70 weeks

24 “Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place. 25 Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time. 26 And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed. 27 And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator” (Dan 9:24-27).

I'm going to discuss several different interpretations of this passage.

1. There's the liberal interpretation, which relates this to the Antiochean crisis in the mid-2C BC. This suffers from some basic problems:

i) It's predicated a the secular assumption that there is no God who reveals the future.

ii) It identifies the character who's "cut off" as Onias III. However, even on liberal dating schemes, that's off by over 70 years. Liberals salvage that identification by blaming the anachronism on the the anonymous author of Daniel, who was confused. Of course, that's a circular argument. Their identification is inconsistent with the evidence. So they preemptively discount falsifying counterevidence.

iii) Antiochus never destroyed the temple or the city (of Jerusalem). And that's hardly an incidental detail.

iv) Likewise, what does the "strong covenant" refer to in his career? 

v) Ironically, liberals have their own gap theory, when they split the seven weeks from the sixty-two weeks. Likewise, they split the "prince" and "anointed one" in vv25-26a into two different figures. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but it disqualifies them from attacking amils and premils who draw similar distinctions. 

2. Some interpretations think there are two characters in view. A protagonist and an antagonist. This, in turn, has two basic variations:

i) Jesus is the protagonist, while Titus and Hadrian are the antagonists. Titus and Hadrian destroy the temple and/or the city (of Jerusalem).

ii) Jesus is the protagonist, while a future Antichrist is the antagonist.

3. Apropos 2(ii):

On this view, Dan 9:26 refers to 1C events while v27 refers to still future events. The "covenant" is a treaty or nonaggression pact which the Antichrist makes with the Jews on his rise to power. He later reneges on the deal. 

What are we to make of this interpretation? 

i) I think proponents are correct to believe that the 1C events did not exhaust Dan 9:24-27.

ii) There's nothing inherently ad hoc about positing temporal gaps. Both amils and premils do this. Arguably, that's clearly in view in Daniel, at one point or another. As one scholar notes:

But you notice between verse 2 and 3 there is an unmentioned interval of over 150 years. Daniel simply passes from Xerxes who attacked Greece, to Alexander the Great, who destroyed the Persian Empire. Daniel skips over 150 years without any reference to it. 

…in chapter 2, chapter 7, and chapter 9 he [E. J. Young] is very much against the idea of an unmentioned interval between two great events. But here he assumes a jump of at least two thousand years without it being mentioned between verse 11:35 and 36…Young, without saying so, assumes an unmentioned interval of at least 2000 years at this point between Antiochus Epiphanes and the Antichrist. 

http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted_hildebrandt/otesources/27-daniel/macrae_daniel_text_audio/macrae_daniel_lecture10.pdf

Of course, making allowance for temporal gaps doesn't justify posting temporal gaps without sufficient exegetical justification.

iii) However, both 9:26 and 9:27 share a common "desolation" motif. "Desolation" in v27 is a carryover from "desolation" v26. It seems arbitrary to split them up.

In addition, it's artificial to drive a wedge between "city and the sanctuary" in v26 and "sacrifice and offering" in v27. Those are clearly interrelated concepts. Jerusalem and the temple are where sacrifice and offering take place. 

iv) In addition, if we correlation Dan 9:24-27 with the Olivet Discourse, Jesus is, in part, answering a question about the Second Temple. The Herodian temple. That's the frame of reference. Not a Millennial temple.

v) Proponents of this view tend to flip back and forth. V24 is mainly about the future, although "atoning for iniquity" is about the past (i.e. the Crucifixion). Vv25-26 shift back to the past (i.e. the public ministry of Christ) while v27 shifts to the far future. It's a very choppy interpretation, which breaks up the flow of the passage. Not just gaps, but reversals.

In fairness, though, prophecy might include flashbacks and flash forwards. 

vi) There's nothing inherently wrong with the idea that the Antichrist might make a temporary treaty with the Jews. However, the text itself doesn't say that or imply that. In addition, I think that's out of context (see below).

4. Some interpretations think there's just one character in view throughout. That has two basic variations:

i) Christ is the consistent referent.

ii) The Antichrist is the consistent referent.

5) Apropos 4(ii), this suffers from a couple of basic problems:

i) It shares some problems with #3. 

ii) Arguments for the messianic interpretation militate against it (see below).

Apropos 4(i), on this view:

i) The Crucifixion moots the sacrificial system. In effect, the city and sanctuary are destroyed by his definitive redemptive death. At that point they've outlived their rationale. 

ii) The Crucifixion is the abomination of desolation.

iii) The "strong covenant" refers to the new covenant, foretold by Jeremiah (Jer 31). And we know that Jeremiah's oracles were on Daniel's mind (Dan 9:2). 

iv) There's a pun between "cutting" a covenant (an idiomatic term for making a covenant) and the Messiah who is "cut off" (i.e. crucified).

v) The church age is the 70th week. It began in the past, but the ending is future. 

6) I think elements of (5) are very appealing. But it suffers from some weaknesses:

i) Why would we favor a figurative interpretation when the temple and the city were actually razed by Titus and Hadrian's forces? The wording of the oracle, combined with subsequent events, invites a literal interpretation.

ii) Although, taken by itself, the Crucifixon is uniquely "abominable," in what sense would the Crucifixion be a sign or advance warning to flee Jerusalem and head for the hills decades ahead of time? It makes no sense of how that functions in the Olivet Discourse. 

7) It's possible to combine some details of these different interpretations.

i) For instance, who destroyed Jerusalem? Literally, that was Titus and Hadrian. Yet they were agents of God. So God destroyed it. And the Jews brought it on themselves. So they destroyed it–when they repudiated the Messiah. From that moment on, its doom was a foregone conclusion. And there's a sense in which Jesus destroyed it by rendering it obsolete.  

ii) Just as Antiochus was a type of Roman emperors or a type of Antichrist, Roman emperors can be a type of Antichrist. 

Likewise, one can view the fall of Jerusalem as a type of endtime deliverance and judgment.