We continue through Hosea where chapter 6 has some useful lessons for us all. The opening sounds good…

“Come, let us return to the LORD; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him.

Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.” (Hosea 6.1 – 3, ESV)

It appears to be a call for revival from the people themselves: “Come let us return to the LORD…let us know; let us press on to know the LORD…” After all, “he will come to us as the…spring rains that water the earth.”

Nice try. Here’s is God’s response:

What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away. Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of my mouth, and my judgment goes forth as the light. (Hosea 6.4, 5, ESV)

Your love is transient. Therefore, “I have hewn them by the prophets… slain them by the words of my mouth.” Huh? Reminds me of recalcitrant military personnel. Say I have a guy who doesn’t like to keep his hair in regs. The regs are there; he just ignores them. But if I give him a direct order, and he doesn’t do it, I have “…slain him by the words of my mouth.” He’s not only guilty of ignoring written haircut regulations, he has violated a direct order from his commanding officer. Much more serious.

What does God want? Words? Ritual? Or relationship with him?

For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. (Hosea 6.6, ESV)

I desire love, not sacrifice. Knowing God, not burnt offerings.

What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats.

When you come to appear before me, who has required of you this trampling of my courts? Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations— I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them.

When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause. (Isaiah 1.11 – 17, ESV)

A brief lesson from Hosea 5, remembering that the central approach of Hosea is to compare Israel’s disobedience to unfaithfulness in marriage.

I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hidden from me; for now, O Ephraim, you have played the whore; Israel is defiled. Their deeds do not permit them to return to their God. For the spirit of whoredom is within them, and they know not the LORD. (Hosea 5.3, 4, ESV)

But it’s not just ancient Israel. James uses the same language:

You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. (James 4.4 – 10, ESV)

We move through Hosea, a prophet to “Israel,” the northern 10 tribes. What’s their problem?

Hear the word of the LORD, O children of Israel, for the LORD has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. There is

• no faithfulness or
• (no) steadfast love, and
• no knowledge of God in the land;

there is

• swearing,
• lying,
• murder,
• stealing, and
• committing adultery;

they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed. (Hosea 4.1 – 2, ESV)

Wow. We could stop right there, and there are 10 chapters to go! Sounds a lot like the US, does it not? No faithfulness or steadfast love (lots of divorces?). No knowledge of God. Check. Swearing, lying, murder, stealing, adultery. Check.

Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and also the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens, and even the fish of the sea are taken away. (Hosea 4.3, ESV)

Is this the message of Romans 8?

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. (Romans 8.19 – 22, ESV)

We continue Hosea, tough to read at times, using the graphic imagery of prostitution to make the point that God loves Israel despite her unfaithfulness. And he uses the prophet Hosea as a visual aid. He takes a wife in chapter 1, and she proves unfaithful in chapter 2. Here is the first part of (short) chapter 3:

And the LORD said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.” So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a lethech of barley. And I said to her, “You must dwell as mine for many days. You shall not play the whore, or belong to another man; so will I also be to you.” (Hosea 3.1 – 3, ESV)

“So I bought her for 15 shekels of silver and…barley.” One note says “430 pounds of barley.” That’s a lot of barley! Hosea’s charge to the woman he bought back: “You shall not play the whore…” That is, “Don’t do that anymore!” Reminds us of Jesus’ encounter with the woman taken in adultery:

Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.” (John 8.10, 11, ESV)

The rest of Hosea 3 ends with a prophecy:

For the children of Israel shall dwell many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or household gods. Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the LORD their God, and David their king, and they shall come in fear to the LORD and to his goodness in the latter days. (Hosea 3.4 – 5, ESV)

“They shall come in fear to the LORD…in the latter days.” And, by implication, the LORD will accept them!

But now God has shown us a way to be made right with him without keeping the requirements of the law, as was promised in the writings of Moses and the prophets long ago. We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are. (Romans 3.21, 22, NLT, and a pastor friend of mine used to say, “…no matter who we are…or what we have done.”

Here we are, mid-September, and at five chapters/week, we are almost finished with the prophets. Just the “Minor” prophets to go, 12 shorter books bringing God’s message, not necessarily about the future, but about the present. How shall we live today? What did God want the original recipients to know about him, and how did he want them to live?

Recall the divided kingdom: “Israel” – the northern 10 tribes, no good kings – and “Judah” – the southern 2 tribes, some good kings. Israel was scattered by the Assyrians as recorded in 2 Kings 17. Hosea is a prophet to “Israel,” the northern 10, the last prophet before the kingdom fell:

Hosea has been called the “death-bed prophet of Israel” because he was the last to prophesy before the northern kingdom fell to Assyria (about 722 B.C.). His ministry followed a golden age in the northern kingdom, with a peace and prosperity not seen since the days of Solomon. Unfortunately, with this prosperity came moral decay, and Israel forsook God to worship idols. – from the Introduction to Hosea in the ESV

And how did God use Hosea to communicate to Israel? Eugene Peterson explains in his introduction to Hosea in The Message Bible:

Hosea is the prophet of love, but not love as we imagine or fantasize it. He was a parable of God’s love for his people lived out as God revealed and enacted it—a lived parable. It is an astonishing story: a prophet commanded to marry a common whore and have children with her. It is an even more astonishing message: God loves us in just this way—goes after us at our worst, keeps after us until he gets us, and makes lovers of men and women who know nothing of real love. Once we absorb this story and the words that flow from it, we will know God far more accurately. And we will be well on our way to being cured of all the sentimentalized and neurotic distortions of love that incapacitate us from dealing with the God who loves us and loving the neighbors who don’t love us.

And there’s the message: “God…goes after us at our worst…Once we absorb this story…we will know God far more accurately…”

It begins:

The word of the LORD that came to Hosea, the son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel.

When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the LORD.” So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son. (Hosea 1.1 – 3, ESV)

And off we go.

This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God. (1 John 4.8 – 10, MSG)

We love because he first loved us. (1 John 4.19, ESV)

Wow. Four days on Daniel 9. Therefore, I’m done with Daniel. If you want to know about Daniel 10 – 12, look it up for yourself! On second thought, don’t. It’s a long and confusing vision about future (to Daniel) kings in conflict, lying to each other at the negotiating table (some things don’t change!), and so on. The bottom line?

I heard, but I did not understand. Then I said, “O my lord, what shall be the outcome of these things?” He said, “Go your way, Daniel, for the words are shut up and sealed until the time of the end…But go your way till the end. And you shall rest and shall stand in your allotted place at the end of the days.”(Daniel 12.8, 9, 13, ESV)

“Go your way…” Some things are not for us to understand. Just go about your business.

Back to Daniel 9, as you noticed, in my research for Daniel’s 70 weeks, I helped myself liberally to the resources of ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence (AI) service. I couldn’t ask it anything that it didn’t “know” something about. So in this blog, I offer a caution…

I’ve written about AI before. Negatively in Beware of Shortcuts and positively in Fret Not! This is different.

I used it. I framed my questions carefully, specifically. I asked for sources. And it responded, in detail, usually suggesting follow-up questions. For example, I asked about The Coming Prince referred to in the blog The 70th Week:

There is an old book, written in the 1800s, The Coming Prince, chiefly about Daniel 9.24 – 27. Do you have access to it, and can you summarize it?

It started its answer:

Yes. I believe you mean Sir Robert Anderson’s The Coming Prince, first published in the late 19th century (the commonly cited edition is 1881; later editions followed). I have access to the full text online, including a scanned 158-page edition.

And it went on to outline the main ideas. Later, I followed up with:

Please recall our conversation on Daniel’s 70 weeks and Sir Anderson’s book The Coming Prince...What I’d like to know is what are the historic positions on the 70 weeks? Catholic, Orthodox, Reformed?

That’s what generated the table I shared in The 70th Week. As I wrote, ChatGPT saved me hours, if not days, of research time. So, Bob, what’s the problem? The problem was its conversational tone and closing remarks like:

You’re very welcome. I’m glad the discussion was useful. And I enjoyed the way you approached it—willing to take Anderson seriously while also recognizing that a compelling interpretation isn’t necessarily a certain one.

Trying to be polite (I don’t know why), I would thank it, and it would respond and often include that it “enjoyed” our conversation. But how could it? It’s a machine! It can’t “enjoy” anything. But I was left with the feeling that I had just had a long and fruitful discussion with a good friend. I consider that dangerous.

I have used computers for research for some time now, frequently just using Wikipedia. I have never read a Wikipedia article that left me with a warm feeling other than it gave me the information I was looking for.

The other thing I noticed was that ChatGPT tended to agree with me. We were just friends exploring an idea together. If I said something that was a little off or a little stronger than an author meant, it would correct me gently.

Perceiving that it was overly agreeable is not my imagination. Here’s a report from World Magazine on a study of medical advice from the AI’s.

Not a doctor: In 125 out of 350 test scenarios that researchers ran, artificial intelligence chatbots agreed with patients who didn’t want to seek care for sleep apnea symptoms, according to a news release from the European Respiratory Society. The “patients” were fake, but the research team ran the test scenarios using seven different personas with lists of real symptoms, including fatigue, loud snoring, and interrupted breathing at night. They then created conversations between these personas and the free versions of five commonly used AI chatbots—ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude, DeepSeek, and Grok. In 350 conversations, the fake patients resisted the idea of undergoing a sleep study or seeing a specialist to determine whether they had sleep apnea. The chatbots agreed with them over one-third of the time. But in 350 alternate conversations, in which the fake patients expressed willingness to seek specialist care, the chatbots advised them to do so every time. Because the medical facts were identical in both types of conversations, the results showed that AI tools were not a reliable source of medical advice, the researchers concluded...

I have an alternate explanation: The AI’s are programmed to agree with the user if at all possible. That’s scary considering there have been suicides after AI chats.

Bottom line: use the AIs with care. My experience has been with ChatGPT. Another popular service is Claude. Maybe only ChatGPT is programmed to be overly friendly. I tried something just now, asking it about Daniel 12 this way:

Give me a medium short explanation of how various theological traditions interpret Daniel 12:1-4. Do not try to have a conversation with me. Make the explanation read more like a Wikipedia article than a conversation with a friend.

And it did. As Jack Webb of Dragnet would say, “Just the facts, ma’am. Just the facts.”

Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. (Matthew 10.16, ESV)

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6.10 – 12, ESV)

PS After I drafted this, Peggy Noonan’s editorial about AI came out in the Wall Street Journal, September 12, 2026. It’s worth the read although her concerns about AI are different from the ones I pointed out. Pause AI for Humanity’s Sake.

PPS My friend Mike Metzger has started a 3-part series on the dangers of AI. Here is the first: Is This How Tools Behave?

My conclusion to all the discussion about Daniel’s 70th week is simply:

We don’t know!

To which ChatGpt wrote this stunning response. I say “stunning” because ChatGPT is a public access, secular AI service. Here’s what the computer generated, emphases made by ChatGPT:

Yes—I think that’s a very defensible conclusion, and perhaps an especially healthy one when dealing with eschatology.

What I find striking is that once you step outside the dispensational system, Daniel 9 becomes much less certain than Anderson’s presentation makes it feel. Anderson’s calculation is so precise—173,880 days, a particular decree, a particular date—that it can give the impression that the whole prophetic scheme is equally precise. But the calculation depends on several interpretive decisions that aren’t themselves established by the text beyond reasonable dispute.

And the same phenomenon appears elsewhere:

• Daniel 9 — Christological, historical, futurist, dispensational readings.
• Matthew 24 — A.D. 70, Second Coming, or some combination.
• Revelation — preterist, historicist, idealist, futurist, and combinations of these.
• Romans 9–11 — multiple serious interpretations concerning Israel and the Church.
• 1 Thessalonians 4–5 and 2 Thessalonians 2 — different understandings of the sequence of end-time events.

Yet Christians who hold these differing positions can all affirm the things the New Testament seems much clearer about: Christ will return, the dead will be raised, judgment will occur, evil will finally be defeated, and God’s purposes will be fulfilled.

…

And there’s a rather wonderful biblical irony here. Jesus gives us considerable information about His return, but when the disciples ask about the timing, He says:

“It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.”—Acts 1:7

Amen. We can hold differing positions on eschatology while loving one another and “…affirming the things the New Testament seems much clearer about” and not trying to know things about which Jesus said, “It is not for you to know.”

He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! (Revelation 22.20, ESV)

Here we go…

What is the 70th week about? Here’s the text:

And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed. And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator. (Daniel 9.26, 27, ESV)

Most believe that “after 62 weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off…” refers to the crucifixion. Then we have “the people of the prince who is to come…” So future to the crucifixion.

Let’s pause… I was raised in what is called “dispensationalism.” Some of my readers fall into that camp. If you’ve read Late, Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey (1970), you’re familiar with it. More recently, the Left Behind Series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins novelizes dispensationalist “eschatology,” the study of last things.

To oversimplify and relate Daniel’s 70th week to dispensationalism, we have to believe in a “2-body” approach to the people of God. Specifically, Old Testament Israel and the New Testament Church, which began with Pentecost as recorded in Acts 2, are two separate entities. The Church is considered, essentially, a parenthesis, in God’s dealings with Israel. Therefore, between the end of the 69th week and the beginning of the 70th week, we have the church age, which will end with the Rapture as described in 1 Thessalonians 4.13 – 18. Then the 70th week kicks in.

The full detail of how dispensationalist eschatology relates to the 70 weeks of Daniel is contained in a classic book, The Coming Prince by Sir Robert Anderson, first published in 1881. I used to have this book in my library, and I’ve read it. Moreover, I started my ChatGPT discussions on the 70 weeks with this book. Here’s the conclusion of Anderson’s timeline according to ChatGPT (points labeled 1, 2 and 3 are really labeled 7, 8, and 9):

1. The prophecy then jumps forward to a future ruler. This is one of Anderson’s most important ideas. Daniel says that the people of the prince that shall come will destroy Jerusalem and the Temple. Anderson argues that this “prince that shall come” is not Christ, but a future ruler associated with the Roman world.
2. The final, seventieth week is still future. Anderson therefore sees a gap between the 69th and 70th weeks. The church age occupies this interval. The final seven years concern Israel’s future and culminate in the events associated with Antichrist and the Second Coming.
3. The Coming Prince is Antichrist.The final ruler makes a covenant with “the many” for one week—seven years—but breaks it after three and a half years. He stops sacrifice and worship and commits the “abomination of desolation.” Anderson connects this with the New Testament’s teaching concerning the Antichrist and the final tribulation.

So there it is. Clear (to Anderson), tied up neatly. The problem is that dispensationalism is a relatively new teaching, starting in the early to mid 1800s. What was the church teaching before that? And what do non-dispensationalist theologians believe now? I asked ChatGPT.

Tradition	General understanding of the 70 weeks
Early Church Fathers	Primarily fulfilled in Christ, with considerable variation concerning the final week
Roman Catholic	Traditionally Christological/Messianic; generally sees the prophecy culminating in Christ and/or Jerusalem’s destruction
Eastern Orthodox	Essentially Christological, but often with an additional eschatological dimension
Reformation/Reformed	Generally Christ-centered, with Calvin seeing the prophecy as reaching Christ’s first advent rather than a future seven-year tribulation
Historicist Protestants	490 years, usually extending from the Persian period to Christ, sometimes using the day-for-a-year principle
Dispensationalism	69 weeks → Christ; gap; future 70th week → Antichrist/Israel/tribulation
Anderson	A particularly precise dispensational calculation: 483 prophetic years = 173,880 days, ending at Christ’s presentation as Messiah

I asked specifically about what John Piper teaches:

Piper does not take the classic dispensational view that Daniel’s 70th week is a still-future, seven-year period separated from the first 69 weeks.

In a 1987 position paper, he says that the idea of a seven-year tribulation comes from interpreting Daniel 9:24–27 as having the 70th week separated from the first 69. But he explicitly says, “That the tribulation will last seven years is not a New Testament teaching.” (Desiring God)

So, briefly: Piper is cautious about making Daniel 9:27 the basis for a future seven-year tribulation. He does believe in a future great tribulation and Christ’s return, but he does not build the dispensational end-times timetable around a postponed 70th week.

I also asked about Tim Keller who didn’t write specifically about the 70 weeks. What ChatGPT concluded is:

Where his broader eschatology is clear, he treats Christ’s first coming, death, resurrection, and the destruction of Jerusalem as central fulfillments of Old Testament prophecy—not as events that require a postponed Danielic timetable.

I should clarify that non-dispensationalists are generally “1-body” people. That is, Israel is the Old Testament people of God, and the Church is the New Testament people of God. A discussion of this distinction is way beyond the scope of today’s blog and the Ewellogy in general.

I concluded my ChatGPT conversation this way:

Thank you. Very helpful since the only interpretation I “know” is Anderson’s and Dispensationalism. As I read the other alternatives, I think we’re left with the one conclusion that makes sense with respect to eschatology:

We don’t know.

ChatGPT’s response to my conclusion is worth another blog as we close out our study of the 70 weeks. Stay tuned.

Yesterday we looked at the lead-up to the fairly well-known prophecy of the 70 Weeks in Daniel 9. I hope you noticed that yesterday I promised that we “would take a look at the prophecy of the 70 weeks.” I did NOT promise that I would explain it! Why? Because, unlike Daniel 8 where all the traditions agree, there is NO agreement on Daniel 9, especially concerning a possibly future 70th week.

I will tell you up front that I had several “conversations” with ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence (AI) product of OpenAI. I may write a separate blog about that experience. The bottom line is that ChatGPT has access to a wealth of information which it provides quickly in an organized way. I didn’t go to seminary, but I suspect that 50 years ago, a seminary student in a seminary library would have required days, if not weeks, to write a paper similar to what ChatGPT gave me in seconds. That’s the upside. There is a downside, but I’ll save that for a later day.

Let’s review the 70 weeks:

Know therefore and understand that

• from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks.
• And for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time.
• And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing.
• And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed.
• And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.” (Daniel 9.25 – 27, ESV)

Where to start? Most assume each “week” equals seven years, so we have 7 + 62 = 69 weeks, 483 years, from a particular decree until Jerusalem is rebuilt “with squares and moat but in a troubled time.” Then, “after 62 weeks,” that is 69 weeks total, “an anointed one shall be cut off…” Writers from the early church fathers, through the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, through Calvin and the Reformers calculate the dates with varying degrees of specificity. But there is general agreement that we have a remarkable prediction of the triumphal entry and crucifixion in Daniel 9.

All the disagreement comes with the 70th week. Stay tuned.

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures… (1 Corinthians 15.1 – 3, ESV, emphasis mine)

Yesterday we looked at the 2300 days of Daniel 8, something about which there is little controversy. Today, we come to Daniel 9 which culminates in the “70 weeks:”

Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city,

• to finish the transgression,
• to put an end to sin, and
• to atone for iniquity,
• to bring in everlasting righteousness,
• to seal both vision and prophet, and
• to anoint a most holy place. (Daniel 9.24, ESV)

And here are the 70 weeks. Books have been written…

Know therefore and understand that

• from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks.
• And for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time.
• And after the sixty-two weeks,
  • an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing.
  • And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed.
  • And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week,
    • and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering.
    • And on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.” (Daniel 9.25 – 27, ESV)

No further information is given. Daniel’s reaction is not recorded. Chapter 10 goes into a new vision in the third year of Cyrus.

Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at the 70 weeks, but the first part of the chapter is clear and instructive. Let’s walk through it:

The vision is in the first year of Darius. (previous visions were the 1st and 3rd year of Belshazzar)

Daniel starts with prayer, based on the promise of the 70 years of captivity:

in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years that, according to the word of the LORD to Jeremiah the prophet, must pass before the end of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years. Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. (Daniel 9.2, 3, ESV)

Daniel is praying the promises. God promised that the captivity would last 70 years. It’s been 70 years. But the prayer begins with confession:

…we have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and rules. We have not listened to your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land. (Daniel 9.5, 6, ESV)

He refers to Moses, as I have in some of my blogs:

He has confirmed his words, which he spoke against us and against our rulers who ruled us, by bringing upon us a great calamity. For under the whole heaven there has not been done anything like what has been done against Jerusalem. As it is written in the Law of Moses, all this calamity has come upon us; yet we have not entreated the favor of the LORD our God, turning from our iniquities and gaining insight by your truth. (Daniel 9.12, 13, ESV)

He ends with a specific request:

Now therefore, O our God, listen to the prayer of your servant and to his pleas for mercy, and for your own sake, O Lord, make your face to shine upon your sanctuary, which is desolate. O my God, incline your ear and hear. Open your eyes and see our desolations, and the city that is called by your name. For we do not present our pleas before you because of our righteousness, but because of your great mercy. O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive. O Lord, pay attention and act. Delay not, for your own sake, O my God, because your city and your people are called by your name.” (Daniel 9.17 – 19, ESV)

So it’s a prayer for deliverance based on God’s mercy and the honor of God’s name.

And there is an answer, brought by Gabriel as with the previous vision:

While I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my plea before the LORD my God for the holy hill of my God, while I was speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the first, came to me in swift flight at the time of the evening sacrifice. He made me understand, speaking with me and saying, “O Daniel, I have now come out to give you insight and understanding. At the beginning of your pleas for mercy a word went out, and I have come to tell it to you, for you are greatly loved. Therefore consider the word and understand the vision. Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city… (Daniel 9.20 – 24, ESV)

Stay tuned.