May 5, 2017 Will A Middle East Peace Deal Be Signed? How Can We Know Who The Antichrist Is?

The ninth chapter has been of particular interest to both Jews and Christians.

Christians, on the other hand, tend to focus on verses 24 -26. The following is the Christian translation of those verses:

24) Seventy weeks are determined upon your people and upon your holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.
25)”Know therefore and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again with plaza and moat but in troubled times. 26) Then after sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off but not for himself and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary.”

To understand this chapter, we must begin with an explanation of the term “weeks.”

Daniel chapter 9 uses the Hebrew word (שבעים ~ Shavuim) to represents a period of time multiplied by seven. For various reasons this word is translated as “weeks” and means a multiple of seven years rather than a multiple of seven days.

a) We see a similar use in the verse, “You shall count~ שבע שבתת השנים) seven Shabbaths of years), seven years seven times… forty-nine years.” Leviticus 25:8
b) A Shabbath is a period of seven days and shares the same Hebrew root for the word
(שבועה~Shavuah) that means “week”.
c) Normally the plural of week would be (שבעות ~ Shavuot) in Daniel it uses the masculine “ים” ending for ( שבעים~ Shavuim) similar to (years ~ שנים) This indicates that (שבעים~ Shavuim) is referring to a multiple of seven years
d) Both Jews and Christian agree that this is referring to a multiple of years.

Therefore in Daniel chapter 9, each week is a period of seven years.