The countdown
Daniel set a timer on history.
Daniel, an old man in exile in Babylon, is praying for his ruined city, Jerusalem. The angel Gabriel answers with a countdown:
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.’ … 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.
- A “seven”
- Seven years, the way “a dozen” means twelve. So seven sevens and sixty-two sevens make 69 sevens: 483 years.
- “The Anointed One”
- In Hebrew, mashiach, the word we say as “Messiah.” In Greek it's Christos: “Christ.” Daniel is talking about the Messiah.
The clock starts when “the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem.” Persian kings gave orders like that between 538 and 445 BC. Drag the slider.
7 sevens (49 years): Jerusalem is rebuilt, “with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble.”
69 sevens (483 years): the Anointed One comes. Then the clock stops. “After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’” he is put to death, and in AD 70 Rome destroys the city and the Temple.
One seven is left, and it hasn't started. A coming ruler makes a covenant “for one ‘seven,’” then sets up “an abomination that causes desolation” until his decreed end (Daniel 9:27). The King has already come. We read this last seven as the years just before he returns to reign.