Daniel 9:25 “Thoughts”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

²⁵And know and have insight – from issuance of a word to restore and to rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah [the] Prince [shall be] seven sevens and sixty two sevens, and again a plaza and a moat will be built even in times of trouble.

Several thoughts I want to record before diving too hard into this passage. First of all, just so it’s said, this is a very difficult passage to translate. Several of the Hebrew words are very general and capable of various understandings. I personally have no doubt that is the nature of prophecy – to always have some element of a cryptic sense about it.

That thought leads me to the second which is this: When Jesus was giving prophecy to His disciples, He said to them, “I have told you now, so that when it does happen you will believe” (John 14:29). Notice the “when it does happen.” I would suggest it is generally always true of prophecy that it will contain two elements. First, there is much that is very clear and it seems to me those things are told us invariably to give us hope and an understanding of our times. The second element is this cryptic feature. Prophecies are just cryptic enough to frustrate our passion to “know it all” ahead of time. To some extent, it will only make sense at the time – when we actually need to know it. The “666” of Revelation is a good example. We’re told it will be the number of the Beast. As much as we ponder that, I doubt we can unravel its meaning – precisely because we don’t need to know (as much as it may fascinate us!). When the time comes and believers need to understand it, I am sure it will be patently clear. However, we don’t need to know it, and so we don’t. That’s the cryptic element that keeps us watching and waiting.

That cryptic element is precisely what ought to keep us all humble as we try to construct our understanding of prophecy. We should study prophecies. We should ponder them and do our best to understand “the things that are all too clear” as we would look ahead and look around. However, we should also do our best to acknowledge when we simply don’t know. The trick, I’m suggesting, is to know the difference. If everyone took that posture, you wouldn’t have people angrily defending their particular prophetic timelines. It would also have protected people down through the centuries from coming up with what are now laughable interpretations.

Once again, we should study and seek to know “the things that are all too clear.” However, and this is the bottom line in my heart – that it is far more important to know the prophecies themselves, to know the Scriptures which present them (even with those cryptic elements), and then to keep them as our “rock” of understanding. The Scriptures themselves need to be our rock – not our prophetical systems which we have devised. We need to know our Bibles!

Another thing I believe we should all acknowledge and keep in mind is that ancient timelines are dubious at best. I myself am very happy to accept that, for instance, the Persians conquered Babylon in 539 BC. However, I have no intention of “going to the mat” with anyone over that date. The secular world and (I think) too many “theologians” treat their ancient timelines as if they’re etched in stone. People are forever trying to align the Bible and its apparent timelines with those which have been constructed for the ancient world. They act like those ancient timelines are absolute truth and the Bible somehow has to be defended against them.

That is so ludicrous, it would be laughable if it wasn’t so ridiculously blasphemous. First of all, the ancient scribes were just as a big a liars as our media today. The government tells us what they want us to believe. They do not hesitate to rewrite history, to only tell half the story, to cherry-pick data in order to “prove” their case, and simply to tell us outright lies. The people doing the writing are and always have been very aware of what their bosses “want to hear.” They are courtesans in every sense of the word – journalistic prostitutes – and nothing they say (or said) should be taken as absolute truth. The other thing about ancient writings is that, usually, there are only scraps and pieces of documents, written in ancient languages, and even the ones that seem most well preserved invariably disagree.

I have expressed this from time to time, but I will not defend the Bible against those “ancient timelines,” regardless of how dearly they may be held by the “scholarly” community. The Bible itself is the only ancient document which is absolutely true and when it seems difficult to align it with those other ancient timelines, I’ll stick with the Bible.

One more thing I want to record concerns the length of the “years” we’re considering. I would suggest once again, if we let the Bible speak for itself, there is no question these are 360 day years or what some have called “prophetic years.” I don’t want to spend a lot of time on it, but it is clear in the account of Noah that time was being reckoned in 30-day months, then between Daniel 7:24,25, Rev. 12:6; 12:13,14; and 13:4-7, the Seventieth Week is variously designated as including 3 ½ years, 42 months, or 1260 days – all indicating a year based on twelve 30-day months or 360 days.

The only real argument against this understanding is the objection that nowhere in ancient history is there any record of anyone reckoning time using such a system. I’ve already addressed that argument above. Their assumption is that their “ancient” documents are an exhaustive, complete, and authoritative standard by which to judge all truth. Anyone with any understanding of “ancient” documents would (should) know such an argument is in itself ludicrous.

And then to use such an absurd standard to judge the Bible is not only logically fallacious, but in the end displays a complete misunderstanding of real Truth. The Bible is the Word of God and it is itself the standard of Truth. Someone may scoff at my faith in the Bible, but they ought to at least admit that their “faith” is being based on a ragged, very incomplete, and often very contradictory collection of those “ancient” documents. Such a person has every right to choose what to put their “faith” in, but then so do I, and so do you, and “as for me and my house,” we’ll choose the Bible. There is no question, if we let the Bible speak for itself, that the years in this prophecy consist of 360 days each.

Alva J. McClain uses the 360-day years, then presents the math that he could predict the exact date of Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, starting with Nehemiah and the decree of Artaxerxes on an understood date of March 14, 1445 BC, and leading to a date of April 6, 32 AD. I’ve always found that intriguing and it may in fact be accurate, except for, once again, we’re basing that system on the scholarly world’s assumed timeline. At this point, I would still call McClain’s suggestions intriguing, but I wouldn’t go the mat over it with anyone. The Bible is true. There is no way to know for certain whether or not Artaxerxes’ decree was issued on March 14, 1445 BC. So I will leave it all as “intriguing.”

It may be that the Jews of Jesus’ day did or could have known those exact dates. Since they were living in that time and could have (or should have) realized the prophetic significance of the decree to rebuild Jerusalem, perhaps they could have done the math. Our problem now is the complete impossibility of pinning down those dates with infallible accuracy. The admonition from all of that to us is to be sure we’re aware as prophecies are being fulfilled around us.

Until the Seventieth Week starts, there is no timeline for us to observe, but still prophecy is being fulfilled even as I type. Israel is once again a nation. On May 14, 1948, in Tel Aviv, Jewish Agency Chairman David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the State of Israel, and for the first time in 2,000 years, the Jewish people were a nation. The whole world should have realized the “Dry Bones” prophecy of Ezekiel 37:1-14 was being fulfilled before their eyes. In fact, it has been being fulfilled ever since that day. The bones came together and the flesh of a true national people became reality until today we see them literally standing. All that is left now is for the breath of the Lord to enter and give them true spiritual life.

It will be interesting to watch and see, with all the military turmoil currently swirling around the nation of Israel (this is the year 2024), if we don’t see the prophecy of Gog and Magog (Ezek. 38 & 39) fulfilled before our eyes. In addition to those things, we see the Revived Roman Empire, the ten toes of Daniel apparently being fulfilled in the European Union.  On February 7, 1992, politicians from 12 European countries signed the Maastricht Treaty and the European Union was born. It still needs to align with its prophecies in a number of ways, but there is no question it is leading to the world of the AntiChrist.

My point in all of that is simply to say we need to have our eyes open, to know our Bibles, and to know the prophecies, so that we are aware as they are being fulfilled. Apparently at least most of the Jewish people paid little regard as their prophecies were being fulfilled. No doubt today, the vast majority of the human race doesn’t even realize prophecies continue to be fulfilled – but you and I don’t need to be so blind. We have every opportunity to actually “walk in the light” and “understand the times.”

To that end, I want to study Daniel 9:24-27, do my best to understand “the things that are all too clear,” to admit to the things that remain uncertain, then to be ready to grasp the significance of world events as they unfold around me.

History is, in fact, His story, and as we see it unfold, we can say once again,

“Hallelujah, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!”

 

Daniel 9:24 “Kindness”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

²⁴Seventy sevens are determined upon your people and upon your holy city to end the rebellion and to finish sins and to atone for perversion and to bring in righteousness of ages and to seal vision and prophecy and to anoint [the] Holy of Holies.

My very first thought reading these verses is to just stop and sit in wonder and praise at the blessing of prophecy. I suppose we believers are so accustomed to prophecy in the Bible that perhaps we take for granted what a kindness it is to us. What a kindness that the Lord tells us beforehand the entire course of human history! Without even realizing it, I wonder how much strength we draw just from the hope we have of knowing “how it will go,” and knowing for certain that the Lord wins in the end? Clear back to the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve heard the Lord tell Satan that one day He would raise up the “Seed of the Woman” who would “crush the head of the serpent” – the promise of the Messiah. That said, believers have, from the very beginning, had prophecy to assure them that this awful fallen world will end!

As we sit here close to 6,000 years later, we not only have the Lord’s prophecies to read in our Bible, but we have the glorious luxury to see an enormous amount of them fulfilled, and then to see them literally being fulfilled right before our eyes! It’s kind of like when your team won the National Championship but you didn’t get to watch it – then later you sit through the video. How different it is to watch it knowing your team wins in the end!

I would even suggest that is a key to benefiting from the study of this passage – to never lose sight of the simple praise it ought to raise from our hearts. Regardless of exactly what it all means, in the end it is an enormous kindness of our God. Here, as in so many prophecies, we are assured “our team wins!”

What we also see is how, once again, our God is the God of the “full measure, pressed down and running over,” the God who does “immeasurably more than we ask or think.” Daniel has been focused entirely on the imminent end of the Babylonian Captivity. He found written in Jeremiah that the captivity would only last seventy years, realizes that time is at hand, and so prays that, in fact, it might come to an end. The Lord sends none other than Gabriel himself to personally answer Daniel’s prayer, but what does he tell him? Not just that this captivity will end, but that ultimately all captivity will end! Daniel was concerned about seventy years, but Gabriel would tell him of seven times that – 490 years! May we read and study this prophecy in the same spirit I believe Daniel would have received it – thinking in his heart the whole time something like “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless His holy name!” The prophecy itself is an enormous kindness from God!

I don’t think there is anyone today who would understand the “seventy sevens” as anything but 70 x 7 = 490 years. As Daniel is living in the late 500’s BC, obviously Christ’s coming was in fact somewhere close to that 490 years, pretty much no matter how anyone figures it. The Lord could have just called it “490 years,” but I suppose that is just the nature of prophecy to always contain a sort of cryptic element. Interesting that, just a few verses later, in 10:2, in our English Bibles, Daniel tells us that he mourned for “three weeks.” In Hebrew it is literally three “sevens of days.” Note that, when he wanted to express his “sevens” as simple “weeks,” he specifically calls them sevens “of days.” So while our English Bibles may translate the verse before us as “seventy weeks,” in Hebrew it is literally “seventy sevens,” leaving us to ask “sevens of what?” but certainly implying it is not days.

Next, I notice those seventy sevens are determined “upon your people and upon your holy city.” Clearly, these seventy sevens are specifically targeting the Jewish people. This prophecy is about the future of the people of Israel. I would emphasize this because so much of what has been written morphs it all into the Church. However, that is not what it says. If we would be careful with our understanding of these verses, we must understand what it says as applying primarily to Israel. We must not allow ourselves to be sloppy and let our understanding morph into something it does not say. This prophecy concerns 490 years of Jewish history.

What Gabriel tells Daniel is that this “seventy sevens” will include six elements. The first three have to do with sin. Included are what I would say are the three most common Hebrew words for sin. The first is literally “rebellion,” The second is perhaps the most general word, the idea of trespassing or missing the mark, while the third is literally “perversion” with the idea of somehow twisting the standard. People understand the three phrases differently, but I would suggest the most direct understanding would be as I’ve translated them above as “to end the rebellion and to finish sins and to atone for perversion.”

To me, “to end the rebellion” makes perfect sense. Adam & Eve’s taking of the fruit was first of all an act of rebellion, a violation of their relationship with the Lord as God of the universe. Our basic problem ever since has been exactly that – rebellion. In a sense, that was Israel’s problem too – always rebelling against the Lord. Jesus came very specifically to end that rebellion – the rebellion of Israel and in fact the rebellion of the entire human race. Speaking specifically of the Jewish people, and getting ahead of myself, I believe their rebellion culminates prophetically in their covenant with the AntiChrist and, in a fractal sense, that is the very specific rebellion Jesus’ coming will end.

Then it says that sin will be finished and perversion will be atoned. Jesus’ final words were “It is finished,” and indeed it was. The price of sin was paid and the power of sin forever broken. On this side of the Cross, of course we know that what He provided was the ultimate atonement or covering of our twistedness. One of the things we should note is that, based on this prophecy, and even this specific verse, the Jewish people should have known the purpose of the Messiah’s coming would be first and foremost spiritual. In a large part,, they did not recognize Him precisely because they were looking for a military leader to free them from Rome, rather than a Savior to free them from sin.

This is just one more place where we see the importance of studying our Bibles and then simply letting it say what it says. In nearly fifty years of studying, I have found the Bible remarkably simple and straightforward to understand – if we simply let it say what it says. This particular passage of Daniel 9:24-27 has been subjected to the most awful hermeneutical gymnastics of perhaps any passage in the Bible. There are almost as many opinions of what it means as there are people writing about it. Yet it says what it says.

To me, the variety of interpretations arise primarily because people do the things like allowing it all to morph into something to do with the Church, when it specifically says it concerns the Jewish people. Just to make that one simple error then spawns an incredible array of opinions. Had the Jews been careful to simply “let it say what it says,” they would have been forced to acknowledge they ought to be looking for a Messiah who would first of all somehow deal with the sin issue itself. If you and I would benefit from prophecy, we should be determined to do the same – whether we understand it or not. It says what it says.

Of course, having dealt decisively with the sin problem, what Jesus does is to “bring in everlasting righteousness.” Hallelujah! No more sin! No more curse. No more death or pain or sorrow! Like probably everyone else, my own life is practically tormented by all the deadlines and projects and phone calls I need to return and saving for retirement and schedules for this and for that and on and on and on and on, but the real truth is the most important thing that needs to happen is to bring in everlasting righteousness. Daniel was told exactly that will happen.

He is then told that the Seventy Weeks will “seal up vision and prophecy.” He is a prophet. What he’s dealing with is prophecy. Yet the day will come, he is assured, when it will all be fulfilled! Here we are living in a world where we have good reason to fear the future. We have the Lord’s promises and prophecies to assure us, in the end, that all will be well. However, the day will come when there is no more prophecy. There is no need for prophecy. We will have nothing to fear and only the wonderful prospect of forever in a world of perfect peace!

The last thing it says the Weeks will serve to do is to “anoint the Holy of Holies.” Once again, people come up with seemingly a million different understandings of exactly what this is referring to. One of the most common is to make it refer to Jesus Himself, that He is the Holy of Holies. However, once again, what it says is simply “holy of holies.” I would note that nowhere in the entire Bible is Jesus ever called the “Holy of Holies.” He certainly is that, but would anyone disagree that the most obvious, straightforward understanding (and most common reference in the Bible) would be to the central portion of the Temple, the home of the Ark of the Covenant and the overshadowing Cherubim?

Ezekiel prophesies (chapters 40-44) that somehow there will be a final Temple built and I would see no reason not to apply our verse to that “Holy of Holies.” As far as what the Bible itself says, that would be the most obvious implication of the words before us. I will admit I totally do not understand why there would need to be a new Temple or priests or a sacrificial system, but, once again, it says what it says. There will be. Ezekiel says so and here I believe Gabriel is referring to it. I am personally content to leave it at that.

Obviously, when Daniel was given this prophecy, he didn’t enjoy the advantage we have. We look back on Jesus and the Cross and so much of what this verse means would seem obvious to us. Yet much of it is still future for us too, so what we can share with Daniel is back to our praise. Our good God would have us assured that our biggest problem – sin – will in fact finally be dealt with. In spite of the incredible wickedness we seem to swim in here, our world will not always be this awful ball of lies and oppression and injustice. We will see the day when none other than Jesus Himself will “bring in everlasting righteousness.” Our good God sent His angel to tell us so!