Counting the Seventy Weeks

So we must look into the times: the times of the Christ’s foretold and future birth, of his suffering, and of the wiping out of the city of Jerusalem — that is, of its devastation. For Daniel says that both the holy city and the holy place are wiped out along with the Leader who is coming, and that the pinnacle is destroyed and brought to ruin. And so we must look into the times of the coming of Christ the Leader. We will trace them in Daniel, and once we have counted them up we will prove that he has come — on the ground of the times laid down for him, and of signs and works that fit them. We prove the same thing again from the consequences that were always announced as following his coming, so that we may believe everything was fulfilled just as surely as it was foreseen. [a]

This, then, is how Daniel foretold him: so as to show both when and at what time he was going to set the nations free, and how, after the suffering of the Christ, that city had to be wiped out. For he says this: “In the first year under Darius son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Medes, who reigned over the kingdom of the Chaldeans, I, Daniel, understood in the books the number of the years. … And while I was still speaking in my prayer, there was the man Gabriel, whom I saw in the vision at the beginning, flying; and he touched me at about the hour of the evening sacrifice, and made me understand, and spoke with me, and said: “Daniel, I have come out now to fill you with understanding. At the beginning of your prayer a word went out, and I have come to announce it to you, because you are a man of desires. So ponder the word, and understand it in the vision. Seventy weeks have been cut short upon your people and upon the holy city, until wrongdoing has grown old, and sins are sealed, and righteousness is obtained by pleading, and everlasting righteousness is brought in; and so that vision and prophet may be sealed, and a holy one of holy ones anointed. “And you shall know, and see it through, and understand: from the going out of a word for restoring and rebuilding Jerusalem, up to the Christ, the Leader, weeks — seven and a half, and sixty-two and a half. And it shall turn back, and shall be built up into height and rampart, and the times shall be made new. And after these sixty-two weeks the anointing shall be wiped out and shall not be; and the city and the holy place he shall wipe out, along with the Leader who is making his coming; and they shall be cut short as in a flood, until the end of a war, which shall be cut short and brought to ruin. And he shall confirm a covenant among many. In one week, and in the half of the week, my sacrifice and drink offering shall be taken away, and in the holy place the curse of devastation; and until the end of the time, an end shall be given concerning this devastation.”

So let us note the limit. He foretells, in truth, that there are to be seventy weeks, within which, if they receive him, “it shall be built up into height and rampart, and the times shall be made new.” But God, foreseeing what was going to happen — that they would not merely fail to receive him, but would persecute him and hand him over to death — summed the matter up again, and said that in sixty-two and a half weeks he is born and a holy one of holy ones is anointed; but that when seven and a half weeks were being fulfilled he had to suffer, and the holy city had to be wiped out after one and a half weeks, by which, that is, the seven and a half weeks have been completed. For he says this: “And the city and the holy place to be wiped out along with the Leader who is to come; and they shall be cut short as in a flood; and he shall destroy the pinnacle and bring it to ruin.” From what, then, do we show that the Christ came within the sixty-two and a half weeks? We shall count from the first year of Darius, since it is at this particular time that this particular vision is shown to Daniel; for he says, “And understand and work it out, that at the completion of your word I am giving you these answers.” So we are bound to count from the first year of Darius, when Daniel saw this vision.

Let us see, then, how the years are filled up until the coming of the Christ.

Then, after Alexander — who had reigned over both Medes and Persians, having reconquered them, and had settled his kingdom firmly in Alexandria, calling that city by his own name — after him there reigned, in Alexandria:

Now let us see how the Christ is born in the forty-first year of the reign of Augustus, when he had been reigning twenty-eight years after the death of Cleopatra. (And this same Augustus lived on fifteen years after Christ was born; and the remaining years up to the day of Christ’s birth will bring us to the forty-first year, which is the twenty-eighth year of Augustus after Cleopatra’s death.) That makes 337 years and 5 months — from which sixty-two and a half weeks are filled up, which come to 437 years and 6 months — up to the day of the birth of Christ.

And then “everlasting righteousness” was made plain, and “a holy one of holy ones was anointed” — that is, Christ — and “vision and prophet were sealed,” and “sins” were forgiven, which through faith in the name of Christ are washed away for everyone who trusts him. But what does he mean by saying that “vision and prophecy are sealed”? He means that all the prophets ever announced about him was that he was to come and had to suffer. So, since the prophecy was fulfilled through his coming, that is why he said that “vision and prophecy were sealed” — since he is the seal of all the prophets, fulfilling everything they had announced about him in days gone by. For after the coming of Christ and his suffering there is no longer any “vision or prophet” to announce him as still to come. In short, if this is not so, let the Jews produce, from after Christ, any volumes of prophets, any visible miracles worked by angels such as the patriarchs saw in days gone by, up until the coming of Christ, who has now come. Since that event, “vision and prophecy are sealed” — that is, confirmed. And the evangelist writes rightly, “The law and the prophets were until John” the Baptist. For when Christ was baptized — that is, when he made the waters holy in his own baptism — the whole fullness of the spiritual gifts of grace that had gone before came to an end in Christ, since he sealed all vision and prophecies, fulfilling them by his coming. That is why he asserts so firmly that his coming “seals visions and prophecy.”

So, having shown both the number of the years and the time of the sixty-two and a half weeks that were fulfilled — at the end of which, as we have shown, the Christ came, that is, was born — let us now see what those other “seven and a half weeks” mean, which were set apart in the cutting of the earlier weeks; let us see, that is, in what event they were fulfilled.

And so, on the day their city was stormed, the Jews fulfilled the seventy weeks foretold in Daniel.

So when these times too were completed and the Jews were subdued, “drink offerings and sacrifices” afterward ceased in that place, and from then on could not be carried out there; for “the anointing” too was “wiped out” in that place after the suffering of Christ. It had been foretold that the anointing would be wiped out in that place, as it is prophesied in the Psalms: “They wiped out my hands and my feet.” And the suffering of this “wiping out” was completed within the times of the seventy weeks, under Tiberius Caesar, in the consulship of Rubellius Geminus and Fufius Geminus, in the month of March, at the time of the Passover, on March 25, on the first day of unleavened bread, on which they killed the lamb toward evening, just as Moses had commanded. And so the whole assembly of Israel killed him, saying to Pilate, when he wanted to let him go: “His blood be on us and on our children.” “If you let him go, you are no friend of Caesar.” All this so that everything written about him might be fulfilled.