Daniel 9

King Darius the Mede hasn’t shown up in history outside the Bible. And on the timeline of most scholars, it seems, there’s no room for him. The Book of Daniel says he was the king of Babylon after Belshazzar but before Cyrus the Great. Yet ancient documents say Cyrus took over when his army invaded, and Belshazzar was executed.

Date unknown since there’s no record outside the Bible of a Darius the Mede ruling Babylon.

Medes were from the Midian Empire in what is now northern Iran.

Xerxes, also known as Ahasuerus, reigned from 486-465 BC. He is famous for invading Greece and defeating Spartans in a narrow seaside passage at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. That battle inspired the blockbuster film, “300.” If the story of his marriage to Esther is history instead of fiction (some scholars say it’s a fictional story), Xerxes married the Jewish Queen Esther in 479 BC, the seventh year of his reign (Esther 2:16-18). This was just after defeating the Spartans. But ancient records outside the Bible say Xerxes was married to Amestris, not to Esther or Vashti, both of whom appear as his wives in the Book of Esther.

Jeremiah 25:11-12; 29:10. Some scholars say that’s a way of describing the lifetime of a person, not literally 70 calendar years. In fact, there were only about 50 years between the time Babylon leveled Jerusalem in 586 BC and the time Persian King Cyrus freed Jewish exiles in 538 BC to return to what was left of Jerusalem. Some adjust the math, saying those 70 years must have started almost 20 years earlier, in 605 BC. That’s when Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar first marched into Jerusalem and left with the first wave of Jewish captives, probably Daniel among them.

In Bible times, people sometimes expressed grief or deep concern by dressing in burlap-like clothing, pouring ash dust on themselves, and going without food. Today, we might dress in dark clothing or wear armbands.

“Here’s what the LORD will do to you and your king. He’s kicking you all out of here. You’re all headed to a country you and your ancestors have never heard of. There, people you’ve never met will rule you” (Deuteronomy 28:36).

Israel’s fall to Babylon and the exile of its people is why many in ancient times would have concluded the Jewish people sinned against God. They figured sin is why God let this happen to them. In this case, as the Bible writers tell it, that presumption was correct. But it’s not always that way. Bad things happen to good people, too. Read the Book of Job for that insight.

It’s unclear what 70 sevens means. There are lots of theories, many involving the end of humanity and the return of Jesus Christ. On the other hand, some scholars say, 70 sevens is a simple code that has nothing to do with our future. Instead, it has to do with Daniel’s prayer. Jeremiah predicted 70 years of punishment, which affected the generation that sinned last. In Leviticus 26:18, God warns the Hebrew ancestors of the Jewish people, “If you don’t come to your senses by then, and start doing what I tell you to do, I’ll punish you seven times worse than I otherwise would have.” So, God sentenced them to 70 years, which was seven times worse than he would have. The point here would be: they sinned bigtime, they got punished bigtime.

After the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC, there were no more of King David’s descendants anointed with oil as God’s chosen king. “Anointed ones” in Daniel’s day and beyond was a way of referring to the Jewish high priest, spiritual leader of the people. He was the Anointed One. Second Maccabees, thought to have been written in the 100s BC, said Antiochus annually gave the job of high priest to the person who bid the highest donation from the Temple treasury to the king. The first high priest Antiochus dealt with was, Jason, who won the first bid. But he lost several years later and was forced into exile.

The word is more often translated as “covenant.” That might be a formal contract or perhaps a handshake-like agreement. Here, it’s unclear what the agreement is and between what groups. In the Bible, the term is most associated with the covenant between God and the Jewish people. The deal: Israel agrees to obey God and in return God promises to give them peace and prosperity. This is the covenant agreement Daniel has just finished praying about. In his prayer he apologized for breaking the agreement. But the covenant in this case might not refer to that, some scholars say. It might refer to the suffering Gabriel is predicting. If the suffering has to do with the reign of Antiochus, as many scholars say it likely does, the agreement might be between the invaders and Jews who were willing to compromise their faith, so they didn’t get executed. Many tradition-minded Jews were executed because they refused to compromise by desecrating the Temple area with sacrificial offerings such as pigs to pagan gods. The stories of their suffering appear in the book of 1 Maccabees, written about 100 BC and included in some Christian Bibles, including the Roman Catholic Bible.

Many scholars say these closing words of Daniel 9 likely refer to ancient history that ended in the 100s BC, with Jews driving Antiochus back to Syria, where he came from. But some Christians say the desecration and desolation described here are still ahead. They say the deadline Gabriel predicted isn’t about “the end” of Bad Guy Antiochus. It’s “THE END.” The big one.