Gabriel’s prophecy to Daniel about the seventy weeks is one of the most difficult

passages in the Bible:

9:24
Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the
transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting
righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place. 25Know
therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and rebuild
Jerusalem to the coming of an Anointed One, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then
for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time.
26
And after the sixty-two weeks, an Anointed One shall be cut off and shall have nothing.
And the prince of the people who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its
end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed.
27
And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week
he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall come
one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator (Dan
9:24–27 ESV).

In context, this passage is God’s answer to Daniel’s prayer (9:3–19) asking for
restoration to the land for the people of Israel. Daniel understood that the seventy
years of exile Jeremiah spoke about had elapsed, at which point God had promised
to restore Israel (Jer 25:11, 12; 29:10). There are a few issues that make this
passage difficult: first, the Hebrew text in Daniel says “seventy sevens,” an idiom
for seventy weeks; second, the identities of the “anointed one” and the “prince of
the people”; third, the object of destruction; fourth, the identity of the “wing of
abominations”; and fifth, the meaning of the numbers in this passage. This paper
will examine the numerology of this passage focusing on the seventieth week.

First, is “seventy sevens” (‫ׁש ְב ִ֜עים‬ ִ ‫ׁש ֻב ִ֨עים‬

ָ ) rightly understood as seventy years, even
if seventy weeks would be a more faithful translation? This passage must be read
in light of Jeremiah, which explicitly affirms that the exile will end after “seventy
years” (‫ׁשב ְִע֥ים ׁש ָָנ֖ה‬
ִ ). In Daniel 9, therefore, “weeks” should be understood as
“years” according to the prophet Jeremiah; specifically, “weeks of years.” Thus
instead of reading this passage as 490 days, readers should understand the
prophecy as 490 years from the time of the prophecy to its fulfillment.1

Attempting to craft a timeline of the seventieth week requires that we determine

two things: first, when did the prophecy take place? and second, when does the 490
years begin? Before that, we must first determine the date of the book of Daniel to
identify this. If we take the timeline presented in Daniel seriously, we see the
destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. and Daniel’s work in Babylon lasting around
70 years after that until Persia’s conquest in 539 B.C.2 Since Daniel’s prophecy
occurred during “the first year of Darius” (Dan 9:1), we can count 490 years from
539 to around 49 B.C. This is approximately the middle of the Maccabean era,
which began to put an end to transgression in the temple and drove out the
foreigners desecrating the holy place.3 The issue, however, is that 49 B.C. does not
make sense in this context. There is nothing around that time which indicates the
֣ ִ ‫)מ‬, God’s Anointed One.4 Thus we must look
coming of the Christ (Heb ‫ָׁשי ַח‬
elsewhere for a starting date from which to begin counting the 490 years.

There are four possibilities for beginning the count: first is 586 B.C. at the fall of
Jerusalem, but 490 years from there is 96, which is not an important date in
Daniel’s view of history; second is Cyrus’ proclamation allowing for the end of
exile (Ez 1:1) in 537, but this takes us only to 47 B.C. and does not make sense of
the constructions mentioned in Dan 9:26; third is Artaxerxes’ commission to Ezra
to begin rebuilding the temple in 457 B.C. (Ez 7:11–26), 490 years from which
takes us to A.D. 33; fourth is Artaxerxes’ commission to Nehemiah to begin
construction to rebuild the walls (perhaps the “squares and moats” of Dan 9:25) in
444 B.C., 490 years from which is A.D. 46. 5 These last two options are most
compelling, as is evident in Christological readings. We know that Christ died
around A.D. 30/33, depending upon the source, and beginning the 490 years with
Ezra takes us exactly to that date (this is the option Gentry prefers). However, there
is a compelling case to be made with Nehemiah in 444 as well. Even though
counting 490 takes us to A.D. 46, Harold Hoehner points out that using a lunar
year of 360 days, which was the standard way of counting seasons (twelve months
of thirty days each) takes us also to A.D. 33. 6 In either case, counting 490 years
results in the date of Jesus’ crucifixion: Jesus who is the Christ, the Anointed One
of God (Jer 23:5–6; Matt 16:16).

In the move from the sixty-ninth to the seventieth week, the Anointed One will be
cut off and the sanctuary will be destroyed (Dan 9:26–27). Christ identified himself
with that sanctuary in John 2:19, suggesting that he will be the one cut off. The
difficulty arises with identifying who the “prince of the people” is. He is the one
who brings about the abomination of desolation, a term used later in Daniel to refer
to Antiochus Epiphanes during the Maccabean crisis (11:31; 12:11). In this
passage, however, the prince of the people is the representative of the people and
therefore stands for the Jewish people as a whole. It is the Jews who bring about
the abomination of desolation in the seventieth week upon themselves. Their
sacrilege of God’s temple, who is Jesus Christ, results in judgment and the
destruction of their temple in Jerusalem. Here we see a sharp divide between the
temples. Nehemiah’s temple was never indwelt by God, nor did it ever become the
place of God’s presence. God’s chosen temple, where he resided on earth with
men, was Jesus Christ. By destroying this temple, the Jews establish themselves as
God’s enemies who desecrate God’s temple by killing God himself (Matt 27:25).

The seventieth week is a week of judgment, but it is also a week of rest. There is a
spiritual reading of the 490 years that symbolizes God’s faithfulness to observe the
Sabbath rest. Just as God rested on the seventh day (Gen 2:2), so Israel was to rest
on the seventh day (Ex 20:8). However, this principle is expanded out to a “sabbath
year”; every seventh year is to be a time of rest, and every “seven sevens” (or 49)
years there is to be a sabbath year followed by a year of Jubilee, which is when
debts were forgiven, sold land return, and slaves set free (Lev 25:1–17). It is
improbable Israel ever observed this command, for there is no record of an
observation of such a socially upsetting practice. From the time Israel conquered
the land under Joshua they failed to observe 70 Sabbath years; thus God sent them
into exile for 70 years, allowing the land to rest for the time he appointed. Thus
when Israel comes back they enter their fiftieth year, the year of Jubilee, when the
slaves are set free and the old covenant promises are renewed. Hebrews 4 makes
this point clear. Joshua could not provide rest to the people of God: “There remains
a sabbath-rest for the people of God” (Heb 4:9). Reading Daniel 9 spiritually
means that we are now approaching the end of this period of exile, the end of the
490 years, as we are approaching the new Sabbath rest of God.

Endnotes
1. Michael Kalafian, The Prophecy of the Seventy Weeks of the Book of Daniel (Lanham: University Press
of America, 1991), 3–5, citing Otto Zockler, “The Book of the Prophet Daniel,” in Commentary on the Holy
Scriptures,” 1876 ed., vol. 13, ed. John Peter Lange (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1960), 13:194.
2. Daniel continued work in Persia after the fall of Babylon, but the vision of Daniel 9 is recorded in the
first year of the rule of Darius, who received the kingdom directly from the Babylonians (Dan 9:1). For the dates on
the Persian empire, see Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq, 3rd ed. (London: Penguin Books, 1992), 381, 382.
3. The Maccabean revolt began in 165 B.C. For more information on Daniel in light of the Maccabean
crisis, see Daniel J. Harrington, The Maccabean Revolt (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2009), 17–35, and Anathea
Portier-Young, Apocalypse against Empire (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 41, 211–212, 258–262.
4. Jay Braverman, Jerome’s Commentary on Daniel (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic Biblical Association
of America, 1978), 104. It is interesting to note that the MT division of the text prohibits identification of the
Anointed One of verse 25 with the same title in verse 26. This is likely a Masoretic reaction against messianic
interpretations of this passage, common with people like Jerome. A Christological reading is easily supported by
semantic diagrams of LXX, θ, Sym, and Syr; so, Peter J. Gentry, “Daniel’s Seventy Weeks and the New Exodus,”
SBJT 14, no. 1 (2010): 30–31, citing Roger T. Beckwith, “Daniel 9 and the Date of Messiah’s Coming in Essene,
Hellenistic, Pharisaic, Zealot and Early Christian Computation,” Revue de Qumrân 40 (1981): 521–542.
5. All four of these are listed and analyzed in Gentry, “Daniel’s Seventy Weeks,” 35, 36.
6. Harold W. Hoehner, Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1977). See
the critique of this position in Gentry, “Daniel’s Seventy Weeks,” 35.
 Bibliography

Braverman, Jay. Jerome’s Commentary on Daniel. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic

Biblical Association of America, 1978.

Gentry, Peter J. “Daniel’s Seventy Weeks and the New Exodus.” The Southern
Baptist Journal of Theology 40, no. 1 (2010): 26–44.

Harrington, Daniel J. The Maccabean Revolt. Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2009.

Hoehner, Harold W. Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ. Grand Rapids:

Zondervan, 1977.

Kalafian, Michael. The Prophecy of the Seventy Weeks of the Book of Daniel.
Lanham: University Press of America, 1991.

Portier-Young, Anathea. Apocalypse against Empire. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,

2011.

Roux, Georges. Ancient Iraq, 3rd ed. London: Penguin Books, 1992.