Daniel's Prophecy on the 69^th^ Week: Messiah Anointed

One of the famous numerical prophecies of Daniel is about 70 weeks, which was recorded in Daniel 9:24-25:

These two verses tell us that the length of 70 weeks is determined for the destiny of the holy people (the Israelites), for the holy city (Jerusalem), and for anointing the most holy who is the Messiah and the prince of the nation of Israel. According to the prophecy, the Messiah should have appeared in the 69^th week from the time when the command to restore and rebuild Jerusalem was issued. The last day of the 69^th prophetic week (one prophetic day is equivalent to one solar year) should correspond to the 483^rd year (69×7 = 483) from the time of issuing the command.

In order to check whether this prophecy was fulfilled, we need to know exactly which year the command to restore Jerusalem went forth and which year the Messiah appeared. As we have already shown that Yeshua was claimed by God to be His Son when John the Baptist baptized him on 24 February 27 AD (see Chapter 12). He was declared to be the Lamb of God on Nisan 10 (April 5 of 27 AD) and started his ministry on April 6 of 27 AD, which lasted for 3 years. If Yeshua is indeed the Messiah, the command to restore and rebuild Jerusalem must have been issued in the spring of 457 BC. This is because the 483^rd year from the spring of 457 BC is the year from the spring of 26 AD to the spring of 27 AD (please note that 457 BC = –456 because year 0 does not exist). We will show below that the spring of 457 BC was indeed the time when Ezra received a command from King Artaxerxes I in his 7^th year of reign. We will also prove that this command has a component of rebuilding the city of Jerusalem, which perfectly matches the prophecy.

Two clear commands were described in the book of Ezra. Cyrus king of Persia in the first year of his reign proclaimed the first command (Ezra 1:1-4). Artaxerxes I issued the second command in the seventh year of his reign (Ezra 7:6-26). In the 20^th year of Artaxerxes I, the governor Nehemiah asked the king to send him to Jerusalem to repair broken wall (Nehemiah 2:1-6). After the request was granted, Nehemiah asked the king to write two letters (Nehemiah 2:7-8). One letter was addressed to the governors of the region beyond the River so that they permitted Nehemiah to pass through their region. The second letter was given to Asaph the keeper of the king's forest. In this letter, Asaph was asked to provide timber to make beams for the temple gates and the city wall. It is apparent that these two letters were not the commands to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, but only served to help Nehemiah in his work of repairing the city wall. Therefore, only one of the two commands recorded in the book of Ezra was the command to rebuild the city.

Now let us check which command is relevant to the one mentioned by Daniel. In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, the king issued a decree to rebuild the temple and to allow the exiled Jews to return to Jerusalem. Since Cyrus' decree was only to rebuild the temple but not the city, the returned Jews began to rebuild the temple and lay its foundation (Ezra 3:10-11) while the city remained in ruin (Ezra 4:11-12).

The adversaries of the Jews despised the sanctuary and this holy people who knew God's law. Chapter 4 of the book of Ezra clearly recorded how the adversaries tried to oppose rebuilding the temple and the city with several strategies during a long period from the days of Cyrus to the reign of Artaxerxes I. Some events in this chapter actually happened after the events described in later chapters, which may confuse readers. But if one reads the book carefully, one should be able to understand why the author did not write these events sequentially. It is clear that the author wanted to describe all of the schemes of Israel's adversaries together.

The schemes of the adversaries include the following (Ezra 4) : 1) They gathered to oppose it, 2) they tried to join (infiltrate) so they could manipulate and hinder the process, 3) they wrote an accusation against the Jews to Artaxerxes I, "they are building a rebellious and evil city and will excite sedition," and 4) they asked Artaxerxes I to issue a command to stop rebuilding the city.

Because of the adversaries, the early progress to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem was discontinued until the second year of Darius (Ezra 4:24). In this year, Yehowah spoke to the prophet Haggai concerning the temple. With the encouragement of the prophet, the Jews again started to work by laying the foundation of the temple. The temple was finally finished on the third day of the month of Adar, which was in the sixth year of Darius (Ezra 6:15) and in the spring of 516 BC.

The Jews started to rebuild the city of Jerusalem in the days of Xerxes I (Ezra 4:6) after Darius helped rebuild the temple in 516 BC. However, in the days of both Xerxes I and Artaxerxes I, the adversaries wrote accusations against the Jews who were rebuilding the city (Ezra 4:6-23). During the earlier reign of Artaxerxes I, the adversaries wrote Artaxerxes I in Aramaic script, accusing the Jews of rebuilding a rebellious and evil city. Then Artaxerxes I commanded the Jews to stop rebuilding the city wall. The king also ordered that this city could not resume its reconstruction until he gave a new command (Ezra 4:21).

The king's reply was a great victory for the adversaries who went immediately to the Jews in Jerusalem and compelled them by force to stop their work (Ezra 4:23). Then Yehowah raised up Ezra who was a ready scribe in the Law of Moses. The king granted Ezra all his requests because the hand of Yehowah was upon him (Ezra 7:6). Because the king had previously issued the command to temporarily suspend the reconstruction of Jerusalem, it is natural that one of Ezra's requests should have been a reversal of the king's previous cessation command. Apparently, the king granted Ezra all his requests and sent him to investigate Judah and Jerusalem according to the Law of Moses (Ezra 7:14). King Artaxerxes I provided more than enough gold and silver to beautify the temple of God in Jerusalem. The king also said that any silver and gold that was left over may be used for whatever Ezra and his colleagues felt was the will of their God (Ezra 7:18). Since the king had withdrawn his previous cessation decree and issued a new decree to restore Jerusalem, Ezra may have used the rest of the gold and silver to rebuild Jerusalem. This can be seen in the prayer of Ezra in Ezra 9:9. Ezra thanked God for not forsaking them but extending mercy unto them in the sight of the kings of Persia and giving them revival and the wall in Judah and in Jerusalem. Ezra's prayer implies that the Persian king had granted them the permission and provided enough gold and silver to rebuild the house of their God, to repair its ruins, and to rebuild the wall in Judah and in Jerusalem.

In the adversaries' efforts to thwart Jerusalem's reconstruction, they apparently knocked down the rebuilt sections of the wall and burned the gates. This was where Nehemiah came into the picture (Nehemiah 1:3). In the 20^th year of Artaxerxes I, Nehemiah heard the sad news that the attempts to rebuild Jerusalem were frustrated again. Nehemiah 1:3 implies that the Jews must have been given permission to rebuild Jerusalem from Artaxerxes I in his decree issued in his 7^th year.

Because of the bad news, Nehemiah spoke to Artaxerxes I, who gave him permission to go back and repair the broken wall in Jerusalem (Nehemiah 2), which was rebuilt previously. If Artaxerxes I had not given the Jews the permission to rebuild Jerusalem in his 7^th year, there would have been no rebuilt wall in Jerusalem to be knocked down by the adversaries in the 20^th year of Artaxerxes I (Nehemiah 1:1-3). If Artaxerxes I had not given the Jews the permission to rebuild Jerusalem in his 7^th year, he would not have let Nehemiah go back to repair the broken wall in Jerusalem in his 20^th year. Therefore, Artaxerxes's command in his 7^th year must have had a component of rebuilding the city of Jerusalem.

With the two letters Nehemiah received from Artaxerxes I in his 20^th year, the wall was put up successfully without much trouble (Nehemiah 6:15). Daniel predicted that the street and the wall would be built again in troublesome times after the command to rebuild Jerusalem was issued. Because Nehemiah did not go back to rebuild the street but only to repair the wall, the king's letters in his 20^th year could not have included the component of rebuilding the street. Thus, the street must have been rebuilt after Ezra received the command of Artaxerxes I in the spring of his 7^th year.

In summary, only the decree of Artaxerxes I to Ezra was the command to restore and rebuild both the temple and Jerusalem while the command of Cyrus was only to allow the Jews to rebuild the temple of God. The street and the wall were rebuilt after Ezra received the command of Artaxerxes I in his 7^th year. Then some sections of the wall in Jerusalem were destroyed again by the adversaries in the 20^th year of Artaxerxes I. Nehemiah and his colleagues finally finished repairing the wall within 52 days in 25 Elul of 444 BC (Nehemiah 6:15).

Now back to the subject concerning the issuing time for the decree of Artaxerxes I. According to Ezra 7:8, Ezra left Babylon on Nisan 1 and arrived in Jerusalem on the first day of the fifth month in the 7^th year of Artaxerxes I. Since Ezra left Babylon on the first day of the month of Nisan, the command must have been issued on or before that day.

Artaxerxes I began to reign on 12 October 464 BC (see Chapter 8). Thus, the 7^th year of Artaxerxes I was from 12 October 458 BC to 11 October 457. Since Ezra left Babylon on Nisan 1 and arrived in Jerusalem on the 1^st day of the fifth month, in the 7^th year of Artaxerxes I, the day that Ezra left for Jerusalem must have been on 1 Nisan of 457 BC (26 March 457 BC).

It is interesting to note that Nisan 1 just coincided with the Vernal Equinox in 457 BC, suggesting that this year is quite special and significant. This day was also the new-year day in both the Hebrew and Babylonian lunisolar calendars. Ezra should have left for Jerusalem immediately after the king issued the command because he prepared his heart to seek the Law of God, to follow it, and to teach it in Israel (Ezra 7:9-10). If he left on the same day, the command should have gone forth on Nisan 1 of 457 BC and on the day of the Vernal Equinox.

Daniel 9:25 is literally translated as, "Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince, weeks 7 and weeks 62; the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublesome times." Here, the phrases "weeks 7" and "weeks 62" have an unusual word order that may express an idea of counting weeks. If this is the case, the number "7" and "62" in Daniel 9:25 should be understood as ordinal numbers and the Messiah should have been anointed in the 483^rd year from the time of issuance of the command to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. The 483^rd year from the issuance of the command was the year between the Vernal Equinoxes of 26 AD and 27 AD. Yeshua was baptized by John the Baptist on 24 February 27 AD, which was exactly four weeks before the Vernal Equinox (March 23) of 27 AD. The day when Yeshua was baptized and anointed was indeed in the 483^rd year from the time of issuing the command. This cannot be a coincidence. It provides clear evidence that Yeshua is the Messiah anointed by God in the early spring of 27 AD.