“Know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem until [the coming of] the Anointed One, a Prince, shall be seven weeks [of years] and sixty-two weeks [of years] …” (Dan 9:25, AMP)
In the last teaching we took stock of all the different ways in which God had worked with Israel, as a covenant people, finally concluding that all of these different facets were fulfilled with the crucifixion and ascension of Jesus. There is a very specific time frame in which God wants to bring about his covenant with this specific people in order to establish a new covenant which could extend to all people. We often forget this very important aspect of the old covenant and the Old Testament – it is a word written for Israel and the Jews, not for all the nations.
Daniel’s calendar serves as a very important tool for understanding our position – we are explicitly told that we should “know therefore and understand”. Ironically one would struggle to find a verse in the Bible that has been as misunderstood and misinterpreted as this one! The terrible deceptions of the Rapture as well as the so called seven years of tribulation before Jesus’ second coming, the Antichrist who will come and sit in the third temple of the Jews (which still needs to be built on the place where the Muslims’ Dome of the Rock currently stands) and rule over the world, are all born from theological misinterpretations of this text. (We will eventually look at all these deceptions in more detail later.)
When Daniel, in the Scripture quoted earlier, speaks of seven weeks almost all the hermeneutists of the Old Testament agree that it is a prophetic manner of speaking and can be equaled to seventy times seven years = 490 years. (The 70-year long exile of the Jews, as discussed by Jeremiah in Jer 29:10, took place from 606-536 BC, and is the prototypical pattern on which the prophecy of Daniel was based. Note that this was an UNINTERRUPTED period.)
A very specific commencing date is given, the time span explicitly pointed out, it being divided into three phases, and the event that will take place at the end of this period is again made very clear. These elements make a clear time analysis possible. The Living Bible explicitly states – “Now listen! It will be forty-nine years plus 434 years from the time the command is given to rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One comes!”
In Neh 2 we read of the events leading up to the decree by king Artaxerxes (Longimanus) of Persia. Addressed to Nehemiah, it was concerned with the rebuilding of the walls and gates of the holy city, with the making of laws and appointing of magistrates, judges and an extensive government. This occurs in 445 BC. The restoration of Jerusalem and the Jewish state is in truth a re-affirmation of the first two decrees made by the kings Cyrus and Darius. Ezra 7:8 explicitly states that Artaxerxes made this epoch-defining decree in the seventh year of his reign. Ezra arrives in the same year, on the first day of the fifth month (Ezra 7:9), 1 August 457 BC. Thirteen years after that (in 444 BC – Neh 1:1) Nehemiah receives permission to travel to Jerusalem. For 13 years there were harsh conditions (Neh 4:17) which opposed them in the fulfilling of their task, but in 52 days after Nehemiah’s arrival the task was completed (Neh 6:15).
The start of Daniel’s prophecy is clearly Artaxerxes’ decree to Ezra in 457 BC.
- Sela: Draw a time line based on the information in the text and ponder the implications thereof.
- Read: Num 20; Dan 11; Ezek 12
- Memorize: Ezek 12:27-28
- For a deeper understanding: Read Robert Caringola’s Seventy weeks: The historical alternative and Philip Mauro’s The wonders of Bible chronology.
