Daniel's Seventy Weeks

Historical Context

Daniel 9 is set in the first year of Darius the Mede (~539 BC), following the fall of Babylon. Daniel, reading Jeremiah 25 and 29, realizes the 70-year exile is nearly complete and prays for Jerusalem's restoration.

While praying, Gabriel appears and delivers the 70-weeks prophecy -- one of the most chronologically specific prophecies in Scripture.

The Starting Point: A Decree to Rebuild Jerusalem

The 490 years begin with a royal decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. Four candidate decrees appear in Ezra and Nehemiah. The traditional Christian reading (Sir Robert Anderson, Harold Hoehner) takes Artaxerxes' decree in Nehemiah 2 (444 BC) as the starting point because it is the only decree that explicitly authorizes rebuilding the city walls.

Hippolytus of Rome (On Daniel, c. AD 210) and Julius Africanus (Chronography 18, c. AD 220) worked with similar starting points and arrived at computations landing near the ministry of Christ.

7 Weeks + 62 Weeks = 483 Years to Messiah

Weeks are understood as weeks of years (shabuim), yielding 70 x 7 = 490 years.

The first 7 weeks (49 years) cover the rebuilding of Jerusalem under Ezra and Nehemiah.

The next 62 weeks (434 years) extend from the completion of the rebuilding to 'Messiah the Prince.' Anderson's calculation (The Coming Prince, 1894) famously arrives at the triumphal entry.

The Cutting Off of Messiah

Daniel 9:26 -- 'And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself.' This is the crucifixion.

Notably, the verse continues: 'and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary' -- fulfilled in AD 70 when Titus destroyed the Second Temple. The 'prince that shall come' is not Titus himself but an end-time figure from his people (Rome) who will appear later.

The Gap

Between verses 26 and 27, there is an unspecified gap of time. Futurist interpreters place the Church Age in this gap. Historicist interpreters (e.g. 19th-century Protestant commentators) run the 70 weeks consecutively, reading the 70th Week as already fulfilled.

The futurist reading is dominant in evangelical eschatology and aligns with Christ's own use of Daniel in the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24:15 -- 'the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet').

The 70th Week

The final week is 7 years of Daniel 9:27: '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.'

This is the 7-year Tribulation. 'He' -- the Antichrist -- makes a 7-year covenant, then breaks it at the 3.5-year mark, triggering the Great Tribulation (Revelation 12-19).

See our Timeline page for how the 7 Seals, 7 Trumpets, and 7 Bowls of Revelation map to the two halves of this final week.