The End of the Seventy Weeks of Daniel 9 – #2- Seventy Weeks Are Determined…To Finish the Transgression
The End of the Seventy Weeks of Daniel 9 – #2
Seventy Weeks Are Determined… To Finish the Transgression
Did the Seventy Weeks End in AD 34-35?
Daniel was told that the 70 Weeks were determined “to finish the transgression.” There is a long and illustrious line of commentators, both Jewish and Christian, who have understood the language here to speak of Israel filling the measure of her sin.
Eusebius cites Aquilla on Daniel 9 that, “to finish the transgression” meant to fill the measure of sin. He relates this language to Matthew 23 (Demonstration of the Gospel, (Proof of the Gospel) Bk. VIII, chapt. 2, p. 119).
Jerome said this of Daniel’s prophecy: “There is no doubt but what it constitutes a prediction of Christ’s advent, for He appeared to the world at the end of the seventy weeks. After Him the crimes were consummated and sin reached its end and iniquity was destroyed” (Jerome’s commentary, Commentary on Daniel (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1958), 95).
James E. Smith, says that the expression means:
First, the expression “to finish the transgression” suggests that Israel would continue to rebel against God. Daniel’s prayer alluded several times to Israel’s transgression and the consequent curse which the nation had experienced. He now learned that the full measure of Israel’s transgression was yet future (James E. Smith, The Major Prophets, (College Press, 1992), 606 – Logos).
Keith Mathison posits the language as referent to how Israel would fill the measure of her sin and be reserved for judgment (Postmillennialism: Eschatology of Hope, 221).
Kenneth Gentry says that the term finish the transgression, “has to do with Israel’s finishing, i.e., completing her transgressions against God.” ( He Shall Have Dominion, 1992, 315).
Even skeptical commentator John Collins, conflating Daniel 8:23 with Daniel 9:24 says that the language means to fill up the measure of sin. (John Collins, A Commentary on the Book of Daniel, Hermeneia, (Grand Rapids; Fortress, 1993), 339, 354).
What this means is that Daniel 9:24 foretold the time, the Appointed Time of the Seventy Weeks, for Israel to fill the measure of her sin. Included in that, assuredly, was the killing of the Messiah who was to come and bring in the promised everlasting righteousness. It should be noted that Daniel 9 implicitly posits the judgment on Jerusalem as the vindication of the slain Messiah. It should not be overlooked that several OT prophecies foretold the “last days” vindication of the martyrs of YHVH, as Israel would fill up the measure of her blood guilt for killing the Lord’s servants.
In Isaiah 2-4 we find a prophecy of Israel’s last days (2:2f) that would consummate at the Day of the Lord (2:19-21). In Israel’s last days it would be a time of judgment on Jerusalem (3:1-3) a time of famine and warfare (3:13ff). And it would be when the glorious “Branch” of the Lord would be manifest (4:1). At that time, the Lord would purge the blood-guilt of Jerusalem “by the spirit of fire and the spirit of Judgment” (4:4). This is nothing less than the avenging of the martyrs at the judgment of the city guilty of slaying the faithful.
In Isaiah 65:6 we find that Israel’s sin and the sin of her fathers would be measured out to her. As H. C. Leupold says on Isaiah 65:6:
This verse proves that there is such a thing as ‘mass guilt,’ where the sins of generation after generation are not completely broken with and the amount grows higher and higher. Ultimately, or time and again, it then happens that God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children (H. C. Leupold, Exposition of Isaiah, Vol II, (Grand Rapids, Baker, 1974), 362.)
It is highly significant that in Romans 10:20-22 the apostle Paul directly cites Isaiah 65:1-2, and says it was being fulfilled in his day, his ministry, as Israel rejected the Gospel and consequently the Gentiles were being called. This means that the filling up of the measure of sin on the part of Israel was taking place in the first century. And of course, Jesus had spoken of this with great clarity.
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, 30 and say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.’ 31 “Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. 32 Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers’ guilt. 33 Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell? 34 Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, 35 that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. 36 Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. Jesus Laments over Jerusalem. 37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!
Words could hardly be clearer. Through the killing of his apostles, prophets and wise men Israel was going to fill up the measure of her sin and that would result in the utter desolation of the temple. This is Daniel 9:24-27!
Later in the very generation, and well after AD 34-35, Paul said that Israel had not yet filled the measure of her sin, but was in the process of doing so when he wrote his first epistle to the Thessalonians who were themselves being persecuted:
For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God which are in Judea in Christ Jesus. For you also suffered the same things from your own countrymen, just as they did from the Judeans, 15 who killed both the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they do not please God and are contrary to all men, 16 forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they may be saved, so as always to fill up the measure of their sins; but wrath has come upon them to the uttermost.
This text has a direct and powerful impact on the question of when the Seventy Weeks were ended. Remember that the Weeks were determined to finish the transgression, i.e. to fill up the measure of Israel’s sin. And Daniel even cues us in that the end of the Weeks was going to be in vindication of the death of Messiah at the judgment of Jerusalem.
In both Matthew 23 and here in Thessalonians we have the divine finger pointing directly at Israel / Jerusalem for persecuting the prophets of old, for killing Jesus, and for killing Jesus’ apostles and prophets.
It will not do to claim that the filling up of the measure of Israel’s blood guilt was accomplished in the killing of Jesus. Needless to say, that was the worst of Jerusalem’s guilt but that did not fill Israel’s cup! Jesus was emphatic that Jerusalem would fill the measure of her blood guilt by killing the apostles, prophets and wise men that he– after his own martyrdom– would send to her.
Likewise, here in Thessalonians, Paul recounts Jerusalem’s internecine history of killing the prophets, slaying Jesus, and now, they were killing the apostles and prophets of Jesus. And notice the terminology. In killing the apostles and prophets– and remember he is writing almost 20 years after the Cross– he says that Jerusalem was persecuting the apostles and prophets “so as to fill up the measure of their sin always.” Now, if Jerusalem had already filled her cup of sin by killing Jesus Paul could not say that they were killing Jesus’ apostles “so as to fill up the measure of their sin.” It was in the killing of Jesus’ apostles and prophets that Jerusalem was filling up their sin! Paul does not put the filling up of the measure of sin in the past.
Notice now Colossians 1:24-25:
I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God which was given to me for you, to fulfill the word of God.
The passage has perplexed scholars and laymen alike through the centuries. What is self-evident is that Paul was affirming that his personal sufferings were an integral part of filling up the measure of suffering (the sufferings of Christ) and the corollary of Israel filling the measure of her sin. In fact, in the Greek, he places his personal suffering in the “emphatic” mode, meaning that his personal suffering was somehow the final part of the suffering to be done by the body of Christ before the parousia. Let me share a comment by Peter O’Brien:
The presence of the definite article τἀ suggests that the phrase ‘what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions’ refers to something well known, and agrees with the apocalyptic notion of a definite measure of affliction to be endured in the last days. As God had set a definite measure in time (Mark 13:5-27) and the limit of the tribulations at the end, so there is a definite measure of suffering that is to be filled up. That limit of messianic woes has not yet been reached. There are still deficiencies which Paul through his sufferings is in the process of completing.” (Peter O’Brien, Word Biblical Commentary, Colossians and Philemon (Waco; Word Publishers, 1982), 80).
Paul’s “I” is emphatic, it is his office (stewardship, oikonomian) to fill the measure of the afflictions of Christ. (Paul does not mean that others were not contributing to filling the measure of suffering. In 2 Corinthians 1:4f; Philippians 1:29 and 2 Thessalonians 1:4f, he speaks of the afflictions of his brethren as an, “evident token,” of the impending judgment of God. Thus, while they all suffered together, Paul was the focal point in God’s scheme).
He is insistent that, “God has set forth us, the apostles, last, as men condemned to death” (1 Corinthians 4:9). (See Gordon Fee, The New International Commentary on the New Testament, First Corinthians, (Grand Rapids; Eerdmans, 1987), 174+). Robertson says Paul’s language suggests, “There is a great pageant in which the Apostles form the ignominious finale, consisting of doomed men who will have to fight in the arena till they are killed.” (Robertson and Plummer, International Critical Commentary, First Corinthians, (Edinburgh; T and T Clark, 1978), 85).
Again, Paul does not mean that he and the apostles would be the last to ever suffer martyrdom. Buit he clearly meant that the measure of suffering would be filled by their death. Then, God’s eschatological Wrath would be poured out. To extend the filling of the measure of the “afflictions of Christ” into a distant future is to ignore Paul’s emphasis on his distinctive role.
The eschatological nature of Paul’s task is seen in the word thlipsis. In response to the disciples’ question about a sign of the end of the age, Jesus promised that they would be delivered up to “tribulation,” (Matthew 24:9, 21; cf. Daniel 12:1). This word is never used of Christ’s expiatory work. O’Brien says of thlipsis, “They are the travail out of which the messianic age is born. God has set a limit to these sufferings, prescribing a definite measure for the afflictions which the righteous and the martyrs must suffer” (Peter O’Brien, Colossians, Word Biblical Commentary, Vol. 44 (Waco: Word Publishers, 1982), 79).
So, Paul said – in approximately AD 51 and in Colossians – that in their persecution of the apostles – and himself especially- the Jews were filling up their measure of sin. It is, therefore, simply untenable and false to say that the 70 Weeks terminated in AD 34-35 long before a single apostle was slain! Let me frame my argument somewhat negatively like this:
Daniel 9:24 predicted that Israel would fill up the measure of their sin within the framework and no later than the end of the Seventy Weeks.
Israel was still in the process of filling up the measure of her sin when Paul wrote Thessalonians and Colossians.
Therefore, the Seventy Weeks had not ended in AD 34-35 – or when Paul wrote Thessalonians and Colossians.
Put another way:
The Seventy Weeks could not end until Israel had filled up the measure of her sin.
In ca. AD 51 and ca. AD 62 Israel had not yet filled up the measure of her sin.
Therefore, the Seventy Weeks had not ended in ca. AD 51 or ca. AD 62.
Finally, keep in mind again that Daniel 9 posits the destruction of Jerusalem as God’s divine response to the killing of the Messiah. That judgment event, as N. T. Wright suggests in his comments on Matthew 16:27-28 was the vindication of Christ and his followers for their suffering:
The whole of the story, of judgement for those who had not followed Jesus and the vindication for those who had, is summed up in the cryptic but frequently repeated saying “the first shall be last, the last first. In other words, when the great tribulation came on Israel, those who had followed Jesus would be delivered; and that would be the sign that Jesus had been in the right, and that in consequence they had been in the right in following him. The destruction of Jerusalem on the one hand, and the rescue of the disciples on the other, would be the vindication of what Jesus had been saying throughout his ministry (N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis, Fortress, 1996), 338).
This is precisely what we find in Matthew 23, 1 Thessalonians 2 and Revelation. That promised vindication did not take place in AD 34-35. It is specious to posit the vindication of Messiah and his followers outside the Seventy Weeks when neither the filling of the measure of sin itself, nor the vindication of that suffering had occurred by AD 34-35. Yet, both of these elements belong undeniably to the Seventy Weeks.
Much, much more could be written about the theme of Israel filling up the measure of her sin. We could discuss the book of Revelation and how it draws extensively on Daniel. We could talk about the entire theme of the vindication of the martyrs at the judgment of Jerusalem. What we have presented should be more than sufficient, however, to show that:
☛ Daniel 9 foretold the filling up of Israel’s sin within and no later than the end of the Seventy Weeks.
☛ Israel did NOT fill the measure of her sin in AD 34-35 as posited by some Amillennialists and Postmillennialists.
☛ That Israel had not filled up the measure of her sin by AD 50-51 or even in the AD 60s when Revelation was penned. According to Paul, his own martyrdom was crucial to the filling up of the measure of sin and suffering, and Paul did not experience martyrdom until approximately AD 67-68. You therefore cannot have the filling up of the measure of Israel sin prior to that. Since the filling up of the measure of Israel’s sin entailed the martyrdom of the apostles, and that did not happen in AD 34-35, then it is false to say that the Weeks ended in AD 34-35.
In light of these facts, and more that could be and will be adduced, the claim that the Weeks ended in AD 34-35 cannot be sustained.
More to come.