The seventy weeks

The seventy weeks are one of the most mysterious parts of the Bible, and they’ve generated no shortage of interesting interpretations about the end times. Let’s take a closer look at what this is all about.

Two readings carry real weight. One ends in the second century BC with Antiochus IV, the king who stopped the sacrifices and set up an altar to Zeus in the temple; that reading sits comfortably beside the rest of Daniel, which keeps returning to exactly that crisis. The other ends with Jesus and with the destruction of the temple in AD 70. Each explains a great deal, and each leaves something over that it cannot explain. I take the prophecy to be fulfilled twice — first in Antiochus’ day, then far more fully in Jesus — and the section Fulfilled twice below says why. A third reading, which puts the last week in the future after a long gap, is common among dispensational readers.¹

What is a year week

At creation, God sanctified the seventh day as a day of rest, the Sabbath. That same rhythm was later extended to a “Sabbatical year”: every seventh year the land should rest, and the people were to trust that God would provide for them through it.

That never actually happened. When Israel went into exile, it was for 70 years — one year for every Sabbatical year the land had been denied, just as Jeremiah had prophesied. Since a Sabbatical year falls only once every seven years, 70 missed Sabbatical years means 7×70=490 years — the entire span of Israel’s existence as a nation up to that point. That’s why a “week” in Daniel means seven years: the term deliberately echoes the Sabbath, the seventh day of the week.

The promise

Counting 605 BC as the year the exile began brings us to 539 BC, when Babel was destroyed and the exile ended under the first Persian king. Daniel was alive at that time and knew the promise that God had made, so when the time came he prayed a prayer of repentance for his people. The answer he receives is only four verses long, but it takes some unpacking:

“‘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.’”

“Seventy sevens” is 70×7=490 years — the same span of Sabbatical years whose neglect had sent Israel into exile in the first place.

Verse 24 lays out six things these 490 years are meant to accomplish:

• Finish transgression, for your people and your holy city. “Transgression” points to the Jews who supported Antiochus IV Epiphanes, described later in chapter 11.
• Put an end to sin — literally “seal,” which in Hebrew shares its consonants with “remove.” Either way, it’s an ambitious goal.
• Atone for all wickedness. “Atone” points back to the Day of Atonement, which in its own context was meant to cover all sins — an atonement intended to be lasting.
• Bring in everlasting righteousness.
• Seal the vision and prophecy — “seal” here in the sense of confirming it.
• Anoint the most holy place. The most holy place would naturally mean the temple, but this may point instead to Jesus, who is greater than the temple and is himself the anointed one.

Taken together, these six goals go far beyond anything achieved in history except what Jesus did on the cross: he paid for all sin, wrote God’s commandments on our hearts through the Holy Spirit, and much more besides.

Fulfilled twice

Before counting years, it is worth being honest about the two readings, because each of them is strong where the other is weak.

Antiochus IV. The rest of Daniel keeps circling one crisis: the fourth kingdom and the feet of the statue, the little horn that stops the sacrifices (8:11), the 2,300 evenings and mornings (8:14), the king who “sets his face against the holy covenant” (11:30–31), and a time of trouble measured in half a week. Read the last of the seventy weeks against that crisis and it fits closely. Onias III, the last high priest of the old line — an anointed one, and called “a covenant leader” in 11:22 — is pushed out when Antiochus comes to the throne in 175 BC and murdered in 171 BC. Sacrifice and offering stop in December 167 BC, when the altar to Zeus goes up in the temple; the temple is cleansed and rededicated in December 164 BC, three and a half years later and seven years after Onias was cut off. Jerusalem’s own historians read Daniel that way almost at once: 1 Maccabees 1:54 describes Antiochus’ altar in Daniel’s own words, “a desolating abomination” — the oldest interpretation of these verses that we have.²

Its gap is the arithmetic and the promise. No plausible starting point gives 490 years ending in the 160s BC, and the six things verse 24 promises did not arrive with the Maccabees. Transgression was not finished, sin was not ended, wickedness was not atoned for, everlasting righteousness did not come. 1 Maccabees knows this perfectly well; its own story ends with the Jewish state back under pressure.

Jesus. The six promises of verse 24 are reached at the cross, and nowhere else. Verse 26 says the city and the sanctuary will be destroyed after the anointed one is cut off, and that is what happened in AD 70. Its gap is the arithmetic too: as the next section shows, the count only reaches the right years if it pauses twice.

Why both. A prophecy can land twice, and Scripture says so itself. Isaiah gives king Ahaz a sign: a young woman will bear a son, and before the boy knows right from wrong the two kings Ahaz fears will be gone (Isaiah 7:14-16). That child belongs to Ahaz’s own lifetime; the sign was no use to him otherwise. Centuries later Matthew hears the same words come true again, and far more deeply, in Mary's son. Nobody has to choose. Daniel himself does this: he takes Jeremiah’s seventy years, which had already run their course, and hears them again as seventy weeks.

So the shape I follow is this. Antiochus is the first fulfilment, close enough to be unmistakable and small enough to leave the promise standing. Jesus is the fulfilment that reaches the six goals. The Jewish war of AD 66–73 reflects the pattern once more, forty years after the week of Jesus. The years stay years; what repeats is the pattern they carry — a wrong put right, an anointed one cut off, a flood, an abomination. Those images can be filled more than once, and they were.³

The seventy weeks

Now let’s lay the count over history, following it through to the fulfilment in Jesus. The passage divides the 70 weeks into three parts: 7 weeks (from the word to rebuild Jerusalem to Cyrus), 62 weeks (the rebuilt city stands), and 1 final week (to finish everything). The weeks are real years, but they are not counted without a break: twice the count pauses.⁴

Verse 25 reads: 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.

The word to rebuild Jerusalem went out through the prophet Jeremiah in 588/587 BC, during the fall of Jerusalem. That marks the start of the first 7×7=49 years, which end in 539 BC when the Anointed One, Cyrus, issues a decree to rebuild Jerusalem.

Here the count pauses. Cyrus gives the order, but it takes almost a hundred years until Jerusalem stands again as a city with walls — that happens under Nehemiah, around 440 BC — and from then 62×7=434 years pass while the city stands, though in constant trouble: Israel is pushed around from the beginning of the building through a long succession of political upheavals and changing rulers (Persians, Greeks, the Syrian-Egyptian kingdoms, and finally Rome). That brings us to 6 BC.

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.

Here the Anointed One is no longer Cyrus but Jesus, born in 6 BC. “Put to death and have nothing” translates a Hebrew phrase that can mean “cut off”, but can also mean “cut a covenant” — he died in order to make a covenant. “The people of the ruler” refers to the Roman legions under Titus, the emperor’s son and later emperor himself; the text uses the word “prince,” which may echo the prince of this world. That ruler’s people came and destroyed the city and the sanctuary in AD 70. The end came like a flood of Roman legions, with war continuing until Israel was finally deported from the land in AD 135 after one last uprising. The desolation, the text insists, was decreed — by God.

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.

Since the subject of that last sentence is still God from the previous clause, it’s God who confirms a covenant with many — the new covenant of Jesus.⁵

In the middle of that final “seven,” he puts an end to sacrifice and offering, because sacrifice is no longer needed.

The subject then shifts to Rome for the abomination that causes desolation (the original Hebrew doesn’t actually say “he,” but “one who makes desolate”). The text speaks of “wings” of abomination, likely referring to the Roman legionary eagle standard. “Until the decreed end is poured out on him” is better rendered “until the decreed end is put on the desolator” — meaning until the Roman Empire itself falls, which brings us back to Daniel chapter 7.

The last week

The final week — the last seven years — turns out to be more complicated, because the text seems to be telling two stories at once, each describing its own version of how things end. The week itself is the week of Jesus, AD 27–34; the Jewish war of AD 66–73 is its reflection forty years later.⁶

The first is the story of Israel, whose Jerusalem, Temple, and land come to an end, only to be taken up into the New Covenant that Jesus establishes to start over with the Jews. The second is the story of Jesus himself. Both stories, oddly, run 40 years apart from each other. How is that possible? Jesus spent 40 days in the desert at the start of his ministry, resisting the very temptations Israel failed to resist in the wilderness after leaving Egypt — the failure that cost Israel 40 years of wandering before it ever reached the Promised Land. Here the story is turned on its head: Jesus does not give in to temptation, and by establishing a new covenant he effectively gives Israel an extra 40 years to enter it.

The story of Israel

In the year 66, the Jewish war begins. Its midpoint — three and a half years in — brings the destruction of the temple, which is never rebuilt; the sacrifices end along with it, cut off “on the wings of the destroyer.” The war itself ends in 73, seven years after it began, and after further unrest Israel is deported in 135 following one more war. By the end, Israel has lost the temple, the city, and the land.

The story of Jesus

Between the birth of Jesus and his public appearing the count pauses a second time. In the year 27 — on the assumption that Tiberius’ reign began in the year 12 — Jesus is called and baptized with the Holy Spirit, and he renews the covenant with the Jews. At the midpoint of the seven years, in the year 30, he dies and rises again, and the covenant now extends to the Gentiles as well; with his death, sacrificial service is no longer necessary.

The seven years end in the year 34, the year Stephen is presumably stoned to death after a speech accusing Israel of having abandoned its covenant. This is the first time after Jesus’ death that a Christian dies for the faith, and it’s also the first mention of Paul, who will go on to spread the faith vigorously among non-Jews.

This is the moment the church begins to follow Jesus in full — the new covenant is now genuinely active.

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