7+62+1=70
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If you have your Bible (and I hope you do), please turn with me to Daniel 9. And if you’re able and willing, please stand with me for the reading of God’s Holy Word. Daniel 9, beginning with verse 20 (page #1,393 in the red pew Bible):
20 While I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel and making my request to the Lord my God for his holy hill—21 while I was still in prayer, Gabriel, the man I had seen in the earlier vision, came to me in swift flight about the time of the evening sacrifice. 22 He instructed me and said to me, “Daniel, I have now come to give you insight and understanding. 23 As soon as you began to pray, a word went out, which I have come to tell you, for you are highly esteemed. Therefore, consider the word and understand the vision:
24 “Seventy ‘sevens’ are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the Most Holy Place.
25 “Know and understand this: From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. 26 After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed. 27 He will confirm a covenant with many for one ‘seven.’ In the middle of the ‘seven’ he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And at the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him.”
May the Lord add His blessing to the reading of His Holy Word!
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This is, as we saw last week, incredibly confusing and difficult to understand. Anyone who tells you this isn’t confusing or difficult either mistaken or they’re thinking a little too highly of themselves.
We spent weeks and weeks in college theology and Old Testament classes debating this interpretation and that interpretation, discussing every major view, and we all ended up reacting the same way: shrugging our shoulders and shaking our heads.
Even our professors—doctors, scholars; men who had spent decades teaching the Bible—even our professors shrugged their shoulders and shook their heads.
It’s really hard to say what all this means for sure. My father-in-law suggested that I should just read-up a little, “There have to be some good works on the book of Daniel, Barrett...”
I replied, “Oh yeah, David, there are scores of excellent works on Daniel—books and commentaries and scholarly journals. I own a dozen of them. The problem is: every single one of them takes a different view; there’s no consensus whatsoever.”
You see, as I’m studying the text preparing for a sermon, I work through the passage myself and try to get a good understanding of the passage, what it’s saying, what it means for us. And then I consult men and women much smarter than me to make sure my interpretation isn’t entirely off base.
This works fairly well from week to week, but Daniel 9 throws a bit of a wrench in the works.
In 400 A.D., one of the most brilliant scholars and linguists in the ancient church, the church father Jerome, wrote:
“Because it is unsafe to pass judgment on the opinions of the great teachers of the church and to set one above the other, I shall simply repeat the view of each and leave it to the reader’s judgment as to whose explanation ought to be followed.”
Jerome then listed nine conflicting opinions on the meaning of Daniel 9, declaring himself unable to decide which one (if any) was right.
Many men and women much smarter than me have come to this passage and, like me, they end up shrugging their shoulders and shaking their heads.
The only thing most people agree upon is that they don’t agree upon anything.
However, at the end of the day, our Heavenly Father saw fit to place this here for us, to preserve this for us; and He did so for a purpose. We know that:
16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
So, at the end of our time this morning, we might still come away shaking our heads and shrugging our shoulders, but, by the grace of God and the power of His Holy Spirit, we will have been taught, rebuked, corrected, trained in righteousness, and thoroughly equipped for every good work.
>Last week, we looked at verses 20-24—the beginning of this confusing section.
The Lord responds to Daniel’s prayer immediately, sending the angel Gabriel to let Daniel know his prayer had been heard and to give Daniel insight and understanding.
It’s Gabriel who introduces the phrase seventy sevens to Daniel and to us (Thanks a lot, Gabe). Let the shoulder-shrugging and head-shaking commence.
As I mentioned last week, one thing I can be fairly certain of is this: for everything I don’t know about the seventy sevens, I am sure that seventy sevens is not to be taken literally. Seventy sevens doesn’t equal 490 literal weeks or years. Seventy sevens is meant to be taken figuratively/symbolically—as in, a long, long time; a complete/full/perfect period of time.
This is one of only a few things I’m quite certain of as I read Daniel 9.
There’s a great deal of mathematical finagling that takes place in commentaries and sermons trying to work out “the when” of the seventy sevens. It’s almost comical, really, watching the attempts to fit a literal 490-week or 490-year time-frame into a period of history.
That’s not for us to do. The specific “when” is not as important as the “what” behind the “when”.
Daniel 9:25 is clear about the starting-point of the seventy sevens:
25 “Know and understand this: From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble.
The starting-point of the seventy sevens begins at the time the word goes out, but we aren’t clear about which word the text intends.
Word is usually associated with a royal decree. But is it the decree that Cyrus made in 538 BC for the exiles to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple? Or the decree of Artaxerxes I in 458 BC, making it possible for Ezra to refurbish temple worship and enforce the God’s law? Or the decree granted in 445 BC on behalf of Nehemiah’s design to rebuild Jerusalem?
There’s another possibility: word might refer to a prophetic word rather than a royal decree. Could this word refer to a word from a prophet like Jeremiah or Isaiah?
All good, and possible, possibilities.
What matters is not the specific “when”, but the “what” behind the “when”.
This might seem like a cheap way out of dealing with the time-frame, but for anyone who has ever transported children, you’ve done something similar, I’m sure of it.
Last year as I drove kids to church camp at Camp Cyokamo, the familiar questions came my way, “Are we there yet? How much longer? When will we get there?”
Each time they asked, I’d say, “Well, when we get there, you’ll probably get to go swimming or get to play gaga ball or basketball or run wild like little monsters.”
My tack was to take their attention off the “when” and help them focus on the “what.”
So it is here in Daniel 9. I believe we won’t figure out for sure the “when” but we know the “what.”
Better to focus on what we know than to drown in the sea of things we don’t know and won’t know this side of heaven.
>Bottom line: at some point in the future, at some point down the line for Daniel and his contemporaries, as verse 25 tells us:
Jerusalem will be restored and rebuilt
The Anointed One will come
But this will take seven sevens, and sixty-two sevens.
As I’ve put forth before, I think it’s best to take all of the sevens symbolically (not literally).
There are seventy sevens, and the text breaks the seventy sevens down into three different parts:
7 sevens = a relatively restricted period of time
62 sevens = a relatively extended time
1 seven = clearly climactic time
There’s no sense in trying to make the math work out exactly. Many people will get out their calculators and their calendars of Biblical events and try to make the math work out perfectly.
Here’s something I read this week that illustrates the whacky lengths some people will go to in order to come up with even whackier interpretations. I don’t believe what I’m about read and I pray you don’t either:
“The Bible uses 360-day years for prophecies and expects us to add the appropriate 'leap months' on schedule (Oh, really?). So, the easiest way to unravel this prophecy is to first convert this prophecy into days:
- Add 7 + 62 weeks = 69 weeks of years
- Multiply 69 (weeks) x 7 (years) = 483 years
- Multiply 483 years x 360 days = 173,880 days”
In a word: whackadoodle.
If our interpretation of an ancient text would make no sense to the original audience, it’s wrong. Daniel wouldn’t have thought for a second to do that kind of math; he wouldn’t have done that kind of math.
Daniel didn’t need to do that kind of math; and neither do we.
All the math we need to know is that 7+62+1=70—that which the text clearly states. There are seventy sevens, so says Gabriel. And they are divided up into three different parts (7, then 62, then 1).
We don’t need to press the details or work to figure out the when. We simply need to understand and trust the what; we need to trust the One who controls all these events, the One who has the schedule all figured out.
I’ve argued with myself for the last couple of weeks, like I have some sort of multiple personality disorder or something; I can’t even agree with myself. I’ve gone back and forth, trying to figure out the most faithful way to present this text to you.
The pronouns are vague and it’s not a clear reading (it’s not a clear reading in English or in Hebrew).
But I think I’ve got an idea about how this all might fit together. Though I hold this tenuously and reserve the right to change my mind (even later today if I feel like it).
>Let’s look again at verses 25-26:
25 “Know and understand this: From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. 26 After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed.
From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven sevens, and sixty-two sevens.
Notice these two time periods are connected, yet they’re separated. If Gabriel meant one period of time, I think he would have said sixty-nine sevens.
So then, there are 7 sevens and 62 sevens.
Seven sevens from the time the word goes out must lead up to some significant event: to the repatriation of the Jewish people, the return of the exiles; the rebuilding of the temple; some significant event.
I’ve started to think that the last part of verse 25—It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble, obviously referring to Jerusalem—this is connected with the 7 sevens.
Jerusalem will be rebuilt sometime after the exiles return. Zerubbabel and Ezra and Nehemiah are the major players in the rebuilding process; the people return, the temple is rebuilt, followed by the wall and then the city itself.
Let’s just say for funsies that the seven sevens span the length of time from the word going out until Jerusalem is rebuilt. That will take 7 sevens—a relatively short period of time.
This is part of what Daniel had been praying for, longing for, hoping for. And it would come in short measure. Though Jerusalem, we’re told, would continue to face its share of trouble.
So that’s the first period of time—the seven sevens take us from the word going out to the restoration of Jerusalem.
And then, after 62 more sevens—after an extended period of time, a time much more distant from Daniel than the 7 sevens—the Anointed One will come…and will be put to death.
We know from where we sit that Daniel and his fellow exiles are living in the 6th century before Christ.
It’s way off in the future for Daniel—an extended period of time, 62 sevens—before the Anointed One, the Messiah, the Christ comes on the scene.
The Christ will arrive and (like v. 24 tells us) He will put and end to sin, atone for wickedness, bring in everlasting righteousness, seal up vision and prophecy, anoint the most holy place.
Daniel won’t live to see the coming of the Anointed One or the death of the Anointed One, but he believes that what the Lord promises the Lord does.
Daniel’s faith is in the One whom he has not seen. Daniel is walking by faith and not by sight.
We can clearly see at this Anointed One is Jesus. The Anointed One is Messiah, the Christ.
Our Bibles tell us that the Anointed One, the Messiah will be, after the 62 sevens, put to death, cut off, killed.
He will be killed and will have nothing. Or as the King James translates it: the Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself.
That sends shivers done my spine.
Think about it: this was revealed to Daniel more than 500 years before Jesus, and it fits Jesus’ story perfectly.
Jesus, the Anointed One, the Messiah, the Christ was put to death, cut off, left with nothing—and this, not for Himself.
He didn’t deserve the death He died.
He was left with nothing; He was stripped of everything He had. The soldiers even gambled for His clothes.
He was, as Isaiah says, cut off from the land of the living (Isaiah 53:8), for our sake. He was cut off from His Father, taking the full force of God’s wrath, bearing our sin, becoming sin for us.
He who had done nothing wrong was put to death…for us.
This vision given to Daniel looks forward all the way to the arrival and death of Jesus.
It’s easy to forget as we’re wading through all of this crazy, confusing prophecy that Jesus is the hero of this story, too. Here’e Jesus in the book of Daniel. Here’s a 6th century prophet foretelling the coming of Jesus. In the middle of everything Daniel & Company are dealing with, the Lord God gives them a nudge and a reminder: “There’s coming a day when the Messiah, the Anointed One will step onto the scene of history and nothing will ever be the same.”
Don’t we need a similar nudge and reminder? What is it you’re dealing with? What difficulty are you up against? Remember and set your mind on this: Jesus, the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Christ has come to change the course of your life forever. He’s your hope. He’s the answer. He is what you need, all you need.
>In the middle of verse 26, another character seems to join the fun: the ruler who will come.
Some see this as an enemy of God and His people—one who comes to destroy the city and the sanctuary, who will wage war and bring desolation.
Others see this as the effect of the rebellion of the Jewish people, the consequence of the Jewish people rejecting Jesus as the Messiah; that the OT people of God, by their sin and rebellion destroy the city and the sanctuary.
Either way, it will be a tumultuous time: destruction, war, desolation.
>And then, verse 27 closes out the vision with the weirdest and most difficult sentence yet.
Gabriel is in desperate need of an editor or a speech-writer. He’s got a problem with pronouns. It would have been really helpful if Gabriel used titles or names instead of just using the word “he.”
But, as a standard rule of interpretation, we use what we know from other parts of the Bible to help explain the difficult sections.
We know that when Jesus came, He brought the Good News of the Kingdom of Heaven along with Him. On the night He was betrayed, He took the Passover meal He and His disciples were celebrating and made it into a commemoration of the New Covenant.
27 Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. 28 This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
The death of Jesus confirms that covenant with many. And He, by His death, put an end to sacrifice and offering.
This is what the book of Hebrews is all about. Jesus’ sacrifice was a once-for-all-time sacrifice. There is no need for any other. When Jesus died, you remember, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, opening-up access to God.
Jesus put an end to sacrifice and offering. Jesus is the only sacrifice we need, the only offering we need. Nothing else is needed, and nothing else will do.
The first half of verse 27, I believe refers to Jesus.
The second half of verse 27, I think, refers to the man of lawlessness in 2 Thessalonians or the antichrist(s) in 1 John and Revelation, who are, like several throughout history, anti-God in their attempts to set themselves against God.
>Daniel gets this vision, this insight and understanding into the events which are to come. Seventy sevens...
Seventy sevens until all this takes place, until all this occurs.
24 “Seventy ‘sevens’ are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the Most Holy Place.
It’s Jesus who fulfills this prophecy. This vision points us to the Anointed One, the Christ.
Christ is our only hope in the darkness. Daniel & Company were waiting for the coming of a new and better covenant, longing and looking for what was to come.
And with Jesus’ death, the new and better covenant arrived. No longer do we approach God with sacrifices and burnt offerings. We can’t presume to come before God with our own effort or goodness.
In Christ, and in Christ alone are we able to come to the Father. Jesus is the One through whom we have access to God and the One through whom we have forgiveness and peace. It was Jesus who was put to death, but not for Himself. He was put to death for us.
Daniel 9 reminds us to keep looking beyond this world for the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promises.
No matter who bad things seem, no matter how far this world veers from God and His ways, God is not shaken. He has set a time when all evil will cease; as verse 27 assures us, God has marked out the end.
Though trouble and trial and conflict await us as we tarry here, we hold onto the truth that God is present with us and His promises are true.
Keep looking beyond this world for the fulfillment of God’s promises. Our ultimate hope is not in this world. Our ultimate hope is the trumpet sound of God—the announcement of the coming victory that has been won for us by Christ.
And, Lord, haste the day
When the faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll,
The trumpet shall resound
And the Lord shall descend,
"Even so" - it is well with my soul.