Untitled Sermon (2)

The Covenant of the Seventieth Week

Meredith G Kline

In quick succession in the early forties, O. T. Allis published two major studies. In the first, he took up the cudgels against the modern critical assault on the Pentateuch; in the second, he dealt with a problem besetting the church from quite a different quarter. Like The Five Books of Moses (1943), Prophecy and the Church (1945) was a masterful critique. In part, surely, as a result of Allis’s expose, dispensationalism does not seem to be quite as influential a movement in conservative churches as it was a generation or so ago. But the interpretation of Old Testament prophecies involved in the assessment of this evangelical heresy is as important and timely today as Allis found it to be then.

By way of tribute to Dr. Allis I would turn to this second area of his publication interests, offering a study of the seventy weeks prophecy in Daniel 9, a passage which plays a dominant role in dispensationalism’s futuristic charting. [1] Attention will focus particularly on the covenant mentioned in Daniel 9:27, for a proper understanding of this covenant speaks decisively against the peculiar concept of the “Great Tribulation” which dispensationalism derives from this verse and with which dispensationalism’s identity is inseparably conjoined.

The Unity of Daniel 9

If satisfactory results are to be achieved in the interpretation of the seventy weeks of Daniel 9, we will have to keep in mind that there is the closest relationship between Gabriel’s prophecy (vss. 20-27) and Daniel’s prayer (vss. 1-19).

In modern higher criticism the unity of Daniel 9 is by no means unanimously acknowledged. Among those who reject the sixth century provenance of the book as a whole in favor of the theory of a second century origin, the prayer of Daniel often is regarded as an interpolation in chapter 9. Even in these ranks, however, the authenticity of the prayer is not without supporters.

In a recent survey of the matter, B. C. Jones seeks to strengthen the case for viewing the prayer as an original part of the chapter. [2] Of the several objections to this position [3] the most significant is the alleged lack of correspondence between the subject of the prayer and Gabriel’s response. Jones counters this with the observation that Gabriel does provide assurances (vs. 24) which answer to Daniel’s plea for forgiveness. Positive evidence of the unity of Daniel 9 is also found in the way the response repeats or plays on the sound of various words in the prayer. [4] It has been noted too that both parts of the chapter share certain expressions not found elsewhere in the book. [5]