Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week …”
(Dan 9:27, NKJV)
When Jesus entered the temple and saw that it had become a “den of thieves” (Matt 21:13), He chased out everyone who were selling things in the temple, throwing over the tables of the money changers and the chairs of the dove sellers (verse 12). Just after this He makes this statement – “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” (John 2:19). This statement was eventually one of the main reasons why the Jews wanted to kill Him, and what was used to insult his temperate demeanor on the cross (Matt 26:61 & 40; Mark 14:58).
John 2:21 explicitly spells out that the temple, as the Jews were familiar with, was replaced by the temple of his Body. He is the house that is being prepared (John 14:2-6 & 18); his Body becomes the New Jerusalem in which He will live (Rev 21:2-3). But we need to clearly understand that the temple of the Old Covenant has been REPLACED by the Temple of the New Covenant, Jesus Christ. For this reason, the veil of the old temple was torn (Matt 27:51), a first sign of how the temple would degenerate – “He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.” (Heb 8:13).
There was clearly a period of transition, which is best shown through an interesting fact which is not recorded in our Bible, but is in the Babylonian Talmud (Yoma 39b) read by the rabbis – “During the last forty years before the destruction of the temple the lot ‘for the Lord’ did not come up in the right hand; nor did the crimson-colored string [suspended in the Temple to show the acceptance of the pascal sacrifice] become white; nor did the western-most light shine; and the doors of the Temple would open by themselves …” This was interpreted by the Christian-Jewish community as signs of God’s wrath towards the Jews because they had not acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah. But I suspect there may be much more to it – it is first and foremost a clear deterioration of the Old Covenant, which reached its high point in 70 A.C when Nero’s son Titus was told to destroy the temple, burning it down. That which Daniel in 9:26 had predicted and which was prophesied by Jesus in Matt 23:24 had indeed taken place at his crucifixion. (In For a deeper understanding a good source on this matter is listed.)
But it also resonates exactly what Dan 9:27 had prophesied – “Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week; but in the middle of the week He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering.” Kelly Varner’s extended Messianic paraphrasing of Dan 9:26 & 27 (in Whose right it is, p. 277) beautifully ties together the disparate lines – “And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for Himself … And He [the Messiah] shall confirm the [New] covenant with many [elect Jews] for one week; and in the midst of the [seventieth] week He [the Messiah] shall cause the sacrifice and the sin offering to cease (at Calvary’s cross) …” During the first half of the last week the true Passover lamb, Jesus (1 Cor 5:7), had destroyed all the other sacrifices in the temple. The temple no longer had any right of existence and had to wait for the fulfillment of Zechariah’s prophecy (11:1) that it would be destroyed by fire.
But to what did the last three and a half years after the crucifixion lead to, the conclusion of the seventy prophetic weeks? In the next teaching we will share that revelation.
- Sela: Read Ezek 16 and see how the teaching is made manifest in this chapter.
- Read: Num 24; Hos 3; Ezek 16
- Memorize: As much of Ezek 16 as possible, which again emphasis God’s amazing sense of synchronicity!
- For a deeper understanding: Read Randal Price’s The Temple and Bible Prophecy.
