The Sixty-Nine Weeks of Daniel
Lesson 1: Event Starting the Clock

The remarkable prophecy concerning the time of Christ's coming is known as the prophecy of sixty-nine weeks.

Daniel 9:24-25

The Old Testament book containing this prophecy was written by Daniel, a Jewish captive of the Babylonians who became a high official of both Babylonia and Persia during the sixth century BC. In chapter 9, Daniel records that after he pleaded with God to turn His wrath away from the Jewish people, God sent him a prophetic message through the angel Gabriel.

Daniel 9:22-27

Gabriel revealed to Daniel that the future history of the Jews until the inauguration of God's everlasting kingdom would cover a period of seventy weeks (v. 24). The seventy weeks comprise two distinct periods: a period of sixty-nine weeks until the coming of Messiah the Prince (v. 25) and a period of one week after His coming (v. 27). The angel treats the sixty-nine weeks as the sum of seven and sixty-two.

This prophecy is perhaps the most astounding in a book full of astounding prophecies. Hundreds of years before the event, the Lord foretold through Daniel exactly when the Messiah would come. Christian apologists of the past have proposed many solutions for Daniel's prophecy of the sixty-nine weeks, but none except the one presented here rely upon a defensible scheme of dates (1).


Starting Point of the Sixty-nine Weeks

The Messiah would come sixty-nine weeks after "the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem" (v. 25). "The" is better "a," since the Hebrew text contains no definite article (2). "Commandment" is dabar, usually translated "word" (3). Work would be done on both "the street" and "the wall, even in troublous times."

What rebuilding of the city does this prophecy foresee? Two clues point to the work done under the direction of Nehemiah, governor of Judah almost a hundred years after the Jews returned from exile. He had been an officer in the court of the Persian king Artaxerxes before the king gave him his post in Judah.

1. The Hebrew word rendered "street" is rehob, which may refer to a courtyard just inside a city gate (4). In Nehemiah's day, the principal rehob of the city was adjacent to the Water Gate, on the east side near the Gihon Spring. This courtyard was probably the "east street" where, over a hundred years before the destruction of Jerusalem, the Levites assembled to hear Hezekiah announce religious reform (2 Chron. 29:4). The damage that the Babylonians inflicted on the east wall of the city no doubt left the Water Gate and its courtyard in ruins. Nehemiah, soon after his arrival in the city, inspected its defenses and found that "the gates thereof were consumed with fire" (Neh. 2:13). Yet, a few months later, the people gathered in the courtyard before the Water Gate to listen as the book of the law was read aloud by Ezra the scribe (Neh. 8:1). Evidently, work had been devoted to restoration of the courtyard.

Mention of "the street" in Daniel 9:25 therefore excludes any work on the city before Nehemiah became governor. Although the exiles who returned in the days of Cyrus had in some measure restored the city and its wall (Ezra 4:12), Nehemiah's report on the condition of the city leaves little doubt that at the time of his coming, the Water Gate had not yet been reclaimed for use.

2. To confirm that it is referring to the work done under Nehemiah, the prophecy adds that the rebuilding of the city would take place "even in troublous times." Indeed, fearing an attack by hostile neighbors, the workers wore or carried weapons (Neh. 4:17).


Persian Edict to Rebuild Jerusalem

Although several Persian edicts promoted the restoration of Judah, the one specifically authorizing Nehemiah's work on the city is described in the Book of Nehemiah.

Nehemiah 2:1-8

The edict that Nehemiah elicited from Artaxerxes was issued in Nisan during the king's twentieth year (v. 1).

The circumstances prompting Nehemiah's bold request of the king are described earlier in the same book.

Nehemiah 1:1-11

In Kislev of the king's twentieth year, Nehemiah heard about the sad condition of Jerusalem and its people. Immediately he began to pray, asking specifically that when he brought the plight of the Jews to the king's attention, God would cause the king to respond sympathetically (v. 11).

Nehemiah was the king's cupbearer (v. 11). Finding an opportunity to address the king was no easy matter. It was unwise for Nehemiah to speak first as he waited upon the king. Finally he decided, no doubt after much inner struggle, that he would let his face show the sadness in his heart. The king might then ask for an explanation. This tactic was very dangerous, since Nehemiah's first duty was to make the king happy. By bringing a dark cloud into the king's presence, he risked kindling the king's anger. No wonder, then, that when the king remarked upon Nehemiah's gloomy appearance, Nehemiah was "very sore afraid" (Neh. 2:2). Yet the king, his heart being in the hands of God (Prov. 21:1), was in a magnanimous mood. With the queen's encouragement, he granted Nehemiah's request to undertake the rebuilding of Jerusalem.

The king's decision was in accord with established policy. The Persians had long supported efforts to rebuild the cities and temples of conquered nations (5). Ostensibly, this policy was aimed at securing the support and blessing of the gods that these nations worshiped (6). But the true motive was probably greed. The Persian kings realized that their own revenues would increase as a result of economic development in ravaged, underpopulated regions of their domain.

The edict issued in Artaxerxes' twentieth year allowed work on Jerusalem to go forward. But this is not the commandment foreseen in Daniel's prophecy of the sixty-nine weeks. The context shows that the future commandment "to restore and to build Jerusalem" would come not from a man, but from God.

  1. The word "commandment" (dabar) in verse 25 appears also in verse 23 (7). The phraseology in these two verses is quite similar. Verse 23 says, "The commandment came forth." Verse 25 says, "the going forth of the commandment." Although verse 23 declines to say who issued the dabar, the source must have been the throne of God. This dabar was God's answer to Daniel's prayer recorded in the preceding verses. So, in verse 25, the dabar from an unnamed source must also refer to a divine commandment.
  2. The passage offers many assurances that the predicted events are "determined." "Seventy weeks are determined" (v. 24). "Desolations are determined" (v. 26). "That determined shall be poured upon the desolate" (v. 27). Determined by whom? The author of the plan that will inevitably be fulfilled is not named, but He is obviously God. Hence, the unnamed author of the commandment in verse 25 must be God also.
  3. The chief message of the entire Book of Daniel is that God is sovereign over human events, that He is the One who controls history. Thus, the commandment to rebuild Jerusalem would not in essence be Artaxerxes', but God's. When Artaxerxes approved repair of the city and its defenses, he was merely bringing to pass what God had already ordained.

The interpretation presented here was first stated in the 1830s by the German scholar E. W. Hengstenberg, whose four-volume work on Messianic prophecy is the greatest ever written on that subject (8). Most scholars today reject his interpretation because, in their view, it makes the prophecy more complicated and subtle than the author could have intended it to be. But who was the author? It was not Daniel, or any other man, or even the angel Gabriel. It was God. Who would be so presumptuous as to set preconceived limits on the possible complexity or subtlety of a divine oracle? The prophecy of the seventy weeks must be seen as an ingenious riddle crafted by God Himself.

Before a reader of the Book of Daniel reaches chapter 9, he finds in chapter 5, in the story of Belshazzar's feast, that the God of Daniel is indeed a propounder of riddles. God's use of a cryptic writing on the wall to confound the wise men of Babylon reveals a side of His personality that should not be unfamiliar to any companion of Jesus. Jesus spoke in parables so

Mark 4:12


Study Questions
  1. When was the Book of Daniel written?
  2. Who actually spoke the oracle of the sixty-nine weeks?
  3. What king issued an edict authorizing the rebuilding of Jerusalem?
  4. Whose request secured this edict?
  5. What was Nehemiah's position at court?
  6. In what year was the edict issued?
  7. What is the first argument that Daniel 9:25 refers to a divine commandment?
  8. What is the second argument?
  9. What is the third argument?
  10. Who first offered this interpretation?


Footnotes

  1. The best-known solutions identify the opening event as Artaxerxes' decree in his twentieth year (Neh. 2:1-8). By assuming that this decree was issued on Nisan 1, 445 BC, and by treating each week of the sixty-nine as seven 360-day years, Sir Robert Anderson calculated that the period of weeks came to a close on April 6, AD 32; Sir Robert Anderson, The Coming Prince, 10th ed. (repr., Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel Publications, 1984), 127. This he said was the day of Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem and of His official coming as King of the Jews. Unfortunately, Anderson made several errors. Lacking the results of modern scholarship, which has determined the actual Julian equivalents of Babylonian dates in 445 BC, he guessed that Nisan 1 was March 14 (ibid., 123). Actually, it was April 13; Richard A. Parker and Waldo H. Dubberstein, Babylonian Chronology 626 BC-AD 75 (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 1956), 32. Moreover, he surmised that Jewish procedures for starting a new lunar month were so inconsistent and inexact that "in any year whatever the 15th Nisan may have fallen on a Friday" (Anderson, 102). By this argument he justified treating Nisan 15, AD 32—his date for the Crucifixion—as a Friday, whereas it was probably a Monday and certainly not a Friday; Colin J. Humphreys and W. G. Waddington, "Dating the Crucifixion," Nature 306 (1983): 744.

    Recently, Harold W. Hoehner has tried to salvage Anderson's solution by correcting the errors; Harold W. Hoehner, Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Publishing House, 1977), 115-139. The new dates Hoehner proposes are Nisan 1 (which he equates to March 4 or 5), 444 BC, for Artaxerxes' decree (ibid., 127-128, 138) and March 30, AD 33, for the Triumphal Entry (ibid., 138). Although the latter date is probably accurate, Hoehner's analysis of the prophecy is invalid for several reasons.

    a) Relying on a source dated 1954, Hoehner sets Xerxes' death and Artaxerxes' succession in December 465 (ibid., 127), whereas evidence published later sets the date in the preceding August (Parker and Dubberstein, 17). This error leads Hoehner to misplace the Nisan of Artaxerxes' twentieth year in 444 rather than 445.

    b) Nisan 1, 444, was not March 4 or 5, but April 3 (ibid., 32). Hoehner's source only provides the Julian dates of new moons. It does not give the Julian equivalent of any Nisan 1 on the Babylonian calendar; Herman H. Goldstine, New and Full Moons: 1001 BC to AD 1651 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1973), v, 47.

    c) Hoehner's source gives March 2 rather than March 4 or 5 as the date of a new moon in 444 (ibid., 47).

    d) Hoehner assumes that the interval from March 5, 444 BC, to March 5, AD 33 (both dates Julian), is exactly 483 solar years (Hoehner, 138); that is, about 173,855 days. Another twenty-five days makes a total of 173,880, which is equivalent to sixty-nine weeks of 360-day years, and brings the date to March 30, AD 33 (ibid.). But it so happens that 483 Julian years are about four days longer than 483 solar years. Thus, by an actual count of days, sixty-nine weeks after March 5, 444 BC, terminates in AD 33 on March 26 rather than March 30.

  2. Jay P. Green, Sr., The Interlinear Bible: Hebrew/English, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1983), 3:2065.
  3. Robert Young, Analytical Concordance to the Bible, 22d American ed., revised by Wm. B. Stevenson (repr., Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1976), 190.
  4. J. A. Thompson, The Bible and Archaeology, 3d ed., revised (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1982), 180.
  5. Edwin M. Yamauchi, Persia and the Bible (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1990), 89-92.
  6. See Cyrus's inscription quoted in James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 3d ed. with Supplement (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), 315-316.
  7. R. Young, 190.
  8. E. W. Hengstenberg, Christology of the Old Testament and a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, trans. Theod. Meyer and James Martin, 4 vols. (n.p., 1872-1878; repr., Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel Publications, 1956), 3:114-115.