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Seventy WeeksInsight on the Scriptures, Volume 2
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Covenant in force “for one week.” Daniel 9:27 states: “And he must keep the covenant in force for the many for one week [or seven years]; and at the half of the week he will cause sacrifice and gift offering to cease.” The “covenant” could not be the Law covenant, for Christ’s sacrifice, three and a half years after the 70th “week” began, resulted in its removal by God: “He has taken it [the Law] out of the way by nailing it to the torture stake.” (Col 2:14) Also, “Christ by purchase released us from the curse of the Law . . . The purpose was that the blessing of Abraham might come to be by means of Jesus Christ for the nations.” (Ga 3:13, 14) God, through Christ, did extend the blessings of the Abrahamic covenant to the natural offspring of Abraham, excluding the Gentiles until the gospel was taken to them through Peter’s preaching to the Italian Cornelius. (Ac 3:25, 26; 10:1-48) This conversion of Cornelius and his household occurred after the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, which is generally considered to have taken place in about 34 C.E.; after this the congregation enjoyed a period of peace, being built up. (Ac 9:1-16, 31) It appears, then, that the bringing of Cornelius into the Christian congregation took place about the autumn of 36 C.E., which would be the end of the 70th “week,” 490 years from 455 B.C.E.
Sacrifices and offerings ‘caused to cease.’ The expression ‘cause to cease,’ used with reference to sacrifice and gift offering, means, literally, “cause or make to sabbath, to rest, to desist from working.” The “sacrifice and gift offering” that are ‘caused to cease,’ according to Daniel 9:27, could not be Jesus’ ransom sacrifice, nor would they logically be any spiritual sacrifice by his footstep followers. They must refer to the sacrifices and gift offerings that were offered by the Jews at the temple in Jerusalem according to Moses’ Law.
“The half of the week” would be at the middle of seven years, or after three and a half years within that “week” of years. Since the 70th “week” began about the fall of 29 C.E. at Jesus’ baptism and anointing to be Christ, half of that week (three and a half years) would extend to the spring of 33 C.E., or Passover time (Nisan 14) of that year. This day appears to have been April 1, 33 C.E., according to the Gregorian calendar. (See LORD’S EVENING MEAL [Time of Its Institution].) The apostle Paul tells us that Jesus ‘came to do the will of God,’ which was to ‘do away with what is first [the sacrifices and offerings according to the Law] that he may establish what is second.’ This he did by offering as a sacrifice his own body.—Heb 10:1-10.
Although the Jewish priests continued to offer sacrifices at the temple in Jerusalem until its destruction in 70 C.E., the sacrifices for sin ceased having acceptance and validity with God. Just before Jesus’ death he said to Jerusalem: “Your house is abandoned to you.” (Mt 23:38) Christ “offered one sacrifice for sins perpetually . . . For it is by one sacrificial offering that he has made those who are being sanctified perfect perpetually.” “Now where there is forgiveness [of sins and lawless deeds], there is no longer an offering for sin.” (Heb 10:12-14, 18) The apostle Paul points out that Jeremiah’s prophecy spoke of a new covenant, the former covenant (Law covenant) being thereby made obsolete and growing old, “near to vanishing away.”—Heb 8:7-13.
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Seventy WeeksInsight on the Scriptures, Volume 2
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Desolations to the city and the holy place. It was after the 70 “weeks,” but as a direct result of the Jews’ rejection of Christ during the 70th “week,” that the events of the latter parts of Daniel 9:26 and 27 were fulfilled. History records that Titus the son of Emperor Vespasian of Rome was the leader of the Roman forces that came against Jerusalem. These armies actually entered into Jerusalem and the temple itself, like a flood, and desolated the city and its temple. This standing of pagan armies in the holy place made them a “disgusting thing.” (Mt 24:15) All efforts made prior to Jerusalem’s end to quiet the situation failed because God’s decree was: “What is decided upon is desolations,” and “until an extermination, the very thing decided upon will go pouring out also upon the one lying desolate.”
A Jewish View. The Masoretic text, with its system of vowel points, was prepared in the latter half of the first millennium C.E. Evidently because of their rejection of Jesus Christ as the Messiah, the Masoretes accented the Hebrew text at Daniel 9:25 with an ʼath·nachʹ, or “stop,” after “seven weeks,” thereby dividing it off from the “sixty-two weeks”; in this way the 62 weeks of the prophecy, namely, 434 years, appear to apply to the time of rebuilding ancient Jerusalem. The translation by Isaac Leeser reads: “Know therefore and comprehend, that from the going forth of the word to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the anointed the prince will be seven weeks: [the stop is represented here by a colon] and during sixty and two weeks will it be again built with streets and ditches (around it), even in the pressure of the times.” The translation of the Jewish Publication Society of America reads similarly: “shall be seven weeks; and for threescore and two weeks, it shall be built again.” In these two versions the words “during” and “for,” respectively, appear in the English translation, evidently to support the translators’ interpretation.
Professor E. B. Pusey, in a footnote on one of his lectures delivered at the University of Oxford, remarks on the Masoretic accenting: “The Jews put the main stop of the verse under שִׁבְעָה [seven], meaning to separate the two numbers, 7 and 62. This they must have done dishonestly, למען המינים (as Rashi [a prominent Jewish Rabbi of the 11th and 12th centuries C.E.] says in rejecting literal expositions which favored the Christians) ‘on account of the heretics,’ i.e. Christians. For the latter clause, so divided off, could only mean, ‘and during threescore and two weeks street and wall shall be being restored and builded,’ i.e. that Jerusalem should be 434 years in rebuilding, which would be senseless.”—Daniel the Prophet, 1885, p. 190.
As to Daniel 9:26 (Le), which reads, in part, “And after the sixty and two weeks will an anointed one be cut off without a successor to follow him,” the Jewish commentators apply the 62 weeks to a period up to the Maccabean age, and the term “anointed one” to King Agrippa II, who lived at the time of Jerusalem’s destruction, 70 C.E. Or some say this was a high priest, Onias, who was deposed by Antiochus Epiphanes in 175 B.C.E. Their applications of the prophecy to either of these men would rob it of any real significance or import, and the discrepancy in the dating would make the 62 weeks no accurate time prophecy at all.—See Soncino Books of the Bible (commentary on Da 9:25, 26), edited by A. Cohen, London, 1951.
In an attempt to justify their view, these Jewish scholars say that the “seven weeks” are, not 7 times 7, or 49 years, but 70 years; yet they count the 62 weeks as 7 times 62 years. This, they claim, referred to the period of Babylonian exile. They make Cyrus or Zerubbabel or High Priest Jeshua the “anointed one” in this verse (Da 9:25), with the “anointed one” in Daniel 9:26 being another person.
Most English translations do not follow the Masoretic punctuation here. They either have a comma after the expression “seven weeks” or in the wording indicate that the 62 weeks follow the 7 as part of the 70, and do not denote that the 62 weeks apply to the period of rebuilding Jerusalem. (Compare Da 9:25 in KJ, AT, Dy, NW, Ro, Yg.) An editorial note by James Strong in Lange’s Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Da 9:25, ftn, p. 198) says: “The only justification of this translation, which separates the two periods of seven weeks and sixty-two weeks, assigning the former as the terminus ad quem of the Anointed Prince, and the latter as the time of rebuilding, lies in the Masoretic interpunction, which places the Athnac [stop] between them. . . . and the rendering in question involves a harsh construction of the second member, being without a preposition. It is better, therefore, and simpler, to adhere to the Authorized Version, which follows all the older translations.”—Translated and edited by P. Schaff, 1976.
Numerous other views, some Messianic and some non-Messianic, have been set forth as to the meaning of the prophecy. It may be noted, in this connection, that the earliest available Septuagint translation badly distorts what is in the Hebrew text. As explained by Professor Pusey, in Daniel the Prophet (pp. 328, 329), the translator falsified the stated time period, as well as added, altered, and transposed words, in order to make the prophecy support the struggle of the Maccabees. That obviously distorted translation has been replaced in most modern editions of the Septuagint with one made by Theodotion, a Jewish scholar of the second century C.E., whose rendering conforms to the Hebrew text.
Some attempt to change the order of the time periods of the prophecy, while others make them run simultaneously or deny that they have any actual time fulfillment. But those presenting such views become hopelessly entangled, and their attempts to extricate themselves result in absurdity or in an outright denial that the prophecy is inspired or true. Of the latter ideas particularly, which raise more problems than they solve, the aforementioned scholar, E. B. Pusey, remarks: “These were the impossible problems for unbelief to solve; it had to solve them for itself, which was, so far, easier; for nothing is impossible for unbelief to believe, except what God reveals.”—P. 206.
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