Does the Hebrew of Daniel 9:25 determine if we should date the sixty-nine weeks from the time the decree was issued, or from the time of its execution? And what evidence is there for our year-day principle of interpretation here?
The expression in the Hebrew would indicate that the time to begin to reckon to Messiah the Prince is when the commandment went forth to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. The Hebrew words, la-ho-spiv ("to restore," or "to return") followed by va-liv-nous ("and to build up") are closely united by the conjunction va ("and"). That the decree was in three parts is stated in Ezra 6:14. It was necessary to have the whole of the decree fully to meet the command of the angel Gabriel. But it would seem from the Hebrew expression of Daniel 9:25, la-ho-shiv valiv-nous (" to restore and to rebuild"), that the time to reckon to Messiah the Prince is when the command went forth to restore and rebuild.
According to Isaiah 44:28, the command of Cyrus was to begin the work, "even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid."
From Ezra 6:1-12 it is evident that Darius confirmed what Cyrus had already commanded, and added to the Cyrus decree. When we read the command issued by Artaxerxes (Ezra 7: 11-26), we discover in this latter decree all that was essential for the full carrying on of the work of God in Jerusalem. This decree of Artaxerxes carried with it all the power and authority fully to restore the work of the people of God as in days aforetime. I believe that what is contained in the decree of
Artaxerxes is the intent of the statement of the angel Gabriel in Daniel 9: 25: la-ho-shin va-liv-nous ("to restore and to rebuild").
All Hebrew writers in translating or referring to the first three Hebrew words of Daniel 9:24, namely, sho-voo-im nechtach ("seventy weeks are determined") render the translation of those words thus: "Seventy times seven years are cut off." The Hebrew word, sho-voo-im, translated "weeks" in our text, is invariably recognized by Jewish scholars as meaning shmi-tos. Now a shini-to is seven years. This is generally known and understood among Jewish people everywhere.
In referring to the seventy weeks of Daniel 9, in his translation of this chapter, Rabbi Isaac Leeser says in the footnote:
"Ancient Jewish writers thought that the second temple stood four hundred twenty years, which, with the seventy years of the Babylonian captivity, make four hundred ninety."
While the learned Dr. Leeser is wrong in the application of the seventy times seven years, he, like all other Hebrew scholars, invariably acknowledged these seventy weeks as so many shmi-tos, or periods of seven years.
Mr. Marks Samuel Bergman, an eminent scholar who for many years was a learned Jewish rabbi but became a convert to Christianity many years ago, translated the Hebrew Old Testament into the Yiddish of the European and American Orthodox Jewish vernacular. In translating Daniel 9:24 Mr. Bergman says:
"Seventy weeks (shmi-tos)."
Thus the rendering of the expression "seventy weeks" as seventy times the period of seven years is accepted and so acknowledged by Hebrew scholars.
The Hebrew word nechtach, rendered in our tent "determined," is understood to mean "cut off," "to decree," "to cut quickly." One of the most able and scholarly commentators among the Jews has the following note on this word nechtach:
"These years are decreed ones, in the sense of being cut off."
And the word this commentator uses to illustrate the value of his thought "cut off," he interjects as a comparison word, ko-rath, one of the strongest of Hebrew terms meaning "to cut."
In regard to Daniel's desire to learn more fully the whole significance of the 2300 days, which the angel Gabriel was commanded to make known to the prophet, the angel, having completed the explanation of the first part of the 2300 days, namely, the seventy weeks, continued no farther. Then it was that the prophet spent three weeks in prayer and fasting and seeking the Lord. To the earnest, constant prayers of the prophet the angel responded, and in chapters 10-12 of Daniel, Gabriel completes for the prophet the commission given to the heavenly messenger, "Make this man to understand the vision."
Gabriel closes the story recorded in the last verse of Daniel 12 with these words: "Go thou thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days."
The word "lot" in this verse is the Hebrew word go-rout. On the Day of Atonement the priest was to cast the go-ronl, or lot, for the Lord's goat and for Azazel. So to Daniel was given the suggestion that at the end of the 2300 days would occur the antitypical Day of Atonement. The angel did not go into the details of the antitypical work, but he said to the prophet:
"Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed to the time of the end. Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand." Dan. 12:9, 10.
Thank God, the wise in Christ understand what occured at the end of the 2300 days, and Daniel was assured at that time that he would be in his lot, and that all would be well with him in the great antitypical Day of Atonement.
F.C. Gilbert
Washington, D. C.
