Seventy Weeks
When are they?

 

It's time to set the clock on Daniel 9. We figured out how chapters 8 and 9 are tied together. We saw that the central issue was obedience to the covenant. But when does the countdown begin? This is another place where there are a lot of theories.

Gabriel told Daniel that he will know and discern that from the going forth of the word to restore and to build up Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks (9:25). Daniel will be able to identify when this happens.(1) We should be able to recognize it the same way he would. We should also be able to confirm that we got it right by looking at how the Bible handles the end of the seventy weeks.

The seventy weeks will begin with a word. It's not a “word of the Lord,” so it's a decree by a human king.(2) Next, this decree will restore Jerusalem. This means that the city will be returned to its rightful owners, the Jews. They will have independent control over it as God's covenant people. They'll be the government and set up the laws. They won't have to have a foreign governor giving them trouble.(3)

Next, the decree will build up the city. I know; that's not the standard translation, but when we look back at Daniel's prayer, that's what he's asking for. The Hebrew word banah can mean either “build” or “build up,” depending on its context. Since the issue is restoration of the city of God, it only makes sense that when God gives it back to the Jews, He'll make it more permanent and prominent.(4)

Curiously, if we identify Jerusalem as the people (cf. 2 Kgs 24:12–14), we end up with exactly the same translation. This time, we find that the decree returns the people to Judea. Since they are the city, they can't be “built.” But the Bible does use “built up” several times in the sense of being made more permanent or prominent. This would allow the people to be “built up” as the people of God. Even more curiously, when we walk through the decrees, this approach gives exactly the same result as the first one. This is because the physical city and the people are, in a sense, the same thing.

Jeremiah says something very important about when the Jews return from their exile in Babylon.

 

Thus says the Lord concerning all My wicked neighbors who strike at the inheritance with which I have endowed My people Israel, "Behold I am about to uproot them from their land and will uproot the house of Judah from among them. And it will come about that after I have uprooted them, I will again have compassion on them; and I will bring them back, each one to his inheritance and each one to his land. Then it will come about that if they will really learn the ways of My people, to swear by My name, 'As the Lord lives,' even as they taught My people to swear by Baal, then they will be built up in the midst of My people. (Jer. 12:14–16)

 

Through the prophet, God specifically says that God's people will be “uprooted” from wicked Babylon and brought back to Judea. Then they will be “built up” if they return to the covenant. It’s hard to be too emphatic here. This is exactly what Gabriel is telling Daniel about with the six items in the list.

There are two decrees that don't do anything more than let the Jews return to Jerusalem. Cyrus the Great issued the first one in 537 BC. Part of it is recorded in Ezra 1. It doesn't restore Jerusalem, so it's not the one we're looking for. Darius re-issued Cyrus' decree in 520 BC.(5) Since it's the same decree, it doesn't match, either. But we don't have to look much further.

The right decree is found in Ezra 7, and was issued by Artaxerxes I Longimanus in 458 BC. It's a perfect match on all counts. It fully restores Jerusalem to the Jews (Ezra 7:23–26). They get total control under God's laws. On top of that, the king gives the Jews immense amounts of gold and silver to rebuild the Temple and buy sacrifices (Ezra 7:15–16, 22; 8:26–27).(6) Finally, he sends back the sacred vessels that Nebuchadnezzar took.
By returning the sacred vessels Artaxerxes admits that Yahweh is truly the sovereign Lord. Nebuchadnezzar took them to show that his Babylonian gods were stronger than Yahweh. Here Artaxerxes admits that Yahweh is stronger than his Persian gods.(7)

There's one more important factor here. Most of the book of Ezra is written in Hebrew. Chapter 7 starts in Hebrew. But the decree is in Aramaic, the legal language of Babylon. Every word of it is quoted. Finally, Ezra gives thanks that “the Lord has put this in the king's heart, to exalt the house of the Lord which is in Jerusalem” (Ezra 7:27–28).(8)

What more can we ask for? The decrees of Cyrus and Darius were partial. They didn't really restore Jerusalem. This one matches on every single point. The entire decree is quoted in the original language of the royal court, followed by Ezra's praise that the Lord had put this in the king's heart. It's as if God put His finger in the text and said, “Look here. This is what I was talking about.” We shouldn't have to go any farther. But there's one more passage we need to look at.

In 444 BC Artaxerxes' cup-bearer Nehemiah hears that Jerusalem and its gates have been burned (Neh 2:3). He asks the king for permission to go to “build” Jerusalem. Then he asks for letters of safe passage and permission to harvest timber (vv. 7–8). These are granted, and Nehemiah heads west. If it weren't for the word “build,” there'd be no reason to look here.

“Build” gets Nehemiah 2 into consideration, but nothing else matches. First, there's no decree here. The letters Nehemiah asked for aren't recorded, so we have nothing in them to go on. But more important, there's nothing here that restores Jerusalem. It just doesn't fit. And, as we'll see, the timing doesn't match anything in the New Testament.

This brings us to a bit of cultural analysis. Daniel is a Jew. His calendar is Jewish. If the seventy weeks are really 490 years, then those years will have to be years Daniel can understand. And that's a problem for us, because the Jewish calendar isn't like our Gregorian calendar.(9)

We've studied astronomy and know that the earth revolves once around the sun every 365¼ days. So we have 365 days in an ordinary year and 366 days in a leap year. This keeps all of our seasons and holidays in the same place on the calendar.

The Jews didn't study astronomy. Their pagan neighbors used astronomy in their sorcery, and God condemned the Jews when they did it (Isa 47:12–14). But they did use the new moon to start their months (1 Chron 23:28–31), and this creates a problem. Lunar months are 29½ days long. So one month is 29 days long, and the next is 30.(10) If you add up twelve of these months, a year is only 354 days long. It doesn’t take long for spring festivals to end up in the winter, then the fall, then the summer, and so on. That's a really big deal.

Passover, First-fruits, and Pentecost are the spring festivals. First-fruits and Pentecost celebrate the spring harvest (Lev 23:10, 22). If the calendar slides, it's only going to take four or five years for this to get hopelessly messed up. Something has to be done.

The Jewish calendar fixes this problem by adding an extra month in seven out of nineteen years.(11) This means we can't tell how long any particular year is going to be. But we can tell how long a Jewish year is on average. It's 365¼ days long, just like our modern years! This keeps the spring and fall festivals right where they belong. And it lets us know that we can count ordinary years to figure out when the Messiah will come, just like any Jew would.

Now that we've figured out how to count years, let's review the decrees and lay out the time line.

 

Author	Found In:	Date	Return People?	Restore Gov't?	Restore God's Law?	“Build up” Jerusalem?
Cyrus	Ezra 1	537 BC	Yes	—	—	—
Darius	Ezra 6	520 BC	Yes	—	—	—
Artaxerxes I	Ezra 7	457 BC	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Artaxerxes I	Neh. 2	444 BC	—	—	—	—

 

Artaxerxes issued his decree to Ezra late in 458 BC. It took several months to organize the trip, since a lot of people were going back to Judea. The thousand-mile trip along the Fertile Crescent took more time, and the Jews arrived in Jerusalem sometime in August or September of 457 BC. The decree had gone forth.

From the time the decree went out until Messiah the Prince was to be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks. Seven weeks points out the Sabbath, the weekly heart of the covenant. This time the covenant emphasis is on the sabbatical year, where the land was supposed to lie fallow and the people were to depend on God for the harvest. Because they hadn't, the land had kept Sabbath while they were away. Now they’ll get one more chance. Let's look at the time line.

                                                                   

 

Once the decree went forth in 457 BC, the rest of the dates were fixed. 69 weeks after the decree, the Messiah will arrive. A week later, God will see whether the Jews met terms of their probation (cf. Gen 22:12). This perfectly matches what Jeremiah said.

The Jews went into captivity because they hadn't kept the covenant (Jer 25). After their punishment, God would bring them back for another chance. If they kept the covenant, God would “build them up” (Jer 12). Daniel supplies the rest of the story. They need to meet those six covenant conditions. At the end of the 70-week trial period, God will check things out.

 

The Bible Confirms Fulfillment

 

Our next job is to see how the Bible confirms this time line. So if you'll sit back and relax, we'll start on very unusual journey.

Each Christmas we hear the story of the magi from Matthew 2:1–12. They came from the east to worship “the king of the Jews.” Verse 2 is very important.

 

"Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east, and have come to worship Him."

 

The magi saw “His star.” This implies that they knew who the star belonged to. But this isn't the way normal astrology works. If these wise men were from Persia, then the normal interpretation of the star would have to do with some event in Persia.(12) It certainly wouldn't have anything to do with a trivial province of the Roman Empire.

But if the magi had the Hebrew Scriptures, then they could figure out its true meaning. All they had to do was take Daniel 9:25, look at their own history, and count the years.(13) 483 years after the decree, the Messiah would show up. But that gets them to an adult Messiah. The magi are coming to celebrate his birth.

Fortunately for them, Daniel 9 isn't the only messianic prophecy. Numbers 24:16–19 calls him “a star from Jacob.” That tells them to watch the night sky. 1 Samuel 2:35–36 identifies him as a “faithful priest,” and Numbers 4 adds that priests are anointed for service when they were thirty years old. This gives them all they need. Instead of 483 years, they count 453 years and get the year the Messiah will be born. It looks like this.

 

 

Let’s stop for a moment here. Unless the process we just went through is correct, there's no way the magi can be sure that the star identifies Jesus. But they do know that the Messiah has been born, and they head right for the natural place to find the new king — the palace. And they walk straight into Jesus' worst enemy — Herod the Great. He wants nothing to do with a Jewish king. So he asks his Jewish advisers about the story.

The chief priests and scribes know it's time for the Messiah to be born. They quote Micah 5:2, which says He’ll be born in Bethlehem. The magi follow the star to Jesus, worship Him, and then bug out after an angel tells them not to go back to Herod. Mary, Joseph, and Jesus beat feet to Egypt one step ahead of Herod's executioners.

We're not done. It takes two or three witnesses to be sure of the truth. The next logical witness is Jesus. Shortly after His baptism, Jesus began preaching the gospel, saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand” (Mark 1:14–15). There's more.

The writer of Hebrews says “at the end of the days God spoke to us in His son” (Heb 1:2, lit.). Peter says that Jesus “appeared at the end of the times for your sake” (1 Pet 1:20, lit.). Paul says that “God sent forth his son when the fullness of the time came” (Gal 4:4). All four of these expressions refer to the end of a prophetic time period. The only time prophecy that ends near Jesus' ministry is Daniel 9:25.

All these texts talk about Jesus appearing on the scene (cf. John 1:30–31). The chief priests and scribes knew the time, since they told Herod. Later they sent other priests and Levites to ask John the Baptist if he was the Messiah (John 1:19–24). Even the woman at the well in Samaria knew it was time for the Messiah (John 4:25).

We know from the stories of John the Baptist and Jesus that Jesus was born around the Feast of Tabernacles, which would be about the end of September or the beginning of October. This is 453 years from the time the decree went forth. He was baptized about the same time of the year, when he was “about thirty years old” (Luke 3:23). And this fits perfectly with John's statement that Jesus “tabernacled” with us (John 1:14, lit.).

The seventy weeks began with the decree of Artaxerxes I in 457 BC “to restore and to build up Jerusalem.” The next key event is the arrival of the Messiah at the end of the sixty-nine weeks. After the events of the seventieth week, God will test the probation. Did the Jews come into compliance with the covenant?