Which decree begins the seventy weeks?
Cyrus, Artaxerxes to Ezra, and Artaxerxes to Nehemiah are major proposals. Each has strengths and chronological challenges. The prophecy's messianic center is clearer than one universally accepted calculation.
DANIEL 9 — CONFESSION, RESTORATION, AND THE SEVENTY WEEKS
Which decree begins the seventy weeks? Study Daniel 9 with context, apologetic analysis, and cross-references.
Daniel 93 questions
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Commentary provenance
Dr. Lucas D. Shallua Commentary · DANIEL 9 — CONFESSION, RESTORATION, AND THE SEVENTY WEEKS
The precise difficulties
- Which decree begins the seventy weeks?
- Is there a gap before the seventieth week?
- Who confirms the covenant in verse 27?
Verse and question study
Is there a gap before the seventieth week?
A futurist reading sees the church age between the sixty-ninth and seventieth weeks, supported by the city destruction occurring after the anointed one's death and by future abomination language. Other interpreters see a continuous sequence completed in Christ and Jerusalem's fall. Humility is appropriate.
Who confirms the covenant in verse 27?
The two strongest readings identify Christ or a future hostile ruler. The destructive, covenant-breaking context favors the hostile ruler in this commentary, but salvation never rests on that identification.
Historical and literary context
The chapter is dated to the first year of Darius son of Ahasuerus, of Median descent, placed over the Chaldean realm. This is the same unresolved Darius the Mede associated with chapter 6, not Darius I who ruled later. Daniel's study of Jeremiah 25 and 29 shows prophecy producing prayer rather than fatalism. The seventy weeks are seventy “sevens,” widely understood as 490 years in symbolic or chronological relation. Interpretive systems differ over starting decree, treatment of gaps, the identity of the anointed ones, and verse 27. This commentary favors a messianic reading culminating in Christ and allowing a future seventieth-week fulfillment, while acknowledging sincere evangelical alternatives.
Apologetic note
The prophecy links the anointed one's removal with Jerusalem's subsequent destruction, a sequence fulfilled in Jesus' crucifixion and Rome's destruction of the city and temple. Chronological models vary, but the broad correspondence is historically significant and predates the AD 70 event in all mainstream datings of Daniel.
Chapter cross-references
- Leviticus 26:14–45; Deuteronomy 28:15–68 Covenant curses fulfilled in exile
- Jeremiah 25:8–14; 29:10–14 The seventy-year promise Daniel studies
- Matthew 24:15–22; Luke 21:20–24 Jesus applies Daniel's desolation language
- Romans 3:21–26; Hebrews 9:24–28 Atonement and everlasting righteousness through Christ
Source and editorial status
Dr. Shallua’s Commentary
This study preserves the hard questions, explanations, context, apologetic note, and references from Dr. Shallua's Commentary.