PHIL HARRIS | Seeker of Truth
Daniel’s Preface
In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, from the seed of the Medes, who was made king over the kingdom of the Chaldeans—in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, discerned in the books the number of the years concerning which the word of Yahweh came to Jeremiah the prophet for the fulfillment of the laying waste of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years.—Daniel 9:1-2
Daniel is approaching about ninety years old. He is reading the words God gave to some of His other prophets such as Jeremiah. It is interesting that Jeremiah’s life and prophetic ministry overlapped with Daniel’s; both of them experienced the Babylonian devastation of Judah. Here is what God revealed to Jeremiah:
“For thus says Yahweh, ‘When seventy years have been fulfilled for Babylon, I will visit you and establish My good word to you, to return you to this place.’”— Jeremiah 29:10
Realizing that God is about to fulfill His promise for the Israelites to be able to return to their own land, Daniel’s response is to pray concerning his own sin and that of the people of Israel. He repents and intercedes for his people.
Daniel’s humbling himself before God and repenting of his sin before making his own request is a profound example of a righteous man’s humility before God. Even Daniel, who was God’s man in a pagan government, submitted himself to God’s mercy and sovereignty before requesting understanding from the Lord.
Daniel’s Prayer
In verses 3-19, Daniel is praying but is interrupted by the angel Gabriel who will reveal God’s next program for the nation of Israel. Daniel is expecting that the nation will be brought back to the land and their national sovereignty restored, but Gabriel reveals that God’s plans for Israel are entering a new chapter. The seventy years of exile will move into a plan for seventy weeks of years.
The purpose of this commentary is to focus on the prophecy of the seventy weeks of years; therefore, we will not be looking closely at Daniel’s prayer. It is, however, an amazing prayer of repentance, trust, and supplication. I suggest that you read it in verses 3–19 of Daniel 9.
Meanwhile, we will move on to Gabriel’s appearance to Daniel and read his message from God which the prophet will receive on behalf of Israel.
Gabriel Comes to Daniel
Now while I was speaking and praying, and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before Yahweh my God in behalf of the holy mountain of my God,and while I was still speaking in prayer, then the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision previously, touched me in my extreme weariness about the time of the evening offering.Then he made me understand and spoke with me and said, “O Daniel, I have now come forth to give you insight with understanding.At the beginning of your supplications the word was issued, so I have come to tell you, for you arehighly esteemed; so understand the message and gain understanding in what has appeared. (Dan. 9:20-23)
Gabriel appears to Daniel and gently oriented him to realize that God was sending him a special message. Gabriel communicated with the weary prophet in three “steps”:
1. Gabriel came in person and touched Daniel, thus interrupting his prayer.
2. Gabriel says he is there to give “insight with understanding”.
3. Gabriel, the messenger of God, informs Daniel that he is “highly esteemed”.
Overview of the Seventy Weeks of Years
“Seventy weeks have been determined for your people and for your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Holy of Holies.”—Daniel 9:24
Gabriel is introducing a new prophecy based on a new group of seventy “sevens”, as the Hebrew literally renders. Daniel knows that God’s original plan of seventy years of exile is nearly ended, and he is not expecting a new program of seventies! Yet Gabriel is stating that there is a new program of “seventy weeks” for “your people”—Israel.
This prophecy of seventy “sevens” is understood to refer to seventy groups of seven years each: seventy “sevens”. Thus seventy groups of seven years would equal 490 years total.
The “holy city” is Jerusalem. This new seventy-week prophecy will usher in and end of sin and a completed atonement for iniquity for the nation and its capital city, Jerusalem. Everlasting righteousness will be ushered in, and by the end of this prophetic seventy-weeks, visions and prophecy will be sealed up—completed— because their meaning and purpose will have been fulfilled. Further, the Holy of Holies would be anointed.
The “Holy of Holies” refers to a temple—a temple which clearly does not yet exist. Yet Gabriel states unequivocally that these things will happen, and he clarifies that this particular prophecy is for “your people” and “your holy city”. This prophecy refers to the Jews and Jerusalem.
Since Daniel had been reading the book of Jeremiah just before Gabriel came to him with this word from the Lord, we need to turn to where Daniel was reading and learn what he learned:
“For thus says Yahweh, ‘When seventy years have been fulfilled for Babylon, I will visit you and establish My good word to you, to return you to this place.’”— Jeremiah 29:10
When Israel was in bondage in Babylon for 70 years, the land of Israel was at rest—desolate—for 70 years. In other words, God’s judgment on the nation of Judah for a 70-year exile in Babylon included His judgment on the people for not observing the “land sabbaths” which the law commanded in Leviticus 25:1–7. Because Israel did not give their land a sabbath rest from cultivation and harvest every seven years, God took the people out of the land for 70 years: one year for each year the land had not been allowed to be at rest. Here is what Leviticus commanded:
Yahweh then spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai, saying,“Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘When you come into the land which I am giving to you, then the land shall have a sabbath to Yahweh.Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its produce,but during the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath rest, a sabbath to Yahweh; you shall not sow your field nor prune your vineyard. What grows of its own accord from your harvest you shall not reap, and your grapes of untrimmed vines you shall not gather; the land shall have a sabbatical year.And the sabbath produce of the land shall be for food; for you and your male and female slaves and your hired man and your foreign resident, those who sojourn with you.Even your cattle and the beasts that are in your land shall have all its produce to eat.—Leviticus 25:1-7
Details of This Prophecy
In Nehemiah chapter two we learn the date when the Hebrew people were allowed to return to their homeland to rebuild the temple and the city walls of Jerusalem after their 70 years of exile:
Now it happened in the month Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, that wine was before him, and I took up the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had not been sad in his presence.—Nehemiah 2:1
History records that the 20th year of Artaxerxes’ rule was 445 BC. The passage in Nehemiah continues by telling us that the king gave Nehemiah permission to go back to Jerusalem to oversee the rebuilding of the city walls which had been destroyed in the Babylonian invasion. Knowing this date informs us that the starting point of this seventy-week—or 490 year—prophecy was in the Jewish month of Nisan in the year 445 BC. When we return to Daniel 9 and read verse 25 we find that Gabriel connects the beginning of this seventy-week prophecy with the command [issued by Artaxerxes] to rebuild the city of Jerusalem
So you are to know and have insight that from the going out of a word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince, there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be restored and rebuilt, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress.—Daniel 9:25
Here Gabriel reveals even more detail. We have learned that the command for Nehemiah to return and begin rebuilding the city and its walls was issued in 445 BC. Now we read that Gabriel is subdividing the seventy-week prophecy into two groups: a group of seven weeks (with each “week” representing seven years—or 49 years total) and a group of 62 weeks (434 years total). Here we notice that Gabriel is explaining what will happen over a period of 69 weeks total—not 70.
Why was Gabriel subdividing the prophecy into a group of seven “sevens”, another group of 62 “sevens”, and omitting that final week—the seventieth? Whey is he now focussed on 69 weeks divided into two parts? And where is that seventieth week?
History reveals the substance of those 69 weeks. Those first seven weeks of years (49 years total) included the time it took to rebuild the city of Jerusalem and the temple. This rebuilt, post-exilic temple is what is known today as the “second temple”. It was far less glorious than was Solomon’s first temple, and the Jews mourned the loss of the beauty of the first temple. Nevertheless, they had their temple rebuilt, and they were finally able, after 70 years of exile in Babylon without any temple, to practice temple worship again. They could resume their sacrifices and offerings and their Sabbaths. They could once again keep the law and observe Passover and the Day of Atonement—things they had not been able to do in Babylon.
The second subdivision—the 62 weeks of years (or 434 years) encompasses the years between the end of the Old Testament (marked by the prophecy of Malachi) and the coming of Messiah the Prince. In other words, the 62 weeks are the years between the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the temple and the appearance of the Messiah when He came to the temple and presented Himself to the people. These years include the intertestamental years when God gave no new word to His people. These were the “silent” years, and yet during these years, God continued to fulfill prophecy confirming His word to Daniel and to the rest of His prophets.
During these silent years between Malachi and the presentation of the Messiah to His people, we find historical confirmation of times of distress, just as Gabriel said. For example, the defilement of the temple by Antiochus Epiphanes when he slaughtered a pig on the altar of sacrifice and erected an image to Zeus in the temple, and the routing out of Antiochus and the restoration of the temple by the Jewish Maccabees three and a half years later, was a massive time of distress which was prophesied to Daniel in Daniel 8:14. In fact, the victory of the Maccabees over Antiochus and the Seleucid empire is commemorated to this day by the Feast of Hanukkah.
We see Gabriel’s revelation to Daniel corroborated in Zachariah’s prophecy as he foretells the Messiah coming into Jerusalem on a donkey. This prophecy was fulfilled when Jesus rode into Jerusalem to the temple in His Triumphal Entry just days before His crucifixion:
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!Make a loud shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you;He is righteous and endowed with salvation,Lowly and mounted on a donkey,Even on a colt, the foal of a pack animal.—Zachariah 9:9
The day Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey marked the end of the 69 weeks. Luke records Jesus weeping over Jerusalem as He came into Jerusalem:
And as He approached Jerusalem and saw the city, He cried over it,saying, “If you knew in this day, even you, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes.—Luke 19:41-42
Jesus cried because because He knew Israel was rejecting Him, their promised Messiah. We see Israel’s rejection of Jesus played out as Pilate asked the Jews whom they wanted released from custody in Rome’s annual ceremonial release of one Jewish prisoner in honor of the Passover feast.
In Matthew 27:17-26 Pilate asked; “Who do you want me to release?” The Jews responded, “Barabbas.”
And he said, “Why, what evil did He do?” But they were crying out all the more, saying, “Let Him be crucified!”Now when Pilate saw that he was accomplishing nothing, but rather that a riot was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to that yourselves.”And all the people answered and said, “His blood be on us and on our children!” (Matt. 27:23-25)
These horrifying details of Israel’s corporate rejection of their Messiah, even cursing themselves by saying “His blood be on us and on our children”, come immediately after the 69 weeks were fulfilled by the public appearance of the Messiah.
This rejection of their Messiah culminated in the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus. We see this event foretold in Daniel 9:26, and we also see what would come after Jesus’ crucifixion:
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 decreed.—Daniel 9:26
After the Sixty-Two Weeks
Two events mark what happens after the “sixty-two weeks”—that second group of weeks contained in the first 69 weeks of the 70-week prophecy—are complete. The first is that Jesus Christ the Messiah is ‘cut off’ on the cross. The second was fulfilled when Titus and the Roman army destroyed Jerusalem and the temple in 70 A.D.
Jesus confirmed to His disciples before His death that the devastation foretold in Daniel’s prophecy would soon come to pass:
And coming out from the temple, Jesus was going along, and His disciples came up to point out the temple buildings to Him. And He answered and said to them, “Do you not see all these things? Truly I say to you, not one stone here will be left upon another, which will not be torn down.”—Matthew 24:1-2
Sixty-nine weeks of the prophecy were fulfilled with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and His crucifixion and the subsequent destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD confirmed Gabriel’s prophecy and timeline. Further, Daniel 9:26 explains what will follow for Jerusalem after its destruction: the destruction would come “with a flood”—destructive forces would be unleashed on Jerusalem that no one could stop and that would destroy the nation of Israel. Yet we see that there will still be terrible events that would occur for Daniel’s people “even to the end”. In other words, the destruction of Jerusalem would not be “the end”. Certainly the temple would be destroyed and the city would be taken over by the hostile Roman Empire, but clear to “the end there will be war; desolations are decreed.”
In other words, the 69th week ends with Jesus’ public presentation of Himself in Jerusalem, and after that fulfillment of 69 weeks, the Messiah is crucified and the Jewish national identity is destroyed. We know from history that the Jews experienced the greatest dispersion of their existence when Jerusalem was destroyed. They fled from Judah, and over time the Jewish people were scattered throughout the nations of the world. “Desolations are decreed,” Gabriel had said—and desolations have marked the experience of the Jews ever since.
Daniel 9:27 reveals the events that mark the beginning of the 70th week of that 70-week prophecy. The 69th week ends with the Roman destruction of the city of Jerusalem with wars and desolations to continue until the end. Yet the years following the cessation of the Jewish nation and the desolations that followed are not counted in either those first 69 weeks nor in the seventieth week. The seventieth week is separated from the sixty-ninth week by an undetermined number of years.
The Seventieth Week
Jesus gave His disciples a warning concerning the beginning of the seventieth week when they asked Him what the signs would be that He was coming back. Matthew 24 contains signs that both foretold the destruction of Jerusalem and also foretold eschatological events that had a far future fulfillment:
“Therefore when you see the ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand),then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains. Whoever is on the housetop must not go down to get the things out that are in his house. And whoever is in the field must not turn back to get his garment.But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days!But pray that your flight will not be in the winter, or on a Sabbath.For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will.—Matthew 24:15-21
Certainly some of Jesus’s warnings applied to the destruction of Jerusalem that occurred just a few years after He made these statements. Yet what Jesus said cannot be seen to be fully fulfilled in 70 AD. He said that these events would launch a “great tribulation” that was worse than anything ever seen since the beginning of the world—and worse than anything else that ever would be. The destruction of Jerusalem was certainly intensely violent, but it cannot be said to be the worst tribulation that has ever occurred or ever will occur in the world.
Jesus was giving warnings about the events that would occur near the end, before He returned.
The Abomination of Desolation Jesus foretold was first mentioned in Daniel. In fact, Israel had already lived through one abomination of desolation that defiled the temple: Antiochus Epiphanes. Yet that abomination had occurred before Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Clearly Jesus was saying that there would be another event involving a Jewish temple in which an evil, anti-Christ man would take his place in the Holy Place. In fact, this desolation of defilement was also foretold by Gabriel in Daniel 9:27. In this verse Gabriel again picks up the figure of a “week”. That seventieth week that was not fulfilled by Jesus’ appearance is finally being described. It will occur in the last days before Jesus comes again, and Gabriel describes how this person will deceive Israel and desecrate Israel’s temple:
And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will make sacrifice and grain offering cease; and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate.”—Daniel 9:27
Notice that for this prophecy to come to its final fulfillment, there must be a temple. Even today there are many orthodox Jews who are planning to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem; the furnishings have been fashioned; the red sacrificial heifers have been bred. The political situation still makes a temple impossible—but as history shows us, we cannot explain away the words of prophecy just because they seem impossible to us.
We cannot speculate how or when such a thing could occur. All we can do is read the words of Scripture and believe that context is everything, and words matter. What God has said, He will do. Yet we err if we try to explain the details of how and when things will happen if God has not revealed them.
We can deduce, however, that if we see a temple being rebuilt in Jerusalem, we are approaching the final week of this 70-year prophecy. When the events of Daniel 9:27 occur, that is the time for the Hebrew people to flee to the mountains. That will mark that last week of tribulation that will resolve with the coming of the Lord Jesus in power. Revelation 12 explains the intensity of this final week by explaining that “the dragon” will be thrown to the earth, and he will be enraged as he persecutes “the woman”—Israel—who gave birth to the child Jesus:
And when the dragon saw that he was thrown down to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male child.But the two wings of the great eagle were given to the woman, so that she could fly into the wilderness to her place, where she was nourished for a time and times and half a time, from the presence of the serpent.—Revelation 12:13-14
Summary
- Daniel is reading the words of Jeremiah where he learns that at the end of 70 years of captivity the Hebrew people would be allowed to return to their homeland. They had been exiled for the same number of years which they had refused to give their land its commanded sabbaths. Every seven years they were commanded to let the land lie fallow and rest, and they had not obeyed. Thus their exile, which was the result of their great apostasy from Yahweh, lasted the same number of years which they had denied their land.
- Daniel is in prayer confessing his own sin and that of the people when the angel Gabriel comes to him in person with a two-part message. The first is that Daniel is highly esteemed. The second is that Gabriel was there to give Daniel “insight with understanding” concerning his prayers for knowledge of God’s will for his people.
- Overall, Gabriel announces that there are seventy prophetic weeks of world history leading to the end of transgression, the end of sin, the atonement for iniquity, and everlasting righteousness.
- In the year 445 B.C. King Artaxerxes allowed Israel to return to their homeland, a date which is the starting point of this prophecy. From this date there are 7 prophetic weeks for the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the temple and then another 62 prophetic weeks for the arrival of the Messiah Jesus Christ. Together these groups of weeks total 69 prophetic weeks. These 69 weeks bring us to about 30 A.D.
- At exactly the time when the 69 weeks ended, Jesus the promised Messiah came riding into Jerusalem on a donkey but cried because He knew they would reject Him before the week was out. He would die on Calvary for the sins of the world.
- Then, in 70 A.D., Titus and the Roman army destroyed Jerusalem and the temple. This event brings us to an end of the nation of Israel and punctuates the complete fulfillment of the first 69 weeks of this prophecy for Israel. What follows the destruction of Jerusalem is a time gap when Israel is not center stage, and the the church spreads throughout the gentile world. The length of this time gap is not revealed, but Gabriel tells Daniel that when this gentile-focussed gap is finished, the seventieth week of his prophecy for Israel will begin, and the time prophecy will be completed.
- In Dan. 9:27 we learn of the abomination otherwise known as the Antichrist who makes desolate the sacrifice (of the temple) during the 70th and final prophetic week of this prophecy. Therefore know that the fulfillment of the 70th week of this prophecy is close at hand when the temple in Jerusalem has been rebuilt.
- Comparing this prophecy with the book of Revelation we learn that the Antichrist, one who makes desolate, will be cast eternally into the Lake of Fire along with sin and death.
—All references unless otherwise stated are taken from the Legacy Standard Bible.
- Daniel 9: Seventy Weeks of Years - January 30, 2025
- Daniel 8: Abomination of Desolation - December 5, 2024
- Daniel 7:15–28 • Everlasting Kingdom of the Most High - October 10, 2024