The Prophecy - Daniel 9:24-27 - Daniel's 70 Weeks |
Old Testament Prophecy |
24) Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy place. 25) So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress. 26) Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined. 27) And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering; and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate. |
During the seven weeks indicated in Daniel 9:25 the city of Jerusalem would be rebuilt even in times of trouble.
With squares and moat: the Hebrew equivalent of the first of these two words usually designates a “plaza” or a space just inside the city gate, used as a forum, a market, and place for deciding court cases. But here it may be taken in the more general sense of “streets” The second word, rendered moat, is literally the word for “cut” and refers to a trench cut into the rock on the exterior walls of a city in order to make the wall a more difficult obstacle for those who would attempt to attack from the outside. This is the only time in the Old Testament where the word is used in this sense. It is sometimes translated as “ramparts” or more generally as “strong defenses.”(1)
The books of Ezra and Nehemiah reveal that's precisely what happened (Ezra 9 and 10; Neh. 4, 6, 9, and 13).(2)
Times of Trouble:
They were under the rule of the Persians, then the Greeks, and finally the Romans who oppressed them.(3)
Times of trouble for God's people.(4)
Times of trouble can be confirmed in Ezra 4:24.
“Jerusalem shall be built so that the city takes in a wide space, has wide, free places, but not, however, unlimited in width, but such that their compass is measured off, is fixed and bounded.”(4)
Sometimes understood, according to Ps. 51:20, of the spiritual building of the City of God.(4)
Here are some links that have been created to help move around inside of the Daniel 9:24-27 prophecy.
Other links of interest include:
1). Pťer-Contesse, Ren.̌ ; Ellington, John: A Handbook on the Book of Daniel. New York : United Bible Societies, 1993 (UBS Handbook Series; Helps for Translators), S. 255
2). John MacArthur
3). ArtScroll Tanach Series on Daniel p. 263
4). Keil, Carl Friedrich ; Delitzsch, Franz: Commentary on the Old Testament. Peabody, MA : Hendrickson, 2002, S. 9:731
