“Seventy weeks are decreed on your people and on your holy city, to finish disobedience, to put an end to sin, to make reconciliation for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy.
ExplanationCommentary
Verse 24. Seventy weeks (that is of years, or seventy times seven, that is, 490 years) are shortened; that is, fixed and determined, so that the time shall be no longer. Challoner.—This is not a conditional prophecy. Daniel was solicitous to know when the seventy years of Jeremias would terminate. But something of far greater consequence is revealed to him, ( Worthington.) even the coming and death of the Messias, four hundred and ninety years after the order for rebuilding the walls should be given, ( Calmet.) at which period Christ would redeem the world, ( Worthington.) and abolish the sacrifices of the law. Calmet.—Finished, or arrive at its height by the crucifixion of the Son of God; (Theod.) or rather sin shall be forgiven. Hebrew “to finish crimes to seal (cover or remit) sins, and to expiate iniquity.”—Anointed. Christ is the great anointed of God, the source of justice, and the end of the law and of the prophets, (Acts 10:38 and 1 Corinthians 1:30. Romans 10:4. Calmet.) as well as the pardoner of crimes. These four characters belong only to Christ. Worthington.