9: 1 In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Medes, which was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans; in the first year of his reign I Daniel understood by the books the number of the years, whereof the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah the prophet, for the accomplishing of the desolations of Jerusalem, even seventy years. And

I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and

4 sackcloth, and ashes. And I prayed unto the LORD my God, and made confession, and said, O Lord, the great and dreadful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love

5 him and keep his commandments; we have sinned, and have dealt perversely, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even turning aside from thy precepts and from thy judge-

6 ments: neither have we hearkened unto thy servants the prophets, which spake in thy name

7 to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land. O Lord, righteousness belongeth unto thee, but unto us confusion of face, as at this day; to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and unto all Israel, that are near, and that are far off, through all the countries whither thou hast driven them, because of their trespass

8 that they have trespassed against thee. O Lord, to us belongeth confusion of face, to our

9 kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against thee. To the Lord

10 our God belong mercies and forgivenesses; for we have rebelled against him; neither have we obeyed the voice of the LORD our God, to walk in his laws, which he set before us by his

11 servants the prophets. Yea, all Israel have transgressed thy law, even turning aside, that they should not obey thy voice: therefore hath the curse been poured out upon us, and the oath that is written in the law of Moses the servant of God; for we have sinned against him.

12. And he hath confirmed his words, which he spake against us, and against our judges that judged us, by bringing upon us a great evil: for under the whole heaven hath not been

13 done as hath been done upon Jerusalem. As it is written in the law of Moses, all this evil is come upon us: yet have we not intreated the favour of the LORD our God, that we

14 should turn from our iniquities, and have discernment in thy truth. Therefore hath the LORD watched over the evil, and brought it upon us: for the LORD our God is righteous in

15 all his works which he doeth, and we have not obeyed his voice. And now, O Lord our God, that hast brought thy people forth out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand, and

16 hast gotten thee renown, as at this day; we have sinned, we have done wickedly. O Lord, according to all thy righteousness, let thine anger and thy fury, I pray thee, be turned away from thy city Jerusalem, thy holy mountain: because for our sins, and for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and thy people are become a reproach to all that are round about us.

17. Now therefore, O our God, hearken unto the prayer of thy servant, and to his supplications,

18 and cause thy face to shine upon thy sanctuary that is desolate, for the Lord’s sake. O my God, incline thine ear, and hear; open thine eyes, and behold our desolations, and the city which is called by thy name: for we do not present our supplications before thee for our

19 righteousnesses, but for thy great mercies. O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O Lord, hearken and do; defer not; for thine own sake, O my God, because thy city and thy people are called by thy name.

20. And whiles I was speaking, and praying, and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before the LORD my God for the holy mountain of my

21. God; yea, whiles I was speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, being caused to fly swiftly, touched me about the time of the evening obla-

22 tion. And he instructed me, and talked with me, and said, O Daniel, I am now come forth to

23 make thee skilful of understanding. At the beginning of thy supplications the commandment went forth, and I am come to tell thee; for thou art greatly beloved: therefore con-

24 sider the matter, and understand the vision. Seventy weeks are decreed upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up vision

25 and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy. Know therefore and discern, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto Messiah, the prince, shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks; it shall be built again, with street and

26 moat, even in troublous times. And after the threescore and two weeks shall the anointed one be cut off, and shall have nothing: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and his end shall be with a flood, and even unto the end

27 shall be war; desolations are determined. And he shall make a firm covenant with many for one week: and for the half of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease; and upon the wing of abominations shall come one that maketh desolate; and even unto the consummation, and that determined, shall wrath be poured out upon the desolator.

Chap. 9. Daniel, having read in the prophecies of Jeremiah that God would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem, set himself to seek God with fasting and the garb of mourning. His prayer and confession on this occasion forms a model of all such supplications. It was answered by the mission of the angel Gabriel, who now appears for the first time as the special herald of God’s purposes. He comes to Daniel to announce the beginning of the period, the close of which he proclaimed to Zacharias. His message constitutes the celebrated prophecy of the seventy weeks, the leading idea of which, regarded as an answer to Daniel’s prayer, seems to be that God would mercifully recompense His people for their captivity at Babylon by a new possession of their land for seven times that period, until the whole history of the nation should be crowned and its religious institutions finished by the advent and sacrifice of Messiah the prince. P. S.

This chapter has a subject of its own, complete in itself, and not connected with the two that precede or the three that follow. Its place here in the order of the chapters of this book is determined by its date. It is here because it was written after the eighth (probably not more than one year after), and four years before chaps, 10-12. Its occasion is given definitely. Daniel had learned by reading the prophecies of Jeremiah that the Captivity was limited to seventy years (Jer. 25: 11, 12). This period was now near its close. It was this circumstance that moved him to seek the face of the Lord with such earnest prayer that He would most fully and freely forgive the sins of his people; rightly judging that as the Captivity was sent upon the people in judgment for their sins, it could cease only upon condition of the most humble confession and repentance on the part of the people and their free forgiveness on the part of God. In this point of light, the whole chapter yields the richest moral instruction, and legitimately awakens the deepest interest. It is indeed an admirable model of intercessory prayer, and may be applied equally to prayer for guilty nations or for guilty individuals. In the spirit of one whose heart is full of sympathy with God and His glory, his great burden is the people’s sins. Hence his prayer scarcely touches any other point than this one—that the Lord in His great mercy would forgive the people and wholly put away their transgressions for His name’s sake. With this point distinctly in mind, the reader will readily see the entire fitness of the answer which comes by the hand of Gabriel from the loving heart of God. It stands in the last four verses, and constitutes one of the richest promises ever made to our lost world. It is essentially the promise of an atoning Messiah, whose violent death should provide amply for the free and full pardon of sin, and for the mission of the Spirit to seal these blessings to “many.” It fixes the date of His coming, the duration of His public labors on earth, the time of His death, and of those striking effusions of the Spirit which were designed to open and illustrate the genius of the Gospel age. The chapter is therefore properly in two parts: (1) Daniel’s prayer that God would forgive the sins of his people (verses 1-19); (2) the sending of Gabriel with the answer and the answer itself (verses 20-27). H. C.

He poured out his heart in ardent supplication before the God of the Covenant, and cried to Him to vouchsafe His mercy to the people who were called by His name, and to restore the sanctuary and the city. This is one of those biblical prayers where we feel that it is not by human exposition that we can enter into its meaning, depth, and significance, but that the words must explain themselves in our own hearts. Daniel, the just and faithful servant of God, enters so deeply into the guilt and sin of his people, in the consciousness of his priesthood he identifies himself so entirely with it, he repents so heartily in the name of all Israel, that we feel here a presentiment, as it were, of what happened in the inner sanctuary of the atoning substitution, and our view is borne aloft from the chamber of Daniel to the prayerful sacrifice of Gethsemane and Golgotha. And can this prayer, which it is not possible to read without deep emotion in the very heart of hearts, be a deception? It only shows how much our criticism is devoid of a deep and earnest sense for religious truth and truthfulness, when to such questions it attaches so little importance.

The answer naturally refers to the question, the favor shown to the petition offered; though the Divine answer extends far beyond the human question, and the Divine favor transcends all that we can think and pray for. We must enter vividly and fully into the thoughts and feelings which form the basis of Daniel’s prayer, in order to understand as far as possible the words of the angel. Daniel prays for the liberation of Israel, and for the rebuilding of the city and the sanctuary. He prays for this manifestly in view of those great promises whose fulfilment was connected with this event.

For in all the prophets, especially in Jeremiah, who is more especially present to his mind (Jer. 31), the fulfilment of the Messianic hope was inseparably connected with this restoration. The revelation which Daniel himself had received in the second and seventh chapters showed him doubtless that the Messianic kingdom was not so immediately near, in its glory at least, since but one of the four universal monarchies had passed away. But this made it the more necessary that some explanation should be granted him concerning the prophecies of the earlier prophets, in whom he saw an intimate connection between the deliverance from captivity and the Messianic salvation. The revelation now vouchsafed to him has for its purpose to analyze into its successive parts that which the prophets, according to the law of prophetical perspective, have hitherto seen together in one—viz., the redemption from captivity and the full Messianic redemption. Auberlen.

1. The name Ahasuerus was a common name with the kings of Media and Persia. Daniel understood “by books,” in this case the written prophecies of Jeremiah, already incorporated into the canons of the Jewish Scriptures.

2. Seventy years. The original word means in its singular number, a seven—a heptad; and this may be a seven of days or a seven of years; the feminine plural is currently used for heptads of days; the masculine plural (which we have here) never by itself for the common week of days, but when a week of days is meant, the word days is appended, as in Dan. 10:2, 3; after a word and a special form of a word which simply suggests the idea of a seven—a seven of something we must ask—a seven of what? and must look for our answer in the context—in the thought already before the mind. In the present case, there can be no doubt that this thought is, the seventy years of captivity. Then seventy sevens of years must be the sense of this phrase, and it involves no usage of the word day to mean year—no usage of any current notations of time in a way to need multiplying by three hundred and sixty to get the actual time.

So far as Bible history gives us the fulfilment of Bible prophecy in which notations of time are involved, the vsus loquendi proves that words in prophecy denoting time are used in their common, normal sense, and never in the enigmatical, peculiar way affirmed by “the year for a day theory.” H. C.—This exposition is a plain inference from the whole bearing of the prophecy, that the sevens spoken of are sevens of years; just as the word Sabbath is often used for the Sabbatic year. In fact, the phrase seems best interpreted as seventy cycles of Sabbatic years, or four hundred and ninety years. P. S.

3-19. The prayer has two principal divisions as pointed out by Melanchthon. Daniel confesses the sins of his people and the justice of God’s punishment (verses 4-14); then he implores God’s pardon (verses 15-19). “It is a sign of true contrition to recognize the anger of God against our sins, to sorrow for our offences against Him, to give Him glory for the justice of our punishment, and to be obedient when punished. But the practice of contrition is attended with this reward—consolation. By his example the prophet teaches us to seek and expect pardon on account of God’s mercy and promises.” Of these two chief divisions the former has the following subdivision: verses 4-10 are a statement confessing chiefly the sins of his people as they were in Daniel’s own time; verses 11-14 add with sorrow that thus it had been in the long past, and that the punishment had fallen only to be forgotten. The prayer should be compared with those in Ezra 9:6-15; Neh. 1:5-11; 9:6-38. The similarities of diction are not due to imitation or to plagiarism, but to a natural and insensible reproduction of the old truths and phrases loved by all devout spirits in common. B. C.

Loyalty to the Babylonian or Persian throne did not make impossible a passionate love of fatherland. Through all the long years of absence, crowded as they had been with those temptations to forgetfulness which ever assail greatness, the windows of the soul had never ceased to be open “toward Jerusalem.” If any would know the habitual sentiments of Daniel’s mind and heart, he has only to turn to the very words of his great confession and prayer. In him we see the loftiest patriotism consecrated by religion. Pusey.

It was concern for his country that moved him to that day of solemn prayer and fasting which brought Gabriel down with an answer. To an enlightened man the cause of his country will be bound up with the cause of God and of religion, as it can be well with the former only as it is so with the latter. This was especially the case with Daniel, whose country God had made and called His own, and whose city, Jerusalem, was God’s holy mountain, the city of the great King, who had chosen it for the place of His special worship. That country was now in desolation, and Jerusalem with its temple was in ruins. God’s worship there had been brought to an end. Sin on the part of the people had brought the desolating foe that had put a stop to their solemn feasts. Provoked to anger by their continued rebellion and apostasy, the Lord had “caused the solemn feasts and Sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion, and had despised, in the indignation of his anger, the king and the priest. The Lord had cast off His altar; he had abhorred His sanctuary; He had given up into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces” (Lam. 2: 6, 7) This was the burden that pressed upon the heart of the beloved prophet. The cause of his people, and with that the cause of God and of true religion, which was bound up with it, was his deep sorrow, and drove him to incessant prayer as the time of the promised deliverance drew nigh. He was concerned not only for his country’s peace, but for his people’s repentance, which must be at the foundation of it. It was this that led him, as a true patriot, to pour out his heart before God in fervent prayer and deep humiliation. Anon.

3-6. This language is beautifully expressive of true prayer: “I set my face unto the Lord God to seek,” etc. So true prayer turns one’s thought and desire to the Lord; looks to Him for blessings. Prayer makes direct application to God, bearing its petition at once to Him and laying its case before His throne. In harmony with his state of mind, and as fitly expressive of his genuine humility of soul, he fasted, put on sackcloth, and cast ashes on his head and garments. He says, “I prayed and made my confession.” Personally Daniel had not worshipped idols, had not cast off the fear of God, had not involved himself in those great sins for which these judgments were sent on the Jewish city and nation, and yet he does not stand upon his exemption from these gross sins. Yet how far Daniel was conscious of heart-sins before God, lying in this direction, none of us can say, nor how much this confession was due to his intensely strong sympathy with his people, of such sort as seems to create a positive identity of conduct and culpability as well as of suffering and punishment. However this may be, this case of Daniel suggests that there is little danger that the holiest of men will confess too much in reference to their own personal sins. While Daniel thought of God as great and greatly to be feared, he did not forget that He evermore “kept covenant and mercy to them that love Him and keep His commandments.” This sustained his hope. God had shown great mercy in condescending ever to enter into covecovenant with His people. His past mercy is good for present faith. The reader will observe that Daniel said, “Keeping the covenant.” The Hebrew has it also, “the mercy,” with manifest reference to the special covenant and the special mercy which God had made and shown to His Hebrew people. Upon this great fact Daniel’s faith took strong hold in this hour of his need. In verse 5 the repetition is peculiarly expressive. As one whose soul is full of the thought, Daniel groups together nearly or quite all the different words known to the Hebrew language conveying the idea of sinning. This sin was greatly aggravated by the fact that God had sent His prophets to rebuke the people and forewarn them of impending judgments, but they had not hearkened to His voice in these warnings.

7-10. There is great force as well as fitness and beauty in the antithesis between the righteousness and the mercies that belong to God, and the shame and the sin that belong to His people. God had been all right; they, all wrong. On God’s side had been ever abounding mercies and forgivenesses; on their side, only perpetual rebellion and most ungrateful, abusive sinning. Alas, that human life should almost perpetually bear precisely this record as toward God!—that the millions live on and sin on just so; their course toward God, perpetual sinning; His bearing toward them, the most amazing patience, forbearance, long-suffering, forgiveness and mercy, that seem to flow from a vast outgushing fountain, as if they could not cease! And if His hand has sometimes turned to judgment we must still say, “Righteousness belongeth unto Thee, O God, forever!”

11-14. The central thought in these verses is that God has been righteously visiting upon the nation the very judgments He had threatened against them in the law of Moses for precisely these sins of which they had been so greatly guilty. The reader will find these passages in their impressive fulness in Lev. 26: 14-46 and in De. chaps. 28-30. It is there declared most distinctly that for such sins God would send them into captivity in a foreign land, and would lay their city and homes desolate. Now Daniel recognizes the entire fulfilment of those fearful threatenings.

15-17. The tone in these verses is that of imploring entreaty; importunate prayer for pardon, resting mainly on the pleas that God delights in great mercies; that He has shown the nation such mercies in delivering them from Egypt; and that the honor of His name is implicated before the nations of the earth since they are His covenant people, now for a long time in the bonds of captivity, nationally eclipsed, and according to the ideas of idolatrous nations, a standing reproach to the God they worship as being unable to redeem and save them. H. C.

16. Furnish thyself with arguments from the promises to enforce thy prayers, and make them prevalent with God. The promises are the ground of faith, and faith, when strengthened, will make thee fervent, and such fervency ever speeds and returns with victory out of the field of prayer. Daniel first searched out the promise, what God had engaged Himself to do for His people, as also when the date of this promise expired; and when, by meditation and study upon it, he had raised his heart to a firm belief thereof, then he sets upon God with a holy violence in prayer, and presseth Him close, not only as a merciful God, but righteous also, to remember them now the bond of His promise was coming out, “O Lord, according to all Thy righteousness, I beseech Thee, let Thine anger and Thy fury be turned away from Thy city Jerusalem.” The mightier any is in the Word, the more mighty he will be in prayer. Gurnall.

18. For Thy great mercies.** This is the ground of his plea with God. He implores Him to listen, to open His eyes and look on the desolations of His people and of the city upon both which He had called His own name. He begs that God will not defer, but will grant him an answer of peace and mercy now. Such importunity may sometimes startle us as unbecoming and almost irreverent. But when it is the spontaneous utterance of a heart in deep sympathy with the honor and cause of God; when it comes of taking firm hold of His great love and of His unfailing promises; when one falls into it, being sweetly and mightily drawn by the Spirit of God Himself, then nothing can be more pleasing to Him. He lets us come very near to Him to “order our cause before Him and to fill our mouth with arguments.” H. C.

20-27. We have here the answer that was immediately sent to Daniel’s prayer, and it is a very memorable one, as it contains the most illustrious prediction of Christ and Gospel grace that is extant in all the Old Testament. If John Baptist was the morning star, this was the daybreak to the Son of righteousness; the dayspring from on high. H.

Daniel seeks to be enlightened about the seventy years which, according to the prophecy of Jeremiah (chaps. 25 and 29), were to be the duration of the Babylonian captivity (verses 1-3); and after he had offered up to God a fervent confession of his sins, and an ardent supplication for his people, this enlightenment was vouchsafed to him through the angel Gabriel, in the celebrated prophecy of the seventy weeks. The powers of the world recede quite out of view. Israel and the promise of salvation given to it are the exclusive subject of this revelation; for it was natural, if not necessary, that the fulfilment of these promises, according to the previous predictions of the prophet, should be expected after the end of the Captivity. And thus this prophecy refers to the redemption and to the Person who brings it, the Messiah. It announces that His coming will not be immediately after the Captivity; but that, dating from the restoration and the rebuilding of Jerusalem, seven times seventy years must yet clapse. Nor would He even then come in His glory, as Daniel might have been led to expect, from the language of the earlier prophets, or even from the revelation he had himself received (chap. 7). He would be put to death; but thereby He would work out the atonement for sin, and confirm the covenant with many. The people of Israel, however, would, as a nation, reject Him, and then be itself rejected, and Jerusalem, with its temple, would be destroyed and remain a desolation, till the consummation determined by God.

The first part of Daniel exhibited the final victory of the Messianic kingdom over all the powers of the world; the second predicted the heavy calamities and temptations which the powers of the world threatened to Israel in the more immediate future; to complete the picture, the prophet received disclosures when and how salvation was to appear in that future. The first part treats of the last days, in which the coming of the Messianic kingdom coincides with the downfall of the hostile world power; both these events are, consequently and necessarily, viewed together in one vision, as well as in the seventh chapter as in the second. This cannot be the case in the prophecy of the more immediate future. The first coming of Christ in the flesh is not immediately connected with the appearance of Antiochus Epiphanes: the two events, therefore, are kept separate in the prophecy. The Messianic prophecy of the ninth chapter takes its independent place between the two visions that refer to the Old Testament antichrist, as a word of comfort for “the wise.” But there were no more special disclosures required for the time between Antiochus and Christ. For, during that period, there occurred no trial like that prepared through Epiphanes. On the contrary, the Maccabean reaction against the tyrant kindled anew the zeal of the people for the religion of their fathers; and history teaches us that from that time the Jews adhered to the law with ever-increasing tenacity. Christ and antichrist, as they are the theme of the first, so they are also the theme of the second part of the book.

If the correct view of the seventy weeks is no other than that ancient one which has prevailed in the Church, modern criticism has received a death blow on the purely exegetical field. The chief support which that criticism derives for its hypothesis concerning our book, the hypothesis, —viz., that it extends no further than to Antiochus Epiphanes, is undermined. Whether this accurate chronological prophecy was given two hundred or six hundred years before its fulfilment, whether under Antiochus or under Darius, its miraculous character is not affected. Auberlen.

21. While he was speaking with such fervor and ardency the angel came to him with a gracious answer. It was about the time of the evening oblation. The altar was in ruins, and there was no oblation offered upon it, but, it should seem, the pious Jews in their captivity were daily thoughtful of the time when it should have been offered, and at that hour were ready to weep at the remembrance of it, and desired and hoped that their prayer should be set forth before God as incense, and the lifting up of their hands, and their hearts with their hands, should be acceptable in His sight as the evening sacrifice. The evening oblation was a type of the great sacrifice which Christ was to offer in the evening of the world, and it was in the virtue of that sacrifice that Daniel’s prayer was accepted, when he prayed for the Lord’s sake; and for the sake of that, this glorious discovery of redeeming love was made to him; the Lamb opened the seals in the virtue of His own blood. This answer was not given him in a dream or by a voice from heaven, but, for the greater certainty and solemnity of it, an angel was sent on purpose, appearing in a human shape to give this answer to Daniel. H.

21-23. “Good prayers,” says an old English divine, “never come weeping home. I am sure I shall receive either what I ask or what I should ask.” Such a habit of feeling as this will give to prayer that quality which Dr. Chalmers observed as being the characcharacteristic of the prayers of Doddridge—that they had an intensely “business-like” spirit. Observe how thoroughly this spirit is infused into the scriptural representation of the interior working of prayer in the counsels of God, respecting the prophet Daniel. The narrative is intelligible to a child; yet scarcely another passage in the Bible is so remarkable in its bearing upon the difficulties which our minds often generate out of the mystery of prayer. Almost the very mechanism of the plan of God, by which this invisible power enters into the execution of His decrees, is here laid open. “While I was speaking,” the prophet says, “Gabriel, being caused to fly swiftly, touched me, and said, ‘O Daniel, at the beginning of thy supplication the commandment came forth, and I am come to show thee; for thou art greatly beloved.’” What greater vividness could be given to the reality of prayer, even to its occult operation upon the Divine decrees? No sooner do the words of supplication pass out from the lips, than the command is given to one of the presence-angels, “Go thou;” and he flies swiftly to the prostrate suppliant, and touches him bodily, and talks with him audibly, and assures him that his desire is given to him. Phelps.

23. “For thou art greatly beloved;” in the Hebrew “a man of delights”—i.e., as to God. It is a most affecting thought that mortals may by grace come into a state of holiness in heart and life, in which God can feel complacency toward them and testify to His great love for them. Who would not aspire toward such holiness and such favor with God as infinitely before all things else? H. C.—Daniel is assured by the heavenly messenger, “Thou art greatly beloved,” for which reason he was selected as the depository of these prophetic revelations. The estimation in which he was held by successive potentates, the public honors he received, the eminent rank he held, all fade into nothingness before this testimony from heaven—a testimony founded on no external glory, but on a character invulnerable to reproaches, and formed of all the elements of pure religion. F. A. Coz.

24-27. I paraphrase thus: “Seventy sevens of years, equal to four hundred and ninety years, are cut off from the course of future time, for thy people and thy holy city, at the end of which provision shall be made for the full pardon of sin and for putting it utterly out of My sight, as a thing shut up, sealed and covered; and to bring in a system of everlasting righteousness whereby pardoned sinners may both be accounted and may become righteous before me. This, by amply fulfilling, will close up those visions of the prophets which respect the Messiah to come. Then will I anoint My Church, the spiritual temple of the new dispensation, with the gracious unction of the Holy Ghost. This in general. I will now repeat and give more particulars. Know, then, and consider, that from the issuing of the decree of Artaxerxes for restoring and rebuilding Jerusalem unto the public ministry of Messiah, the prince, shall be forty-nine years and four hundred and thirty-four years—i.e., forty-nine up to the point of completing the rebuilding of the city, and four hundred and thirty-four from that point till the Messiah shall appear before the public, to commence his Gospel ministry. This city shall be restored and rebuilt; the thing is settled in the counsels of the Almighty, and shall be done, although in times of much distress. After the four hundred and thirty-four years shall have expired the Messiah shall be cut off by a violent death; His relationship to His ancient covenant people will cease; they will reject Him, and He will abandon them to their righteous doom. Then the people of the Roman prince, coming from afar, shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; its end shall be with that sweeping flood of ruin; even till the end of this war, there is a Divine decree for desolations. During one heptad of years the covenant of God’s mercy shall become effective to many: at the middle point of this heptad He will make sacrifice and offering cease by becoming Himself the one great atoning sacrifice, complete thenceforth and forever, and superseding all the sacrifices of the Mosaic ritual. Then down upon the summit of the temple, now an abomination before God for the apostasy of those that worship therein, comes the desolator, the Roman legions—even until a complete, terrible, and predetermined destruction shall have been poured forth upon the desolate city.” H. C.

The events which preceded and followed the coming and sufferings of the Messiah, having been so punctually fulfilled, afford a double confirmation of His being the very same Person prophesied of, and afterward crucified; nor can they with any probability of truth be applied to any other. So that we may well say, This is the clearest and most express prediction in the whole Bible concerning the time of His coming and death. Wogan.—Sir Isaac Newton justly represents this illustrious prophecy as the foundation of the Christian religion. Dr. Hales.—And Archbishop Secker has recorded the declaration of a writer upon “the weeks,” that “if he had hitherto lived an infidel, the conviction wrought in him by a just consideration of the certain sense and perfect completion of this Divine oracle was so full that he should think it his duty to do and suffer all that was possible for human nature, supported by Divine grace, rather than forfeit his faith.” Wintle.

24. To make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness. The first clause is the technical expression for atonement (e.g., Lev. 5:8; 19:22; Ps. 65:4; 78:38), and is coupled with the second as cause and effect, or as the negative and positive aspects of the Messianic mercies of God. The words “transgression,” “sin,” and “iniquity,” so often repeated by Daniel in penitence, are thus repeated to him in mercy, as if to assure him emphatically that God would put them away as though they had not been. Pusey.

The Levitical word for atonement, a cover for sins to hide them from view, gives us the central thought of the passage—one which stands in the closest connection with Daniel’s prayer. No point stands out so prominently and strongly in this prayer as the distress and solicitude he feels in respect to the great sins of his people. The agonizing solicitude of his heart centres upon this one question: How can this sin be removed? How can the Lord pass over and forgive it so that the people can again come under His mercy and favor? It was therefore to meet precisely this main point of his distress and anxiety that the Lord replies: After seventy heptads of years I will bring forth a perfect provision to atone for sin. Then it will be seen how I can honorably and safely forgive the penitent sinner and restore him to favor. “To bring in everlasting righteousness,” is only another form of stating the same thing. The sinner forgiven and his sins all covered stands right before God. Christ is made of God unto him righteousness as well as redemption. On the ground of what Christ is, and has suffered for him, he is accounted righteous before God. This way of accounting sinners righteous is “everlasting” as contrasted with the transient duration of the Mosaic system, and the temporary effects of those frequent sacrifices required under that system, which indeed were only typical at best, and “could never with those sacrifices which they offered, year by year, make the comers thereunto perfect” (Heb 10:1). This new system is to stand through all time, and its blessed effects will be enduring. “To seal up vision and prophet” is the literal rendering of the original, and obviously refers to the fulfilment, and hence, in this sense, to the closing up of those prophecies which for many ages had predicted the Messiah, but which, having now done their work of ministry to the faith of God’s waiting people, may be considered as sealed up and laid aside—superseded by the Messiah’s actual coming. H. C.

25. The advent of the Messiah would not be immediately after the Exile, as Daniel had hoped, and thus coincide with the restoration of the people and the rebuilding of the city; but 7 and 62 = 69 prophetic weeks were previously to elapse. Within this time Jerusalem is to be restored and rebuilt, not indeed in that Messianic and Divine splendor as was prophesied, for example, by Isaiah (54 : 11 ; 60-62), but only in an earthly, external, and humble manner, with streets and trenches. It will be a troublesome time, better than the Exile, but yet by far less rich in grace and salvation than the Messianic time. Thus the prophet’s eye was turned away from the end of the Exile and fixed on the end of the sixty-ninth week as the time of the Messiah’s coming. He is not to regard the time preceding that advent; he is not to set his heart and hope upon it. For the fate of the people and city, which fills him with solicitude, is entirely dependent on the position they will take in reference to the Messiah. And, therefore, in the two following verses there is such emphatic prominence given to the life and fate of the Messiah, while the fate of the city and sanctuary is mentioned only in the second half of the verses, and in dependent connection with the former. Auberlen.

Unto the Messiah the Prince. That is, until the awful period when the business of His life should be finished; until His hour was come, when He was to glorify His father, or when He was to be cut off by a voluntary suffering for the sins of all mankind, and thereby triumph as a prince over death, and over all His and our enemies. All the circumstances of His life are omitted, or rather comprehended in this final event when all things that were written of Him were accomplished. Wintle.

26. By symbolic numbers he taught with extraordinary clearness when the Messiah was to come. The day of His advent is no longer indefinite, or only approximately fixed; it is exactly declared. But with what bitter revelations is it combined! What must have been the Jew’s feelings when, instead of triumph and victory, and an era of glorious conquest and universal empire, he read that Messiah was to be cut off, and that the armies of an alien empire would destroy the city and the sanctuary! that the daily sacrifice would cease, and that the abomination that maketh desolate would prevail for 1390 days! R. P. S.

We are told, verse 25, that the coming of the Messiah was to be at the end of the sixty-second week, which therefore could not be marked also by His death. Nay, His death, as we see in verse 27, is half a week after, and the destruction is much later still. The meaning of the angel therefore is: You must give up not only the hope that the Messiah will come immediately after the Captivity, but also that other expectation, that immediately after His coming He will establish His kingdom of glory. It will be quite otherwise. Messiah will be put to death by the unbelieving people, and therefore they will not attain to glory and power, but, with the city and the sanctuary, will be delivered into the hands of the Gentiles. This is the view vouchsafed to Israel as a people into the more immediate Messianic future. Auberlen.

The Messiah must be cut off, must die a violent death, and so be cut off from the land of the living, as was foretold Isa. 53 : 8. Hence, when Paul preaches the death of Christ, he says that he preached nothing but what the prophets said should come (Acts 26 : 22, 23). And thus it behooved Christ to suffer. He must be cut off, but not for Himself, not for any sin of His own; but, as Caiaphas prophesied, He must die for the people—in our stead and for our good; not for any advantage of His own; the glory He purchased for Himself was no more than the glory He had before (John 17 : 4, 5). No, it was to atone for our sins and to purchase life for us that He was cut off.

27. He must confirm the covenant with many. He shall introduce a new covenant between God and man, a covenant of grace; since it was become impossible for us to be saved by a covenant of innocence. This covenant He shall confirm by His doctrine and miracles, by His death and resurrection, by the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, which are the seals of the New Testament, assuring us that God is willing to accept of us upon Gospel terms. His death made His testament of force, and enabled us to claim what is bequeathed by it. He confirmed it to the many, to the common people; the poor were evangelized when the rulers and Pharisees believed not on Him. Or He confirmed it with many, with the Gentile world. The New Testament was not (like the Old) confined to the Jewish Church, but was committed to all nations; Christ gave His life a ransom for many.

He must cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease; by offering Himself a sacrifice once for all, He shall put an end to all the Levitical sacrifices; shall supersede them and set them aside; when the substance is come, the shadows shall be done away. He causes all the peace offerings to cease when He has made peace by the blood of His cross, and by it confirmed the covenant of peace and reconciliation. By the preaching of His Gospel to the world, with which the apostles were intrusted, He took men off from expecting remission by the blood of bulls and goats, and so caused the sacrifice and oblation to cease. The apostle to the Hebrews shows what a better priesthood, altar, and sacrifice we have now than they had under the law, as a reason why we should hold fast our profession. H.

Abominations. The Romans, after they had set the temple on fire, placed the idolatrous ensigns of their army over against the eastern gate of the temple, and offered sacrifice to them, as Josephus expressly tells us. The word “abominations” is commonly used for idols. (See 1 K. 11: 5, 7; 2 K. 23: 13.) And the “abomination of desolation,” set upon the altar by Antiochus (1 Mac. 1: 54), is explained by the idol altar (verse 59). So the “abominations” here spoken of properly signify the ensigns or standards of the Roman legions; each standard having stamped upon it the image of the tutelar god to which the legion offered sacrifice. W. Loweth.

24-27. The decree of desolation, the destruction of “the city and of the sanctuary by the people of the prince that shall come,” cannot apply to the time of the Maccabees, since the temple was not then destroyed, but only profaned.

The chronology offers, under such interpretation, insuperable difficulties. Seventy weeks make 490 years; now the return from the Captivity having taken place in 536, and the murder of Onias in 170 B.C., there are between these two events 336, not 490 years. The historic period would then be too short, if compared with the number indicated.

We are told in answer that we are not to take as the starting-point of this period the return from the Captivity and the restoration of Jerusalem, but the year in which Jeremiah uttered the oracle which foretold these events—i.e., the year

605—the date of that remarkable prophecy (Jer. 25). From 605-170 there are in fact 434 years, which make up the 62 weeks of which Daniel speaks (9: 26). But, in the first place, when mention is made in Dan. 9: 25 of “the commandment given to restore and to rebuild Jerusalem,” is it natural to understand by that the oracle of Jeremiah with regard to this restoration? Do not these expressions refer more naturally to the famous edict of Cyrus, which gives permission to the Jews to return to their own country and to rebuild their city, or, better still, to the Divine command which Cyrus executed? The edict took effect in the very same year in which it was issued; it is then between the restoration in 536, and the second destruction announced (verse 26) that we must place the interval indicated. In this way the prophecy will include, as it very naturally would, the whole duration of the state of things which was established at the restoration, the whole time of the existence of the second Jerusalem and the second temple. Then next, the number in Daniel amounts not only to 62, but to 69 weeks, if not even to 70. Where are we to find the seven weeks which are left over, even according to this interpretation already devised on purpose to make room for this theory? For, lastly, between the oracle of Jeremiah (605) and the murder of Onias (170) there are only 434 years (62 weeks), and not 483 years (69 weeks). Here begin the tours de forces: (a) Hitzig and others include the awkward period of the seven weeks in that of the 62, placing it at the beginning of the latter. This would then be the half century which elapsed between the ruin of Jerusalem in 588 (or 586) and the appearance of Cyrus (in 536). But how is this? When it is said: “From the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem, unto Messiah the prince, shall be seven weeks and threescore and two weeks, . . . and after threescore and two weeks the Anointed shall be cut off,” it is allowable to suppose that the author intended to include the seven weeks within the 62! And if this sleight of hand (pardon the expression) should be allowed, still how are we, even adopting that method of interpretation, to find the total number of seventy weeks mentioned in verse 24: “Seventy weeks are determined upon Thy people and upon Thy holy city.” The seven weeks cannot find room in the 62. For it is evident that the number 70 comprehends: 1. The group of the seven; 2. That of the 62; 3. The final week. Consequently these groups are successive, not contemporaneous. (b) Delitzsch and Hofmann, coming into direct collision with the order indicated by Daniel, place the seven weeks at the end of the 62!—they are to represent the interval between Antiochus Epiphanes and Jesus Christ. But who will agree to such an overturning of the text? Besides, between Antiochus and Jesus Christ there was an interval of 164 years—not 49! (c) Ewald has devised another expedient. The number 69 or 70 being evidently too large in all the interpretations which apply the prophecy to the time of the Maccabees, this author has proposed to deduct from the entire number all the Sabbatical years—i.e., one in seven, giving as his reason that this whole period is a time of oppression, while the idea of the Sabbath always carries with it a feeling of joy. Thus we should have (1) the seven weeks between the destruction of Jerusalem and the edict of Cyrus (587–538, according to Ewald’s chronology); (2) the 70 weeks between the return from the Captivity and the year 175, when an “anointed one” was cut off (this anointed one being, according to Ewald, not Onias, but Seleucus Philopator, who died in 174, at the time when he was invading Judea). These 62 weeks added to the seven (49 years) would bring us to the year n.c. 105, instead of 175. But to help out this calculation comes in the deduction of the 70 sabbatical years, which brings the ship prosperously to the desired haven—175. What are we to say of such monstrosities of exegesis! We will not urge all the other improbabilities to which this interpretation of the learned writer is exposed.

And these are the explanations over which one hears exclamations of triumph, as if the Messianic application of this wonderful prophecy had been completely and deservedly refuted by modern science! These attempts, so evidently vain, constitute the most complete demonstration possible of the absolute impossibility, according to any impartial exegesis, of applying this prophetic cycle of the 70 weeks to any other period than that which elapsed between the restoration of Jerusalem and the advent of the Christ—of Him who, as Daniel says, “is to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy” (9 : 24). Godet.

The twenty-fourth verse belongs to the most profound and glorious passages in the Old Testament; and if anywhere these have a Messianic signification, it is here. The angel wishes at first to give the prophet the general impression that his hopes and prayers for the Messiah will be fulfilled in a much later period than he expected. The 70 years of exile were indeed, as he had confessed in his prayer, a punishment for the sins of the people, yet not a perfect satisfaction for them before God. God would certainly visit Israel with His redeeming mercy, but the full atonement and forgiveness of sin, the eternal and everlasting restoration of the normal state between God and sinners (righteousness), would come only after 70 prophetic weeks. The sacrifice by which this atonement for sin would be made is pointed out in the twenty-sixth verse by the expression, “Messiah shall be cut off;” with this also is connected the expression in the twenty-seventh verse, “He shall confirm the covenant with many,” and the prophecy, that the sacrifices of the Old Testament, both with and without blood (“sacrifice and oblation”), shall cease. Thus the angel presents to the prophet in these expressions a connected chain, each link of which bears, upholds and explains the other, and which, taken aggregately, represents the Messiah as the perfect sin-offering of the covenant.

Finally, to take a brief survey of the entire prophecy, the prophet has indeed received strength and consolation only for the near future, which was the special object of his intercessory prayer. It is true that Jerusalem will be rebuilt, and that the people will be permitted to return from the Captivity; but this restoration is merely temporary, and is succeeded by many centuries of affliction. For the more distant future, Daniel receives, on the one hand, a consolatory disclosure concerning the appearance of the Messiah, who brings unto many the full salvation of the new covenant; but, on the other hand, disclosures concerning the destruction of the city and the sanctuary, because Israel rejects its Messiah, and which must affect Him deeply and painfully. The restoration of Jerusalem will not, therefore, be of long continuance, but, on the contrary, a new exile is to be expected. Yet, for the far distant time, the angel does not leave the prophet without a ray of hope for Israel and Jerusalem. Thus he received in some measure the consolation he had sought in his prayer regarding the future of his people. Gabriel begins the twenty-fourth verse with exceedingly precious promises, and from behind the dark clouds of night which cover the horizon, a glimmering ray of light shines through in blessed presentiment. Auberlea.

Recapitulation of the Chapter.

Daniel knew that Jeremiah had fixed seventy years as the length of the duration of the Exile. But the date from which to calculate was not determined; for there had been several deportations. Daniel, however, could not doubt that the end must be near; and his prayer was at that very time hastening on the desired event. Gabriel, the interpreter of the Divine mercies, appears to him and announces that the return is indeed very near, but that that event will by no means coincide, as Israel imagines, with the coming of the Messiah. God’s people have still long and grievous periods to go through, before they will reach the goal so impatiently expected. The heavenly messenger, in the first place, marks out distinctly the whole of the period which is to intervene between the return from the Captivity and the coming of Christ. It was to be a vast cycle of seventy weeks of years; exactly seven times as long as the Captivity had lasted; as if God wished to say to His people: “Add to that long period of exile seven times its own length, and you will have an idea of the length of the interval which still separates you from the moment which you think so near.” These six expressions, of which the first three describe the complete abolition of sin, the three last the perfect realization of righteousness on the earth, can only relate to the consummation of the Divine work—the time of the Messiah. Seven times seventy years—that is to say, four hundred and ninety years, or about five centuries—such, to speak generally, is the measure of the cycle which comprehends the remainder of the history of Israel between the return from the Captivity and the kingdom of God. We know that the edict of Cyrus was issued in the year n.c. 536. There is, then, evidently an approximative coincidence between the prophetic cycle and the historic period which answers to it. After this first summary statement, the general cycle is subdivided (verses 25–27) into three subordinate periods. The first is reckoned at seven weeks—that is, forty-nine years, or very nearly half a century. This number stands for the period of the restoration—that is to say, the time of the rebuilding of the temple, of the holy city, and of its walls. The second subdivision is sixty-two weeks, four hundred and thirty-four years, about four centuries and a half. This number has no special value of its own. It is merely the result of the subtraction of the numbers of the first and third subdivisions from that of the total period.

It is the measure of the time of maintenance of the restored people, of that long state of almost constant warfare for Israel during the great political convulsions which followed the national restoration. The third subdivision only includes one single week, seven years; this is the closing period, the time of the advent and work of the Messiah; the number seven marks the peculiar sacredness of this final period. In the midst of this notable week the Messiah disappears; for one part of the nation the covenant is confirmed and renewed by His death; but for the mass of the people, sacrifice is forever abolished, and that final ruin decreed which was to be consummated by a foreign invasion. It is evident that here we are dealing with vast cycles, like those with which the mind of Daniel had been familiarized by his astronomical studies. Revelation adapts itself to the conceptions of those who are to be its organs. But we must not expect history to bind itself slavishly to the exactness of those mathematical definitions of which the laws are of a different kind. History is the domain of human liberty; it cannot be controlled by the rhythm of the sacred numbers, three, seven, and ten. Godet.

We have here a most remarkable prophecy, delivered above five hundred years before the event, which, besides what it declares of the Messiah’s salvation, as finishing transgression, and introducing the everlasting righteousness, contains a variety of most important circumstances, all future at the time when Daniel wrote. The following public facts are expressly noted. The commandment to build the city. The building of it. The character of the times during which this was to take place. The coming of the Messiah. The time that was to elapse after the return of the Jews from the captivity of Babylon till His appearance. The express application of the term Messiah, which is the same as Christ. His dying a violent death: He shall be cut off, but not for Himself—that is to say, not for His sins, but for the sins of men. His making atonement for sin. His putting an end to the legal sacrifices. His introducing the everlasting righteousness. The closing up of prophecy. Its consummation, in His confirmation of it with many who should accede to it. The destruction of the city and temple. The signal nature of that destruction. The times when all these things should take place specified in their distinct periods. All this received an exact accomplishment. The commandment to build the city was given to Ezra by Artaxerxes in the seventh year of his reign, and is recorded in the Book of Ezra, and the building of the city was effected. At the set time Jesus Christ, pointed out as the Messiah by a variety of other prophecies, appeared. He was put to death, yet many became His disciples, with whom He confirmed His covenant. The time of the law and the prophets came to an end; and the legal sacrifices lost their obligation and efficacy. Soon after, Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed as by an inundation. The sacrifices then ceased to be offered, even in form. From that day to the present the Jews have been anxiously desirous to renew them; but Jerusalem being the only place where these could be offered, and it having been ever since in the hands of their enemies, this has been totally out of their power. Edwards.