Daniel · chapter 9 of 12
Updated on
Daniel 9 records Daniel's great prayer of confession: reading in Jeremiah that the exile would last seventy years, he pleads with God to forgive his people and restore Jerusalem. While he prays, Gabriel arrives with the answer: seventy weeks are decreed for the people and the holy city to end sin and bring everlasting righteousness, a prophecy interpreted in several ways.
Daniel 9 takes place in the first year of Darius the Mede, when Babylon has already fallen and the end of the seventy years announced by Jeremiah is near. Daniel responds to that promise not with passivity but with prayer and fasting. The chapter brings together one of the most beautiful prayers of confession in the Bible and one of its most debated prophecies, that of the seventy weeks.
In the first year of Darius, Daniel understands from the books that, according to the word of the Lord to Jeremiah, the desolation of Jerusalem will last seventy years. He turns to the Lord in prayer and pleas, with fasting, sackcloth and ashes. He acknowledges the greatness of God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him, and confesses in the plural: we have sinned, we have not listened to the prophets. Righteousness belongs to God, and to the people, shame.
Daniel recognizes that the curse written in the law of Moses has fallen on them and appeals to the God who brought his people out of Egypt: turn your anger away from Jerusalem, your holy hill. They do not plead trusting in their own righteousness, but in God's great mercies. The prayer ends with an urgent plea: Lord, hear; Lord, forgive; Lord, act and do not delay, for your own sake, because your city and your people bear your name.
While Daniel is still praying, Gabriel comes about the time of the evening sacrifice and tells him he has come to give him understanding, because he is greatly loved. Seventy weeks are decreed for his people and his holy city to finish the transgression, put an end to sin, atone for iniquity, bring in everlasting righteousness, seal vision and prophecy and anoint the most holy. From the word to restore Jerusalem until an anointed one, a prince, there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks. After that the anointed one will be cut off, and the people of a prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. A strong covenant is made with many for one week, and in the middle of it sacrifice and offering cease, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.
References follow ESV book names and verse numbers. Read each verse in your Bible before the explanation.
Daniel understands from the books that the desolation of Jerusalem will last seventy years, according to Jeremiah. His prayer is born from reading Scripture: God's promise does not make him passive but leads him to ask for its fulfillment.
To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, even though the people have rebelled against him. In the middle of a very blunt confession, Daniel remembers that hope rests on God's character, not on Israel's merits.
Daniel says they do not present their pleas trusting in their righteousness but in God's great mercies. It is the foundation of every prayer God hears: not who we are, but who he is.
Seventy weeks are decreed for the people and the holy city to end sin, bring everlasting righteousness and anoint the most holy. The promise is as wide as Daniel's prayer: God answers confession with a plan that goes beyond the end of the exile.
6 questions with answers and references, ready for Sunday school, small group or a Bible quiz night.
Answer: That, according to the word of the Lord to Jeremiah, the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years. — Daniel 9:2
Answer: With prayer and pleas, fasting, sackcloth and ashes. — Daniel 9:3
Answer: He speaks in the plural, including himself: we have sinned, we have done wrong, we have rebelled. — Daniel 9:5
Answer: Not the people's righteousness but God's great mercies. — Daniel 9:18
Answer: While Daniel was still praying, about the time of the evening sacrifice. — Daniel 9:20-21
Answer: To finish the transgression, put an end to sin, atone for iniquity, bring in everlasting righteousness, seal vision and prophecy and anoint the most holy. — Daniel 9:24
Daniel 9 is a model of prayer: it is grounded in Scripture, confesses personal and collective sins without excuses and rests on God's mercy. In a small group you can pray with the words of this chapter and ask which sins of the church or society we tend to name only as other people's, when Daniel says we have sinned.
The prophecy of the seventy weeks is interpreted in different ways, and it is honest to admit it. But its purposes, to end sin, atone for iniquity and bring everlasting righteousness, point to a work of God that Christians see completed in Christ. God's answer to a prayer of repentance is always greater than the one praying dares to ask.
Daniel 9 leaves a prayer that God answers at once and a prophecy that looks far beyond the exile. In Daniel 10 begins the last great vision of the book, in the third year of Cyrus, which reveals the spiritual conflict behind history.
The weeks are periods of seven, probably years. A traditional Christian reading sees in the first sixty-nine the road to the coming of Christ and in the cutting off of the Anointed One his death, with the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. Another reading sees a pause before the last week, which would correspond to an end time. Others relate everything to the high priesthood and Antiochus IV in the second century BC.
The text does not identify it clearly. Proposed options are the decree of Cyrus in 538 BC, that of Artaxerxes to Ezra in 458 BC and that of Artaxerxes to Nehemiah in 445 BC. Each choice gives a different calculation, so it is best to present the different options without imposing a date.
Daniel speaks as a member of the people and identifies with its sin without pretending to stand apart. That solidarity is part of the model of intercessory prayer in the Bible, and recalls how Christ identified with sinners without having sinned.