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 popularly
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 apparently 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 many saw it, had been completed, and a great many of the
people, partially owing to the ongoing subjection to Rome, 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 to the land of
Israel and the area of Jerusalem under the leadership of Ezra, with this
coinciding 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, the
people of the Creator God people did not yet consider themselves to have fully
and truly exodused from the state of exile. Rather, a popular conception amongst
the people was that they remained under the promised curses of their faithful,
covenant God.
Due to subsequent
rule by Greece, Egypt, Rome, and others, this popular 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!” (Nehemiah 9:36-37) This
self-understanding is also reflected in the book of Ezra. This way of comprehending their position
lined up with the curses of Leviticus and Deuteronomy that were associated with
the Creator God’s covenant with His people.
So though they lived
in (and many possessed ownership of) their own land, Israel waited for its messiah. A number of potential messiahs came and went,
with one failure after another. As Daniel’s four hundred ninety year
period began to draw to a completion, something of a fever pitch was created amongst
the people. Many insisted that their God, if He was indeed as faithful as
He was believed to be, had to act according to His promises. It must be remembered that the promises of
their God, in accordance with the covenant, coupled with the dramatic display
of the exodus that was such an important part of the way that Israel defined
itself, were part and parcel of the way that members of the nation of Israel
looked upon the world.
This way of thinking
concerning the way that the promises were to come to fruition, and especially
the messianic way that those promises were viewed through the lens of prophets
such as Isaiah, produced a substantial number of messianic movements, a great
deal of high-minded words, a substantial amount of activity on behalf of more
than a few well-intentioned (for the most part) members of the covenant people
to establish themselves as the messiah, and ultimately many empty and futile
claims.
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