Daniel 9:24-26a, Part 3

"24 Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place. 25 Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again, with squares and a moat, but in a troubled time. 26a And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing."

Part 1 and Part 2 can be found here.

So far we have seen that this prophecy concerns Jesus' crucifixion and we have seen that the start date for the prophecy was Nisan 1, 444 BC. In this post we are going to look at the three sources mentioned in the previous post to see how some people have attempted to calculate the prophecy dates. Before we cover those models, some groundwork has to be laid.

1. Most of the people who attempt to calculate the prophecy assume, based on Genesis 7:11, 24 and 8:4 where 150 days passes and exactly 5 months pass, that there is a 360-day year (12, 30-day months) that is God's "prophetic calendar". The timing of prophecies must then be calculated using the 360-day year rather than our modern 365.25 days per year model with leap years. This is highly debatable. Probably the foremost expert on the Ancient Near East and an Old Testmanet commentator, Gleason L. Archer, said that there is no evidence that anyone ever used a 360-day year. But, I am not saying this "prophetic calendar" is correct, I am merely attempting to show the timing of Daniel's 70 weeks is accurate by way of showing how close we can get to calculating it. In the end, you will see that if we just had a bit more data, we could calculate it accurately.
2. This prophecy culminates in Christ's crucifixion, so we are looking for that Friday Passover sometime between 28-33 AD. However, the prophecy says first that the anointed one will come. A lot of commentators agree that this is Jesus' triumphal entry. This is intimately associated with the Passover lamb instructions that God gave the Israelites in Exodus 12:3, 6. Namely, that the lamb has to stay in the house with them for 4 days before they kill and eat it (10th Nisan with the Passover being 14th Nisan). This means Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem had to come on Sunday so he could "stay in house" for 4 days as our Passover lamb: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. The passover supper would have been on Thursday evening, the crucifixion on Friday, and the resurrection on Sunday. Ultimately, we are looking for a Sunday triumphal entry in a year that had Passover on a Friday.
3. For the sake of brevity, I am leaving out a lot of the astonomical data concerning the moon phases. The first book's author used data from the Royal Observatory in England to calculate his dates. It would be time consuming and confusing to include it. I am giving the information you need, not necessarily all the information used.
4. As I have said before, calendar matching from ancient to modern is not something that can be done with high accuracy.
With that in mind, let's get started.

The Coming Prince by Sir Robert Anderson
Anderson's model is wrong, but it is the most robust modern try at it and it forms the basis for a lot of subsequent thought about this prophecy. He starts off by naming the wrong starting date. He thinks Nisan 1 is March 14th, 445 BC. In his defense, he wrote in the late 1800's/early 1900's, scholars didn't know about the dating procedures of ancients. Remember we said that accession year dating was used, so Artaxerxes' first year, 465 BC, was only partial and wasn't counted. His "first year" by their count was 464 BC. That puts the 20th year (Neh 2:1) in 444 BC, not 445 BC. Next, he calculated the days from that date.
69 weeks of years x 7 years per week = 483 years
483 years x 360 days/year = 173,880 days
173,880 days + March 14th, 445 BC = April 6th, 32 AD (a Sunday)
This seems to work. But, Passover in 32 AD was either Sunday or Monday. This does give us a start though.

Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ, Part VI: Daniel's Seventy Weeks and New Testament Chronology by Harold Hoehner
Hoehner took Anderson's model and made some refinements that get us a little further. First, he fixed the start date. Nisan 1, 444 BC is March 5th, 444 BC.
173,880 days + March 5th, 444 BC = March 26th, 33 AD
Hoehner does some finagling with the prophetic calendar and the solar year calendar that I am not showing. I will discuss that below. This also doesn't work because the 26th was a Thursday. This would put the Passover on Monday. We need a triumphal entry on a Sunday.

"An Examination of the Chronological Difficulties of Hoehner and Ice's Calculations of Daniel 9's First 69 Weeks" by Bob Pickle
Pickle points out some problems with Hoehner's model that will be helpful to us. But, Pickle himself comes to the conclusion that Christ's baptism was the end of the prophecy. I am going to ignore that part of it. First, the Jews inserted leap months, 7 every nineteen years, into their calendars. That means they had an extra month 7 times every nineteen years. 444 BC was one of those leap years. That makes the start date April 2nd, 444 BC when the extra month is taken into consideration.
173,880 days / 365.24219 days per year (solar year) = 476 solar years
476 solar years x 365.24219 days per year = 173,855 days
173,855 days + April 2nd, 444 BC = March 29th, 33 AD
March 29th, 33 AD is a Sunday -- Triumphal Entry
March 30th, 33 AD is a Monday -- Nisan 10th
       30th, 31st, 1st, 2nd -- lamb kept in house
April 3rd, 33 AD is a Friday -- Nisan 14th (this day would start the evening before according to Jewish reckoning and means the Passover dinner was eaten what we would call Thursday night)
This seems to fix everything, except that there is some serious rounding in the math done. The numbers are actually 476.0676744 solar years and that translates back into 173,880 days. Keeping the numbers accurate would put the triumphal entry on a Friday. Also, the Passover was on Saturday or Sunday in 33 AD. Finally, I am not even going to get into the arguments over what year Jesus' ministry started.
At this point, you can see that every model and set of calculations has some problems, but this still gets us very close to calculating the date of both Christ's triumphal entry and crucifixion. I said previously that this series would be a little bit anticlimactic and I still think it is. However, the fact that we cannot accurately calculate the prophecy in no way means that is isn't true. Jesus held the Jews responsible for not knowing it. In Luke 19:41-44, he says with my highlights:

And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”

It is still readily believable that Jesus orchestrated his death down to the very day. That should give us great comfort. Jesus willingly sacrificed himself for us even though he knew the whole time what was coming and the very hour of his death. It also demonstrates the incredible knowledge and power of God that in 483 years of human history, He effortlessly organized it so that the table was set for the God-man, Jesus Christ, to appear on the day he told Daniel 600 years before hand.

Daniel 9:24-26a, Part 2

"24 Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place. 25 Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again, with squares and a moat, but in a troubled time. 26 And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing."

In part 1 we discussed verse 24 wherein we saw that the prophecy related to Daniel in this passage is Messianic. That means it has to do with Jesus Christ as the Messiah. In particular, it has to do with his crucifixion. The reason we can pinpoint that particular aspect of his ministry, his atonement that is, is due to the fact that the removal of transgressions, sins, and iniquity is in view. That only happened on Calvary when Christ was crucified. As mentioned last week, there is a specific timing element to this prophecy and it ends at Christ's crucifixion. In today's post we will look at some theories about where the timing fits in history based on an evaluation of verse 25 and 26a.

Verse 25: The opening phrase of verse 25 is important. It says; "Know therefore and understand...". A lot of people think that prophecy isn't that important, but what we see here is that Gabriel, with a message from God, is telling Daniel to know and understand what he is about to say. Since this is part of the Old Testament canon that God saw fit to give to us, we had also better know and understand it to the best of our ability. The next phrase, "that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem..." is very specific. It points to some kind of word that will allow or order the Jews to rebuild Jerusalem. Remember that in 587/6 BC, Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian armies destroyed Jerusalem and the first temple. Jerusalem has lain in ruins for close to seventy years which is exactly what God told Jeremiah (25:11; 29:10) he was going to do to Israel for their rebellion. At this time, about 538 BC, the Jews were living under Persian rule, so anything they did in their homeland had to be approved by the ruler of the Persian empire. That is exactly what happened. In 538/7 BC, Cyrus the King of Persia allowed, by decree, Jews to return to their homeland and rebuild the temple. This is recorded at the end of 2 Chronicles, verses 22 and 23 and it was prophesied by God through Isaiah in chapter 44, verse 28. This is exactly where Ezra picks up, in chapter 1, verses 1-4; with Cyrus' decree to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. This was the first time that Jews were officially allowed to return to Israel since the Babylonian empire conquered Judah. But, this is not our decree. It says nothing of the city of Jerusalem. It only directs the construction efforts of the temple. The prophecy says specifically that the word is to "restore and build Jerusalem", not the temple.
We have yet another decree concerning the temple in Ezra 6:1-15. It was really just a reinforcement of Cyrus' original decree due to the opposition the Jews were facing in completing the temple. They did get the temple finished, but we still don't have a starting point for the prophecy we are investigating. For that we have to look in Nehemiah 2:1-8.
In Nehemiah chapter 1 it says that Nehemiah got a report that Jerusalem and its gates were still ruined. This causes Nehemiah great consternation. So much so that Artaxerxes, the King of Persia at this time, recognizes his sadness and grants his request to return to Israel. This is how it happens. Nehemiah 2:1-8:

"In the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, I took up the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had not been sad in his presence.  And the king said to me, “Why is your face sad, seeing you are not sick? This is nothing but sadness of the heart.” Then I was very much afraid.  I said to the king, “Let the king live forever! Why should not my face be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers' graves, lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?”  Then the king said to me, “What are you requesting?” So I prayed to the God of heaven.  And I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, that you send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers' graves, that I may rebuild it.”  And the king said to me (the queen sitting beside him), “How long will you be gone, and when will you return?” So it pleased the king to send me when I had given him a time.  And I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, let letters be given me to the governors of the province Beyond the River, that they may let me pass through until I come to Judah,  and a letter to Asaph, the keeper of the king's forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the fortress of the temple, and for the wall of the city, and for the house that I shall occupy.” And the king granted me what I asked, for the good hand of my God was upon me."

Now we have our decree to fix Jerusalem! In addition, we have the month this decree was made; Nisan, which is March/April on our calendar. And, we have what year it was; the 20th year of Artaxerxes. Most commentators agree that because no day is given along with the month, this means that Nehemiah refers to the first day of the month. Historians and biblical scholars have shown that the king referred to is Artaxerxes Longimanus, also known as Artaxerxes I. He reigned from 465-424 BC. The 20th year of his reign would be 444 BC due to the fact that ancient peoples started counting a king's rule from the first full year, which in this case would be 464 BC. This means that Nisan 1, 444 BC is our start date.
Our end date is where the real argument lies, though people still argue about the start date as well. The scripture says: "to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again, with squares and a moat, but in a troubled time." The prophecy is now split up into two parts; 69 weeks and 1 week to make seventy weeks. There are 69 weeks total when added in the first part (7+62). However, even this is a point of contention among translators and theologians about how to take the 7 and 62 weeks, but I think it makes the most sense to join them so that it is 69 weeks or 483 years between the decree and the coming of an anointed one. The HCSB, KJV, NASB, and NIV translate it to this effect. I usually read the ESV and that is what is quoted above. That leaves 1 week or 7 years at some point after the "prince" comes. Who is the anointed one that will be the end of the 69 weeks? This seems assuredly to be Christ. In light of verse 24 and the discussion of the end of sin and the ushering in of everlasting righteousness in which a "holy [one]" (see part 1 about the translation here) is anointed seems very clear; it is Jesus Christ. Specifically, it is his crucifixion. This is the only place where atonement for sin was made. Verse 26a gives us that information: "an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing." If Jesus is the anointed one, and I think he is the person in view, then his being "cut off" and coming to "have nothing" seems evident in the Gospels. Specifically in Matthew's Gospel chapter 27, verse 46.
With all that in place, we can now turn to the actual modern calendar dates and figuring out how this prophecy is laid out. We have a start date of Nisan 1, 444 BC and an end date of Christ's crucifixion to be determined by calculating the 69 weeks. In order to do this we are going to take a look at 3 dating models and, in a bit of an anticlimactic ending, we are going to realize that dating this thing with 100% accuracy is virtually impossible this side of heaven. However, even though we can't pinpoint the exact dates, we can get close, close enough to understand that it does happen just as God said it would. That should make us all realize the power in the foreknowledge of God and His providential control of all world events. The three models we are going to look at are:

1. The Coming Prince by Sir Robert Anderson
2. Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ, Part VI: Daniel's Seventy Weeks and New Testament Chronology by Harold Hoehner
3. "An Examination of the Chronological Difficulties of Hoehner and Ice's Calculations of Daniel 9's First 69 Weeks" by Bob Pickle

This is where we will continue next time.

Daniel 9:24-26a, Part 1

"24 Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place. 25 Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again, with squares and a moat, but in a troubled time. 26 And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing."

There probably are not many scripture passages more argued about within Christianity than this one. The timing of end time events is always a much talked about topic. What I want to do here is offer some of my own thoughts that have come about as I have studied and read about this passage. There is an obvious timing element to this prophecy, and that is the real center of the debate about it. To what or whom does the timing refer? When does the clock start? When did it end? How do we compare calendars to figure out exact dates for what we may think it means? All these questions and more matter. Let's get started.
First things first. Daniel has recognized that Jeremiah's seventy years of desolation's (Jer 25:11; 29:10) of Jerusalem are nearly passed (9:1, 2) and that God's mercy will soon be realized among the Jews. Realizing this, Daniel prays (9:3-19). Mainly, he repents for Israel of all the evil that they have done against God and begs for His mercy. As a result, Gabriel comes to give Daniel (and us!) insight into what the future holds (9:20-23). That is where we will pick up the interpretation.

Verse 24: The seventy weeks can also be translated seventy sevens (also in verses 25, 26). Most commentators think this means that the overall time period being discussed is 70 weeks of years or 490 years (70 weeks x 7 years/week=490years). The weeks are for "your people" and "your holy city". I think we can agree that this is the Jews and Jerusalem. Gabriel is relating this prophecy to Daniel, so this seems to be straightforward. Daniel's people are the Jews and his holy city would be Jerusalem, where the temple mount is (the temple is no longer there and the 2nd temple is yet to be rebuilt). After that, there are 6 items listed that will happen in the seventy weeks: finish transgression, end sin, atone for iniquity, start righteousness forever, seal vision and prophet, and anoint a holy place. The early Church fathers who commented on this passage all thought that these things had to do with Christ (for example Theodotion 150 AD and Jerome 400 AD).

1. "to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin": The only thing that put an end to sin is Christ's sacrifice. It is through His blood that we can be free of the evil influence of sin that enslaves us (Rom 6:16). This was a common understanding of other passages of prophecy. Take a look at Isa 40:1-3. Notice that God tells Isaiah to tell "her", i.e. Israel, that her sins are paid for (v. 2). That is followed by a verse you probably know. It is a prophecy used in the Gospels for John the Baptist (Matt 3:3; Mark 1:3; John 1:23). These things to be done in the seventy weeks clearly seem to be Messianic as well.

2. "to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness": Following on the end of sin, iniquity will be atoned for as well and the resulting righteousness will be everlasting. Christ atoned for our sins (1 John 2:2) and ushered in the Kingdom of God, which will be everlasting, though it is not yet fully here until Christ returns.

3. "to seal both vision and prophet": This line concerns a ratification of God's visions and prophecies that we can find throughout the rest of the Old Testament. The idea here is that when Christ's work is complete (the cross and resurrection) it will be a Divine confirmation of everything that God has said would happen.

4. "to anoint a most holy place": There are some good exegetical arguments that show that this could be rendered "to anoint a most holy (thing) or (one)" instead of "place". This would fit with the idea that we are talking about Christ's sacrifice and that he is being anointed as the one who would fulfill the obligation to the law and the head of the new covenant. This also fits well with verse 25 that speaks of a coming "anointed one", as it discusses the timing of the prophecy in detail.

This is the end of part 1. The emphasis here is that this prophecy is Messianic. It concerns Jesus Christ. Specifically, it concerns his sacrifice on the cross that covered our sin and has inaugurated the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. Next time, we'll cover verse 25. In this verse we will get into all the timing issues concerning the prophecy.

The Chronology of Kings and Chronicles, Part 3

In part 1 and part 2 of this series we looked at how we can begin to unravel the chronological mystery that is the reigns of the Judean and Israelite kings. Edward Thiele, in his book, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, showed how he came to a fixed date of King Jehu of Israel's accession in the year 841 BC. He used Assyrian eponym lists that listed kings and special events from 892-648 BC. Once he had a foothold he was able to calculate everything else. But, as we have seen, it wasn't as simple as counting years. He also discovered 3 rules that had to be considered when doing the regnal calculations. They are:

1. Judah started their year in the month of Tishri (our Sept/Oct); Israel started their year in the month of Nisan (our Mar/Apr)
2. Judah used accession year dating; Israel used non-accession year dating. Remember though, that when they were friendly for a time, they used the same non-accession year dating system, then both switched to accession year dating until they were conquered.
3. Judah and Israel used their own dating system when counting the other kings reigns.

Those 3 rules are really the complicated part. This last portion is very simple. Sometimes, when a king was old or, as in the Northern Kingdom, there was infighting between 2 people who wanted to rule, there were 2 kings at once. A list with times would be the simplest way to show this

Judah
1. Jehoshaphat co-reigned with Asa for 3 years
2. Jehoram co-reigned with Jehoshaphat for 5 year
3. Azariah (also called Uzziah) co-reigned with Amaziah for 25 years
4. Jotham co-reigned with Azariah for 10 years
5. Ahaz co-reigned with Jotham for 3 years
6. Mannaseh co-reigned with Hezekiah for 10 years

 Israel
1. Zimri ruled for 7 months which is already counted in Elah, Tibni, and Omri's counts; 1 year
2. Tibni and Omri ruled separate kingdoms at the same time in the North for 5 years
3. Jeroboam II co-reigned with Jehoash for 11 years
4. Zechariah ruled for 6 months which is already counted in Jeroboam II's count; 1 year
5. Shallum ruled for 1 month which is already counted in Menahem's count; 1 year


There is much more to learn about the chronologies in Kings and Chronicles. But, you will have to go get Thiele's book to go even more in depth. I hope this series has been helpful.

Resources
The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings by Edwin R. Thiele
The Old Testament Documents: Are They Reliable & Relevant? by Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. (ch. 9)

The Chronology of Kings and Chronicles, Part 2

In part 1, we learned that Edward R. Thiele, in his PhD dissertation and book entitled; The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, acquired fixed dates for 2 events in the chronology of ancient Israel by using Assyrian eponym lists covering the years 892-648 BC. These 2 events were the rise of Jehu to the throne of Israel (Northern Kingdom) in 841 BC and Shalmaneser III's invasion of Judah during the 14th year of Hezekiah in 701 BC. From there, Thiele was able to calculate the dates for the reigns of every king in Judah and Israel. However, it was not without complication. As I said yesterday, the Assyrian lists and the foothold dates were only the first layer of confusion. Today, we will discuss 3 procedures that Thiele discovered in trying to piece together a chronology for these kings.

The first of these is recognizing when Judah and Israel started their respective calendar years. Judah began their year in the month of Tishri (our September/October) while Israel began their year in the month of Nisan (our March/April). This complicates things because a regnal year in Israel would overlap 2 regnal years in Judah. Also, both of these calendars would overlap 2 of our years (Jan-Dec). An illustration is in order. This comes from Thiele's book, page 45.




Each wedge with the month labeled is the beginning of the year. Judah is on top with Israel on bottom. What you can see here is that  year 2 in Israel covers part of years 2 and 3 in Judah. So while Judah has counted 2 years, Israel has only counted one.

The second chronological procedure has 4 layers of confusing. This has to do with accession year and non-accession year dating. Non-accession year dating means that the year a king comes to power counts as the first year. For instance, if Hezekiah became king in June of 715 BC, that short time, from June to August, would count as year one. Year two would start in the month of Tishri (our Sept/Oct). On the other hand, if we use accession year dating, we would wait until the new year to start counting his reigning years. Using the same example, June of 715 BC, Hezekiah's year one would not start until Tishri, about 3 months after he had ascended to the throne. At this point you might be saying; "Great, which one did the kings use? This isn't so hard." Well, the 2 kingdoms, for most of their existence, used the opposite system of counting regnal years. This is the second layer of this one rule.

Judah used accession year dating from Rehoboam until Jehoshaphat. Remember, this means they counted the first year from the beginning of the new year. Israel used non-accession year dating from Jeroboam I to Ahaziah. Essentially, during this time, Israel counted an extra year compared to Judah. The chart below, from Walter Kaiser's book, The Old Testament Documents: Are They Reliable & Relevant?, page 123 demonstrates this principle and clears up our counting of the years from the beginning of part 1 of this series.

Judah Years Israel Years Actual years Rehoboam 17 Jeroboam I 22 21 Abijah/Abijam 3 Nadab 2 1 Asa 41 Baasha 24 23 Jehoshaphat 18 Elah 2 1 Omri/Tibni 12 11 Ahab 22 21 Ahaziah 2 1 Total years 79 86 79
This is not the end of the accession and non-accession year discussion. Our 3rd layer consists of the fact that when relations became good between the kingdoms, Judah switched to a non-accession year system. This lasted from Jehoram to Amaziah. As a result, we must take off a year for each of those kings. Finally, both kingdoms for unknown reasons used accession year dating after this until they were no more. For Judah, that is from Azariah to Zedekiah and for Israel, that is from Jeroboam II until Hoshea.
Our final chronological procedure is that each kingdom used its own system when counting the years from the other kingdom. If we look at the chart above, this means that Israel counted Rehoboam's reign as 18 years with non-accession year counting. The final piece of this complicated puzzle is the figuring of co-regencies (when a father and son ruled during the same year) and overlapping reigns from multiple "kingdoms" in the north due to infighting between rivals. In other words, some of the years in Kings and Chronicles are really counted twice. Next week, I will finish this 3 part series. Enjoy your holiday! God bless you!