Daniel 9:24-27 “Cut Off”

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. 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. ²⁶And after the sevens of sixty and two, Messiah will be cut off and nothing to Him and a people of a coming prince will spoil the city and the sanctuary and its end in the flood and until end war being determined desolations. ²⁷And he will confirm a covenant with the many [for] one seven and [in] the half of the seven, he will stop sacrifice and offering and upon a wing of abominations one making desolate, even until [the] end, and [the] one causing to be decreed will pour out upon [the] desolator.

In v.26, Daniel is told that, after the 62 sevens (after the 69^th Week), Messiah will be cut off. As discussed before, this must have been a shocking, perplexing, and cryptic prophecy. Messiah cut off and have nothing? How could that be? The serpent was only supposed to “strike His heel.” He was to “crush the serpent’s head!” (Gen. 3:15). The “Stone cut without hands” was supposed to “crush the kingdoms of this world and bring them to an end, but will itself endure forever” (Dan. 2:44). As I said earlier, I strongly suspect that our Daniel, being the diligent student that he was, would have immediately connected this “Messiah cut off” with the Suffering Servant prophecy of Isaiah 53. However, even to him, it probably would seem mysterious how all these things could be true at the same time.

For us now, looking back, it would be obvious that, before the Lord could “bring in everlasting righteousness,” the sin problem had to be dealt with (as Gabriel had just said in v. 24). Today, we can see clearly that “the blood of bulls and goats can never take away sin” (Heb. 10:4) and that something far greater was necessary to truly “atone for wickedness.” In fact, Isaiah had said, “He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him…and the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (53:5,6). To us, that is obviously speaking of Jesus, but I’m suggesting that a very careful reading of the Old Testament could have understood, though perhaps darkly, that, somehow the Messiah must suffer, even be “cut off,” as part of this business of bringing an end to sin. Daniel would have been the kind of careful studier who might have put that together. He probably found it perplexing, however I can almost hear him telling us, “but it says what it says.”

I want to inject here the observation that the Jewish people, as a group, obviously ignored this prophecy. Certainly by Jesus’ time, it would seem all they could see was a glorious Messiah who would conquer the world and free them from Rome. One could ask, “How could that be?” The Pharisees in particular were supposed to be diligent studiers of the Scriptures. The first thing I would suggest is, even if they did study, I doubt they observed our simple rule of “Let it say what it says.” They had their popular interpretation of the glorious Messiah, so they either reasoned away this idea of “cut off,” or simply ignored it.

Again, how could that happen when it says it right there in the Bible? Frankly, I think we can answer that by observing our own generation. The simple truth is very few people today actually study the Bible. When I say that I am specifically referring to pastors, missionaries, seminary professors, and anyone else supposedly serving as teachers of the Word. Of those who do study at all, few of them “let it say what it says.” They all have their own popular hobby horses. However, for the vast majority, I believe the problem is that, in fact, they don’t study to start with. What they do is read each other’s books and write more books. They listen to each other’s sermons and preach more sermons. They all have their own group’s popular positions, but never have had to face the hard reality of passages in the Bible that would clearly refute their position, simply because they never studied them – perhaps never even read them.

I say that after nearly fifty years of listening to sermons and lessons and reading books and commentaries from a wide variety of positions. Even as a layman, when listening or reading from others, if you’ve carefully studied a particular passage, it is obvious whether a person has themselves actually studied or not. Way, way, way too often the obvious falls to “not.” I’d like to rail on how shameful that is, but we all need to turn that gun of conviction on our own hearts. The fact is, I can’t change the world. I can’t change what other people do or don’t do, but I can change me. This “famine of the Word of God” only makes it all the more important that you and I study as diligently and carefully as we are able.

Whatever abilities we may have, whatever tools are usable to us as we would study, we need to be putting them to work. I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to learn to work with the original languages and I do, but, if you have not, that need be no obstacle to you. The same Holy Spirit that gives insight, who promises us “Seek and you shall find,” will help you just as much as He helps me. He only expects us to do the best we can. May we all be like our friend Daniel, take the Word of God seriously, and be found diligent and careful students!

The next thing to note is that it clearly says Messiah will be cut off “after the sixty-two sevens.” Even as Daniel heard and later studied those words, he probably noticed the “after.” What is peculiar about that is that there was still one more seven to go. The Messiah would be cut off after the sixty-two sevens, yet with no mention yet of that last seven. A very careful student could have noticed that somehow the last seven did not immediately follow the sixty-two.

Interesting that on the day Jesus rode the donkey into Jerusalem and somehow knew they (probably the leaders) were rejecting Him as King, He said to them, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace – but now it is hidden from your eyes” (Luke 19:42). Their rejection ended the sixty-two sevens, so now 483 of the prophesied years had passed, leaving seven to go, but, in Matt. 23:28, He told them, “Your house is left to you desolate.” It sounds as if it is all over for the Jews, yet there were clearly seven more years to come, apparently at that point sometime in the undetermined future. So the time when Messiah was cut off occurred after the sixty-two sevens but not yet in the last seven, leaving a gap which we now know was to be our current Church Age, the “times of the Gentiles.” Paul explains in Romans 11:25. “Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in.” Yet he continues in v.26, “And so all Israel will be saved…” Though Messiah was cut off, the Jews’ house “was left to them desolate,” and the 69^th week had ended, yet there was even then still a future for the people of Israel – and specifically seven more years of something.

What we see in the passage is that, during this gap, “The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue to the end, and desolations have been decreed.” In the visions of both chapters 7 and 8, Daniel has seen and been very curious about the “little horn” that rises out of the fourth kingdom only to do great evil in this world and particularly against the Jewish people. This nefarious individual has been playing a prominent part in Daniel’s previous visions, and personally, I do not doubt that to Daniel, “the ruler who will come” would be a clear reference to that very individual, that “little horn.” The “people of the ruler to come” would then be the Romans and obviously they did exactly what Gabriel is prophesying here. In 70 AD, they did in fact destroy the city and the sanctuary” and it all lay desolate until 1947 when Israel once again became a nation and the Dry Bones began to rise.

Gabriel also describes the time of this gap as a period of war continuing to the end. The last 2,000 years have certainly been that, right up until the present. Just in Europe alone, it is shocking to study their history and see how they have spent the last two millennia butchering each other. If blood is good fertilizer, the continent of Europe ought to grow amazing crops! It has sure seen plenty.

If Gabriel would have stopped at this point, Daniel would have been left asking – but what about that last seven? Fortunately, Gabriel didn’t stop but went on to tell Daniel the message recorded in verse 27.

That is a study all in itself, so…