Daniel's Seventy Weeks 101

Daniel's Seventy Weeks may be the most important of all prophecies regarding both the first and second coming of Jesus and His Kingdom that will be established forever. Daniel is visited by the same angel that visited Mary to announce the birth of Jesus the Messiah. The angel Gabriel brings an announcement, saying, "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. " (Daniel 9:24).


First, let's talk "Seventy Weeks". Seventy Weeks to Jewish people is like talking Seventy Decades for us today. If the prophecy read "Seventy Decades" have been decreed for your people and your holy city, no one would have a problem understanding the prophecy. However, Seventy Weeks can and does cause some confusion. Why? Because the Hebrew people there were many different types of weeks; they had a week of days (by which they celebrate a weekly Sabbath), then they had a week of weeks or 49 days (by which they yearly celebrate Feast of Weeks or Pentecost), then they had a week of years (by which they celebrated a Sabbath Rest for the land on the seventh year see Leviticus 25:2-4).


Daniel's Seventy Weeks is a week a years. Just as is refered to in Genesis 29:27 where Jacob's uncle tells him to "Compete the week of this one" which we learn later in the verse means, "You shall serve with me for another seven years. And Jacob did so and completed her week (Genesis 29:28). Hence the week can be a week of days, a week of weeks, or a week of years. And in this case, Daniel's Seventy Weeks are Seventy Weeks of Years or Seventy times Seven Years.


One more clue that points to the Seventy Weeks being weeks of years is found in the beginning of Daniel 9. Daniel read the prophecy of Jeremiah and found that his people were only to be in captivity for seventy years (Daniel 9:2). We learn in at the end of 2 Chronicles, "And those who had escaped from the sword he carried away to Babylon... to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its sabbaths. All the days of its desolation it kept sabbath until seventy years were complete" (2 Chronicles 36:20-21). The land enjoyed its sabbaths every seven years or a week of years.


Daniel's Seventy Weeks goes as follows; "So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Price there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks" (Daniel 9:25). There are four decrees, but only one includes Jerusalem being "built again with plaza and moat, even in times of distress" (Daniel 9:25). This decree final of the four decrees is decribed in Nehemiah 2:1-9. The other three decrees had to do with the rebuilding of the temple but did not include the entire rebuilding of the holy city with plaza and moat. (See other decrees Ezra 1:2, Ezra 6:8, Ezra 7:13)


This decree "came about in the month Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes" (Nehemiah 2:1). This decree taking place on the 1st of Nisan (March 14) in 445BC set in motion the most important of prophecies as this prophesy specifies to the exact day when the Messiah would present himself to the world as King.


Tomorrow we will examine to the exact day, Daniel's Seventy Weeks and the day when Messiah would present himself as King.