Chapter Outline
- Daniel’s Discovery in the Scriptures (vv. 1-2)
- The first year of Darius the Mede
- Daniel reads Jeremiah’s prophecy of seventy years
- Daniel’s Prayer of Confession (vv. 3-19)
- Seeking God with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes
- Praise of God’s covenant faithfulness
- Confession of Israel’s sin and rebellion
- Acknowledgment that the judgment was just
- The plea for mercy for the sake of God’s own name
- Gabriel’s Swift Answer (vv. 20-23)
- Gabriel comes during the evening offering
- Daniel greatly esteemed; sent insight at the start of his prayer
- The Prophecy of the Seventy Weeks (vv. 24-27)
- The sixfold purpose of the seventy weeks (v. 24)
- The seven and sixty-two weeks to Messiah the Prince (v. 25)
- Messiah cut off; the city and sanctuary destroyed (v. 26)
- The final week and the covenant of the prince to come (v. 27)
Capture — What Do I See?
Daniel 9 is the prophetic heart of the book and one of the most important chapters in all of Scripture for understanding the timeline of God’s plan. It opens not with a vision but with a Bible study. In the first year of Darius the Mede, Daniel is reading the prophet Jeremiah and discovers that the desolation of Jerusalem was appointed to last seventy years. Daniel does the math, realizes the seventy years are nearly complete, and that discovery drives him to his knees.
The chapter has two clearly marked halves. The first is one of the greatest prayers in the Bible — a prayer of confession in which Daniel, a man of remarkable personal righteousness, identifies completely with the sin of his people and pleads for mercy. He does not pray “they have sinned”; he prays “we have sinned.” The second half is the answer to that prayer. Before Daniel even finishes praying, Gabriel arrives and delivers the prophecy of the seventy weeks — seventy periods of seven years that lay out the entire future of Israel’s redemption, from a decree to rebuild Jerusalem, to the coming and cutting off of the Messiah, to the destruction of the city, and finally to a still-future seventieth week dominated by a prince who makes and breaks a covenant.
What we capture is a chapter of two answered hungers — a man hungry to understand God’s word, and that same word answering him with the most precise timeline of redemption ever revealed.
Analyze — What Does It Mean?
Daniel Discovers the Promise (vv. 1-2)
“In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, of Median descent, who was made king over the kingdom of the Chaldeans — in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, observed in the books the number of the years which was revealed as the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet for the completion of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years.” (Daniel 9:1-2)
Babylon has just fallen; Darius the Mede is now reigning. Daniel, an old man of perhaps eighty-five, is studying “the books” — the existing Scriptures, treated as the very word of the Lord. He is reading Jeremiah, who had prophesied that the captivity would last seventy years. Daniel takes that promise seriously and personally. He understands that the seventy years are nearly spent, that the time of restoration is at hand. Notice the model here: a fulfilled promise of God did not make Daniel passive. It made him pray. He believed God would do what He said, and that belief sent him to intercession, not to the sidelines.
The Posture of the Prayer (vv. 3-4)
“So I gave my attention to the Lord God to seek Him by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth and ashes. I prayed to the Lord my God and confessed and said, ‘Alas, O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and lovingkindness for those who love Him and keep His commandments.'” (Daniel 9:3-4)
Daniel sets himself to seek God — deliberate, undistracted, humbled with fasting and sackcloth. And he begins where good prayer begins: with who God is. He addresses Him as the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and lovingkindness. Before Daniel confesses a single sin, he establishes the character of God — faithful, merciful, covenant-keeping. The whole prayer rests on the difference between God’s faithfulness and Israel’s failure.
The Confession of Sin (vv. 5-14)
“We have sinned, committed iniquity, acted wickedly and rebelled, even turning aside from Your commandments and ordinances. Moreover, we have not listened to Your servants the prophets, who spoke in Your name to our kings, our princes, our fathers and all the people of the land.” (Daniel 9:5-6)
This is the model confession of Scripture. Daniel piles up the verbs — sinned, committed iniquity, acted wickedly, rebelled, turned aside — refusing to soften the truth. And he says “we.” Daniel was a man of such integrity that even his enemies could find no fault in him, yet he never separates himself from his people. He identifies with their sin and carries it before God as his own. He confesses that righteousness belongs to the Lord but shame belongs to Israel, that the curses written in the Law of Moses have justly fallen, and that “the Lord our God is righteous with respect to all His deeds which He has done.” Daniel does not argue that the judgment was too harsh. He agrees with God against himself and his nation. That is what true confession does.
The Plea for Mercy (vv. 15-19)
“O Lord, in accordance with all Your righteous acts, let now Your anger and Your wrath turn away from Your city Jerusalem, Your holy mountain… So now, our God, listen to the prayer of Your servant and to his supplications, and for Your sake, O Lord, let Your face shine on Your desolate sanctuary.” (Daniel 9:16-17)
Now the prayer turns from confession to petition. And the ground of Daniel’s appeal is striking. He does not ask God to act because Israel deserves it — he has just spent a dozen verses proving the opposite. He asks God to act for the sake of His own name. “We are not presenting our supplications before You on account of any merits of our own, but on account of Your great compassion.” The prayer climaxes with a string of urgent imperatives: “O Lord, hear! O Lord, forgive! O Lord, listen and take action! For Your own sake, O my God, do not delay, because Your city and Your people are called by Your name.” Daniel pleads God’s reputation, God’s compassion, and God’s covenant — never Israel’s worthiness. This is how mercy is sought: on the merit of God alone.
Gabriel’s Swift Answer (vv. 20-23)
“While I was speaking in prayer, then the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision previously, came to me in my extreme weariness about the time of the evening offering. He gave me instruction and talked with me and said, ‘O Daniel, I have now come forth to give you insight with understanding. At the beginning of your supplications the command was issued, and I have come to tell you, for you are highly esteemed.'” (Daniel 9:20-23)
The answer was dispatched the moment Daniel began to pray. Gabriel tells him the word went out “at the beginning of your supplications” — heaven moved before Daniel finished his sentence. Gabriel comes at the time of the evening offering, the very hour of sacrifice, though the temple lay in ruins and no offering could be made. And he tells Daniel he is “highly esteemed” — literally, greatly beloved, treasured in heaven. The man on his knees confessing his nation’s sin is the man heaven holds most dear. Then Gabriel delivers the answer, and it is far larger than the seventy years Daniel had been reading about. Daniel asked about seventy years; God answers with seventy weeks.
The Sixfold Purpose of the Seventy Weeks (v. 24)
“Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy place.” (Daniel 9:24)
The word translated “weeks” means “sevens.” Seventy sevens, decreed for Daniel’s people Israel and Daniel’s holy city Jerusalem, is 490 years. Within this span God will accomplish six things: finish the transgression, make an end of sin, make atonement for iniquity, bring in everlasting righteousness, seal up vision and prophecy, and anoint the most holy place. The first three deal with sin and were secured at the cross. The last three — everlasting righteousness brought in, all prophecy fulfilled and sealed, and the most holy place anointed — are realized when the Lord Jesus returns and establishes His kingdom. The seventy weeks therefore stretch from a decree in Daniel’s near future all the way to the Second Coming.
The First Sixty-Nine Weeks (v. 25)
“So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress.” (Daniel 9:25)
Here is the prophecy that has staggered honest readers for centuries. The clock starts with “a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem” — a decree to rebuild the city, given in the days of Persia. From that decree until “Messiah the Prince” is seven weeks plus sixty-two weeks, sixty-nine sevens, which is 483 years. Bible teachers including Sir Robert Anderson and, in our day, Amir Tsarfati and David Jeremiah have shown that when this 483-year count is measured out, it lands on the exact era of the public arrival of Jesus the Messiah — many connect the end of the count specifically to the day He rode into Jerusalem and presented Himself as King. Daniel, given this prophecy roughly five centuries beforehand, was handed the timetable of the first coming of Christ.
Messiah Cut Off and the City Destroyed (v. 26)
“Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined.” (Daniel 9:26)
Two events fall “after the sixty-two weeks” — that is, after the sixty-ninth week and before the seventieth begins. First, “the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing.” This is the crucifixion. The word “cut off” is a word for violent, judicial death; “have nothing” pictures the Messiah rejected, stripped, dying not for His own sin but apparently with nothing to show. Second, “the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary.” In AD 70, within a generation of the cross, the Roman armies destroyed Jerusalem and the temple exactly as foretold. The phrase is precise — it is “the people of the prince who is to come” who destroy the city. The people were the Romans of the first century; the prince himself, the one who is “to come,” is a future figure who arises from that same realm. This is the same little horn of Daniel 7 and the same fierce king of Daniel 8 — the Antichrist.
Notice what happens between the sixty-ninth week and the seventieth. The Messiah is cut off; the city is destroyed; “to the end there will be war.” The prophetic clock pauses. There is a gap — an unmeasured span between week sixty-nine and week seventy — and we are living in it. This present age of the church, hidden from the Old Testament prophets, runs in the interval between the cutting off of Messiah and the start of Daniel’s final week.
The Seventieth Week (v. 27)
“And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering; and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate.” (Daniel 9:27)
The “he” of verse 27 is the nearest named figure — “the prince who is to come” of verse 26, the Antichrist. The final seven years begin when this prince “makes a firm covenant with the many” — a treaty, very possibly a peace agreement involving Israel. The signing of that covenant starts the clock on Daniel’s seventieth week. But “in the middle of the week,” after three and a half years, he breaks faith. He stops the sacrifice and grain offering, which means a rebuilt temple with restored worship will be standing. He sets up “abominations” — the abomination of desolation the Lord Jesus warned about — and he becomes “one who makes desolate.” Then the same verse promises his ruin: a complete and decreed destruction is poured out on him. The seventieth week ends not with the triumph of the Antichrist but with his judgment at the return of Christ.
The “time, times, and half a time” of Daniel 7, the 2,300 evenings and mornings of Daniel 8, the breaking of the covenant in the middle of this week, and the forty-two months of Revelation are all measuring the same period — the second half of the seventieth week, the Great Tribulation.
Compare — Where Else Does Scripture Speak?
Daniel 9 is the backbone of the Tribulation timeline. Nearly every other prophetic time-marker hangs on this one chapter. When the Lord Jesus speaks of the abomination of desolation in the Olivet Discourse, He cites “Daniel the prophet” by name and points His disciples to Daniel 9:27. When Paul describes the man of lawlessness taking his seat in the temple of God, he is describing the prince of Daniel 9 who stops the sacrifice in the middle of the week. When Revelation measures forty-two months, 1,260 days, and “a time, times, and half a time,” it is measuring the back half of Daniel’s seventieth week. Daniel 9 is the master clock; Revelation is the detailed account of its final tick.
The covenant with the many and the false peace. The Antichrist begins his career as a peacemaker — he confirms a covenant. Paul warns that when people are saying “Peace and safety,” sudden destruction comes upon them. The first seal of Revelation 6 is a rider on a white horse who goes out conquering, a counterfeit of Christ, an arrival under the banner of peace that turns to war. Daniel 9:27 is where that false-peace pattern is first laid down.
The cutting off of Messiah. “The Messiah will be cut off and have nothing” stands beside Isaiah 53, where the Servant is cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of God’s people, and assigned a grave with the wicked. It stands beside Zechariah 12:10, where Israel will one day look on the One they have pierced and mourn. Daniel gave the timing of the Messiah’s death; Isaiah and Zechariah gave its meaning.
Daniel’s prayer and the prayers of the saints. Daniel 9 also belongs beside the great corporate confessions of Ezra and Nehemiah, who likewise stood in the gap and confessed the sins of the people as their own. And it anticipates the Lord Jesus, the one truly righteous Man, who numbered Himself with the transgressors and bore their sin not in prayer alone but in His own body on the tree.
Execute — How Should I Respond?
Let the promises of God drive you to prayer, not passivity. Daniel found a promise in Scripture that God would surely keep — and he prayed. Knowing that God has decreed an outcome is never a reason to fall idle. It is the very reason to seek His face. Read the certain promises of God on your knees.
Confess sin honestly, and confess it as “we.” Daniel’s confession holds nothing back and excuses nothing. And the most upright man in his nation prayed “we have sinned.” Pray for your family, your church, and your nation by standing inside their sin, not above it, and pleading God’s mercy.
Appeal to the mercy of God, never to your own merit. Daniel asked for everything on the basis of God’s name, God’s compassion, and God’s covenant — not Israel’s worthiness. That is the only ground any of us has. Come to God for the sake of His character and the finished work of Christ.
Live with confidence in God’s timetable. Sixty-nine of the seventy weeks have already run, and they ran exactly as Daniel said. The God who kept the prophecy that precisely will keep the rest. Live as one who knows the clock is in His hands and the final week ends with the triumph of Christ.
Insights — What Key Truth Do I Carry Forward?
Daniel 9 gives us a praying man and a planning God. Daniel hungered to understand Scripture and confessed his nation’s sin with his whole heart, and before he finished, heaven answered with the most precise prophecy in the Bible — the seventy weeks that map the entire course of redemption.
The carry-forward truth is this: God has decreed the calendar of redemption down to the year, and the cross stands at its center. Sixty-nine weeks ran to “Messiah the Prince,” and then the Messiah was cut off — crucified for the sin Daniel had just confessed. The clock paused, the church age was hidden in the gap, and one week remains. That final seven years opens when the prince confirms his covenant and closes when complete destruction is poured out on him at the coming of Christ. Daniel asked God for mercy on the basis of His name, and the answer was a Savior who would be cut off “and have nothing” so that His people could have everything. Carry that forward: the God who timed the first coming to the year is just as sure about the second, and the same mercy Daniel pleaded is the mercy that meets every sinner at the cross.
Teaching the Word. Watching the Times. — SmithForChrist