The 70 Weeks and the 2,300 Days
The word “determined” found in Daniel 9:24, “Seventy weeks are
determined,” literally means “Seventy weeks are cut off.” Although the
word translated as “determined” is not used anywhere else in the Bible,
it is found in Jewish literature, and it means “cutting off ” from some-
thing longer. Since Daniel 8 presents the 2,300-year prophecy, whose
starting point is not given in Daniel 8, it logically follows that when the
next chapter (Daniel 9) talks about 490 years as “determined,” or “cut
off,” they can be “cut off ” only from the 2,300 prophetic years men-
tioned in the previous chapter. After all, what else could this period be
“cut off ” from but another, and longer, time prophecy?
Read Daniel 8. What was the one part of the vision given that was not
explained (see especially Dan. 8:14, 26, 27)?
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There are many reasons the 70-week prophecy of Daniel 9:24–27
and the 2,300 evenings and mornings prophecy of Daniel 8:14 belong
together: (1) both are time prophecies; (2) the specific terminology of
“vision” and “understanding” links them (see Dan. 8:26, 27 and 9:23);
(3) both interpretations of the prophecies were given by Gabriel (see
Dan. 8:16 and 9:21); (4) the only part of the vision not explained in
Daniel 8 was the vision about the 2,300 evenings and mornings (some-
times translated as “days”) in Daniel 8:14; (5) Daniel 8 contains the
vision and then a partial interpretation of it, while Daniel 9 has an inter-
pretation only, in this case the interpretation of the only part of Daniel 8
not interpreted—which was the 2,300-day prophecy of Daniel 8:14, the
one part of the vision that Daniel had not understood (see Dan. 8:27).
The information given to us in Ezra fills in the missing pieces of the
prophecy’s predictions in the book of Daniel, namely, when to begin
historically to count the prophetic time regarding crucial aspects of
Christ’s ministry and work on our behalf.
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