Tuesday: The 70 Weeks and the 2,300 Days

The word “determined” found in Daniel 9:24, “Seventy weeks are determined”, literally means, “Seventy weeks are cut off”. Although the word translated as “determined” is not used anywhere else in the Bible, it is found in Jewish literature, and it means “cutting off” from something longer. Since Daniel 8 presents the 2,300-years prophecy, whose starting point is not given in Daniel chapter 8, it logically follows that when the next chapter (Daniel chapter 9) talks about 490 years as “determined” or “cut off”, they can be “cut off” only from the 2,300 prophetic years mentioned in the previous chapter. After all, what else could this period be “cut off” from but another, and longer, time prophecy?

Read Daniel 8:1-27. What was the one part of the vision given that was not explained (see especially Dan. 8:14, Daniel 8:26-27)?

There are many reasons why the 70-week prophecy of Daniel 9:24-27 and the 2,300 evenings and mornings prophecy of Daniel 8:14 belong together: 1. both are time prophecies; 2. the specific terminology of “vision” and “understanding” links them (see Dan. 8:26-27 and Daniel 9:23); 3. both interpretations of the prophecies were given by Gabriel (see Dan. 8:16 and Daniel 9:21); 4. the only part of the vision not explained in Daniel chapter 8 was the vision about the 2,300 evenings and mornings (sometimes translated as “days”) in Daniel 8:14; 5. Daniel chapter 8 contains the vision and then a partial interpretation of it, while Daniel chapter 9 has an interpretation only, in this case the interpretation of the only part of Daniel chapter 8 not interpreted — which was the 2,300-day prophecy of Daniel 8:14, the one part of the vision that Daniel had not understood (see Dan. 8:27).

The information given to us in Ezra fills in the missing pieces of the prophecy’s predictions in the book of Daniel, namely, when to begin historically to count the prophetic time regarding crucial aspects of Christ’s ministry and work on our behalf.