Daniel’s Seventy Weeks
446 BC–AD 31 · 173,880 days
“Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city” (Daniel 9:24): weeks of years, seven years each. “From the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks” (Daniel 9:25): sixty and nine weeks, 483 years. Counted in years of 360 days, as the text counts them elsewhere (the hundred and fifty days of the flood are five months, Genesis 7:11, 24; 8:3-4; forty and two months are a thousand two hundred and threescore days, Revelation 11:2-3), they are 173,880 days: from the month Nisan of the twentieth year of Artaxerxes (Nehemiah 2:1), about the 1st of April, 446 BC, to Sunday the 22nd of April, AD 31, when the Lord came into Jerusalem as King (Luke 19:37-42). Three days later, on Wednesday the fourteenth day of the first month, Messiah was cut off (Daniel 9:26). The seventieth week is still to come. The years of 360 days are Sir Robert Anderson’s, in The Coming Prince (1881), but not his dates: he ended the count on a Sunday in AD 32, the tenth of the month, which needs a Friday crucifixion. Daniel 9 does not name the length of its years; the passages above do. The text names the month of the commandment, not the day. The days here are counted by the Julian calendar from the new moons, to within a day; two things must hold for them. AD 31’s first month must be the later of the two spring moons: by the earlier, the fourteenth was a Tuesday in March, and the Wednesday needs a thirteenth month added that year, as was done when the barley was not yet ripe; nothing now can confirm or rule this out. And Artaxerxes’ years must be counted as Nehemiah counts them, from autumn, with the months before his first autumn as his first year (see Nehemiah Builds the Wall); counted as the Persians counted, from spring, his twentieth year’s Nisan is 445 BC.
Daniel 9:24–27
The Sixty and Nine Weeks
- From
- 1 April 446 BC · Nehemiah Builds the Wall
- To
- Sunday, 22 April AD 31 · The Triumphal Entry
- Days
- 173,880 69 weeks × 7 years × 360 days
By the Julian calendar, from the new moons, to within a day.
Seven Weeks
7 weeks · 49 years · 446–398 BC
“the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times” Daniel 9:25
Forty and nine years of 360 days from the commandment, to about July 398 BC: forty and eight of our years and about three and a half months. The text names no event at their end; Nehemiah tells the building in troublous times: “every one with one of his hands wrought in the work, and with the other hand held a weapon” (Nehemiah 4:17).
Threescore and Two Weeks
62 weeks · 434 years · 398 BC–AD 31
“unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks” Daniel 9:25
Four hundred and thirty and four years more, sixty and nine weeks in all, to the day He came into Jerusalem as King: “behold, thy King cometh unto thee” (Zechariah 9:9). He wept over the city: “If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day” (Luke 19:41-42).
- The Triumphal Entry Passion Week · Sunday, the 11th
- Zechariah 9:9
- Luke 19:37–42
Messiah Cut Off
About AD 31
“after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself” Daniel 9:26
Three days after the sixty and nine weeks, on Wednesday the fourteenth, “the preparation of the passover” (John 19:14). “He was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken” (Isaiah 53:8).
- The Crucifixion About AD 31
- John 19:14–18
- Isaiah 53:8
The City and the Sanctuary Destroyed
About AD 70
“the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary” Daniel 9:26
The Lord foretold it: “There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down” (Matthew 24:2). The Romans, the people of the prince that shall come, destroyed Jerusalem and the temple in AD 70, a year that rests on history, not on the text’s numbers.
Unto the End
“unto the end of the war desolations are determined” Daniel 9:26
Between the sixty and ninth week and the seventieth the text sets no number: wars and desolations “unto the end”. The New Testament reveals what was hid from the prophets, the church, Jew and Gentile in one body (Ephesians 3:5-6), and blindness in part upon Israel “until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in” (Romans 11:25). As Scofield’s note on Daniel 9:24 has it, this is the Church age, and when it will end is nowhere revealed.
The Seventieth Week
1 week · 7 years · Still to come
“he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week” Daniel 9:27
Seven years still to come. “He” is the prince that shall come (Daniel 9:26), the little horn (Daniel 7:8), who will make a covenant for one week and break it: “in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease” (Daniel 9:27), the abomination of desolation the Lord spoke of (Matthew 24:15). Its halves are counted in the same years of 360 days: “a time and times and the dividing of time” (Daniel 7:25), “forty and two months” (Revelation 13:5), “a thousand two hundred and threescore days” (Revelation 12:6).
Changes from Ussher: every year on the timeline that the seventy weeks, or the text’s own numbers, set apart from Ussher’s.
