Daniel Chapter 9

Daniel the prophet is fasting and praying for wisdom to understand the vision of chapter 8. Even as a prophet of God, he turns to other of God’s prophets to try to understand, and he reads where the prophet Jeremiah spoke of seventy years of captivity as punishment for the Jewish nation. Being almost at the end of those seventy years, Daniel cannot understand the relation of the 2300 years (of Daniel 8:14), hoping they are not an extension of the seventy. He prays for forgiveness of his sins and the sins of his nation. Suddenly, during his prayer, the angel Gabriel returns to give him understanding of the previous vision. The angel gives the beginning point for the vision and then explains in detail the first part of the time period—seventy weeks (490 years). This is one of the most astonishing of all Bible prophecies pinpointing the very year of the Messiah’s anointing and the year of his death. The time prophecy also identifies the year of the beginning of the investigative judgment when “the judgment was set, and the books were opened.”