Four Hundred Ninety Years

Seventy weeks have been determined concerning your people and your holy city to put an end to rebellion, to bring sin to completion, to atone for iniquity, to bring in perpetual righteousness, to seal up the prophetic vision, and to anoint a most holy place. – Daniel 9:24 (NET

This was understood to be seventy weeks of years, or four hundred ninety years. Further information about the significance of this period of time is provided in the following verse, which says, “So know and understand: From the issuing of the command to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until an anointed one, a prince arrives, there will be a period of seven weeks and sixty two weeks” (9:25a). This served to color the expectation of the people in the days of Jesus. At the time in which Jesus lived, the four hundred ninety year period, as they saw it, had been completed, and the people were looking for their “anointed one,” their “prince,” their messiah” to appear.

Over five hundred years prior to the time of Jesus, groups of people had returned under the leadership of Ezra, with the decree from Cyrus, the king of Persia, to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. Though there had been a return to their land of promise, because the people were still under the rule of a foreign power, God’s people did not yet consider themselves to have fully returned from exile. They still considered themselves to be under God’s curse. Due to subsequent rule by Greece, Egypt, Syria, and Rome, this mindset would persist through Jesus’ day. In the days of Nehemiah, though they lived in their land, the people readily confessed that “today we are slaves! In the very land You gave to our ancestors to eat its fruit and to enjoy its good things---we are slaves. Its abundant produce goes to the kings you have placed over us due to our sins. They rule over our bodies and our livestock as they see fit, and we are in great distress!” (9:36-37) This understanding of their position lined up with the curses of Deuteronomy that were associated with God’s covenant with His people.

So in their own land, they waited for their messiah. As the four hundred ninety year period began to draw to a completion, it created a fever pitch amongst the people. They knew that God, if He was faithful, had to act according to His promises. This produced many messianic movements, a great deal of high-minded words, a substantial amount of activity on behalf of many to establish themselves as the messiah, and ultimately many empty and futile claims. However, God was in control and faithful to His promise. When the four hundred ninety years were fully complete, as God saw it, then His covenant people would have their King. They would have the shepherd to whom Zechariah pointed.

Interestingly enough, this was not the first time that God’s people had waited four hundred ninety years for their King. This was not the first time that, though they were in their promised land, they were not autonomous. It would not have only been in Nehemiah’s day that the people could have said of their land, “Its abundant produce goes to the kings you have placed over us due to our sins…and we are in great distress!” This was not the first time that the people could have said “today we are slaves,” as they looked forward to a King, and a shepherd to lead them. In the book of Acts, the Apostle Paul makes a speech in which he says that “The God of this people Israel chose our ancestors and made the people great during their stay as foreigners in the country of Egypt (ruled by a foreign power), and with uplifted arm He led them out of it. For a period of about forty years He put up with them in the wilderness. After He had destroyed seven nations in the land of Canaan, He gave His people their land as an inheritance” (13:17-19).

For Paul and others, this could easily be made to correspond to the history of the remnants of Judah returning under God’s direction, from Babylon to Jerusalem, to rebuild the Temple in their land. What does Paul add to this? He says, “All this took about four hundred fifty years” (13:20a). Four hundred fifty years is not quite four hundred ninety years, but we must continue. “After this He gave them judges until the time of Samuel the prophet” (13:20b), in which God’s people would be ruled by an alternating series of foreign powers, not unlike the period of time from Daniel to Jesus. “Then they asked for a king, and God gave them Saul son of Kish, a man from the tribe of Benjamin, who ruled forty years” (13:20c-21).

Four hundred fifty years, plus forty years, is four hundred ninety years. What happened next? “After removing him, God raised up David their king. He testified about him: ‘I have found David the son of Jesse to be a man after My heart, who will accomplish everything I want him to do’.” (13:22) David was the first shepherd-king of God’s people. Paul, fully aware of the importance of the four hundred ninety years of Daniel and its presentation of the coming of the messiah (the Son of David), constructs a narrative in which David himself is given to Israel after a period of four hundred ninety years. Upon doing that, Paul immediately turns to Jesus the Messiah, saying that “From the descendants of this man God brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, just as He promised” (13:23). Jesus, of course, was the greater Shepherd-King.