Date of the Heavenly Commandment

Someone might object: "If the dabar of verse 25 is a divine commandment, how can we find the starting point of the sixty-nine weeks? We have no way of dating a commandment from the throne of God." But in this case we have a way. We need only take into account two principles of prayer. Daniel 9 elevates both to prominence so that the reader will not miss the key to unlocking the riddle.

1. The dabar of verse 23 came in response to the prayer of Daniel. So, just two verses before the prophecy of the sixty-nine weeks, Scripture illustrates the principle that although God may act according to no counsel but His own, He prefers to act under the urging of His children. This principle explains why so many of His great decrees and great works are answers to prayer. The first coming of Christ satisfied the fervent desire of countless believers in foregoing centuries that God would send a Redeemer. The church has long prayed for the Second Coming of Christ (Rev. 22:20).
   
   The Book of Daniel illustrates the same principle again in chapters 10-12. There, we read that when Daniel prayed, God answered by granting him another wonderful prophetic revelation.
   
   
2. How soon did God answer the prayer recorded in chapter 9? Gabriel said, "At the beginning of thy supplications the commandment came forth" (v. 23). Here, Scripture illustrates the principle that if a prayer is acceptable to God, He responds without delay. He does not need to think it over. His answer comes forth from the throne as soon as a believer prays, although the believer may not see the answer implemented right away. The same truth is taught in Daniel 10.

Then said he unto me, Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words.

The two principles of prayer highlighted in chapters 9 and 10 of Daniel allow us to date the commandment foreseen in Daniel 9:25—the commandment that in Daniel's day was still far off in the future.

1. The first principle implies that just as the dabar of verse 23 was given in answer to Daniel's prayer, so the dabar of verse 25—the divine commandment to rebuild Jerusalem—would be given in answer to prayer. Whose prayer? No doubt this divine commandment soon led to the earthly commandment seeking the same result; specifically, to the decree of Artaxerxes recorded in Nehemiah 2. It is certainly no accident that the Book of Nehemiah treats the decree as the answer to Nehemiah's prayer recorded in chapter 1. The book starts with his prayer to underscore that it was the original cause of work on the city. Thus, the prayer prompting the divine commandment to rebuild the city must have been Nehemiah's.
2. As Hengstenberg recognized also (1), the second principle implies that the commandment came forth as soon as Nehemiah began to pray.

Although few other prayers in Scripture bear dates, Scripture conveniently informs us that Nehemiah's prayer began in the month of Kislev during the twentieth year of the king. This, then, is the month marking the beginning of the sixty-nine weeks.

Transferring the Date to the Julian Calendar

Several hurdles stand in the way of finding when the sixty-nine weeks came to an end. The first is the task of transferring the Persian date of Nehemiah's prayer to the calendar historians use for other events of antiquity: that is, the Julian calendar, which is the same as our modern calendar, the Gregorian, except that the Gregorian is three days shorter in each span of four centuries.

Since the Persians used the Babylonian calendar, we can find the Julian date of Nehemiah's prayer by consulting the tables in Richard A. Parker and Waldo H. Dubberstein's Babylonian Chronology, published in 1956. These tables furnish the exact Julian equivalent of any Babylonian date, with a possible maximum error of only one day (2). All scholars accept these tables as valid and definitive.

In compiling these tables, Parker and Dubberstein relied on two kinds of data.

1. Babylonian months were lunar. That is, the Babylonians started a new month as soon as they sighted the crescent following a new moon (3). Modern astronomers can, by projecting the constant rhythms of the moon backward into the past, determine precisely when each lunar month in ancient times began (4).
2. A year made up of twelve lunar months is somewhat shorter than a solar year. On the average, the difference is about 11 1/4 days. Therefore, to keep the seasons from slipping backward on the calendar, the Babylonians occasionally added an extra month to the year (5). Archaeologists have compiled a complete list of the extra months actually inserted into the Babylonian calendar over a period of many centuries (6). Clay tablets bearing dated records of business transactions or astronomical observations have been the primary source of information (7). Literally thousands upon thousands of these tablets have been found.

The astronomical and archaeological data available to Parker and Dubberstein allowed them to correlate Julian and Babylonian dates for the years 626 BC to AD 75 (8). So, the Julian date of Nehemiah's prayer can be determined simply by looking in their tables for the Julian equivalent of Kislev in Artaxerxes' twentieth year.

But here a problem arises. According to the Book of Nehemiah, the king's edict in the following Nisan also fell in the king's twentieth year. But Kislev was the ninth month on the Babylonian calendar, and Nisan was the first. Thus, it seems that the prayer and the edict should be dated in successive years rather than in the same year (9). The explanation for the anomaly must be that Nehemiah used the Jewish calendar (10). The Jewish and Babylonian calendars were the same, except that the Jewish year started in Tishri, the seventh Babylonian month, rather than in Nisan (11).

When, by Jewish reckoning, was the twentieth year of Artaxerxes? The answer depends on when Artaxerxes became king. The needed information is nowhere to be found in surviving records except in a single cuneiform text preserved in the collections of the British museum. This text, still unpublished in its entirety although the stone tablet bearing it was unearthed many years ago, says that he came to the throne in the fifth month during the year of his father's assassination (12). The year was 465 (13). The day was between one and two months before Tishri. If the Jews (like the Babylonians and Persians) counted the short period preceding the new year as Artaxerxes' accession year, it follows that by Jewish reckoning, his first year began on Tishri 1, 465, and his twentieth year began on Tishri 1, 446.

Parker and Dubberstein disclose that the following Kislev began on November 17/18 of the same year (14); that is, on the day extending from the evening of the seventeenth to the evening of the eighteenth. (Babylonian days started in the evening (15)). It was during this Kislev that Nehemiah began to entreat God's favor upon the city of his fathers. We come at last to the extremely important conclusion that the clock measuring the sixty-nine weeks of Daniel began to tick sometime in the month following November 17/18, 446 BC.

Term of Sixty-Nine Weeks

The Hebrew word "week" merely signifies a heptad, a series or group of seven (16). Since the seventy weeks of Daniel 9 span the whole future history of the Jewish nation, each week must be a long period of time. Virtually all scholars, both liberal and conservative, recognize that each week is a cycle of seven years (17).

If the sixty-nine weeks began in the month following November 17/18, 446 B.C., and if the weeks lasted 483 years, we can easily compute the date of the terminal month. Since there was no year 0, adding 483 years to 446 B.C. brings history to A.D. 38, close to the time of Christ. To be precise, it brings history to a time only five years after His death.

It would appear that prophecy slightly overshoots the mark. But when we dig deeper, the discrepancy disappears. Throughout church history, students of the sixty-nine weeks have suspected that they consist of abbreviated years. Julius Africanus, a third-century Christian scholar and chronologist, thought that a prophetic year was equal to twelve lunar months (18). In an average year, twelve lunar months come to 354 days. Yet the actual length of the prophetic year was not discovered until the nineteenth century, when many Bible students came to a dispensational view of prophecy. As have noted before, dispensationalists find a gap in each prophecy of Daniel. Within that gap lies the whole Church Age, separating events in antiquity from the time of the end. In the vision of Daniel 9, the gap falls between the sixty-ninth and seventieth weeks. Dispensationalists believe that the seventieth week still lies in the future, within the period of shattering events described in the book of Revelation.

Revelation conveniently reveals the length of the seventieth week. The first half is 1260 days (Rev. 11:3). The second half has the same length. It is variously called 1260 days (Rev. 12:6), forty-two months (Rev. 13:5), and a time, times, and half a time (Rev. 12:14). The sum of a time, (two) times, and half a time is 3 1/2 times. The whole week is therefore seven times. If forty-two months make up 3 1/2 times, then each time contains twelve months. If 1260 days make up forty-two months, then each month contains thirty days. We conclude that the measure of a time is 360 days.

Why prophecy uses the strange expression "time, times, and half a time" is now evident. This formula is a circumlocution to avoid saying "3 1/2 years," which would be misleading. Prophecy is well aware that a period of 360 days is not exactly a year. Therefore, it declines to call this period a year and instead calls it a time.

More than a century ago in a famous book called The Coming Prince, Sir Robert Anderson was the first to argue that if the seventieth week contains years of 360 days, the remaining weeks must have the same measure (19). Each week is therefore 2520 days long. We now see why prophecy defines the coming period as seventy weeks rather than as 490 years. The latter quantity could only be understood as 490 solar years, whereas the seventy weeks are weeks of times, each time being slightly shorter than a solar year.

Date of the Terminal Month

To compute the exact terminus of the sixty-nine weeks, we need to know the exact starting point. But we know only that the starting point fell in the month after November 17/18, 446 BC. The best we can do is to start at this date and move forward sixty-nine weeks. We then arrive at a date no more than a month earlier than the coming of the Messiah. Many have supposed this calculation to be much harder than it is. Anyone with a mathematical turn of mind can obtain the right answer in less than five minutes. The following hints will make the calculation easier.

1. There was no year 0.
2. Just as AD 4, AD 8, AD 12, etc. are leap years on the Julian calendar, so also are 1 BC, 5 BC, 9 BC, etc.
3. 69 weeks x 7 times per week x 360 days per time = 173,880 days.

Many people have verified that sixty-nine weeks measured from any time of day during November 17/18, 446 BC, came to an end at the same time of day during December 8/9, AD 31.

This date falls within the years of Jesus' active ministry as teacher and healer. So, without going any farther, we have already shown that the prophecy of the sixty-nine weeks was fulfilled, for indeed, sixty-nine weeks measured from the commandment to build Jerusalem brought history to the time when Messiah the Prince appeared on the earth.

But the prophecy is more precise. "Unto the Messiah the Prince" refers to a particular event that occurred at the end of the sixty-nine weeks. So, as we peruse the Gospel record, we should find an event in the month following December 8/9, A.D. 31, that we can identify as the official coming of Christ.

1. What is the first principle of prayer illustrated in Daniel 9?
2. What is the second?
3. Whose prayer led to Artaxerxes' edict?
4. When did this prayer begin?
5. What calendar is used for ancient events?
6. What authoritative source converts Babylonian dates to Julian dates?
7. When did a Babylonian month begin?
8. Why did Nehemiah place both his prayer and the edict in the same year?
9. When did the sixty-nine weeks begin?
10. What does the term "week" signify?
11. According to the Book of Revelation, what is the length of a prophetic year?
12. Who first identified the length of a prophetic year?
13. What were the leap years BC?
14. What year followed 1 BC?
15. When did the sixty-nine weeks come to an end?

1. 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), 3:186.
2. Richard A. Parker and Waldo H. Dubberstein, Babylonian Chronology 626 BC-AD 75 (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 1956), v, 25.
3. Ibid., 25.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., 1.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., 4-9.
8. Ibid., 2-3.
9. It was the Persian custom to treat the month Nisan, in the spring, as the beginning of the regnal year: that is, as the beginning of the next year in the numbered years of a king's reign. If, for example, a king ascended the throne in the fall or winter, his first year did not start until the following Nisan. The remaining time until Nisan was called his accession year. Thus, the first Nisan during his reign marked the beginning of his first year, the second Nisan marked the beginning of his second year, and so on.
10. Julian Morgenstern, "The New Year for Kings," in Occident and Orient: Gaster Anniversary Volume, ed. Bruno Schindler and A. Marmorstein (London: Taylor's Foreign Press, 1936), 441-443; Edwin R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, new revised ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Publishing House, 1983), 53; Judah J. Slotki, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah: Hebrew Text and English Translation with Introductions and Commentary (London: Soncino Press, 1951); S. H. Horn and L. H. Wood, "The Fifth-Century Jewish Calendar at Elephantine," Journal of Near Eastern Studies 13 (1954): 14; J. Carl Laney, Ezra/Nehemiah (Chicago: Moody Press, 1982), 74; F. Charles Fensham, The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1982), 150.
11. Josephus Antiquities 1.3.3; Thiele, 51-53; A. Malamat, "The Twilight of Judah: In the Egyptian-Babylonian Maelstrom," in Supplements to Vetus Testamentum 28, Congress Volume: Edinburgh, 1974 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975), 124; K. S. Reedy and D. B. Redford, "The Dates in Ezekiel in Relation to Biblical, Babylonian and Egyptian Sources," Journal of the American Oriental Society 90 (1970): 464-465.
12. Parker and Dubberstein, 17.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid., 26, 32.
15. Ibid., 26.
16. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, The New Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon with an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic (n.p., 1906; repr., Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1979), 988.
17. For example, the authoritative lexicon by Brown, Driver, and Briggs states dogmatically that "week" in Daniel 9:24-27 means "heptad or seven of years." See Brown et al., 989.
18. Africanus Chronography 16.2-3.
19. Sir Robert Anderson, The Coming Prince, 10th ed. (repr., Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel Publications, 1984), 75.