Daniel’s confession and prayer: Gabriel informs him concerning the
seventy weeks to the coming of Christ.
9:1. In the first year of Darius, the son of Assuerus, of the seed of
the Medes, who reigned over the kingdom of the Chaldeans:
9:2. The first year of his reign I, Daniel, understood by books the
number of the years, concerning which the word of the Lord came to
Jeremias, the prophet, that seventy years should be accomplished of the
desolation of Jerusalem.
9:3. And I set my face to the Lord, my God, to pray and make
supplication with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes.
9:4. And I prayed to the Lord, my God, and I made my confession, and
said: I beseech thee, O Lord God, great and terrible, who keepest the
covenant, and mercy to them that love thee, and keep thy commandments.
9:5. We have sinned, we have committed iniquity, we have done wickedly,
and have revolted: and we have gone aside from thy commandments, and
thy judgments.
9:6. We have not hearkened to thy servants, the prophets, that have
spoken in thy name to our kings, to our princes, to our fathers, and to
all the people of the land.
9:7. To thee, O Lord, justice: but to us confusion of face, as at this
day to the men of Juda, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to all
Israel, to them that are near, and to them that are far off, in all the
countries whither thou hast driven them, for their iniquities, by which
they have sinned against thee.
9:8. O Lord, to us belongeth confusion of face, to our princes, and to
our fathers, that have sinned.
9:9. But to thee, the Lord our God, mercy and forgiveness, for we have
departed from thee:
9:10. And we have not hearkened to the voice of the Lord, our God, to
walk in his law, which he set before us by his servants, the prophets.
9:11. And all Israel have transgressed thy law, and have turned away
from hearing thy voice, and the malediction, and the curse, which is
written in the book of Moses, the servant of God, is fallen upon us,
because we have sinned against him.
9:12. And he hath confirmed his words which he spoke against us, and
against our princes that judged us, that he would bring in upon us a
great evil, such as never was under all the heaven, according to that
which hath been done in Jerusalem.
9:13. As it is written in the law of Moses, all this evil is come upon
us: and we entreated not thy face, O Lord our God, that we might turn
from our iniquities, and think on thy truth.
9:14. And the Lord hath watched upon the evil, and hath brought it upon
us: the Lord, our God, is just in all his works which he hath done: for
we have not hearkened to his voice.
9:15. And now, O Lord, our God, who hast brought forth thy people out
of the land of Egypt, with a strong hand, and hast made thee a name as
at this day: we have sinned, we have committed iniquity,
9:16. O Lord, against all thy justice: let thy wrath and thy
indignation be turned away, I beseech thee, from thy city, Jerusalem,
and from thy holy mountain. For by reason of our sins, and the
iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem, and thy people, are a reproach to
all that are round about us.
9:17. Now, therefore, O our God, hear the supplication of thy servant,
and his prayers: and shew thy face upon thy sanctuary, which is
desolate, for thy own sake.
9:18. Incline, O my God, thy ear, and hear: open thy eyes, and see our
desolation, and the city upon which thy name is called: for it is not
for our justifications that we present our prayers before thy face, but
for the multitude of thy tender mercies.
9:19. O Lord, hear: O Lord, be appeased: hearken, and do: delay not,
for thy own sake, O my God: because thy name is invocated upon thy
city, and upon thy people.
9:20. Now while I was yet speaking, and praying, and confessing my
sins, and the sins of my people of Israel, and presenting my
supplications in the sight of my God, for the holy mountain of my God:
9:21. As I was yet speaking in prayer, behold the man, Gabriel, whom I
had seen in the vision at the beginning, flying swiftly, touched me at
the time of the evening sacrifice.
The man Gabriel.... The angel Gabriel in the shape of a man.
9:22. And he instructed me, and spoke to me, and said: O Daniel, I am
now come forth to teach thee, and that thou mightest understand.
9:23. From the beginning of thy prayers the word came forth: and I am
come to shew it to thee, because thou art a man of desires: therefore,
do thou mark the word, and understand the vision.
Man of desires.... that is, ardently praying for the Jews then in
captivity.
9:24. Seventy weeks are shortened upon thy people, and upon thy holy
city, that transgression may be finished, and sin may have an end, and
iniquity may be abolished; and everlasting justice may be brought; and
vision and prophecy may be fulfilled; and the saint of saints may be
anointed.
Seventy weeks.... Viz., of years, (or seventy times seven, that is, 490
years,) are shortened; that is, fixed and determined, so that the time
shall be no longer.
9:25. Know thou, therefore, and take notice: that from the going forth
of the word, to build up Jerusalem again, unto Christ, the prince,
there shall be seven weeks, and sixty-two weeks: and the street shall
be built again, and the walls, in straitness of times.
From the going forth of the word, etc.... That is, from the twentieth
year of king Artaxerxes, when by his commandment Nehemias rebuilt the
walls of Jerusalem, 2 Esd. 2. From which time, according to the best
chronology, there were just sixty-nine weeks of years, that is, 483
years to the baptism of Christ, when he first began to preach and
execute the office of Messias.—Ibid. In straitness of times ...
angustia temporum: which may allude both to the difficulties and
opposition they met with in building: and to the shortness of the time
in which they finished the wall, viz., fifty-two days.
9:26. And after sixty-two weeks Christ shall be slain: and the people
that shall deny him shall not be his. And a people, with their leader,
that shall come, shall destroy the city, and the sanctuary: and the end
thereof shall be waste, and after the end of the war the appointed
desolation.
A people with their leader.... The Romans under Titus.
9:27. And he shall confirm the covenant with many, in one week: and in
the half of the week the victim and the sacrifice shall fail: and there
shall be in the temple the abomination of desolation: and the
desolation shall continue even to the consummation, and to the end.
In the half of the week.... or, in the middle of the week, etc. Because
Christ preached three years and a half: and then by his sacrifice upon
the cross abolished all the sacrifices of the law.—Ibid. The
abomination of desolation.... Some understand this of the profanation
of the temple by the crimes of the Jews, and by the bloody faction of
the zealots. Others of the bringing in thither the ensigns and standard
of the pagan Romans. Others, in fine, distinguish three different times
of desolation: viz., that under Antiochus; that when the temple was
destroyed by the Romans; and the last near the end of the world under
Antichrist. To all which, as they suppose, this prophecy may have a
relation.