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!