The Prophecy of Daniel about the Jewish Exile and Antiochus Epiphanes
by Ulrich Utiger

Peter Paul Rubens, Daniel in the lions den

Page description
About the prophet Daniel, the Babylonian exile of the Jews, their return and the time when they were persecuted by Antiochus Epiphanes.

Contents of this page
The prophecy of the seventy years of exile
The prophecy of the seventy weeks
The four phases contained in the seventy weeks

Short summary of the previous pages
We have seen that The Life Cycle of the Angels and Man is composed of the four phases of peace, sin, judgment and return to peace. We discovered the same phases in The Account of the Flood and The Ancestors of Israel Abraham and Joseph as well as in From the Exodus to the Babylonian Exile. On the following pages we try to demonstrate that the whole salvation history is composed of eras with four cycles, which in turn are composed of the four phases mentioned above (see Summary of Salvation History). On this page we analyze the fourth cycle of the era of the Israelite people.

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THE LAST BIBLICAL EVENTS

Previous page
FROM THE EXODUS TO THE BABYLONIAN EXILE

Page 7

3. THE ERA OF THE ISRAELITE PEOPLE

3.2. JUDAS MACCABEUS

The prophecy of the seventy years of exile

The Persians were conquered by the Greeks, who also occupied Judah. Yet, they left the Jews their religious liberty, with the result that they opposed no resistance to the occupation. This happened with other occupiers several times in a similar manner, which is only known from non-biblical sources, for the historical books of the Old Testament do not refer to any event that happened between the Babylonian exile and the events described by the books of the Maccabees. It therefore seems that it will be difficult to demonstrate the continuation of the cycles of salvation history. However, this period constitutes a phase of transition of relative peace for the Jewish people, which the book of Daniel refers to as prophetic account.

Also Daniel lived in exile in Babylon. One day he ardently prayed in order to get an explanation of the seventy years of the exile predicted by Jeremiah (Jer 25:11-12) and to calm down God's anger against his people (Dan 9:1-19). He perhaps guessed that the seventy years would not be as long as they appeared. For in reply to his prayer, God sent the angel Gabriel, who gave him a cryptic explanation concerning seventy weeks:

"Seventy weeks are decreed
for your people and your holy city,
for putting an end to transgression,
for placing the seals on sin,
for expiating crime,
for introducing everlasting integrity.
for setting the seal on vision and on prophecy.
for anointing the Holy of Holies.
Know this, then, and understand:
from the time the word 'return and rebuild Jerusalem' went out
to the coming of an anointed Prince, seven weeks.
And sixty-two weeks with squares and ramparts restored and rebuild,
but in a time of trouble.
And after the sixty-two weeks
an anointed one will be cut off, there will not be for him [...],
the city and the sanctuary will be destroyed
by a prince who will come.
His end will come in catastrophe
and, until the end, there will be war
and all the devastation decreed.
He will make a firm covenant with many
for the space of a week.
And for the space of one half-week
he will put a stop to sacrifice and oblation.
and on the wing of the Temple will be the disastrous abomination
until the end, until the doom assigned to the devastator"
(Dan 9:24-27).

We have to suppose that the first seven weeks relate to the Babylonian exile announced by Jeremiah (Jer 25:11-12) since Daniel is praying to get an answer about the duration of the exile. This is why "from the time the word 'return and rebuild Jerusalem' went out" concerns Jeremiah's prophecy "the Jews will be deported from Jerusalem to Babylon and stay there seventy years", which can also be understood as "the Jews will return to Jerusalem from Babylon after seventy years". So this "word" has nothing to do with Persian king Cyrus' permission to let the Jews get back in their country and rebuild it (Ezra1), which constitutes the fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecy. This has to be separated clearly. This interpretation is confirmed by Isaiah: "I am he who says of Cyrus 'my shepherd'. He will fulfill my whole purpose, saying of Jerusalem 'let her be rebuild' and of the Temple 'let your foundation be laid'. Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus..." (Isa 44:28-45:1).

A commonly held view is that "return and rebuild Jerusalem" would refer to the decree of Artaxerxes in 445 AD (Nehemiah 2). The seven and sixty-two yearweeks would then lead to the arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem and his Passion in 32 BC by counting 360 days for one year. However, one does not know the exact day of both this decree and the Crucifixion, which is furthermore preferred in 30 or 33 BC. Independently of this, the holders of this interpretation translate with "the coming of the Messiah the Prince", which is not correct because "Prince" has no article in the original Hebrew text. This means that it is "an anointed Prince" and not "the anointed Prince" Daniel 9:24 refers to with "...for anointing the Holy of Holies". For Christ is unique and cannot be designed as "a Messiah" among others. This is why Daniel 9:25 does not refer to Christ. In Daniel 9:26 is still question of another "anointed one". This is the high priest Onias, as we will see. In addition, the seven weeks and the sixty-two weeks have to be separated because of the punctuation in the original text. So there are only seven and not sixty-nine weeks between "the word" and "an anointed Prince".

It is therefore necessary to calculate the duration of the exile from Jeremiah's announcement made before the exile and not from the moment when the exile effectively began. So the exile had to end effectively about eight years earlier than Daniel believed: the first deportation by Nebuchadnezzar took place in 597 BC. Jeremiah announced the exile in the fourth year of Jehoiakim and the first year of Nebuchadnezzar (Jer 25:1), that is to say in 605 BC. The seventy years of exile have therefore begun approximately eight years earlier and have equally ended eight years earlier than Daniel expected, which certainly consoled him, since he asked God to appease his anger.

The first returns of the Jews from Babylon took place in the first year of the reign of Cyrus over the Babylonian Empire, which corresponds to the year 538 BC (Ezra 1:1). This makes a difference of 67 to 68 years (605 - 538 = 67), depending on from what month of the first year to what month of the last year one counts, which is however not possible to determine. To this number, it is still necessary to add the time passed until the entire return of the Jews and the beginning of the construction of the second temple. For the seventy years of the exile are represented by the seven weeks, then follow the sixty-two weeks, which shall be the time of reconstruction of Jerusalem. So it is necessary to calculate the time of the seven weeks until the beginning of this reconstruction. However, these works only took place two years after the return (Ezra 3:8). The time of the exile, calculated from the prediction of Jeremiah up to the reconstruction of Jerusalem and the temple, must therefore have lasted nearly seventy years (68 + 2 = 70), which is a further confirmation that the above interpretation of Daniel 9:25 is correct.

The prophecy of the seventy weeks

Let us now analyze the prophecy of the seventy weeks and suppose that there is not only one reference to real history. We therefore try to apply again the multireference already discovered with Genesis. In this case, we have to consider that the days of the seventy weeks do not represent constant values but variables. We are going to see that the seven (exile), sixty-two (reconstruction), and one weeks (persecution) effectively express a theoretical proportion valid for different historical contexts, which apply this theoretical value only in an approximate manner because they prefigure an event that will only arrive in the end times with the Antichrist. This contrasts with Jeremiah's prophecy, which really lasts seventy years because it only applies to the Babylonian exile and to nothing else. Daniel's prophecy of the seventy weeks however refers to different historical contexts. For instance, it also applies to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD predicted by Jesus, as we are going to see on the following page. Also this context is approximate, although still a bit more exact. This is why each context, as long as it is a prefiguration to the end event, is only realized approximately.

By replacing one day by one year, one week lasts seven years. Consequently, the seven weeks of the exile theoretically last forty-nine years (7 x 7 = 49), which is approximate compared to the real seventy years. The sixty-two weeks of the reconstruction last 434 years (62 x 7 = 434). From the first return of the Jews to the beginning of the persecutions by the Greek king Antiochus Epiphanes, who prefigures the end time Antichrist (see Conclusion), in other words from 538 BC to 169 BC effectively 369 years passed. So within this historical context, the prophecy therefore only holds an approximate resemblance with the reality (49 years instead of 70 for the exile and 369 years instead of 434 for the reconstruction). But this is precisely what has to be the case. The prophecy would effectively be doubtful – in the sense of being written after the events as some theologians claim – if it was thoroughly exact.

Things nevertheless are more precise with the last week, which constitutes a period of intense tribulations, wars, and persecutions (Dan 9:26-27): according to 1 Mac 1:20, the persecutions began in 169 during the first campaign of Antiochus against Egypt, preceding the murder of the high priest Onias (2 Mac 3:1; 4:34) according to "and after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off..." (Dan 9:26). Antiochus erected "the disastrous abomination" (1 Mac 1:54; Dan 9:27; Mat 24:15) in December 167, an altar of the pagan religion, inside the temple on the altar of the holocausts. Antiochus died in October 164, after which the persecutions ceased. But the war still continued until 163/2. The final week therefore effectively lasted almost seven years. And the disastrous abomination was consequently constructed, according to the prediction of Daniel 9:27, nearly in the middle of the seven-year period. So we state that the resemblance of the proportions 70:366:6 of real history with the theoretical proportions 49:434:7 of the seventy weeks is well observable1.

The four phases of the seventy weeks

Our main concern is of course the cycles of salvation history: the first seven weeks refer to the punishment phase of the third cycle, the Babylonian exile. And the sixty-two weeks of the reconstruction of Jerusalem refer to the consecutive revival phase of the same cycle and especially to the beginning phase of the fourth cycle. As for the other phases, according to the small introduction of Daniel 9:24, which predicts that the seventy weeks must end in order to expiate a sin, one can imagine that the last week refers to a new phase of sin and judgment before the return to peace, which culminated with the arrival of "the Holy of Holies":

This final week is realized by the persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes. The books of the Maccabees attribute the cause of these persecutions often to a new apostasy committed by the Jews (1 Mac 1:64; 2:49; 3:8; 2 Mac 5:17-20; 7:38), which began before the beginning of the last week. Thus, these books relate for example that "in those days went there out of Israel wicked men, who persuaded many, saying: ‘Let us go and make a covenant with the heathen that are round about us’ [...] They built a place of exercise at Jerusalem according to the customs of the heathen, and made themselves uncircumcised, and forsook the holy covenant, and joined themselves to the heathen" (1 Mac 1:11-15). And even Jason, the high priest, "labored underhand" (2 Mac 4:7) by introducing Hellenism, which spread rapidly in Israel "through the exceeding perversity of Jason, that ungodly wretch, and no high priest" (2 Mac 4:13). Many Jews therefore yielded to the customs of Hellenism, which had already conquered all oriental countries through Greek imperialism. The matter in hand is therefore really an apostasy, like the one that once caused the occupation by the Assyrians and the Babylonian exile.

Yet the persecutions of Antiochus were so cruel that they cannot only be interpreted as a judgment: Jason attempted to seize power, but failed by his own compatriots. Antiochus Epiphanes qualified it as a rebellion of Judah and suppressed it savagely (2 Mac 5:5-14). This was the beginning of the persecutions, whose main object was not the oppression of a nearly non-existent rebellion but the extermination of the Jewish religion (2 Mac 5:15-7:41).

These persecutions also belong to the phase of sin, for the martyr of the seven brothers and their mother, and of Eleazar, who persevered in their faith until death (2 Mac 6:18-7:41), already announces what happened since Jesus Christ: from then on the phase of sin is no longer focused on the abandonment of the faith but on the persecutors of those who persist in the faith. It is also for this reason that the judgment no longer concerns the people of God but the persecutors who want to divert it away from its faith. Therefore, Antiochus was incurring a severe judgment, since he tried to make the Israelites abandon their beliefs (1 Mac 1:10; 6:8-13; 2 Mac 9).

The phase of sin therefore essentially began with the last week and went to end in the middle of the week, when Antiochus, at the height of his madness, constructed the disastrous abomination. The phase of judgment realized with Mattathias and then his son JUDAS MACCABEUS, who succeeded in confronting their oppressors (1 Mac 2-7) nearly from the second half of the week2. Antiochus died and his successor again granted the religious liberty to the Jews (1 Mac 6). This is the end of the seventy weeks and the beginning of the phase of revival, which passes into the first phase of the following cycle. This cycle belongs to a new era inaugurated by the arrival of Jesus Christ.

This arrival is referred to with "Seventy weeks are decreed [...] for expiating crime and introducing everlasting integrity [...] for anointing the Holy of Holies" (Dan 9:24): by supposing that the prophecy "thinks" in units of phases, the time after the seventy weeks is considered as a coherent period of relative peace for Israel because it constitutes the beginning phase of the next cycle. This is why all what happened during this phase is considered a single event concluding the seventy weeks. This is similar to saying: "Something will happen tomorrow". So it can happen in the morning or the evening. We do not know it and an exact precision of the time is impossible. In a similar way, it is impossible to determine through Scriptures the exact arrival of the "the Holy of Holies", that is the Messiah. The only thing we know is that he shall arrive within a relatively short period after the seventy weeks. A short period means that it has to be shorter than the 7 x 70 = 490 years of the seventy weeks, which is the case for the approximate 160 years between the end of the seventy weeks and the birth of Jesus Christ.

We evidently could also multiply with any other number as for example with six to closer arrive to the six years of the last week (42:372:6). According to the book of Revelation however, which announces seven years for the "end of the world" (see Conclusion), we have to multiply everything with seven because Antiochus’ persecutions, as well as the destruction of Jerusalem, are prefigurations of the end of the world.

According to 1 Mac 54, Antiochus constructed the disastrous abomination in the year 145 of the Seleucid calendar. And according to 1 Mac 2:70, Mattathias is dead in 146 of the same calendar, hence a year later, while his combat, which he confided to his son Judas before his death, had already begun (1 Mac 2).