Daniel 9:24-27 "Seventy 'sevens' are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy. 25 "Know and understand this: From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven 'sevens,' and sixty-two 'sevens.' It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. 26 After the sixty-two 'sevens,' the Anointed One will be cut off and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed. 27 He will confirm a covenant with many for one 'seven.' In the middle of the 'seven' he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on a wing of the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him." (NIV)
The Prophet Daniel uses the hebrew word "Mâshîyach" meaning an annointed one, and he denotes a future prince, a ruler who will come to Jerusalem, a man that will be cut off. Some have been skeptical in claiming this prophecy is referring to the one and only "Messiah Son of David" on the basis of 1) an "indefnite" article when referring to "Messiah" therefore the "Messianic Messiah" is not in view 2) a possible mention of "two annointed ones" in verses 25&26, both having incompatable chronology with "Messiah Ben David" and finally 3) the preconcieved notion that the Messiah Son of David will not die but reign forever. However these three factors hold no weight as we shall see.
The third point first:
Messiah Ben David will not die therefore Daniel 9:26 cannot be referring to him.
This just begs the question, since no where does it say in scripture Messiah will not die, but it does say he will reign forever on David's Throne. Infact when we take all of scripture together in its totality we see the Messiah will die and he will reign forevermore! The objection therefore assumes that death and everlasting kingship are mutally incompatable where as the scripture makes no such assumption. Infact the New Covenant solves this clearly by pointing out the Messiah dies and then returns to reign forevermore! So it is not a case of either/or, but a case of both/and. This issue is dealt with more extensively in this article here.
Now to the first two points, here is a translation that might support the concept of two annointed ones:
9:25 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. (ESV)
As you can see the lack of the indefnite article, the periods rendered and the completely different time scales inevitably gives us "two" annointed ones. This type of misleading translation occurs in the RSV aswell, a response is inorder:
Regarding the "indefinite article" James D. Price, Ph. D. Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament, says:
"So in this passage, the punctuation preferred by Lippard, Sigal, and the RSV divide the verse so that it makes little sense. It calls for the introduction of two different Messiahs where the text obviously refers to only one; otherwise the laws of linguistics expect a distinguisher such as "another" to mark the fact that the second word "Messiah" has a different referent. Otherwise the same referent is expected.
It may be objected that the word "Messiah" in this passage is without the definite article and so refers to an indefinite person than to the well known Messiah of Jewish tradition. However, it is likely that the word is used here as a proper name that requires no article. That makes it even more evident that both occurrences of the word have the same referent." (Source)
Are there really two annointed individuals being spoken of? Not at all:
"2) Lippard, based on the work of Sigal, points out that the punctuation of the Hebrew text, as indicated by the Masoretic accents, places a major division of the verse between the seven weeks of years and the sixty-two weeks of years in verse 25. This makes the passage state that the Messiah will come after the seven weeks of years, and another Messiah after the sixty-two weeks. He is right, the Masoretic accent known as Athnach (the second strongest of the disjunctive accents) separates the seven weeks from the sixty-two weeks."
However Dr. Price says:
"This would seem almost conclusive IF ONE WERE SATISFIED WITH SHALLOW SCHOLARSHIP. But one must know more than the elementary concepts of the Masoretic accents before such conclusions can be made. The most important principle regarding the Masoretic accents is that they are primarily musical and only secondarily grammatical.
William Wickes, the most highly respected authority on the Masoretic accents, stated: "The character of the accentuation is . . . preeminently musical."[10] Likewise, Israel Yeivin, a modern Masoretic authority wrote that the primary function of the accents "is to represent the musical motifs to which the Biblical text was chanted in the public reading."[11] My own research on the Masoretic accents has verified this principle.[12] The placement of the accents of a verse are usually in harmony with the grammar of the Biblical text; but they are governed primarily by the musical demands of cantillation, and especially in poetry (as is this text of Daniel), the musical demands may overrule the grammatical demands. For example, in 1 Chronicles 1:7, a prose section, the text reads: "The sons of Javan were Elisha and Tarshishah, Kittim and Rodanim." This verse has a predicate with a fourfold compound predicate complement. In this verse the Athnach separates Tarshishah from Kittim. Grammatically there is no reason to place the major division of the verse in the middle of the compound predicate complement. According to the accents the verse should be punctuated "The sons of Javan were Elisha and Tarshishah; Kittim and Rodanim." Such punctuation is grammatically illogical. But the situation is even worse in 1 Chronicles 1:13-16 which constitutes only one sentence in English (and Hebrew): "Canaan begot Sidon, his firstborn, and Heth, and the Jebusite, and the Amorite, and the Girgashite, and the Hivite, and the Arkite, and the Sinite, and the Arvadite, and the Zemrite, and the Hamathite." This sentence contains a compound object of the verb "begot" with eleven elements each joined with the others by the conjunction "and." Yet this compound object is divided into four segments by the strongest disjunctive accent in Hebrew: Silluq with Soph Pasuq. There is no grammatical reason to divide this sentence into four segments. The reason for such grammatically illogical divisions is musical, due strictly to cantillation not grammar and syntax.
Such grammatically illogical divisions occur often, especially in poetry. So for example, in the very verse under discussion (Dan 9:25) a rather strong disjunctive accent (Tiphcha) separates "seven" from "weeks," words that are obviously grammatically related; a disjunctive accent (Garshaim) separates "weeks" from "sixty-two," again words that are obviously grammatically related; and a second time the rather strong disjunctive accent (Tiphcha) separates "troublesome" from "times," words that are obviously grammatically related.
So one cannot take an elementary approach to the accents of any verse. The punctuation of a translation, although often guided by the Masoretic accentuation, must be governed by the grammar, syntax, and exposition of the Hebrew text. These linguistic features often must overrule the musical cantillation." (Source)
Finally, One last vital translational issue we must learn is the rendering of "seventy weeks" instead of "seventy sevens", because this effects the over-all understanding of the prophecy.
Dr Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum is the Jewish founder and director of Ariel Ministries, He is ranked by some as the foremost Messianic Jewish Biblical Scholar in the world has this to say:
"Gabriel's prophecy to Daniel began with the words, "Seventy sevens are decreed upon thy people and upon thy holy city..." Many English versions have translated the phrase to read "seventy weeks." But this translation is not totally accurate and has caused some confusion about the meaning of the passage. Most Jews know the Hebrew for "weeks" because of the observance of the Feast of Weeks, and that Hebrew word is shavuot. However, the word that appears in the Hebrew text is shavuim, which means "sevens." The word refers to a "seven" of anything, and the context determines the content of the seven." (Source)
Now we learned a better translation of shavium is "sevens" and not "weeks", the question remains: Sevens of what?(days, weeks, months, years, etc). As Dr Fruchtenbaum noted context will determine the meaning. In my research I haven't found any Biblical Scholar who has disagreed that the sevens in Daniel 9 are referring to sevens of years. Since theres no point proving something already proven elsewhere and already accepted by all the scholars i've seen, I lead you to Mr Glen Miller who has already provided evidence showing the correct understanding of sevens in Daniel 9 is 'sets of years'(as opposed to sets of 'weeks' and/or 'months'):
"First, the related background/cases in the Tanakh/OT.
In this category are two types of data: (1) evidence from the context of the passage in Daniel and (2) evidence from other passages in which a day symbolizes a year.
Under (1), we can simply note a representative reference or two:
...in Dan 9:24,25,26,27 it denotes a period of seven years in each of its appearances in these four verses. This is proven by the context wherein Daniel recognizes that the seventy-year period of captivity is almost over. The land had been fallow for seventy years and thus repaid the Lord for the seventy sabbatical years owed to him for the prior seventy periods of seven years (Dan 9:2; Jer 25.12; cf. II Chr 36.21!). Just as Daniel is in prayer concerning this matter, the angel Gabriel appears and informs him that Israel's restoration will not be complete until she goes through another seventy periods-of-seven, shabua (Dan 9.24ff)! Note also the apparent reference in Dan 12:12 to half of Daniel's last seventy (9:27); it is 1290 days, approximately three and a half years. Thus here it means years." [TWOT, s.v. "shabua"]
"Note that Daniel elsewhere (10:2) specified when he meant weekdays: sheloshah shabhu`im yamim (selosah sabucim yamim, "three weeks"). No plausible argument has ever been raised against the deduction that the heptads here referred to consist of years rather than days, for 490 days would be meaningless in this context. Almost all the lexicons so define it in connection with this passage (BDB, p. 989; W. Gesenius, Hebraisches and Aramaisches Handworterbuch, 17th ed., ed. F. Buhl [Leipzig, 1921], p. 800; F. Zorell and L. Semkowski, eds., Lexicon Hebraicum et Aramaicum veteris Testamenti [Rome, 1940], p. 815). KB (p. 940) alone adheres to "period of seven days," apparently on the ground that only symbolic value is involved rather than an actual time. But the preceding verses show that the subject under discussion is the seventy-year captivity predicted in Jer 25:11-12; 29:10. Gabriel's response to Daniel's prayer concerning the termination of the Exile must have had the year-unit in view, not the more usual day-unit. As for the purely symbolic use of "seventy `sevens,'" there is not the slightest analogy for such usage in all Scripture. According to 2 Chronicles 36:21, the Jewish nation had been punished by this captivity so that the land might at last enjoy rest from cultivation for a period equivalent to all the seventh-year Sabbath rests that had been prescribed in the Law of Moses but that had been routinely neglected (Exod 23:10-11; Lev 25:15-11; Deut 15:1-11; 31:10-13). In this divine oracle, therefore, the multiplying of seventy by seven was analogous to Jesus' response to Peter about the number of times an offender should be forgiven (Matt 18:22). [EBC, in.loc.]" (Glen provides more evidence here)
Now the prophecy becomes slighty more clear!
9:24 "Seventy 'sevens' are decreed for your people..." --- 70 sets of 7 Years comes to 490 years
9:25 "Know and understand this: From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven 'sevens,' AND sixty-two 'sevens.' "--- 7 Sets of 7 Years comes to 49 Years and 62 sets of 7 years comes to 434 years! adding this together(434+49) makes 483 years from the decree to rebuild the city until the coming of an Annointed Prince riding into Jerusalem.
9:26 "AFTER the sixty-two 'sevens,' the Anointed One WILL BE cut off and will have nothing." --- After 434 years(which follows the 49 years), Messiah would be cut off and die. This means Messiah would die sometime after 483 years from the decree.
9:27 "He will confirm a covenant with many for one 'seven.' In the middle of the 'seven' he will put an end to sacrifice and offering." --- In this case 1 set of 7 years, which is 7 years! This means the end of sacrifice was 3.5 years during the 7 year covenant.
Interestingly enough the 70 sevens are broken into time intervals, 7 sevens, 62 sevens and 1 seven, this a total of 70 sevens! why is this? More to Come!
