, the prince/ruler) and then work backwards.
  • This date is easier—there is comparatively little debate among bible-believing interpreters about the date of Jesus’ arrival on the scene.

So, we will take the best date(s) for the beginning of Jesus’ ministry (i.e., his “arrival”)[6] and work the 69 “sevens” backwards from there, using each of the four possible “ways” to understand the “sevens” (above). Here is how we do it:[7]

  • I interpret Jesus’ arrival (“until Messiah the Prince”) as his baptism, when his ministry formally kicks off (Mk 1:9-13). If you try to use Christmas as his arrival, no calculation makes any sense at all. So, the baptism it is.
  • It’s very likely the Romans crucified Jesus in April of A.D. 30. Some say A.D. 33. I assume A.D. 30 in the calculations that follow.[8]
  • By counting the number of Sabbaths mentioned during Jesus’ ministry, we determine his ministry probably lasted about 3.5 years.[9]
  • This would put Jesus’ arrival on the scene (his baptism) as late A.D. 26 (i.e., April, A.D. 30 minus 3.5 years = October-ish, A.D. 26).
  • We can now count backward using the various “69 units of something” options to figure out the most likely solution.

There are 69 “units of something” from the decree to rebuild Jerusalem until A.D. 26, when the Messiah who is a prince/leader/ruler arrives.

  1. Option 1—A.D. 26 minus 69 units of days (69 days). This would put the decree to rebuild Jerusalem at 69 days before Jesus’ baptism at Mark 1:10-11. This option clearly doesn’t work. The city was rebuilt long before this point!
  • Option 2—A.D. 26 minus 69 units of years (69 years). This would put the decree to rebuild Jerusalem as happening in 43 B.C. This isn’t true—the returning exiles rebuilt Jerusalem by at least 445 B.C. (Neh 6:15)!
  • Option 3—A.D. 26 minus 69 units of seven years each (483 years). This would put the decree to rebuild Jerusalem as happening in 457 B.C (that is, A.D. 26 minus 483 years). This option fits well with Ezra’s commission to go to Jerusalem and establish God’s community in the city, now that the temple had been built—see Ezra 7:12-26; 9:9.

The Israelite’s return from the east to the promised land didn’t happen all at once. It came in fits and starts. The issues involving these dates are complicated. I’ll use generally accepted dates from conservative sources.[10]

  • Some folks, like Esther and her family, chose not to return to the promised land at all.
  • 538-ish B.C. Many Jews returned when Cyrus, the Persian ruler, gave them money, supplies, and allowed them to return and rebuild the temple in 538 B.C. (Ezra 1-6).[11] This is a tale also told in the books of Haggai and Zechariah.
  • 457 B.C. The next wave of exiles returned to the promised land under the leadership of Ezra, the priest (Ezra 7),[12] with the blessing of the Persian ruler, Artaxerxes I.
  • 445 B.C. About twelve years after Ezra and his party left for Jerusalem to the west, Nehemiah in Persia hears a report about how the city still lies in ruins and is yet to be fully repaired: “… the wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates have been burned with fire” (Neh 1:3). He seeks for and receives permission from the Persian ruler, still Artaxerxes I, to go (Neh 2:1-8).

Returning to our options for dating—the only reasonable solution, if we take each “seven” to be a unit of seven years each, is to see the beginning point of the timespan from Daniel 9:25 as Artaxerxes I’s decree for Ezra to head to Jerusalem in ≈ 457 B.C. It shakes out like this:

  • The end point (“until Messiah the prince,” Dan 9:25) is Jesus’ baptism in A.D. 26.
  • 69 “units of seven years each” = 483 years.

So …

Again, this fits well with Artaxerxes I’s decree for Ezra to head to Jerusalem in ≈ 457 B.C. Nevertheless, some good Christians disagree:

  • Some good bible scholars protest that, when the Persian king gave Ezra permission to go to Jerusalem sometime after the first wave of exiles had already returned (Ezra 7:12-26), the city was already in the process of being rebuilt.[13] They claim that the first wave of exiles who returned ≈ 538 B.C. already began this work.
  • After all, the foreigners in the land wrote to the Persian king before Ezra set out, complaining that “the Jews who came up from you have come to us at Jerusalem; they are rebuilding the rebellious and evil city and are finishing the walls and repairing the foundations” (Ezra 4:12).

What shall we do with this data?

  • First, the 457 B.C. date just works. It does. It works perfectly. So, if there is a reasonable solution that lets us keep the date, we should grab hold of it.
  • Second, it is true that Artaxerxes did not specifically tell Ezra to rebuild the city. But, he did send Ezra out to organize the returned exiles into a proper community and establish religious order. Ezra was apparently to be a sort of priest/governor: “And you, Ezra, according to the wisdom of your God which is in your hand, appoint magistrates and judges so that they may judge all the people who are in the province beyond the Euphrates River, that is, all those who know the laws of your God; and you may teach anyone who is ignorant of them” (Ezra 7:25). Ezra understood that his job included rebuilding the ruined city: “to give us reviving to erect the house of our God, to restore its ruins, and to give us a wall in Judah and Jerusalem” (Ezra 9:9).
  • Third, in the mid-440s B.C. when Nehemiah arrived on the scene, the city was still in ruins. “I was inspecting the walls of Jerusalem which were broken down and its gates which had been consumed by fire (Neh 2:13). He told his companions what he’d discovered: “Jerusalem is desolate and its gates have been burned by fire” (Neh 2:17). Working like madmen amidst fierce opposition, the city walls were only fully re-built in 445 B.C. (Neh 6:15; see also Neh 3-5).
  • Fourth, Ezra’s failure to finish rebuilding the city and its walls in the ≈ 12 years before Nehemiah pulled into town doesn’t nullify the Ezra option. It just means Ezra’s time was monopolized with other matters.[14]
  • Fifth, this all suggests the foreigners who wrote that letter to the Persian ruler were lying. The first wave of returned exiles rebuilt the temple in 515 B.C. (Ezra 6:15).[15] But the city was still a mess. A wasteland. Nehemiah tells us so. The folks who wrote that letter had their own reasons—they feared the Jewish people would establish themselves back in the promised land. So, they exaggerated the Jewish people’s progress and imputed sinister motives to them (Ezra 4:13-14) so the Persian king would order a halt to the whole thing. They succeeded (Ezra 4:17-24).

So, the decree to Ezra in ≈ 457 B.C. still makes good sense, which means each “seven” = a unit of seven years. Further, God advised the Israelites that the promised land, which they had defiled, must enjoy the sabbaths the people had ignored for 70 years (2 Chr 36:21). He also warned his people that he would repay them seven-fold for their sins (Lev 25:18, 21). This seems to be the springboard for Gabriel’s 70 “sevens” in our prophecy. The 70 “sevens” of punishment in captivity times 7x for their sins = 490 years = the 70 “sevens” at Daniel 9:24.[16]

All this indicates there is no need to consider the last option for understanding the “sevens”—the symbolic one. So, we have an incredibly detailed prophecy from Daniel 500-ish years before the events occurred—down to the very month of Jesus’ baptism. Gabriel clearly tells Daniel that, 483 years from a future decree to restore and re-build Jerusalem, the city will be rebuilt in times of trouble, and the Messiah will have arrived on the stage.

More details will come in Daniel 9:26, in the next article.

[1] For example, C.F. Keil and Franz Delitzsch spend a great deal of time defending the option that the ESV translation later represented (Commentary on the Old Testament, vol. 9 (reprint; Peabody: Hendrickson, 1996), 729). But, in the end, they agree that by the end of the 69 “sevens” Messiah will have arrived and Jerusalem will have been rebuilt. So, in a sense, the translation difference does not matter—the whole thing will take 69 “sevens.” But, it begins to matter when you try to sort the two events into order.

[2] “… the true reason of the 69 weeks being divided into seven, and 62, is on account of the particular and distinct events assigned to each period …” (Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament, 6:346).

[3] Leupold, Daniel, 424-25.

[4] Moses Stuart writes: “Daniel’s meditation had been upon the seventy simple years predicted by Jeremiah. The angel tells him that a new-seventy, i.e. seventy week-years or seven times seventy years, await his people, before their final deliverer will come” (Daniel, 266; emphases in original).

[5] A brief, reasonable defense of the “seven = one unit of seven years each” and the ≈ 457 B.C. date, which I propose here, is from Gleason Archer, “Daniel,” in Expository Bible Commentary, vol. 7, ed. Frank Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1985), 113-16.

[6] If we reckon Messiah’s “arrival” as Christmas morning, then no option but the symbolic one works for the “sevens.”  I do not discuss this “arrival = Messiah’s birth” option here, but you ought to know it is an option. Instead, I take Messiah’s arrival to be the start of his ministry—his baptism.

[7] There are two dating calculations computed by the best bible-believing scholars: (a) the A.D. 26 date for Jesus beginning his ministry at his baptism + the A.D. 30 date for his crucifixion (≈ 3.5 years of ministry), or (b) an A.D. 30 date for the beginning of his ministry + the A.D. 33 date for his crucifixion (also ≈ 3.5 years of ministry).I believe Option A is correct, largely based on this prophecy from Daniel and because the calculations are defensible.

These calculations are extraordinarily technical. See (a) Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology, revised ed. (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1992), §581, §583-4; §615-20, and (b) Harold Hoehner, Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1977), ch. 3, 5.

[8] Finegan, Biblical Chronology, §629 and references therein. Finegan opts for A.D. 33, but his analysis shows A.D. 30 is also quite probable.

[9] “Three years plus a number of months” (Finegan, Biblical Chronology, §628, §600-601).

[10] An excellent overview is Leon J. Wood, A Survey of Israel’s History, rev. David O’Brien (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986), 333-41.

[11] This happened in “the first year of Cyrus king of Persia” (Ezra 1:1), which was 539 B.C. (Jason Silverman, s.v., “Cyrus II,” in The Lexham Bible Dictionary, ed. John D. Barry et al. (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2016)).

[12] This occurred “in the seventh year of the king” of Persia, Artaxerxes I (Ezra 7:1, 8). This was about 457 B.C. (Walter A. Elwell and Barry J. Beitzel, “Artaxerxes,” in Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1988), 207).

[13] Edward Young, The Prophecy of Daniel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1949), 202-3; Andrew Steinmann, Daniel (St. Louis: Concordia, 2008), 462, 470.

[14] Archer, “Daniel,” in EBC, 7:114.

[15] For the 515 B.C. date, “[n]ow this temple was completed on the third day of the month Adar; it was the sixth year of the reign of King Darius” (Ezra 6:15), see Paul L. Redditt, s.v., “Temple, Zerubbabel’s,” in Lexham Bible Dictionary).

[16] Joyce G. Baldwin, Daniel, vol. 23, in Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1978), 187.

Understanding Daniel’s 70 “Weeks” Prophecy (pt. 1)

Understanding Daniel’s 70 “Weeks” Prophecy (pt. 1)

This is the first of three articles about the great prophecy in Daniel 9:24-27. This prophecy is very complicated and very important. One writer called it “the key to prophetic revelation.”[1] Many good Christians disagree about how to interpret it. This bible study will not exhaustively defend its interpretation at every point against all comers. Instead, it makes a positive case for its own position and seeks to be straightforward and understandable to ordinary people.

This bible study takes a literal, futurist view[2]—meaning (a) we should interpret the passage according to the natural, ordinary manner of language in proper context (e.g., poetry is poetry, narrative is narrative, figurative language is figurative, etc.), and (b) its fulfillment lies in the future—not the past.

Prayer answered (Daniel 9:1-23)

This prophecy happens because Daniel prays to God for help. This is a beautiful prayer. Christians should study it. But it isn’t our focus here, so we won’t stay here for long.

The Babylonians conquered the southern kingdom of Judah in 586 B.C., after a lengthy period of national and spiritual decline. The Babylonians took many Jewish people far away to the east (2 Kgs 25:11). Daniel was one of them. But that was a long time ago. He’s now an old man. He’s spent his best years as a civil servant in the Babylonian and Persian bureaucracies, trapped in an exile he doesn’t want. Daniel knows God swore that he would punish Israel for 70 years before he brings his people back to the promised land (Jer 25:11-12; 29:10). These 70 years have just about come and gone.

… I, Daniel, observed in the books the number of the years which was revealed as the word of the LORD to Jeremiah the prophet for the completion of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years. So I gave my attention to the Lord God, to seek Him by prayer and pleading, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes (Daniel 9:2-3).

The angel Gabriel arrives on the scene with God’s reply: “so pay attention to the message and gain understanding of the vision” (Dan 9:23). This bit is especially important—Gabriel is answering Daniel’s question about when God will bringIsrael back to the promised land. Daniel wants to know when God will make good on his “70 years promise.” He begs God: “for Your sake, Lord, let Your face shine on Your desolate sanctuary …” (Dan 9:17).

Well, Gabriel has come with God’s answer. This brings us to the famous prophecy. It summarizes the entire scope of living history–the sum of God’s plan to set everything right that’s wrong in this world.

The sum of the whole thing (Daniel 9:24)

Gabriel says:

Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the wrongdoing, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for guilt, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy Place (Daniel 9:24).

The most obvious question is about these seventy “weeks.” What does this mean?

It’s complicated.

We won’t get there until the next section—sorry! But, for now I’ll say that the word means “sevens,” which is a vague time indicator. Its meaning depends on what’s happening in the passage. Your bible may translate it as “weeks” to help you out, but that’s not necessarily the most helpful gloss.

Whatever these 70 “sevens” are—and we’ll figure that out soon enough—clearly God will accomplish a bunch of things by the time they’re fulfilled. There are three bad things that God will fix, and three good things that will happen. Gabriel says these events are directed towards “your people and your holy city” (Dan 9:24).

Sometimes, God speaks directly to certain people, while at the same time speaking also to other people far in the future—sometimes in a deeper and more meaningful way. We usually only see this in light of revelation that comes later in the bible’s story. For example:

  1. God told his rebellious people he would spare them from the poisonous serpents if they looked upon the image of a bronze serpent on a pole and truly believed this act would rescue them (Num 21:4-9). So far, so simple.
  2. But, in a deeper way, this command foreshadowed that God’s people will be spared from the poisonous serpent—“the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan” (Rev 12:9)—if they “looked upon” Jesus on his cross and truly believed this would rescue them (Jn 3:14-15).

Some of that is going on here. Yes, Gabriel speaks of the Jewish people (“your people and your holy city,” Dan 9:24), but the true reference is bigger than that.[3] Anyone who trusts in Jesus as his savior is a child of Abraham and an heir according to that covenant promise (Gal 3:26-29). After all, considering the bible’s whole story, God’s holy city is called the “new Jerusalem” (Rev 21:2; cp. Rev 21:1-4).

First, Gabriel lists three bad things that God will fix by the end of these 70 “sevens.”

  1. God will “finish[4] the transgression.” Rebellion and transgression will end. The only time in history that rebellion against God will stop is in the new paradise to come—in the better tomorrow: “there will no longer be any curse” (Rev 22:3).
  2. He will “make an end of sin.” Again, the only time in human history when God’s people will never sin is the eternity in paradise, where “the first things have passed away” (Rev 21:4).
  3. There will be made an “atonement for guilt.” In the old covenant, God did provide a way for believers to receive atonement (see Lev 4:27-31). In Leviticus 4:31, the bible says: “So the priest shall make atonement for him, and he will be forgiven.” But Christ’s atonement is different and better. According to Hebrews 10:2, the old covenant sacrifices “can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually every year, make those who approach perfect.” This is why Christ is the better priest, who gives his people a better reconciliation: “For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified” (Heb 10:14).

Next, Gabriel tells us three good things God will accomplish by the end of these 70 “sevens.”

  1. He will “bring in everlasting righteousness.” This is a righteousness that will never end. The only time when everlasting righteousness will be here on the earth is in the new tomorrow, in paradise (see Rev 22:1-4).
  2. God will “seal up vision and prophecy.” This most likely means there will no longer be any need for God to speak to his people by way of visions or prophecy, because he will reveal himself to us all personally—like he did with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden (Gen 3:8). This is when “the tabernacle of God is among the people, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them …” (Rev 21:3). 
  3. He will “anoint the Most Holy Place.” This is the satisfaction Jesus makes to God because of our sins and crimes–the personal and legal reconciliation that sets us right with him.

There are two ways to understand what “anoint a most holy” means.

  • The phrase means “holy of holies” or “a very holy thing/place/person.”
  • We’re tempted to think “holy of holies = inner chamber of the temple,” but this is not necessarily correct. The phrase just means “a really, really holy thing.” The context must tell you what this “very holy thing” is in this passage—a person (Jesus Christ) or a place (the Millennial temple)?

Because the passage is about everything wrong in this world being finally fixed at the end of the age, Gabriel is likely referring to Jesus here[5]—God will anoint a most holy person as king at his resurrection and ascension (Acts 13:22-23; cp. Ps 2:6-7). Further, in light of the bible’s whole story, Jesus literally is the new and better temple.

  • In Matthew 12:6, Jesus said that, in himself, something greater than the temple was here.
  • The apostle John says in his vision of the new Jerusalem that he sees no temple, “for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple” (Rev 22:22).
  • The psalmist gives us a prophecy of a king God will enthrone over creation: “I have installed My King Upon Zion, My holy mountain” (Ps 2:6). The apostle Paul explains that this passage refers to Jesus at his resurrection and ascension back to heaven (read Acts 13:32-33).

But some faithful Christian interpreters believe these six events refer to the new covenant era—to the time after Jesus’ ascension when the new covenant has launched. They say this isn’t about the last things at all—it’s all in effect right now. They believe this “everlasting righteousness” is about the righteousness from God (Rom 1:17) which he now offers to everyone who believes in Jesus.[6] To “finish the wrongdoing” and “make an end of sin” refers to Christ’s atonement for his people, etc.[7]

This is probably not right—there is surely no everlasting righteousness in our hearts, in our minds, or in this world. This world is awash in sin and temptation—the apostle Paul calls it “this present evil age” (Gal 1:4). This suggests the six great events are not yet fully accomplished. Believers (and this world) await the experiential transformation to match the legal pardon we already have (Rom 8:18-25).

So, it seems better to interpret these six momentous events as fulfilled when Jesus returns here from heaven to establish his kingdom—the “second coming.” Together, they tell us that God will fix everything that’s wrong in this world. No more transgressions, no more sin, a perfect atonement that brings personal and legal reconciliation with God, everlasting righteousness on earth as it is in heaven, no more need for vision and prophecy because all God’s people will see him as he is, and Christ anointed and ruling as king over his creation.

That’s why this prophecy matters.

How does all this good stuff shake out? We turn to that in Daniel 9:25-27, in our next two articles.

[1] John Walvoord, Daniel: The Key to Prophetic Revelation (Chicago: Moody, 1971; reprint, 1989).

[2] A free, scholarly resource that sketches my viewpoint is from Stephen R. Miller, “Interpreting Daniel’s Seventy Weeks: Dismal Swamp or Blessed Hope?” Available here.

[3] “… for all the people of God; who also were Daniel’s people and city in a spiritual sense, to which he belonged” (John Gill, An Exposition of the Old Testament, vol. 6 (London: Mathews and Leigh, 1810), 343).

[4] A very few English translations and commentators believe the phrase should be translated “restraining the transgression” (ISV translation and Edward J. Young, The Prophecy of Daniel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1949), 198). But this is almost surely incorrect.

[5] One more strike against this “very holy thing” being the Millennial Temple is that Gabriel calls the temple “the holy place” (וְהַקֹּ֜דֶשׁ) at Dan 9:26, in contrast to the more generic phrase “a most holy thing” (קֹ֥דֶשׁ קָֽדָשִֽׁים) at Dan 9:24. H.C. Leupold is especially good here (Exposition of Daniel (Colombus: Wartburg: 1949; reprint; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1969), 416), as is Young (Daniel, 201). 

[6] “This righteousness, or the Messiah who accomplishes it, was the treasure above all treasures that was most eagerly longed for by the Old Testament saints” (Leupold, Daniel, 414).

[7]  Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament, 6:344.