NOTES for Dan 9:20-27

To the prayer from the end of the exile period, the author of Daniel adds a prophecy contemporary with him, which he, like the prayer, places in the mouth of his hero. This prophecy, as can be seen, belongs to a person whose name is unknown to us today, someone who received from God a revelation about the end times and the coming of the Messiah. A simple calculation shows that the unnamed prophet expects the Messiah to appear 490 years, "seventy sevens," after the decree of Cyrus the Great about the Jews' return to the land of their fathers, issued in 538 BC, that is, in 48 BC (vv. 24-25). Of course, in this case there can be no question of exact dating, but by historical standards the time is indicated quite precisely; it is, of course, impossible to demand from a prophet absolute chronological precision down to the year. The mention of Jerusalem, which will be restored but "in troubled times" (v. 25), fully corresponds to the historical realities known to us today: the Temple was rebuilt in 515 BC, while the city walls could be rebuilt only by 443 BC.

But for the age in which the author of Daniel and the prophet whose name we do not know, whose prophecy he included in his book, lived, all this already belonged to long-past days. The words about the coming Messiah sounded much more urgent both for them and for their contemporaries. The mention of the Messiah's death and of the subsequent new destruction of the city and the Temple must undoubtedly have made a special impression on listeners and readers (v. 26). Previously only Isaiah of Babylon (Isa 53) had spoken about the suffering and death of the Messiah, and now an unnamed prophet not only confirms his witness but goes even further, as if anticipating the Savior's own prophecy about the end of Jerusalem (Matt 24:15-21). "The people of the ruler who will come" are obviously the Romans, who in 63 BC, under Pompey's command, would seize Judea and all Palestine, and in AD 70, under the emperor Vespasian, after the anti-Roman uprising, would raze the city and the Temple to the ground.

But the coming of the Messiah, as can be seen, will be preceded by the defilement of the Temple by a certain ruler, who is called "the desolator" and of whom it is said that deserved punishment will overtake him (v. 27). By "the week that confirms the covenant" are apparently meant the years separating the prophecy from the purification of the Temple after the Maccabees drove the Syrians out of Jerusalem in 166 BC. Perhaps it was spoken in 171 BC, after the murder, by order of Antiochus, of the high priest Onias III, who actively opposed the religious policy carried out by the Syrian authorities. And then it was revealed to the prophet that the persecutions would intensify, that "in the middle of the week" the Temple would be defiled, which happened in 168 BC, but that by the end of the "week" the covenant would be strengthened. So it happened: after the victory of the rebels led by the Maccabees, the Syrians were driven out of Jerusalem in 166 BC, and the Temple was purified. But these were events of the fairly near future. In the more distant perspective, however, the unnamed prophet was granted a glimpse not only of the suffering Messiah, but also of the catastrophe that would fall on the people soon after the Savior's death on the cross and resurrection.