(Daniel 9:20-26)
In Daniel 9, after Daniel confessed the sins that caused God’s temple to become desolate, an angel told Daniel that Israel was taken into captivity for 70 years because of its sin.
The angel said that 70 weeks (“Seventy sevens,” שבע) would be decreed to put an end to sin and iniquity. In other words, it would take seven times longer to “end sin and iniquity.”1Dan 9:24
Know therefore and understand,
that from the going forth of the command
To restore and rebuild Jerusalem
Until the Messiah the Prince
There shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks;
The street shall be built again, and the wall,
Even in troublesome times.2Dan 9:25
As recorded in Ezra 4 and 7, the command to restore and rebuild the streets of Jerusalem came from King Artaxerxes, in the “fifth month of the seventh year of the king.”3Ezr 4:21; 7:8 Sir Isaac Newton, who discovered the law of gravity, studied this date and determined it to be 457 B.C., which he wrote in the margin of his 1707 King James Bible. Adding 69 weeks (483 days as years) to the year 457 B.C. brings us to A.D. 27, when Christ was anointed in His baptism. According to Luke 3:1, this was in the 15th year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius. Tiberius was granted the authority to govern the provinces soon after his military celebration on October 23, A.D. 12.4https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ancient/suet-tiberius-rolfe.asp, Suetonius, De Vita Caesarum – Tiberius, XX and XXI
Here, we learn that the days in Daniel’s prophecies are really years. In fact, the Hebrew word for days often has the meaning of years.5Gen 41:1, 2Sa 13:23; 2Sa 14:28; Jer 28:3,11 In Daniel 10, Daniel said that he fasted for “three weeks of days,”6Dan 10:2-3 emphasizing that these days were real days.
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