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weeks of days, weeks of years, or, as some believe, of both. Whether we are able to
compute the time or not, He will surely come.
To enable the reader to follow the theme without confusion, we divide our study into
four sections:--
(1)
The prophecy of Jeremiah (Dan. 9: 1, 2).
(2)
The prayer of Daniel (Dan. 9: 3-23).
(3)
The principle of computing prophetic times.
(4)
The prophecy of the seventy weeks.
The prophecy of Jeremiah.
Daniel himself was a prophet, to whom had been granted the spiritual ability to see the
meaning of Nebuchadnezzar's visions, and to witness the two visions dealing with the
end of the indignation. It is with this event, linked with Jeremiah's prophecy, that
Dan. 9: opens. We have in Zechariah positive proof that the "time of indignation" and
"the seventy years" of Jeremiah refer to the same period:--
"O Lord of Hosts, how long wilt Thou not have mercy on Jerusalem, and on the cities
of Judah, against which Thou hast had indignation these threescore and ten years"
(Zech. 1: 12).
From Isa. 10: 5 we learn that the Assyrian is the rod of the Lord's anger--"And the
staff in their hand is mine indignation." The Assyrian is sent against "an hypocritical
nation . . . . . to tread them down like mire in the streets". The Assyrian nation does not,
however, intend to be of service of the Lord: it is but fulfilling its own schemes of
conquest:--
"Wherefore it shall come to pass, that when the Lord hath performed His whole work
upon Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, I will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of
Assyria, and the glory of his high looks" (Isa. 10: 12).
We are prepared by our previous studies to find that the indignation accomplished
against Jerusalem by the Assyrian is a foreshadowing of "the last end of the indignation",
a future period alluded to in Isa. 26: 20. This period is in mind in Dan. ix:--
"In the first year of his (Darius') reign I Daniel understood by books the numbers of
years, whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet, that He would
accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem" (Dan. 9: 2).
Among the passages written by Jeremiah that Daniel would have read is Jer. 25: 11:--
"And this whole land shall be a desolation, and an astonishment, and these nations
shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years."
Another passage that would have attracted Daniel's attention is Jer. 29: 1-10:--