4: The 70-week Prophecy of Daniel [Excerpt]

“Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy place. So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again…Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary…And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering…” (Daniel 9:24-27)

Daniel spent much of his adult life serving in the courts of the king of Babylon. One day, while he was studying the writings of the prophet Jeremiah, Daniel came to realise that Israel’s 70-year captivity in Babylon was nearing its end.[1] Jeremiah had pleaded with Israel to repent and turn from provoking the LORD to anger by going after other gods. He had warned them that failure to mend their ways would lead to the people having to serve the king of Babylon for 70 years, during which time the land of Israel would lie desolate. Daniel read how Jeremiah reprimanded Israel for their hard-hearted failure to respond to him, to the other prophets and even to the Lord Himself. Three times Jeremiah rebuked Israel with the words “you have not listened.”[2]

Daniel’s tender-hearted response to his growing understanding of the reasons for the captivity was to devote time to prayer, fasting and repentance on behalf of Israel. He wrote, “So I gave my attention to the Lord God to seek Him by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth and ashes.”[3] As a godly and sensitive man, he felt distressed and ashamed of the attitudes and behaviour of rebellious Israel which had led to the exile. Daniel was deeply moved by his longing for Israel to depart from their sinful ways and to walk on the path of righteousness. God deeply valued the response of Daniel, just as He showed favour to those who had sighed and cried out over the abominations carried out in the temple in Jerusalem[4]...

[1] Daniel 9:2; Jeremiah 25:1-11; 2 Chronicles 36:21

[2] Jeremiah 25:3,4,7; 26:5;29:19;35:15

[3] Daniel 9:3

[4] Ezekiel 9:4

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