Daniel 9:24-27 might be one of the hardest passages in all of Scripture to decipher. The original text seems to be intentionally ambiguous. We really are required to look at every little detail of this passage. Even after doing so, it's easy to come away from it still scratching your head.
Having just finished two blogs on Daniel 2 & 7 you'll see that Rome plays no part in those prophecies. However, Rome cohorts will point to this prophecy in Daniel 9 and the AD 70 destruction of the Temple to support their claim that the Antichrist will be of the revived Roman Empire.
Daniel 7 Beasts: Click Here! Nebuchadnezzar - The Great Statue: Click Here!
You may also want to review:
Seventy Weeks - Six Conditions: Click Here!
Now, moving on to Daniel 9...
Daniel was certainly trying to figure it out... Gabriel had to explain:
[Dan 9:22-23 LSB] Then he made me understand and spoke with me and said, “O Daniel, I have now come forth to give you insight with understanding. [23] “At the beginning of your supplications the word was issued, so I have come to tell you, for you are highly esteemed; so understand the message and gain understanding in what has appeared.
[Dan 9:26 LSB] Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are decreed. 9:26a - And after the 62 weeks an anointed one shall be cut off... After the 69th week, but before, or at the start of the 70th - the "cut off" is the hinge event. The "textual hinge" is the pivot point at which the conversation changes. Christ was "cut off" when he died, was resurrected and ascended. "shall be cut off" → violent, premature, judicial death (same verb used for execution or excommunication in Lev 17:14; Isa 53:8; Ps 37:9). Was the Messiah cut off? Isaiah says "yes": [Isa 53:8 KJV] He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken. So, with "cut off" being the grammatical, textual hinge event, we could say that everything after may refer explicitly to the 70th week.
Certainly, we can say that the next events do not refer to the 69th and previous. In other words, all of the next events come after the 69th, with "cut off" being the textual hinge, but they may not necessarily refer explicitly to the 70th week as it is sometime in the future. Clear as muddy water, right? 9:26b - destruction of city & sanctuary + "until the end of the war decreed desolations" No week-number is given → grammatically still under the 70-week decree, but not explicitly confined to the 70th week. Most scholars place it within or at the end of the 70th. I mean... good grief! Doesn't it figure? One of the things we're trying to decide is whether the AD 70 destruction qualifies with the original text, and the grammar appears to be ambiguous with no textual clues like the next events below.
These are the only parts the Hebrew text explicitly tagged as belonging to the 70th week:
9:27a – the confirming/strengthening of a covenant for one week
9:27b – the cessation of sacrifice in the middle of that week
9:27c – the abomination and final judgment that run until the end of that same period
For me, concerning the Temple destruction, I would claim that it's safe, or at least reasonable, to assume that the destruction is tagged as a 70th week event by association to 9:27a-c.
We know for a fact that none of the events of 9:27a-c can be attributed to the AD 70 destruction. Therefore the destruction of city and sanctuary, spoken of by Daniel, must be a 70th week event.
Safe to assume? You know what they say about those who assume...
"and the people of the prince who is to come"
There are really only a couple of ways to view this.
[1] Almost every commentator, theologian, and scholar all point to the destruction of AD 70 under Titus and Rome. We all know that this historically happened.
I often wonder "what they would point to had that destruction not occurred?". I would think their only option would be to point to the 70th week. Unfortunately, they come up with all kinds of answers for that... they point to Antiochus, or Yeshua and a "spiritual" fulfillment, etc.
For the above situation, we need to determine who the "prince" is. If the prince is Titus, then "the people" belong to Titus. If the prince is the coming Antichrist, then "the people" belong to the Antichrist.
The prince cannot be Titus because Titus didn't "confirm a covenant", etc. All of these things did not happen in AD 70; there was no covenant, no sacrifices to stop, and no abomination set up in the holy place. The prince is not Titus.
Those who hold to the AD 70 destruction claim, either way - the people are Roman because it was Rome that destroyed the city and temple.
There are a couple of problems with this...
Some, correctly point out that by the late AD 60s, almost no ethnic Italian Romans were serving in the eastern legions. The Roman army had long since become a multi-ethnic imperial force drawn from the provinces. The soldiers who actually burned the Temple and razed Jerusalem were overwhelmingly Syrians, Arabs, and eastern provincials — many of whom hated the Jews with a passion (Josephus repeatedly notes their cruelty and that they acted against Titus’s orders in setting fire to the Temple).
The Hebrew Text
Anyone who claims that Daniel 9:26 teaches that the destroyers of Jerusalem (or their descendants) must be ethnically Roman, because of their association with Rome, is adding a meaning to עַם that the Hebrew language itself never gives. The Hebrew word simply does not work that way.
The Septuagint (LXX) Greek The LXX translators did not see any ethnic connotation in the Hebrew עַם at all. They rendered it with λαός, the standard Greek word - can be political, ethnic, or military (the same word used for “the people” of Israel, Egypt, Rome, etc., without implying race). They translated נָגִיד with ordinary leadership titles (ἄρχων / ἡγούμενος) that carry zero ethnic or national implication in either direction.
What we end up with is that the language does allow that "people" could in fact be referring to their ethnicity. Meaning, that Rome, or Romans, cannot be explicitly claimed just because Titus, of Rome, was in charge of the destruction.
[2] Most agree that "the prince who is to come" is the Antichrist. If the Antichrist "who is to come" is not yet here, neither are "the people". This points to the destruction of the city [Jerusalem] and the sanctuary [third temple] in the future. There's nothing in the original language to disallow this.
This, in turn, could point back to the ethnicity argument in [1] above. The "people" ethnically could still exist when the Antichrist arrives on the scene and become his people in that way.
The question is, how far into the future? I'll be getting to the "little horn" and the "willful king" soon. In this case we're told "even to the end there will be war". "End" is pretty far into the future, wouldn't you say?
וְקִצּוֹ בַשֶּׁטֶף וְעַד קֵץ מִלְחָמָה נֶחָרֶצֶת שֹׁמֵמוֹת
Liiterally: "and its end with-a-flood, and until end-of war determined desolations"
קֵץ
Above is Daniel’s standard word for the final consummation (Dan 8:17, 19; 11:35, 45; 12:4, 9, 13).
This being the case, it is safe to say the "end" being referred to is, in fact, pointing to end-time events (consummation). The same prince appears again in the very next verse where he confirms a covenant for one week, stops sacrifice in the middle of the week, and sets up the abomination of desolation.
[Dan 9:27 LSB] And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will make sacrifice and grain offering cease; and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate. Or, at least, that is the common interpretation. There's nothing in the text that forces the "he will make a firm covenant" to refer to "the prince who is to come".
Hebrew routinely allows a verb to refer back to the most important or most recent named individual, even across intervening material (resumptive pronoun). Which in this case could be "the anointed One", or the Messiah.
Normal default rule: the verb refers to the nearest eligible masculine singular antecedent. In this case, pointing to the "prince who is to come".
Obviously, most believe the "he" is referring to "the prince who is to come". This is just one of those "cover all your bases" issues.
The verse ends with "until the end [there shall be] war — desolations are determined" — an open-ended future, not a closed event in AD 70.
Ethnicity Background
Jewish War 6.4.3 (§241) “Caesarea [Titus] gave orders that they should now demolish the entire city and temple, but should leave as many of the towers as were of the greatest eminency… but for all the rest of the wall, it was so thoroughly laid even with the ground… that there was left nothing to make those that came thither believe it had ever been inhabited.” Notice he distinguishes: the city was to be totally demolished, but the Temple is not included in that demolition order.
