For Teaching

Daniel 9: What the Passage Says

139 claims across 27 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Daniel 9 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

In the first year of Darius, Daniel reads in the book of Jeremiah that Jerusalem's ruin is to last seventy years. He then prays a long confession, admitting that Israel broke God's law and earned the disaster written in the law of Moses, and he asks God to turn his anger away from Jerusalem. While he is still praying, the angel Gabriel arrives and gives him a message about seventy "weeks" decreed for his people and his holy city. The message lays out a sequence: seven weeks and sixty-two weeks until an anointed ruler, who is then cut off; the destruction of the city and the sanctuary by the people of a coming ruler; and a final week in which sacrifice and offering are stopped.

Claim by Claim

9:1
- Darius was the son of Ahasuerus.
- Darius was of the seed of the Medes.
- Darius was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans.
- The events took place in the first year of Darius.
9:2
- In the first year of Darius's reign, Daniel understood by the books the number of the years.
- The word of the LORD about that number of years came to Jeremiah the prophet.
- The number of years for accomplishing the desolations of Jerusalem was seventy.
- Daniel speaks in the first person.
9:3
- Daniel set his face toward the Lord God.
- Daniel sought God by prayer and supplications.
- Daniel sought God with fasting.
- Daniel sought God with sackcloth.
- Daniel sought God with ashes.
9:4
- Daniel prayed to the LORD his God.
- Daniel made confession.
- Daniel addressed God as Lord.
- Daniel called God great.
- Daniel called God dreadful.
- Daniel said God keeps the covenant and steadfast love to those who love him.
- Daniel said God keeps the covenant and steadfast love to those who keep his commandments.
9:5
- Daniel said, We have sinned.
- Daniel said, We have committed iniquity.
- Daniel said, We have done wickedly.
- Daniel said, We have rebelled.
- Daniel said, We have turned aside from your commandments and from your judgments.
9:6
- Daniel said, We have not listened to your servants the prophets.
- The prophets spoke in God's name.
- The prophets spoke to our kings.
- The prophets spoke to our princes.
- The prophets spoke to our fathers.
- The prophets spoke to all the people of the land.
9:7
- Daniel said righteousness belongs to the Lord.
- Daniel said shame of face belongs to us, as at this day.
- The shame belongs to the men of Judah.
- The shame belongs to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
- The shame belongs to all Israel, those near and those far off.
- Those far off are in all the countries where God has driven them.
- God drove them there because of their unfaithfulness against him.
9:8
- Daniel said shame of face belongs to us.
- The shame belongs to our kings.
- The shame belongs to our princes.
- The shame belongs to our fathers.
- The reason is that we have sinned against God.
9:9
- Mercies belong to the Lord our God.
- Forgivenesses belong to the Lord our God.
- We have rebelled against him.
9:10
- We have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God.
- Obeying his voice means walking in his laws.
- God set his laws before us by his servants the prophets.
9:11
- All Israel have transgressed God's law.
- All Israel turned aside so as not to obey God's voice.
- The curse has been poured out upon us.
- The oath has been poured out upon us.
- The curse and the oath are written in the law of Moses.
- Moses is the servant of God.
- The reason is that we have sinned against him.
9:12
- God has confirmed his words.
- God spoke those words against us.
- God spoke those words against our judges who judged us.
- God confirmed his words by bringing upon us a great evil.
- Nothing has been done under the whole heaven like what has been done upon Jerusalem.
9:13
- All this evil has come upon us as it is written in the law of Moses.
- We did not entreat the favor of the LORD our God.
- We did not turn from our iniquities.
- We did not give attention to God's truth.
9:14
- The LORD has watched over the evil.
- The LORD has brought the evil upon us.
- The LORD our God is righteous in all his works which he does.
- We did not obey his voice.
9:15
- Daniel addressed the Lord our God.
- God brought his people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand.
- God made himself a name, as at this day.
- Daniel said, We have sinned.
- Daniel said, We have done wickedly.
9:16
- Daniel appealed to the Lord according to all his righteousness.
- Daniel asked that God's anger and fury be turned away from his city Jerusalem.
- Jerusalem is God's holy mountain.
- Jerusalem and God's people have become a reproach to all those around us.
- The reproach is because of our sins and the iniquities of our fathers.
9:17
- Daniel asked God to hear the prayer of his servant.
- Daniel asked God to hear his servant's supplications.
- Daniel asked God to make his face shine upon his sanctuary.
- The sanctuary is desolate.
- Daniel asked this for the Lord's own sake.
9:18
- Daniel asked God to incline his ear and hear.
- Daniel asked God to open his eyes and see.
- Daniel asked God to see our desolations.
- Daniel asked God to see the city which is called by his name.
- We do not present our supplications before God on the basis of our righteousnesses.
- We present our supplications on the basis of God's great mercies.
9:19
- Daniel asked the Lord to hear.
- Daniel asked the Lord to forgive.
- Daniel asked the Lord to listen and act.
- Daniel asked God not to delay.
- Daniel asked this for God's own sake.
- God's city and God's people are called by his name.
9:20
- Daniel was speaking.
- Daniel was praying.
- Daniel was confessing his own sin.
- Daniel was confessing the sin of his people Israel.
- Daniel was presenting his supplication before the LORD his God.
- Daniel's supplication was for the holy mountain of his God.
9:21
- Daniel was still speaking in prayer.
- The man Gabriel came to Daniel.
- Daniel had seen Gabriel in the vision at the beginning.
- Gabriel was made to fly swiftly.
- Gabriel touched Daniel.
- This happened about the time of the evening offering.
9:22
- Gabriel informed Daniel.
- Gabriel talked with Daniel.
- Gabriel addressed him as Daniel.
- Gabriel said he had now come forth to give Daniel skill and understanding.
9:23
- The command went forth at the beginning of Daniel's supplications.
- Gabriel said he had come to show Daniel the command.
- Gabriel said Daniel is greatly beloved.
- Gabriel told Daniel to understand the matter.
- Gabriel told Daniel to consider the vision.
9:24
- Seventy weeks are determined upon Daniel's people and upon his holy city.
- The seventy weeks are to finish the transgression.
- The seventy weeks are to make an end of sins.
- The seventy weeks are to make atonement for iniquity.
- The seventy weeks are to bring in everlasting righteousness.
- The seventy weeks are to seal up vision and prophet.
- The seventy weeks are to anoint the most holy.
9:25
- Gabriel told Daniel to know and understand.
- From the going forth of the word to restore and to build Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks.
- It is ambiguous whether the seven weeks and the sixty-two weeks are to be counted together to the Messiah or divided.
- The street shall be built again.
- The wall shall be built again.
- The building shall happen in troublous times.
9:26
- After the sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off.
- The Messiah shall have nothing, or shall be cut off but not for himself.
- The people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary.
- The end of it shall be with a flood.
- Desolations are determined until the end of the war.
9:27
- He shall confirm the covenant with many for one week.
- In the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease.
- For the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate.
- That which is determined shall be poured upon the desolate, until the consummation.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

9:1: "Chaldeans" is an older name for the Babylonians; the kingdom of the Chaldeans is the Babylonian empire, which fell to the Medes and Persians in 539 BC. Ahasuerus is the Hebrew form of the royal name that Greek writers spell Xerxes. The Medes were a people from what is now northwestern Iran, allied with the Persians. A ruler named Darius the Mede is not mentioned in any surviving record outside the book of Daniel.
9:2: "The books" means written collections of earlier prophetic writings. Jeremiah, a prophet active in Jerusalem before and during its destruction by Babylon in 587 BC, had said the city would lie waste while the nation served Babylon for seventy years (Jeremiah 25:11-12; 29:10). Daniel is writing as one of the deportees taken to Babylon, roughly seventy years after the first deportations.
9:3: Going without food, wearing sackcloth (coarse, scratchy cloth woven from goat hair), and sitting in ashes were the standard public signs of grief or repentance in the ancient Near East. They were meant to be seen: a person in this state was visibly announcing mourning or self-humbling.
9:4: English Bibles print two different words here. "LORD" in capitals stands for the personal name of Israel's God, which Hebrew writes with four consonants and which Jewish readers traditionally do not pronounce; "Lord" in ordinary type translates a separate Hebrew word meaning "master." The "agreement" (older translations say "covenant") is the formal, binding arrangement between God and Israel made at Sinai, with obligations and stated consequences on both sides, like a treaty. "Faithful love" translates Hebrew *hesed*, the loyal commitment owed within such a relationship.
9:6: "Our fathers" means ancestors generally, not just the previous generation.
9:7: The scattering referred to is the exile: Babylon deported the leading families of Judah in stages between 605 and 582 BC, and other Judeans fled to Egypt and elsewhere. "Covered with shame" renders a Hebrew phrase literally meaning "shame of face", the public disgrace of a defeated people, not a private feeling of guilt.
9:11: The law of Moses (Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28) sets out blessings for keeping the covenant and a long list of curses for breaking it, ending in defeat, deportation and exile. Israel was understood to have sworn to those terms, so the "curse and the sworn promise" are the penalty clauses of the agreement now taking effect.
9:12: "Judges" here means rulers and officials who governed and settled disputes, not judges in the modern courtroom sense only.
9:13: "Made we not our prayer before the LORD" translates a Hebrew idiom that literally means "we did not soften the face of the LORD." It is the standard phrase for approaching a superior to ask for favor, and it pictures a hard expression relaxing.
9:15: The exodus from Egypt was the founding event of Israel's national story, and "with a strong hand" was the standard phrase for it. Daniel appeals to it as the precedent: the reputation God gained by that rescue is the ground of the request.
9:16: "Your holy mountain" is Mount Zion, the ridge in Jerusalem on which the temple stood.
9:17: "Look with favor" translates the idiom "make your face shine upon," a way of describing a superior turning towards someone with goodwill. The "holy place" is the Jerusalem temple, burned by the Babylonians in 587 BC and still unrebuilt at this point.
9:18: For a city or people to "bear" someone's name meant to belong to them and be under their protection, the same idiom used when a conqueror claimed a captured town.
9:21: Gabriel is the messenger who interpreted the earlier vision in chapter 8; this is one of only two places in the Hebrew Bible where such a figure is given a name. The evening offering was the second of the two daily temple sacrifices, made in mid-afternoon, around three o'clock. The temple was in ruins at this time, so the phrase marks the hour by a remembered routine rather than an actual sacrifice.
9:23: "Greatly loved" translates a Hebrew word meaning treasured or precious; the same term is used of valuables and of a person held dear.
9:24: The Hebrew says literally "seventy sevens." The word translated "weeks" means simply a unit of seven, and the text does not say seven of what; most readers since antiquity have taken it as seven years, giving 490 years, but the passage itself leaves the unit unstated. "To set apart with oil" refers to anointing, pouring olive oil over a person or object to mark it as dedicated to sacred use. "What is most holy" is equally open in Hebrew: it can mean the innermost room of the temple, the altar, or a most holy person.
9:25: "Messiah" is the Hebrew word *mashiach*, "anointed one", a title used in the Hebrew Bible for kings, high priests and occasionally prophets, all of whom were installed by being anointed with oil. It does not by itself identify any particular individual. Which "order to restore and rebuild Jerusalem" is meant is disputed: candidates include Cyrus's decree of 538 BC and later Persian authorisations under Artaxerxes. The Hebrew punctuation is also debated: it can be read as one stretch of sixty-nine sevens, or as seven sevens ending with one anointed figure and sixty-two more sevens of rebuilding. The word rendered "wall" is uncertain and may mean a moat or defensive trench.
9:26: "Cut off" is the ordinary Hebrew term for being killed or removed, also used of a person being cut off from the community. The phrase after it is only two words in Hebrew (literally "and there is nothing to him") and can be taken as "he will have nothing," "no one will be left to him," or, as older English versions had it, "but not for himself." The identity of "the ruler who is coming" is not stated, and the Hebrew does not make clear whether he is the same figure as the anointed one just mentioned or a different one.
9:27: Hebrew has no separate word for "he" here, so the subject is carried over from the previous verse and could be either the coming ruler or the anointed one. "Sacrifice and offering" are the two daily temple rituals, the animal sacrifice and the accompanying grain offering. The "detestable things" translate a word used in the Hebrew Bible for idols and pagan cult objects; the phrase as a whole became a fixed expression for a desecration that empties the temple of worshipers. "Wing" is literal and unclear: it may mean the pinnacle, the corner, or the extremity of the temple building. The last clause is ambiguous in Hebrew and can be read either as judgment poured out on the one who causes the ruin, or on the ruined place itself.

Read Daniel 9