Understanding Daniel's 70th week
Understanding Daniel's 70th Week
David J. Nixon
As you study eschatology, and particularly in my articles, you will come across many references to “Daniel’s 70th Week” and be left with the impression that this is somehow an important event in the End Times. Well you would be right in thinking that! The 70th Week of Daniel is arguably one of the most significant prophecies given in the entire Bible, as well as being one of the most important still unfulfilled prophecies at our current time.
To set the scene, the Prophet Daniel is a prominent captive in the nation of Babylon and has been praying to God for the promised deliverance from the hands of Israel’s captors after 70 years of Exile, as prophesied by Jeremiah. He is visited by the angel Gabriel (Daniel 9:21), who is the herald of this important message as well as the good news of the conception of Jesus Christ to Mary some 500 years later. Gabriel informs Daniel of God’s timetable for Israel until He “puts an end to sin, and to atone for righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place” (9:24). This plan will unfold over a period of “70 weeks” according to Gabriel.
Initially, it is crucial that we come to an understanding of what this term – “70 weeks” – refers to. In Hebrew the word “week” simply means “set of seven” and that is why some of our English Bible translations render it as “70 sevens” in this passage. From this it follows that God has decreed 490 units of time until He ushers in the kingdom on Earth and completes His plan for national Israel. Now it is possible that we could debate whether the unit of time is a day, week, month or year. It would seem sensible in a prophetic context to take it as a year and indeed when we examine the content of the passage a year seems like the best interpretation.
However, we are greatly aided here by the fact that this is a prophecy which has been fulfilled in history and so we have confirmation that it is indeed to take place over a period of 490 years. The progression of the prophecy is as follows: there will be 7 and 62 weeks from the going forth of the command to rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah, Jesus Christ, comes into the world (9:25). The Messiah will be cut off during the 69th week and then the Temple will be destroyed by “the people of the prince who is to come” (9:26). Now before examining in detail the historical fulfilment of the prophecy up until this point we need to note in passing that a few decades passed between the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ and the Temple’s destruction. This is a crucial point that we need to return to in detail once we have seen the historical evidence for fulfilment of the prophecy up until the 69th week’s conclusion.
I have argued in the past that this prophecy is an incredible apologetic resource given the fact that it predicts the timing of the Crucifixion almost exactly, something which would be impossible 483 years in advance – unless of course God who is outside of time and knower of all things told us in advance, as Daniel claimed. If you consult the table below I have set out some points in Israel’s history and paralleled it with the corresponding prophetic developments which substantiate their divine origin:
(Historical Event => Prophetic Correlation)
- 538BC Cyrus defeats Babylon and issues an edict allowing the return of the Jews. => Cyrus's victory was exactly prophesied by Isaiah 200 years before; Daniel receives 70 weeks prophecy
- 536BC 50,000 Jews return to Jerusalem with Zerubbabel to rebuild the temple after Cyrus returns the articles stolen by Nebuchadnezzar (but the work stops after 1 year). Daniel dies. => Completion of 70 years of captivity, as prophesied by Jeremiah. Return prophesied by Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel
- 515BC Temple reconstruction completed
- 464BC King Artaxerxes takes the Persian throne
- 458BC Artaxerxes allows Ezra the priest to return with more people to Jerusalem to revive the spiritual condition of the city -
444BC Artaxerxes grants Nehemiah’s petition to allow the rebuilding of Jerusalem and issues the decree. => Commencement of 70 weeks prophecy-
443BC Nehemiah returns to Jerusalem and has the walls rebuilt
- 396BC Jerusalem’s walls, moat and plaza rebuilt. => Completion of 7th week of Daniel’s Prophecy
- 333BC Alexander the Great, leader of Grecian Empire, invaded Israel but allowed the Jews to continue Temple worship
- 323BC Alexander dies and his Empire is divided between his 4 generals. This 4 way division was prophesied by Daniel over 100 years previously
- 320BC Alexander’s General Ptolemy I seized control of Jerusalem, having already controlled Egypt
- 198BC Antiochus III of Syria (General Seleucus founded kingdom of Syria/Seleucid on ruins of Alexander’s Empire) defeats Egypt to take control of Israel
- 167BC Antiochus IV Epiphanies attacks Jerusalem and the defiles the Temple. => Abomination in the Temple prophesied by Daniel almost over 350 years before
- 164BC Jews retake Jerusalem and cleanse the Temple under Judas Maccabees
- 63BC Jerusalem conquered by Rome under General Pompey. => Prophesied by Daniel
- ~4BC Jesus Christ born in Bethlehem. => Prophesied by Isaiah
- 30/33AD Jesus Christ Crucified in Jerusalem => Prophesied by Isaiah and Daniel. Completion of the 69th week of Daniel’s Prophecy
- 70AD Destruction of Temple by General Titus. => Prophesied by Daniel 500 years before and Jesus 40 years before
By studying this table you will come to see the incredible accuracy of Biblical prophecy, and these are but a few of the prophetic developments that I have noted briefly so the totality of the subject is overwhelming evidence for the Bible as God’s inspired truth. However, there is still the matter of why Daniel 9:26 describes the crucifixion and says that it will be followed by the destruction of the Temple and then after that the final 70th week of the prophecy will happen. The entire prophecy should have been completed in either 37 or 40AD at the latest (depending on your date for the crucifixion, which is a matter of debate today), yet the Temple was not destroyed until 70AD and the events of the 70th Week have not transpired. With all the evidence for the accuracy of Bible prophecy what has gone wrong with the 70 weeks prophecy just as it enters into its final lap? Even Jesus made reference to the 70th weekwhen He commanded Israel to flee to the mountains when she saw the Abomination of Desolation in the future which had been described by Daniel in Daniel 9:27 (Matthew 24:15), so He certainly saw it as still awaiting future fulfilment!
The answer is quite simply that there appears to be a very important pause in God’s timetable for Israel’s redemption – notice that I say pause because the Apostle Paul is very clear that this is only temporary and normal service will resume in the future (Romans 11:25-27). Now God is working through the body of Christ, the Church, to bring the gospel message to the whole world so that the Gentiles might too receive redemption through Jesus Christ (John 10:16). When that time is complete then Christ shall return for the Church (2 Peter 3:1-10) and pick up with Israel where He left off with the initiation of the 70th Week. (For more detail and scriptural exposition on this particular point please consult my article:
“Signs of the Times Concerning Israel and the Church”)The rebirth of Israel as a nation was prophesied (Isaiah 66:8; Ezekiel 37; Matthew 24:32-35) and forms the basis for the countdown towards the recommencement of 70 Week programme for the redemptive history of Israel. Jesus said that by the end of the 70th Week that Israel would return to Him and declare: “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord” (Matthew 23:39). So we now turn to consider how this happens.
The 70th Week begins with the character of the “Prince” of the people who destroyed the Temple in 70AD (9:26) who is referred back to in the Hebrew pronoun commencing Daniel 9:27: “And he shall confirm a covenant with the many for one week”. This person is therefore somehow connected with the Roman Empire and based on an understanding of the synthesis of the visions in Daniel 2 & 7 I believe that the identification of the Prince as being one in the same with the “little horn” who arises into power in a resurrected Roman kingdom in Europe is entirely well founded scripturally. As a result we can conclude we are dealing with the person of the Antichrist described in Revelation 13.
Daniel tells us that Antichrist will break his peace agreement with Israel after 3.5 years and John in Revelation 13 describes how the Antichrist will be empowered for a similar period of 3.5 years and so again we can safely conclude we are dealing with the same character and events here during the latter half of the 70th Week. The breaking of the covenant will involve an attack on the Temple in Jerusalem and the Antichrist declaring himself to be god (2 Thessalonians 2:4). The 70th Week will then conclude with the rescue of Israel and the remnant of Believers in the world from the clutches of the Antichrist, who will be judged and thrown into the Lake of Fire. Christ will then usher in the Millennial Kingdomand reign physically from Mount Zion as prophesied throughout the Old Testament as the kingdom comes to Israel. (For more detail and scriptural exposition on these points please consult my article on “The Unholy Trinity Operating in the Last Days”).So hopefully now you will understand why we talk about the 70th Week of Daniel and why it is 7 years long and still a future event we are awaiting to happen.
Appendix:
Please note that if you want to do the calculations yourself to verify the 70 weeks prophecy then you must take into consideration the progression from 1BC to 1AD and also the fact that the 70 weeks prophecy was given in the Hebrew Calendar of 360 days per lunar year. As a result the calculation would look something like this:
The Jewish year is 360 days long (not our 365.242 days – remembering the .242 is why we have a leap year every 4 years!) so when calculating the dates of the 70 weeks prophecy’s fulfilment some mathematical calculation is needed to convert the dates! Since there would be 69 weeks (7 weeks + 62 weeks) between Artaxerxes decree and the Messiah being cut off there were 173,880 days (483 years multiplied by 360 days in Jewish calendar). Divide 173,880 by 365 to convert to the number of years in the Gregorian calendar giving ~476.07 years; when taken from 444BC goes to 33AD.
We know from history that Artaxerxes made his decree in early March so our calculation would place the end of the 69th week at the end of March/beginning of April in 33AD. This is also the time of Passover in the Jewish calendar, which you will recall is when Jesus was crucified. Therefore to virtually the exact day Daniel’s prophecy predicted the crucifixion if you accept the later 33AD date – otherwise the 30AD date is still safely within the 69th Week to count as fulfilment!
