SEVENTY WEEKS (s'ev"nq weks).
That the seventy weeks mentioned by Daniel denote weeks of years is agreed by almost every commentator, but not the time when these seventy weeks, or 490 years, began. It is plain they began from an edict or warrant to build the city of Jeru salem, and not from an edict to rebuild the tem ple; they could not therefore begin at the edict of Cyrus, or Darius, for rebuilding the temple; but at the edict of Artaxerxes Longimanus for repairing the city, either in the seventh year of his reign, when he gave Ezra his commission for that effect (Ezra vii and viii), or in the twentieth year of it, when he gave Nehemiah his (Neh. ii). The edict in the seventh year of his reign was most favorable, and was ratified by the counsel lors, as well as by the king, and appears to have been just 490 years before our Savior's death, by which he finished transgression, and made an end of sin, by his complete atonement. Of these, seven weeks, or forty-nine years, were spent in rebuilding the city and its walls, with great trou ble; and these ended about the death of Nehemiah. Sixty-two more weeks, or 434 years, elapsed, be fore the public ministry of John or Christ began; and after confirming the covenant with many, Jesus, in the last half of the seventieth week, that is, at the end of it, made the sacrifice and oblation to cease in point of obligation. If, with Mercator
and Petavius, we allow Artaxerxes to have reigned with his father ten years, and so the twentieth to be but the tenth after the death of his father Xerxes, then 483 years will elapse between that and the commencement of our Savior's public ministry, and in the midst of the seventieth week, or about three years and a half after, the sacri fices were abolished by his death. If we date the commencement of these weeks from the twentieth of Artaxerxes after the death of his father, the death of our Savior happened 478 years after, in the middle of the sixty-ninth week; and we must leave the seventieth for the events connected with the destruction of the Jewish nation, between A. D. 65 and 72, in which, after making covenants or leagues with a variety of the eastern princes, Ves pasian and his son Titus entirely overturned the Jewish church and state. But, after all, it must he allowed that the chronology of that period is not so absolutely fixed and clear as to justify any warm dispute about a few years ; it being of no great moment whether these 490 years be reckoned from the seventh or twentieth year of Artaxerxes Longimanus (Dan. ix:24-26). (Brown, Bib. Dirt.) (See DANIEL, Boox OF; WEEK.)