The angel Gabriel gives Daniel the prophecy of seventy weeks
Daniel 9: 24—27
24 “Seventy weeks are decreed for 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. 25 Know therefore and understand: from the time that the word went out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the time of an anointed prince, there shall be seven weeks; and for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with streets and moat, but in a troubled time. 26 After the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing, and the troops of the prince 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 He shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall make sacrifice and offering cease; and in their place shall be an abomination that desolates, until the decreed end is poured out upon the desolator.”
For an easier reading, I highlighted the different characters in the passage.
The four verses above are among the most enigmatic in the Bible.
Most Biblical scholars apply the “one day stands for one year principle” to the scriptures. (Elsewhere in Hebrew texts, we encountered the day-year principle (Ezek 4:5), additionally, projects like building Jerusalem and the temple are impossible to complete within weeks as mentioned in the prophecy!) So, at least the endless debates, or at least most of them, are not over the duration of seventy weeks. Applying the one days equals one year, that means 70 weeks x 7 = 490 years.
The text states a list of events
First period (7 weeks, or 49 years):
a. The “word” goes out to rebuild Jerusalem and its temple (Beginning of period)
b. Arrival of an “anointed prince” (End of period)
Second period (62 weeks, or 434 years) during which the temple would have been built ends with:
c. “An anointed one shall be cut off” (i.e. killed) (End of period)
Third period (1 week, or 7 years) [The most debated one]:
d. A prince arrives with his troops. He makes a “covenant” for seven years, but breaks it in the middle, after three and a half years, when he stops the offering and commits the “abomination of desolation,” i.e. he profanes the temple. He ultimately destroys Jerusalem and its temple.
The critical scholars’ interpretation of the seventy-weeks prophecy
Critical scholars, as the name hints, do not assume divine inspiration or supernatural powers by the author. They also do not accept that the writer of the Book of Daniel was writing in the 6th century, as he claims, but in the 2nd century living through the events he allegedly prophesied. That is, he did not live in the times of Babylonian captivity of Jews but he was actually living under the oppression of the Seleucid empire. Critical scholars, right off the bat, stumble on the “first period.” They know that it ends with the arrival of an “anointed prince.” Whether that is King Cyrus the Great (considered anointed by God elsewhere in Jewish literature) or Joshua, the first High Priest of the Second Temple, that leaves them with the year 538. Now they have to understand the starting point of the “first period,” which starts with “the word” going out to rebuild the Jerusalem and its temple. What on earth (or in heaven) could that be?
“The word” of verse 25 is one of the most cryptic in the text. It can not be Jeremiah’s prophecy of 605 BC since that is a time gap of 67 years, and what is needed is a period of 7 weeks (49 years). It can not be the decree of Cyrus either, since that coincides with the very year of the anointing of the High Priest, i.e. they happen in the same year, no 49-year gap! If the reference is to the period during which the temple laid in ruins, from 587 BC, then that makes more sense (587 BC – 538 BC = 49 years). But that’s not what it says!
Second Period: The second period ends with the “cutting off” of an anointed one. According to critical scholars, the anointed who is “cut off” (killed) is the temple’s High Priest Onias III, assassinated in 171 BC. According to Jewish writings, he was killed at the hands of the Seleucids. Going back a period of 62 weeks (434 years) from 171 BC, which lands you perfectly in 605 BC. That is the year of Jeremiah’s prophecy to rebuild the temple (It is a little weird that a prophecy would appear to rebuild something that was in a perfect condition at the time, but that’s how Jeremiah rolls!) However, the problem with reaching 605 BC, going backwards from 171 BC, we no longer having any room for a “first period” (49 years). That led scholars to conclude that the author made a miscalculation, and that there is an overlap as the graphic above shows in red lines. One must admit that it seems like a copout, finding that when one’s timelines are not properly aligned, to blame the author for making a mistake!
Third period (the most debated one): During the final period, a prince makes a “covenant” for seven years, but breaks it in the middle, after three and a half years, when he stops the offering and commits the “abomination of desolation,” i.e. he profanes the temple. He ultimately destroys Jerusalem and its temple. Scholars point towards the covenant between Antiochus IV and Hellenized Jews, mentioned in 1 Maccabees 1:11-12. The author speaks of the temple’s desecration at 3 and a half years from the beginning of the third period, i.e. the end of the Second period, which ends with the killing of Onias III in 171 BC. That means in 167 BC which is the historical event, where the Second Temple was turned into a pagan shrine and pigs were slaughtered inside. The author “prophesies” that the desecration would be removed at the end of the seven-year period. That coincides with the Maccabean Revolt of 164 BC.
What happened in 171 BC was a greatly offensive act towards the Jewish people under Seleucid persecution. Their temple was profaned with pagan rituals, offering for sacrifice, of all animals, pigs! The most “unclean” animal to Jews. That event never left the collective memory of Jewish people. What never actually happened was the destruction of city of Jerusalem or the temple (yet). And that creates another problem for scholars since verse 26 above use the word “destroy.” However, they file that under “Lost in Translation,” and the author “probably” meant “spoil” rather than “destroy.” Others dismiss that charge by saying that Daniel was just a bit too dramatic while describing events that he lived through!
Hellenized Jews were viewed as disloyal by Jews who remained faithful to their traditions. Think of Americanized or Germanized Jews. Those Jews endorsed the Greek culture of the Seleucids. Biblical writers did not write favorably of them. They supported the Greek rulers and their culture. They did not object to seeing Judea becoming a Greek polis. They joined the innovative Greek institution of gymnasium (Oh boy, exercising in the nude!). And if you are a nude Jew among Greeks, they will see your circumcised penis, and they would be horrified. That led many Jews to abandon the practice (great offense to the faith), and those already circumcised took on the risk of reversing its effects. Perhaps, Hellenized Jews found it easy to abandon Jewish practices and rituals since they were outlawed under the Seleucid persecution. Eventually, after many generations, the “fundamentalist” Jews would rebel against them in what could be viewed as a civil war. The successful Maccabean Revolt was not only against the Seleucid oppressors but also the Hellenized Jews. In fact, Hannukah, celebrated by Jews annually commemorates that victory.
The traditional Christian interpretation of the seventy-weeks prophecy
Christians, who could be divided into three main groups of Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants, have naturally always surveyed the Old Testament looking for prophecies of a future messiah (Hebrew for “an anointed one”), that is Jesus Christ. That was never hard to do since there had been many prophecies about a future savior in Jewish writings for hundreds of years, not only in the Book of Daniel but also in the books of Hosea, Isaiah, Ezekiel and others. In fact, the idea of a savior originated in Judaism and was just reshaped in Christianity. When a Christian scholar sees the words “anointed one” in the Old Testament, they automatically read it, and understand it, through the figure of Jesus Christ. This particular prophecy is no exception. Most traditional Christians view it as a prophecy of Christ, and that its timeline starts between 457 BC and 45 BC and it ends between AD 26 and AD 70 (view the graphic above to see the relevance of these years).
It should be said that traditionally, both Orthodox and Catholic Christians approached this passage humbly, by providing multiple possible explanations implying that no one answer perfectly deciphers the text. One prominent Catholic website says: “Most [interpretations] regard the prophecy of the seventy weeks as having a Messianic reference, but even all Catholic interpreters do not agree as to the precise nature of this reference.” Traditional Protestants followed the same cautious approach of other Christians. However, Evangelicals, the most powerful group of Protestants, deal differently with Biblical prophecies. (That will be explored below.)
One of the main interpretations by traditional Christian starts in 457 BC and ends in AD 33. That covers a duration of 490 years. The “abomination of desolation” is the killing of Jesus Christ in the holy city in AD 30, a mid-point between his baptism (anointing) AD 26 and the spread of the Gospel and conversion of Paul in AD 33. (Note that the traditionally known dates about Jesus’ life are based on a wrong calendar, hence his birth is actually in 4 BC!) So from AD 26 to AD 33, we get the last week period (7 years). The “strong covenant” is the bond between God and his chosen people, hence he sent them his savior. Put differently, Jesus through that divine covenant preached the gospel to only Jews during that period, but his message was rejected. “Cutting off the anointed one” is the punishment of Crucifixion of Jesus, the savior. “To seal both vision and prophet” (verse 24) is to bring an end to the salvation story where Jesus is killed in atonement for our sins, hence no more prophets are needed. “He shall make sacrifice and offering cease” is another reference to Christ making the temple offerings obsolete. The destruction of “the city and the sanctuary” of verse 26 is understood as the event of 70 AD as punishment for rejecting Christ. That makes perfect sense, right? But there is a problem, actually a few.
The breakdown of the three periods seems arbitrary. There is no clear historical milestone to mark the end of the first period that lasts 49 years from 457 BC. Christian scholars respond by claiming that this is the approximate duration of building the temple which was completed around 400 BC. (But history did not record when exactly it was finished.) Also, the year 26 AD (or 27 AD) as the year of Jesus’ baptism (the “anointing”), marking the beginning of the third period, could not be historically verified. By picking that year, they could say that the covenant between God and his people was broken mid-point (three and a half years) by crucifying Jesus in the year 30 AD.
Even though the text clearly speaks of two anointed characters, one arrives at the end of the first period and the other is “cut off” at the end of the second period, the traditional Christian interpretation twists the meaning to claim that these are only one person, Jesus Christ. To make that work, they might employ a bizarre trick by understanding “until the time of an anointed prince, there shall be seven weeks; and for sixty-two weeks… [and stop here]” They would ignore that these are two separate periods (sentences) and just add the weeks together reaching sixty-nine weeks (483 years). There you go, between the decree of the temple (457 BC) and “the time of an anointed prince (Jesus baptized in AD 26) is 483 years.
“The prince” of verse 26 is also a problem for those who follow the classical explanation. That prince made a covenant with the Jews and it is broken in the middle of the third period. Some say that “prince” is Christ (making all three characters of the above passage one figure, Jesus Christ). Since that prince destroys Jerusalem and the temple, Christian scholars would say Christ is the one who brought upon the Jews this punishment for rejecting him and breaking the covenant. (But Jesus Christ has no troops!) Also, it seems like a stretch of imagination to claim that Jesus Christ destroyed Jerusalem. An alternative answer is to claim that the prince is Titus, the Roman Emperor, whose troops destroyed Jerusalem in AD 70 (sent by Jesus, get it?) but that messes with the “neat explanation” of verse 27 which could be used to refer to Jesus Christ as having a covenant and bringing an end to sacrifice (through his final sacrifice on the cross) and his execution being the “abomination of desolation.” Another issue, the historical event of destruction of the temple and Jerusalem takes place in AD 70, but that lies outside the above scheme which ends in AD 33. It all gets confusing but that’s what happens when you ignore the clear historical context Antiochus IV.
The traditional Christian interpretation ignores that the “abomination of desolation” is a very specific event that was extremely offensive to Jews by Antiochus Epiphanes, hence the author mentioned it several times throughout his book: Daniel 8:9-26; 11:31-45. However, even those mentions are reinterpreted in Christian messianic terms.
Another problem is that “everlasting righteousness” (verse 24), signaling the end of the world, obviously never materialized. Traditional interpretations dismisses this as merely “blessings,” not a conclusion to an end-time prophecy, thereby changing the entire theme of the passage. They explain that such blessings were on offer if Jews were to be righteous people, but that means there are also curses. So when they rejected Christ, their punishment (opposite of what was promised in verse 24) was having their holy city and temple destroyed.
All the above issues is why Christian authors often present this interpretation along with the historical one, which is favored by critical scholars, thought, of course, they would still glorify it as a divine prophecy written in the 6th century BC during the Babylonian captivity, hundreds of years before it took place. Some Christian writers avoid the rabbit hole of speculation of this prophecy by briefly commenting on it while explaining the Book of Daniel without getting into its details.
An example is an article on Catholic.com: “The end date [of the prophecy] is the persecution by and death of Antiochus IV Epiphanius. At the end of the seventy weeks, sacrifice and offering will cease until the decreed destruction of the destroyer. Then there will be an end to sin and the kingdom of the Messiah will come.” Oh, hold on! Does that mean Daniel prophesied that the kingdom of the Messiah, i.e. the end of the world, is around the corner? (Yes, he did!) But such details are what Christian authors conveniently avoid.
This prophecy is one of the few passages in the Bible where Christian authors feel free to recalculate and speculate about without the fear of being labelled “heretic,” as long as their interpretation has Jesus Christ’s advent somewhere. And certainly, they would not claim that the author had made a miscalculation.
The Evangelical (Dispensationalist) interpretation of the seventy-weeks prophecy
While traditional Christians came to that ancient Jewish prophecy looking for Jesus Christ, Evangelicals went much further: they came looking for a blueprint for the future. That is how they have been reading such Biblical prophecies since the early twentieth-century And that is how we ended up with millions in one Christian group, anticipating, and to a great extent, looking forward to, catastrophic future scenarios.
First of all, they pushed aside the last week of the 70, the one that speaks of “juicy stuff” like a prince and troops, a war and the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. That is just too good to leave in the ancient past. That leaves the Evangelical with 69 weeks (multiplied by 7), meaning 483 years. Moving forward from 444 or 445 BC for 483 years (view graphic above), takes you to AD 38 or 39, which is a meaning year in the story of Jesus. He had already left town! The timeline needs to get tighter. They found a solution.
Those of follow this view picked a Biblical mention of a 360-day year from Genesis and concluded that Jewish people throughout their history used that system, called Prophetic Years (or Biblical Years). This is a pure invention because Jews added the extra days so their annual seasons would not be out of sync. However, Evangelicals used that method to reduce the timeline. 483 modern years X 360 days is 173,880 days. If you divide 173,880 days by 365.25 (that is 365 1/4 days), you get approximately 477 “prophetic” years. Now if you move forward from 444 or 445 BC for 477, you land in AD 32 or 33, which is within the probably period in which Jesus entered triumphantly into Jerusalem and was crucified days later (between AD 30 and AD 33). That is a perfect match for the milestone ending the second period where an anointed one is “cut off.” Problem solved? Not really!
Verse 25 mentions “an anointed prince.” That led Evangelicals to conclude that Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem as the final milestone for the 69th week. So the “anointed” who gets “cut off” is still Jesus Christ but his crucifiction, according to them, is not a milestone, it also happens in the huge gap between second period and the third. In other words, it got a mention in the passage but it does not add mean much to the actual timeline of events. That is what happens when you twist the words to produce a certain meaning, you end up leaving out the defining moment of Christianity, the Crucifixion.
Unlike their predecessors, Evangelicals claims that the “prince with troops” is not Antiochus, not Titus, or even Christ as some interpreters saw it. They claimed that this is some super evil figure who is yet to appear. He is the Antichrist of the end days who will make a covenant with the Jewish people then break it in the middle of a seven-year period and desecrate the future temple of Jerusalem. The emergence of the Antichrist will launch the seven-year tribulation during which the sacred city and its temple will be destroyed. As for the “everlasting righteousness,” well, that is the 1000 years reign of Christ. “Dispensationlists” mix up prophecies from several books in the Bible along with the Book of Daniel to paint the apocalyptic picture. Lucrative business for selling books and even movies!
But where in the text one could find that between the second and third periods, i.e. between the 69th and 70th weeks, there is a pause of thousands of years! Somehow Evangelicals see the seventieth weeks as postponed to some date in the future, telling us consistently that it should be here any moment now.
A fellow Evangelical author, Jonathan Menn, comments that this approach has “the prophecy launching thousands of years into the future and dealing with another Roman prince, another Roman people, another rebuilt Jerusalem, another rebuilt temple and another sacrificial system. Such an interpretation does great violence to the text.” Violence is an appropriate term to describe what happens when you claims there is a gap lasting for millenia right in the middle of the same sentence, between Daniel 9:26a and 9:26b.
Also, this interpretation completely ignores the great event of AD 70 where the Second Temple was destroyed. It also puts the entire era of the Church in the gap.
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Under the subtitle “Israel treaty with Hell”
Some 2500 years ago the prophet Daniel said that a prince would come to power from the people who would destroy the city of Jerusalem and the second Temple (Daniel 9:27). The Romans under Titus did the destroying, so the coming prince would have to be someone out of the Roman culture. This Roman prince, as we described in “The Future Fuehrer,” will come to power just before the return of Christ. He will make “a strong covenant” with the Israelis, guaranteeing their safety and protection. The word translated “strong covenant” has the idea of a treaty or mutual protection pact. The Israelis will then be permitted to reinstitute the sacrifice and offering aspect of the law of Moses. This demands that the Temple be rebuilt, because according to the law of Moses, sacrifices can be offered only in the Temple at Jerusalem. Apparently all this will be done under the protection of the Antichrist of Rome.
(P.S. The Arabs are not going to like this idea of rebuilding the Temple one bit.)
According to Daniel’s prophetic chronology, the minute the Israeli leader and the Roman leader sign this pact, God starts His great timepiece which has seven allotted years left on it. This event marks the beginning of the period of Biblical history previously noted as the Tribulation. (p. 151-152)
Jesus Christ predicted an event which would trigger a time of unparalleled catastrophe for the Jewish nation shortly before His second coming. This “abomination of desolation” or desecration of the inner sanctum of the Temple would occur at the midway point of God’s last seven years of dealing with the Jewish people before setting up the long-awaited Kingdom of God ( Daniel 9:27).
Daniel’s prediction also indicates that a prince would rise up from among the people who destroyed the second Temple (who were the Romans in a.d. 70) and that he “would make a firm covenant” with the Jewish people. This treaty would guarantee the religious freedom to reinstitute the old “sacrifices and oblations” of the Law of Moses.
This “prince” must be from a revived form of the ancient Roman Empire. (More about this in a later chapter.)
The apostle Paul predicts the activities of this Roman prince in great detail and gives us insight into the act that is called “the abomination of desolation.” Paul speaks of this person as one who “opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God” (II Thessalonians 2:4 NASB ) . By this act, the Roman prince, who is also called “the Lawless One” and “the Antichrist,” breaks his covenant with the Jewish people and causes the Jewish temple worship, according to the law of Moses, to cease (Daniel 9:27). 1Ibid., 56-57.
If you read two different characters with a gap of two thousand years in between in the verses 26 and 27, you’re either drunk or lying. Note that Hal Lindsey does not provide the actual verses in his book because they would not make sense.
What comes after in his book is a section titled “Tie it all together.” Therein lies the problem, he ties, mixes, a bunch of ancient prophecies together to create scenario that he believed will happen.
Strangely Hal Lindsey is saying the Prince who destroys (verse 26) is Titus. Then Lindsey refers to the “he” of verse 27 as a future Antichrist 2000 years later! (Fady: Where is the building of the temple in between those two events? Did Hal predict that the Third Temple will be destroyed, if yes, then where is it in the verses?)
“Daniel’s prediction also indicates that a prince would rise up from among the people who destroyed the second Temple (who were the Romans in a.d. 70) and that he “would make a firm covenant” with the Jewish people.”
Fady: Not true! Hal Lindsey is twisting an alternative meaning from the verse. What it says is that the prince who destroys the temple will make a covenant with the Jews.
Four verses were written more than two thousand years ago. They were deliberately enigmatic. You have a list of historical events for which the dates are approximate, not exact. Other events are supernatural, like receiving a prophecy whose dates are also approximate and could never be confirmed. Some events are not exactly unique, like multiple decrees, under different historical circumstances, for the same goal (building the Second Temple). Some figures are not clear like candidates for “the anointed one.” Calculating the passage of time has been done using the standard calendar or another one that factors in the historical error that moved the birth of Jesus to 4 B.C. for accuracy. Also, some calculations use our standard 365-day years while others use the so-called prophetic year of 360 days. On top of that, give yourself a license to pause the timeline of events at any point to claim that it continues in the future (the end times), then you end up with almost any reading you desire from these four ancient verses. We continue to live in the shadow of some of these “dangerous speculations.”
Several decrees and commands are associated with rebuilding the temple and the city of Jerusalem, between 538 BC and 444 BC.
solar/tropical (365 days), lunar (354 days), solar-lunar (365 days), or “prophetic” (360 days)?
birth, baptism, transfiguration, triumphal entry into Jeruslame, cricifixion, resurrection
endless combinations
What I presented above are the most recognized critical and traditional interpretations of the prophecy. But even within those two approaches, there are several different variations. My aim was not to dive in the prophetic calculations but to show “the spirit” behind each method. But if you want to get lost in calculations about the end-times based on the above four verses, the Internet is your playground!
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But before the seven-year tribulations, the Rapture must happen, which is the “Church,” those who truly believe, will be taken away in the clouds. They are the lucky ones who will not experience the horrors of the tribulations.
Endless stream of books, documentaries, magazines and websites have been speculating about the end of the world for many decades. The foundational prophecy, the central premise, on which all end-time predictions are built is the Seventy Weeks prophecy. The ones propagating its theories have been influencing, or trying to, American politicians for a long time. American political leaders are well aware of the millions who believe these ideas and know how to shape their Middle Eastern policy based on their voters’ reactions and emotions.
Endnotes
