Day 17 of Journey Through Daniel: THE SEVENTY "SEVENS"

COMMENTARY Today’s reading continues the occasion of Daniel 9. We’ve seen Daniel praying to God after reflecting on Jeremiah’s prophecy about the seventy years of captivity. Now, Daniel receives a vision from the angel Gabriel, which reveals more about the exile of the people of God. In Daniel 9:24, Gabriel says, “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.” In other words, exile was not entirely over for the people of God. They would return to the land of Judah, but even there, their suffering would continue for “seventy ‘sevens’.” The phrase “seventy ‘sevens’” has been the subject of endless debate. Most scholars agree that the phrase means seventy “seven-year intervals” or 490 years. They draw this conclusion by comparison with Leviticus 25:8, which talks about how an event known as the Year of Jubilee should occur after seven “seven-year intervals” or 49 years. Beyond that, scholars have offered endless interpretations about when this 490-year period might begin and end. Verses 25-27 complicate things even more. Those verses subdivide the 490 years into periods of 49 years, 434 years, and 7 years. No matter when this 490-year period is thought to begin or end, it is virtually impossible to line up all these time frames with dates of significance in Jewish and Christian history, if that is even the correct understanding in the first place. Instead of trying to force the numbers to add up, it is probably best to interpret Daniel’s seventy “sevens” as theological math, a common phenomenon in the Bible where the significance of a number is not in its numerical value, but in what it symbolically conveys. A good example of this is in Matthew 18:21-22, which uses the same numbers as Daniel 9. When Peter asks Jesus if he should forgive someone up to seven times, Jesus responds, “No, not seven times, but seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:22 NLT). The point isn’t that Peter should forgive someone precisely 490 times and that would be enough. Given that the number seven often conveys ideas of completion or perfection in the Bible (and much more the number 490), the point is that Peter should forgive as many times as is necessary. In a similar way, Daniel 9 seems to be expressing that at the complete and perfect time, God would act on behalf of His powerless people. This is certainly how Jesus and the New Testament writers understood the mission of Jesus. As Paul writes in Romans 5:6, “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly” (cf. Mark 1:15; Galatians 4:4; Ephesians 1:10). So rather than spending our time attempting to calculate exactly when certain events did or may yet take place, we should instead spend our energies creating communities that demonstrate the qualities that God has required of His people since the beginning: justice, righteousness, and self-giving love. SCRIPTURE DANIEL 9:20–27 THE SEVENTY “SEVENS” 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.” QUESTIONS 1. Daniel 9:21 indicates that Daniel received an answer to his prayer while he was still praying. Why do you suppose God was so quick to speak to Daniel? 2. Many scholars see the details of Daniel 9:26-27 as describing the events of 171-164 BC when Antiochus IV Epiphanes killed an “anointed” priest, “put an end” to Jewish worship, and installed an “abomination that causes desolation” in the Temple. If this is the case, then in Mark 13, Jesus reapplied these symbols to his first century context because many similar things were happening in His own day. He as God’s anointed would be killed, and the Jerusalem Temple would be destroyed by the Romans. Why do you suppose history seems to repeat so often? What does the end of this vision (and really all the visions of Daniel) teach us about the end of each cycle of history?