Daniel 9 Seventy Sevens Explained

[Kellye Tunks]

Takea 1-minute survey to join our mailing list and receive a free ebook in the format of your choosing. Read on your preferred digital device, including smart phones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers.

You shall count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the time of the seven weeks of years shall give you forty-nine years. Then you shall sound the loud trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month. On the Day of Atonement you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land. And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan. That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; in it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows of itself nor gather the grapes from the undressed vines. For it is a jubilee. It shall be holy to you. You may eat the produce of the field.

Given the stupendous effects of the seventy sevens, it is worth noting that the first sixty-nine sevens do not mention the kind of effects listed in verse 24. The seventieth seven, though, includes an anointed one being cut off, destruction of city and sanctuary, and desolations that have been decreed (v. 26). Furthermore, a covenant will be made and sacrifices will end (v. 27). The six remarkable outcomes in verse 24, therefore, would not be accomplished gradually throughout the first sixty-nine weeks. They would come to pass because of what takes place in the seventieth seven.

Relating the sixty-two sevens (v. 25b) to the seven (v. 25a) is not as difficult as may be initially thought. The sevens are consecutive and uninterrupted. The period of sixty-two sevens probably extended from the time of Nehemiah to the time of Jesus (the anointed one). As with the first seven sevens, we should not press the sixty-two sevens with strict literalism with the intent to specify exactly 434 years. It is a round number, symbolic of the time period from Nehemiah to Jesus.

In this structure, A and A' refer to the same event: the sacrificial work of the anointed one. Sections B and B' each have a single event in mind as well: the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple. Below we will contend that the seventy sevens of chapter 9 reach fulfillment in the vicarious death of Jesus Christ and in the destruction of the Jerusalem temple.

Mitchell L. Chase (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is an associate professor of biblical studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also the preaching pastor of Kosmosdale Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, and is the author of several books. He blogs regularly at Biblical Theology on Substack.

Daniel 9 is one of the strangest and most symbolically rich passages in all of the Bible. Learn about the history of this passage commonly known as "The Seventy Sevens" and why Jesus thought it was a big deal.

Tim notes that Daniel would have been heartbroken because he was hoping that this would have been a proclamation of good news that Israel would return from exile. Instead, the message is that Israel has a long way to go in its exile.

Tim: Hey, this is Tim at The Bible Project. Today's episode we're going to be carrying forward a conversation between Jon and myself about the seventh-day rest. We're multiple episodes in. We've been tracing these patterns of the number seven in the storyline of the Bible. We camped out for quite a while on page one in Genesis. We saw there that the number seven, there's seven days of creation in the Genesis 1 account, and we go from a place of darkness and disorder. God creates a world of complete order and beauty in a pattern of seven. Then we just started tracing that through so many stories of the Bible that are riffing off of that basic theme. In fact, the whole story of the Bible in a way is working out this gigantic storyline of darkness and disorder to the seventh-day rest. At this point in the story of the Bible, we've tracked through up to Israel's exile, how God brought them into the Promised Land, they blew it, and they are exiled in what Leviticus presented as this inverted pattern of seven.

In this episode, it's our last stop in the Hebrew Scriptures. We're going to focus in on a puzzling and fascinating story in the book of the prophet Daniel. And lo and behold, it all revolves around the number seven. This is in Daniel 9. Daniel is praying for the restoration of Jerusalem and his people from exile. And the answer that he gets is not what he expected. It all revolves around the meaning and symbolism of the number seven. This story, maybe you're familiar with it, maybe you're not, it has been controversial in interpretation in Jewish communities in all spreads of the Christian tradition. People have really wondered what is going on in this chapter of the Hebrew prophets.

It turns out that Daniel himself is riffing off of a theme in the book of Jeremiah, the prophet before him, and that chapter is itself built off of patterns of symbolism and the Numbers 7:2. This is, I think, a really fascinating and exciting chapter in the Old Testament. Jesus was really into this chapter because he mentioned it himself. So let's dive in. Here we go.

Jon: God created the world in six days and on the seventh day, He stopped and He settled into creation. He appointed humans to rest with Him and to rule with Him. This was the human ideal and abundance and its rest. Humans are exiled, and instead of abundance, ground back down to the dust. But there's still this desire for rest for this final state of completeness. Shabbat (what God did on the seventh day) means to stop in order to rest, and it's connected to the seven, the cycle of sevens. And seven has the same kind of...what's the word?

Jon: Basically it's the same word as "complete." It's the idea of completeness. So seven becomes super important. As we continue the narrative, God chooses Abraham and he says, "I'm going to give you that kind of rest, that Eden blessing, your family." Well, the problem is, is Abraham's family is actually enslaved to a violent kingdom, Egypt, and so God has to rescue them from Egypt. And that rescuing from Egypt mirrors the same kind of pattern of God liberating creation out of chaos and disorder. And so you've got this connection between God creating Earth or creation so that we can rest in it is connected to this idea of humans being liberated from death, and slavery, and violence and the powers.

Actually, we shouldn't just wait for it, we should I practice it now. Practice it on the seventh day or you stop from your work. But then there's all these festivals. There are seven types of holy days or appointed times and they're all built around sevens and this anticipation for the renewal of creation. Not only that, but on the seventh year, it's the Year of Release. Debts are forgiven. And it's like, we just want creation to just be renewed. It's like, let's make it happen. And not only that, but then on the seventh cycle of the seventh year, everything is reset. It's the year of jubilee.

Israel is wandering in the wilderness. It's a new type of slavery. It's a slavery not to some other powers, but slavery to their own disobedience. Wilderness is also connected to testing. Like, "Are we going to get this right? Are we going to choose faithfulness and trust? They go into the land, they celebrate Passover. The land is in abundance. And we see that this theme of trusting is all connected to this idea of stopping and resting. It's how this was to take down Jericho.

Tim: Oh, we do. A lot of ground. Yeah, totally. That's good. Awesome. Good job. That's good. And it was entertaining. For this part of the conversation, which is going to be how Israel's prophets, the books of the prophets process this Sabbath Eden rest, seventh day hope for the restoration of Eden in the ultimate seventh day. Let's turn to the last page of the Jewish ordering of the Hebrew Scriptures, which is the last chapter of 2 Chronicles.

Tim: In the most ancient form of the organization of the Hebrew Scriptures is organization that Jesus called the Torah, the prophets, and then the Psalms, which names the book that heads the third collection, which is also called The Writings. The Writings is a diverse collection and it appears that Chronicles was composed as a kind of conclusion to the whole Hebrew Bible. The last chapter is 2 Chronicles 36, it retells the story of the last king of Judah, who Nebuchadnezzar takes out and the story of the sacking of Jerusalem.

Tim: He loves his land. "But Israel continually mocked the messengers of God despise the prophets. And so the anger of Yahweh rose against his people. There was no turning back. He brought against them the king of the Chaldeans. Chaldeans is another synonym for the Babylonians. The Babylonians killed their young men with the sword in the temple. They had no compassion on young men, young women, old men or the sick. All were given into the Babylonians' hands. All the articles of the temple, great and small, and treasures of the temple and the treasures of the king were all brought to Babylon. They burned the house of God, broke down the walls of Jerusalem, burned its buildings." This is bad news verse 20 "Those who escaped from the sword, basically, the people that survived the onslaught were carried away to Babylon, and they were slaves to him and his sons until the rule of the Kingdom of Persia." Remember, Chronicles is written towards way late. The restoration of Jerusalem has already happened. The return from exile and the rebuilding of Jerusalem has already happened from this author's point of view.

Tim: The Second Temple is rebuilt, it's not working out. According to Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, it's not awesome. This author ends the story here saying...Remember, he carried those away to Babylon. Vs. 21 "In order to fulfill the word of the Yahweh by the mouth of Jeremiah, the prophet, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days of its desolation, the land kept the Sabbath until the seventy years were complete."

3a8082e126