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Daniel 9 and the seventy weeks

Daniel hears Gabriel say that seventy weeks are decreed for his people and his city. Then comes a date math problem that runs from a 'going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem' to a cut-off anointed one and a desolating prince. Four candidate starting decrees and four candidate fulfillments have circulated since the second century. Each reading produces a different answer to who the anointed one is and what the seventieth week is doing.

What's at stake

Daniel is praying for his people in the first year of Darius the Mede. He has been reading Jeremiah, who said the desolations of Jerusalem would last seventy years. The angel Gabriel comes in answer to the prayer with a different number. 'Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, 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' (Dan 9:24, KJV). The next three verses lay out a chronological scheme: seven weeks, then sixty-two weeks, then a final week, with an anointed one 'cut off' after the sixty-two and 'one that maketh desolate' in the middle of the seventieth. Read one way, the verses point to the desecration of the Jerusalem Temple by Antiochus IV in 167 BCE. Read another way, they point to the crucifixion of Jesus in roughly AD 30 and the destruction of the Temple in AD 70. Read a third way, the seventieth week is still future. The same verses ground all three.

What the verses say

The chapter opens with Daniel praying. He has been reading Jeremiah 25 and 29, which set the exile at seventy years (Jer 25:11-12; 29:10). Daniel is in 'the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus' (Dan 9:1), which most readings place at around 538 BCE, the year after Cyrus took Babylon. The seventy years are nearly up. The prayer is a confession of sin and a plea for restoration. Gabriel arrives in answer with a redefinition of the seventy. The number is multiplied by seven. Seventy weeks of years, four hundred and ninety years, are decreed.

The decree is broken into three parts. Seven weeks (49 years) from 'the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem' to an anointed one, a prince. Then sixty-two weeks (434 years), during which the city is rebuilt 'in troublous times.' Then 'after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary' (9:26). The seventieth week is described separately. 'He shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation' (9:27).

Four interpretive variables sit in those four verses. First, the starting date: which 'commandment to restore and build Jerusalem' is in view. Second, the anointed one: who is 'cut off after sixty-two weeks.' Third, the destroying prince: who 'shall destroy the city and the sanctuary.' Fourth, the seventieth week: whether it follows immediately on the sixty-ninth or is separated from it by a gap. Different combinations of those four variables produce different fulfillment schemes. The four schemes that have shaped most reading of the chapter are the Antiochene reading, the continuous-messianic Christ-AD-30 reading, the dispensationalist gap reading, and the symbolic-Jubilee reading.

The four readings

How the seventy weeks have been read

Each position is defined by its starting decree, its candidate for the anointed one cut off, its candidate for the desolating prince, and whether the seventieth week is continuous with the sixty-ninth.

The seventy weeks run from Jeremiah's prophecy (or from the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BCE) to the desecration of the Temple by Antiochus IV in 167 BCE. The anointed one cut off is Onias III, the legitimate high priest murdered in 171 BCE. The desolating prince is Antiochus IV. The seventieth week is the three-and-a-half-year suppression of the Temple cult from December 167 to December 164 BCE.
Held by
  • Porphyry, Against the Christians, book 12 (c. 270 CE), preserved in Jerome
  • Heinrich Ewald, Die Propheten des Alten Bundes (1841)
  • S. R. Driver, The Book of Daniel (Cambridge, 1900)
  • James A. Montgomery, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Daniel (ICC; T&T Clark, 1927)
  • Louis F. Hartman and Alexander A. Di Lella, The Book of Daniel (Anchor Bible; Doubleday, 1978)
  • André Lacocque, The Book of Daniel (John Knox, 1979)
  • John J. Collins, Daniel (Hermeneia; Fortress, 1993)
  • Carol A. Newsom, Daniel: A Commentary (OTL; WJK, 2014)
Evidence
  • • The chapter opens with Daniel reading Jeremiah's seventy years, and Jeremiah's seventy years run from the Babylonian deportations (605 or 587 BCE) to the return under Cyrus (539 or 538 BCE). The starting point is natural: Jeremiah's prophecy itself, or the destruction of Jerusalem the prophecy addresses.
  • • Counting 490 years from roughly 587 BCE arrives at approximately 97 BCE, which does not fit Antiochus IV. Counting from Jeremiah's prophecy in roughly 605 BCE arrives at 115 BCE, still not Antiochus. The Antiochene reading does not require exact-year arithmetic; it reads the 70x7 as Jeremianic shorthand for the longer arc of judgment culminating at the Antiochene crisis.
  • • Onias III was the legitimate Zadokite high priest. He was deposed in 175 BCE by his brother Jason and murdered at Daphne near Antioch in 171 BCE, on the orders of Andronicus acting for Antiochus IV. 2 Maccabees 4:33-38 names him explicitly. An 'anointed one cut off, but not for himself' fits Onias closely.
  • • Antiochus IV's persecution lasted roughly three and a half years (December 167 to December 164 BCE), matching the 'half a week' in which the sacrifice ceases. The desecration is the 'abomination that makes desolate,' identical language to Dan 11:31 and 12:11.
  • • The rest of Daniel's apocalyptic visions focus on the Antiochene crisis (Dan 8:9-14, 23-26; 11:21-35; 12:11). A reading of Dan 9 that culminates somewhere else has to explain why this one vision points elsewhere when the rest of the book points here.
Challenges
  • • The arithmetic does not work cleanly. From the destruction of Jerusalem (587 BCE) to Antiochus's desecration (167 BCE) is 420 years, not 490. The reading has to treat the 70 weeks as a structuring schema rather than precise chronology.
  • • Onias III was not anointed by Daniel's standard. He was a hereditary Zadokite high priest. The Aramaic mashiach ('anointed one') in the verse can refer to a high priest, but the term is more naturally applied to a king or a messianic figure.
  • • The seventieth-week language ('he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week') is hard to apply to Antiochus IV, who broke covenant rather than confirmed it. Defenders of the reading argue the Hebrew higbîr ('cause to prevail') can describe imposing a covenant, not affirming it.

The starting-date question

Four candidate decrees have been read as 'the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem.' Each generates a different endpoint when 483 years are added.

The four candidate starting dates and what each generates when 483 years (sixty-nine weeks of years) are added. Solar-year arithmetic on the left, Anderson's 360-day prophetic-year arithmetic on the right where it changes the result.

Persian-era decrees (BCE)
Resulting endpoints (BCE or CE)
605 BCE
Jeremiah's prophecy of 70 years
Jer 25:11-12. Some Antiochene readers begin the count here, treating the seventy weeks as a Jeremianic extension. 605 BCE plus 490 years = 115 BCE. Does not fit Antiochus directly; works only on a schematic reading.
0% along range
587 BCE
Destruction of Jerusalem
The event Jeremiah's prophecy addresses. 587 BCE plus 490 years = 97 BCE. Most Antiochene readings take Jeremiah's date and treat the 490 as schematic.
1% along range
538 BCE
Cyrus's decree
Ezra 1:1-4; 2 Chr 36:22-23. Authorizes the return and the rebuilding of the Temple. 538 BCE plus 483 years = 55 BCE. Does not match either Christ or the Temple destruction.
3% along range
458 BCE
Artaxerxes's decree to Ezra
Ezra 7:11-26. Authorizes Ezra's mission and the application of Persian law to the province. 458 BCE plus 483 solar years = AD 26. Lands in the start of Jesus's ministry on standard NT chronology.
6% along range
445 BCE
Artaxerxes's decree to Nehemiah
Neh 2:1-8. Authorizes Nehemiah's mission to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. 445 BCE plus 483 solar years = AD 38. With Anderson's 360-day prophetic-year arithmetic (173,880 days), arrives at AD 32-33, near the crucifixion.
6% along range
171 BCE
Onias III murdered at Daphne
2 Macc 4:33-38. The Antiochene reading's primary candidate for 'an anointed one cut off, but not for himself.'
17% along range
167 BCE
Antiochus IV desecrates the Temple
The 'abomination that makes desolate' goes up on 15 Kislev. The Antiochene reading takes this as the climax of the seventieth week.
17% along range
164 BCE
Rededication of the Temple
1 Macc 4:52-53. Roughly three and a half years after the desecration. The Antiochene reading matches the 'half of the week' (Dan 9:27) in which the sacrifice ceases.
17% along range
30 CE
Crucifixion of Jesus
Continuous-messianic and dispensationalist readings take this as the cutting off of the anointed one. Hoehner 1977 dates the crucifixion to AD 33; Anderson 1894 to AD 32.
24% along range
70 CE
Destruction of Jerusalem by Titus
Continuous-messianic readings take this as 'the people of the prince that shall come' destroying the city. Dispensationalist readings take it as the 'people' but separate from the 'prince' who is still future.
26% along range
2025 CE
Future seventieth week (dispensationalist)
On the dispensationalist gap reading, the seventieth week has not yet occurred. The covenant with many and the cessation of sacrifice in the middle of the week are reserved for a future Antichrist figure.
100% along range

Who is 'an anointed one cut off'

The candidates for the anointed one cut off

The 'anointed one' (Hebrew mashiach) of v. 26 has been identified differently by each reading. The Hebrew term itself can mean a high priest, a king, or a messianic figure, leaving the chapter open to multiple referents.

Onias III (Antiochene)
Identity
Zadokite high priest in Jerusalem, deposed by his brother Jason in 175 BCE and murdered at Daphne in 171 BCE.
2 Macc 4:33-38; Josephus, Antiquities 12.5.1
'Anointed'
As high priest, anointed in the literal Levitical sense (Exod 29:7; Lev 8:12). The Aramaic-Hebrew mashiach naturally fits a high priest.
Lev 8:12; mashiach hakohen ('the anointed priest') in Lev 4:3
'Cut off'
Murdered by assassination at Daphne, near Antioch, on the orders of Andronicus acting for Antiochus IV.
2 Macc 4:34
'Not for himself'
Hebrew we-en lo can be translated 'and he had nothing' or 'and not for himself.' Onias was deposed without judicial process and died unjustly, fitting the first translation.
Hebrew commentary tradition
Timing
171 BCE, four years before the Temple desecration. On the Antiochene reading, this sits at the boundary between weeks 69 and 70, with the seventieth week running from roughly 171 to 164 BCE.
Hartman / Di Lella; Collins, Hermeneia
Jesus (Christ-AD-30)
Identity
Jesus of Nazareth, crucified under Pontius Pilate in approximately AD 30 (Anderson) or AD 33 (Hoehner).
Mark 15; Matt 27; Luke 23; John 19
'Anointed'
Christos / Mashiach as title (Mark 8:29; Acts 10:38: 'God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power'). The full messianic sense of the term.
Acts 10:38; Heb 1:9
'Cut off'
Hebrew kareth (to be cut off) is used elsewhere of being excommunicated or killed (Gen 9:11; Exod 31:14). The crucifixion fits the term.
Hebrew lexicography; LXX rendering exolothreuthēsetai
'Not for himself'
Translated as 'not for his own cause' or 'and shall have nothing.' The substitutionary reading (he dies for others, not for his own offense) is taken as a direct fit for Christ.
Isa 53:8 ('cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken'), read together with Dan 9:26
Timing
Approximately AD 30-33, calculated by 483 years from Artaxerxes's 445 BCE decree to Nehemiah, with Anderson's 360-day prophetic-year convention.
Anderson, The Coming Prince (1894); Hoehner, Chronological Aspects (1977)
Future Antichrist (Dispensationalist)
Note
The dispensationalist reading does not identify the 'anointed one cut off' as the Antichrist. It identifies the anointed one as Jesus (matching position 2). The Antichrist is the destroying prince of v. 27, not the cut-off anointed of v. 26.
Walvoord, Daniel (1971); Pentecost, Things to Come (1958)
Identity (prince of v. 27)
A future Antichrist figure who makes a covenant with Israel for seven years and breaks it in the middle.
Dispensationalist systematic reading
Covenant
On this reading, the seventieth-week covenant is a future political covenant between the Antichrist and Israel, possibly involving renewed Temple sacrifice in a rebuilt Temple.
Walvoord, Daniel (1971); Scofield Reference Bible notes
Cessation of sacrifice
The Antichrist stops the sacrifice 'in the midst of the week,' three and a half years into the seven-year covenant period. Identified with 2 Thess 2:4 ('the man of sin... sitteth in the temple of God').
2 Thess 2:3-4; Rev 11:2-3; Walvoord (1971)
Timing
Future. The seventieth week has not begun. The gap between weeks 69 and 70 is on the dispensationalist reading the present church age.
Darby, Lectures (1853); Scofield Reference Bible (1909)
Symbolic / no specific referent (Jubilee)
Identity
The anointed one is a typological figure within the Jubilee-of-Jubilees schema, not a single historical individual identifiable by date.
Hartman / Di Lella, partial; Goldingay 1989
'Anointed'
Read as evoking the full Levitical pattern of restored worship rather than a single anointed officeholder.
Lev 25 (Jubilee), read together with Dan 9:24's restoration goals
'Cut off'
Read as the breaking of right order that the seventy-weeks schema then addresses. The cutting off is a stylized event in the schema, not a specific assassination or execution.
Goldingay 1989; Newsom 2014
Theological function
The chapter's six goals (finish transgression, end sin, make reconciliation, bring in righteousness, seal vision, anoint the most Holy) describe the full restoration the seventy weeks are meant to achieve. The 'cut off' anointed one is part of the schema, not a date-stamped figure.
Dan 9:24, read together with Lev 25
Compatibility
The symbolic reading can be paired with the Antiochene reading (the schema culminates at 167 BCE) or with the Christ reading (the schema culminates at the crucifixion). It is not a separate fulfillment claim so much as a frame for one.
Lacocque 1979; Newsom 2014

Why the chapter is unusually open

The chapter does not specify a calendar, a year-length convention, or a single agent for the 'commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem.' That openness is not accidental on any reading. It is part of why four substantial readings can coexist for nearly 2,000 years without one of them clearly defeating the others. The Antiochene reading takes the openness as the chapter's schematic-Jubilee logic. The continuous-messianic reading takes the openness as room for the prophetic-year convention. The dispensationalist reading takes the openness as a built-in pause. The symbolic reading takes the openness as the chapter's genre.

What both sides of the Christian-Jewish history of reading have agreed on is that the chapter is the Hebrew Bible's most explicit chronological prophecy. The number 490 is given. The breakdown into 7 + 62 + 1 is given. The anointed one is named. The destroying prince is named. The chapter invites calculation. The disagreement is about what kind of calculation it invites, and what counts as its successful endpoint.

How the Olivet Discourse complicates things

Jesus's Olivet Discourse (Mark 13; Matt 24; Luke 21) picks up Daniel's 'abomination of desolation' language and applies it forward, not backward. 'When ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand where it ought not (let him that readeth understand,) then let them that be in Judaea flee to the mountains' (Mark 13:14). The verse complicates every reading. If Jesus is referring to Dan 9:27, then he treats the seventieth-week's abomination as still future from his own moment, which is most natural on the dispensationalist gap reading. If Jesus is referring to Dan 11:31 or 12:11 (which use identical language), then he is picking up the Antiochene-era prediction and reusing it for the events of AD 70, which is consistent with both the continuous-messianic and the Antiochene reading.

Most commentators on the Olivet Discourse take Jesus's reference as primarily to Dan 12:11 ('from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days'), which describes the Antiochene desecration but is reused by Jesus for a typologically similar event in his own near future (AD 70) or in the eschaton. The chapter-9 connection is then secondary. The dispensationalist reading argues that the Olivet Discourse takes Dan 9:27 forward as well, since the verses share the same key phrase (shiqqutsim meshomem, 'abomination that desolates').

What each side has to account for

Position 1 (Antiochene) has to account for the chapter's specific timing language. 'Seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks' is divided language, and the chapter dates Onias's murder and Antiochus's desecration to a sequence that does not match precise 70x7-year arithmetic from any known starting date. The reading treats the numbers as schematic, which the chapter itself does not directly authorize.

Position 2 (continuous Christ-AD-30) has to account for the seventieth-week problem. If the seventy weeks ran continuously to the crucifixion, the verse 'he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease in the midst of the week' has to be read as the theological cessation of sacrifice at the crucifixion, not as a physical cessation. The Temple sacrifices continued physically for forty more years until AD 70. Reading 'cessation' theologically is a real interpretive move.

Position 3 (dispensationalist gap) has to account for the absence of any textual signal that a gap exists between weeks 69 and 70. The reading is recent in the history of Christian interpretation (Darby 1830s) and has to explain why the gap was not seen by Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, or any patristic or medieval reader of the chapter.

Position 4 (symbolic-Jubilee) has to account for the specificity of the breakdown. Seven plus sixty-two plus one is not the form a pure-symbol normally takes. The chapter gives the reader divisions, durations, and named events, which a symbol-only reading has to absorb into theological structure.

All four readings agree that the chapter is doing something extraordinary. It is the Hebrew Bible's most explicit numerical prophecy. The disagreement is about what kind of fulfillment it expects, and the answer to that question has stayed open from Porphyry's third-century critique through Jerome's fifth-century commentary to the present.

Sources

Primary sources
  • Daniel 9 (KJV, NRSV; MT and OG-Theodotion Greek consulted)
  • Jeremiah 25:11-12; 29:10 (the seventy years)
  • Leviticus 25 (Jubilee and sabbatical-year structure)
  • Ezra 1:1-4 and 2 Chronicles 36:22-23 (Cyrus's decree, 538 BCE)
  • Ezra 7:11-26 (Artaxerxes's decree to Ezra, 458 BCE)
  • Nehemiah 2:1-8 (Artaxerxes's decree to Nehemiah, 445 BCE)
  • 1 Maccabees 1:54-59 (the abomination set up, 167 BCE)
  • 1 Maccabees 4:52-53 (the rededication, 164 BCE)
  • 2 Maccabees 4:33-38 (the murder of Onias III)
  • Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 10.11.7; 12.5.1 (on Dan 9 and on Onias III) (LCL 326, Marcus 1937)
  • Porphyry, Against the Christians, book 12 (c. 270 CE), preserved in Jerome, Commentary on Daniel
  • Julius Africanus, Chronography, book 5 (c. 240 CE), in the fragments preserved by Eusebius, Demonstratio Evangelica 8.2
  • Eusebius of Caesarea, Demonstratio Evangelica 8.2 (c. 314 CE) (Ferrar translation, SPCK 1920)
  • Jerome, Commentarii in Danielem, on chapter 9 (407 CE), CCSL 75A; Archer translation (Baker, 1958)
  • Babylonian Talmud, Nazir 32b; Sanhedrin 97b (rabbinic discussions of the seventy weeks)
  • 11Q13 (Qumran Melchizedek text), in DJD XXIII
  • Mark 13:14; Matthew 24:15; 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4 (New Testament use of Daniel's abomination language)
Modern scholarship cited
  • John Nelson Darby, Lectures on the Second Coming (1853)
  • Heinrich Ewald, Die Propheten des Alten Bundes (1841)
  • Robert Anderson, The Coming Prince (Hodder & Stoughton, 1894)
  • S. R. Driver, The Book of Daniel (Cambridge Bible; CUP, 1900)
  • C. I. Scofield, The Scofield Reference Bible (Oxford, 1909)
  • James A. Montgomery, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Daniel (ICC; T&T Clark, 1927)
  • Edward J. Young, The Prophecy of Daniel (Eerdmans, 1949)
  • Lewis Sperry Chafer, Systematic Theology (Dallas Seminary, 1948)
  • J. Dwight Pentecost, Things to Come (Zondervan, 1958)
  • Charles C. Ryrie, Dispensationalism Today (Moody, 1965; rev. 1995)
  • John F. Walvoord, Daniel: The Key to Prophetic Revelation (Moody, 1971)
  • Meredith G. Kline, 'The Covenant of the Seventieth Week,' in The Law and the Prophets (P&R, 1974)
  • Harold W. Hoehner, Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ (Zondervan, 1977)
  • Louis F. Hartman and Alexander A. Di Lella, The Book of Daniel (Anchor Bible; Doubleday, 1978)
  • Joyce G. Baldwin, Daniel: An Introduction and Commentary (Tyndale; IVP, 1978)
  • André Lacocque, The Book of Daniel (John Knox, 1979)
  • Klaus Koch, Daniel (BKAT 22; Neukirchener, 1986)
  • John Goldingay, Daniel (WBC; Word, 1989)
  • John J. Collins, Daniel (Hermeneia; Fortress, 1993)
  • Stephen R. Miller, Daniel (NAC; B&H, 1994)
  • John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (Word, 1997)
  • Bennie H. Reynolds III, Between Symbolism and Realism: The Use of Symbolic and Non-Symbolic Language in Ancient Jewish Apocalypses (Vandenhoeck, 2011)
  • Carol A. Newsom, Daniel: A Commentary (OTL; WJK, 2014)
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