Daniel 9:25–26

The seventy weeks are divided into three parts: seven, sixty-two, and one. Weeks of years are clearly meant. These weeks do not date from the command to build the temple. That command came in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia (Ezra 1:1). They date from the command to restore and build the city of Jerusalem, which Artaxerxes gave in his twentieth year (Nehemiah 2:1).

Surely this is a remarkable way of expressing it. The natural way, we might think, would be to say sixty-nine. But no: it is "seven weeks, and sixty-two weeks." There is a design in this. God never says a word without a blessed reason — a wise and gracious motive. So there is one here… This is why the seven weeks are named. The rebuilding of Jerusalem, hindered though it was, mattered to God. His word both predicts and records it.

The street is where the life of the city gathers. It is the meeting place, and the first part of the city to get houses. The moat is an extra defence to protect the city.

In short, God singles out these seven weeks to give us not just a history but a prediction of the troubles. The derision, the hatred, the enmity, the attempts to destroy, the constant intrigues and plotting in and around the land, the carelessness of the people, the faults of the princes, the unfaithfulness of the priests — all these things worked against them. The bitterest and most humiliating of all their sorrows they found among themselves… So much does God think of His people in the day of small things.

The Hebrew word "Nageed" means a "leader," a "prince."… If, then, the words "unto Messiah the Prince" refer to the Lord Jesus, what point in His life on earth does the word "unto" reach? There seems to be only one time in the Lord's ministry when the people owned and hailed Him as their King: His last entry into Jerusalem (John 12:12-15). He was born "King of the Jews," but only then did the people own Him as King in public… So we may safely conclude that the word "unto" points to a time six days before the Lord's death. The King was owned, and the sixty-nine weeks ended.

Counting a year for a day, 69 weeks = 483 years. The prophetic year has 360 days, so 483 years x 360 = 173,880 days. That brings us to the 10th day of the month Nisan in the 18th year of Tiberius Caesar, the Roman Emperor. It is the very day when our Lord rode into Jerusalem on a donkey's colt, fulfilling the prophecy of Zechariah 9:9.

The key comes in now. It explains the difficulty stated at the beginning: why the seventieth week is cut off from the sixty-nine. The death of Christ tore the chain, and broke off the relations of the people of Israel with God. So, the Jews having rejected their own Messiah, the last week is for a time set aside.

I say then that the margin here gives the scope, in my opinion, more exactly. Our version — "but not for himself" — implies that He was cut off for other people... He was cut off for our sins. He suffered in atonement for our iniquities. So people saw the death of Christ only as expiation. But that is not the point here. The meaning is that Messiah should be cut off and have nothing. His inheritance is completely gone. His people refuse Him. His land is not His to hold. His kingdom is denied Him. Everything that belonged to Messiah is taken away from Him.

The correct translation is, "Messiah shall be cut off and have nothing." That is, the Messiah did not take the kingdom, though it was His by right. He was rejected and crucified, so He could only have taken it by judgment in power. But His mission then was not judgment; it was salvation (John 3:17). So He was "cut off," and went back to heaven with "nothing."

A new element of great importance is also introduced: the Messiah should be cut off. He would have nothing of what belonged to Him by right. The consequence of this would be the destruction of the city and of the sanctuary, desolation and war. It would be the prince of another empire, not yet in existence, who should destroy the city and the sanctuary. God's relations with the people were now completely broken off for the time — even with a believing remnant.

When Christ was cut off, sixty-nine weeks had run their course. There only remained one week — or seven years — before His kingdom would be set up. But the Jews rejected their Messiah; so the fulfilment of the prophecy is put off... During this time there is a great blank in the history of God's ancient people. God gives no account of how long it lasts... So there is a huge and important gap between verses 26 and 27, and the prophecy gives no details about it.

All agree that this is the destruction of the city by the Romans. Most therefore assume that Titus is the "prince who is to come," but there are many reasons against this. For why should the people be mentioned at all? Is it not plain that both the people and the prince are stressed here? Yet the people alone do this — and they are the people of the prince who is to come.

The more immediate result was to be the destruction of the city and the sanctuary by "the people of the prince who is to come." Now this prince is the "little horn" we read of in Daniel 7. He is the head of the Roman Empire in its revived and last stage, and we identified him with the first "beast" of Revelation 13. This Roman despot is still to come, but the Roman people were the dominant power in the time of our Lord, and they did destroy Jerusalem very thoroughly.

That destruction was only the beginning of God's disciplinary judgments upon them. So the prophecy moves on to "its end," which is to be "with a flood," or "an overflow." We judge this to mean that the sorrows and persecutions that have followed the Jews through all these centuries will rise to flood height just before the end.