Daniel 9:24-25 loosely reads, “Seventy weeks are determined for your people and your holy city…from the going forth of the command to rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince, there shall be sixty-nine weeks” or 483 years. The seventy weeks of Daniel contain one of the most remarkable prophecies in Scripture, identifying the day Jesus made His triumphal entry: April 6, 32AD. Read the notes or listen to the teaching!

Table of contentsWhy Seventy Years in Exile?Background to the Seventy Weeks of DanielThe Bible Is Meant to Be Taken Literally When AppropriateThe Bible Is Meant to Be UnderstoodThe Importance of the Seventy Weeks of DanielUnderstanding the Seventy Weeks of DanielSix Things Accomplished By the End of the Seventy Weeks of DanielRestoring and Building JerusalemMessiah the Prince Comes after Sixty-Nine WeeksFour Possible Dates of the Decree to Restore and Build JerusalemThe First Possible Decree in 538 BCThe Second Possible Decree in 517 BCThe Third Possible DecreeThe Fourth (and Correct) Decree on March 14, 445 BCWhy Seven Weeks and Sixty-Two Weeks Versus Sixty-Nine Weeks?Why Add, "A Prince”?Why Can't We Add 483 Years to March 14, 445 BC?The Seventy Weeks of Daniel Is a Time-Sensitive Prophecy

The prophet Jeremiah warned the Jews that the Babylonians would conquer them if they didn’t repent. The Jews didn’t repent, so Babylon conquered the Jews and brought them into exile in Babylon.

Jeremiah 25:11 This whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. 12 Then after seventy years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity, declares the Lord, making the land an everlasting waste.

The land is Judah. After God used the Babylonians to punish the Jews for their wickedness, He punished the Babylonians for their wickedness when the Medes and Persians conquered them under King Cyrus, who then allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem in three waves. We read about this in Ezra and Nehemiah.

Jeremiah 29:10 “For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place.

Jeremiah was writing from Jerusalem, so “this place” is Jerusalem.

Why Seventy Years in Exile?

We get the answer in 2 Chronicles 36. Here's the context: The Jews were supposed to let the land rest every seventh year. In other words, the land was supposed to receive its own Sabbath. The Jews were supposed to walk by faith and trust God to provide enough in the sixth year to last them through the seventh year. But there’s no record of the Jews ever doing this once in 490 years. For 490 years, the land missed seventy Sabbath years. So, God removed the Jews from the land for seventy years so it could experience the rest it was supposed to have:

2 Chronicles 36:20 He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia, 21 to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate it kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years.

This refers to Jeremiah’s prophecy, which we read in Jeremiah 25:11-12 and Jeremiah 29:10, that the Jews would be in exile for seventy years.

Background to the Seventy Weeks of Daniel

Daniel is one of the Jewish exiles in Babylon. He read the prophet Jeremiah’s writings and learned the Jews were going to be in exile for 70 years. The authors of the Scriptures set an excellent example for us by reading each other’s writings. We also have an example in the New Testament when Peter read Paul’s writings and said they could be hard to understand:

2 Peter 3:16 There are some things in [Pauls’ writings] that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction,