WORDS
into segments of sevens or heptads. The coup de grace is given to all such evasions when they are worked out in detail. If the 70 weeks have their usual meaning of 490 days, the period covers better than a year. When in that time was the nation brought to the coming of their Mes siah? If the 70 weeks refer to blocks of months, or 490 months, we have a time lapse of better than forty years. Was that the year of the coming of Messiah to Israel? To ask these ques tions is to answer them. In short, Daniel is predicting the time of Mes siah’s coming, and such a matter of infinite importance is not beclouded nor encrusted with ambiguity. How shall we understand the prophecy? The first step in the right direction is to understand the word week to refer to a heptad of seven years, thus interpreting the predic tion to designate 490 prophetic years. Is the starting point of .the reck oning available? In simple lan guage it is said to be the time of the edict to rebuild Jerusalem. There are those who refer this to the decree of Cyrus in Ezra 1. This is in error, because Cyrus’ command related to the rebuilding of the temple in Jeru salem, not the city. Nor can it be the edict of Darius in Ezra 6, for that also referred to the temple alone. Again, the decree of Artaxerxes in Ezra 7 cannot be in view, for this also speaks of the house of their God. There remains only the correct edict for the starting point of the num bering, that of Artaxerxes in Nehe- miah 2. This did concern the rebuild ing of the city of Jerusalem, and the date was the twentieth year of Artax erxes, about 445 B.C. Reckoning now 49 years, we find this covered the period of rebuilding of the city after, the exile. After 434 years mcjre the Messiah was cut off and received no kingdom. This was followed by the destruction of the very city whose rebuilding was just spoken of. Then after a lapse of centuries (such as is found in our Lord’s use in Luke 4 of Isaiah 61) the Antichrist will flourish in the last heptad of years. So interpreted, the prophecy re veals the blessed coming of Messiah, His rejection by Israel, the punish ment of God upon them then and in the future time of tribulation, the visitation upon the Antichrist, and the final consummation in blessing for Israel. We do well to look care fully at our words. In them God has stored such rich truth as we have been considering. (The student will want to pursue the matter further in Sir Robert Anderson’s The Coming Prince and in Dr. A. J. McClain’s, Daniel's Prophecy of the Seventy Weeks.) END.
from the
WORD by Charles L. Feinberg, Th.D., Ph.D., Director, Talbot Theological Seminary W E E K
16:9 (twice), 10,16; and 2 Chron. 8: 13) which came after the numbering of seven weeks. The little word week takes on vast Messianic or Christological impor tance, as well as prophetic signifi cance, when we turn to the famous prophecy of Daniel 9:24-27. In these four verses (which form the back ground of the Olivet discourse in Matthew 24 and 25, Mark 13, and Luke 21, as well as the book of the Revelation) we find six uses of the word. There are scholars of the Old Testament who are prepared to tell us that the weeks in this passage refer to an unknown, prophetic period. Says one scholar (Keil), in speaking of the weeks, it is “ an intentionally indefinite designation of a period of time measured by the number seven whose chronological duration must be determined on other grounds.” And having said this, the same writer spends time referring the passage to a period extending from a definite starting point (the decree of Cyrus in Ezra 1) to an indefinite termin ating point (the consummation of all things for the kingdom of God). Our comment is this: if in a passage of four verses we have six distinct and definite notations of time, yet the first notation is to be taken as definite and the last as indefinite, while the entire intervening period is spoken of as in tentionally indefinite, then there is an end to the logic of language; and Daniel must be set down as a con- fuser of the saints instead of their en lightener through the Spirit. First of all, God utilizes the num ber seventy because of the obvious relation to the seventy years of Jere miah spoken of in Daniel 9:2. Israel was to experience physical deliver ance through Cyrus at the expiration of the predicted seventy years of Babylonian Captivity. Now Daniel is told that, after the conclusion of sev enty heptads of years, his people Is rael will experience spiritual deliv erance through God’s Servant, the Messiah. Such an arrangement was surely intelligible to a people who knew every seventh year as a Sab bath of the land, and wiere acquaint ed with the practice of dividing years
« ne does not need to study the Word of God for many years, be fore he learns that words are em ployed in Scripture in a variety of meanings. Indeed, some of the more common words enjoy a wide range of connotation. Such a word is week. In the New Testament the week is called sabbaton, and the days of the week are numbered, not named. Of the nine uses in the New Testament (Mt. 28:1; Mk. 16:2,9; Lk. 18:12; 24:1; Jn. 20:1,19; Acts 20:7; and 1 Cor. 16:2) all but Luke 18:12, the prayer of the Pharisee in the temple, speak of the first day of the week or the resurrection day. It is in the Old Testament where the word has different shades of meaning which are significant. We must bear in mind from the outset that the Hebrew word shabhua means period of seven or heptad. Just so we speak of a dozen or a score of any thing, after which we must specify what object is in mind. The Hebrew week was one of seven days. It has been suggested that there was an ancient Hebrew week of ten days (Gen. 24:55; Ex. 12:3), but this can not be defended. The Genesis pas sage is using ten as a round number, just as Zechariah did in 8:23 of his prophecy. The Exodus citation has nothing to do with the days of the week, but is specifying the commence ment of the Feast of Passover. The week of seven days was common to the Babylonians as well as the He brews, and both derived their reck oning from the lunar month. Of the nineteen uses of the word week in the Old Testament, only four (Lev. 12:5 in the laws of childbirth; Jer. 5:24 with reference to harvest weeks; and Dan. 10:2, 3) refer to weeks of days. In the Daniel passage it is stated that the heptads are heptads of days. Dan iel fasted, not twenty-one months or years (!), but that many literal days. However, the Old Testament knows also of heptads of weeks. God appoint ed that on the fiftieth day (Pentecost in the Greek) after the Passover, Is rael should celebrate the Feast of Weeks, a feast of ingathering of wheat. Seven passages mention this feast (Ex. 34:22; Num. 28:26; Deut.
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