Daniel 9: Gabriel and the Seventy Weeks
Sunday, November 17, 2019
Daniel provides us with a model, a plan, a pattern we can follow when we receive the news that life is a string of trials interspersed with little triumphs. Chapter 9 lays out a simple map.
I turned to the Lord, pleading an earnest prayer . . . We turn to God and pour our fears into God’s ear. We tell him our worries with honesty. We do not hide any of the details for God already knows them.
With fasting, sackcloth, and ashes . . . We make an outward sign to our inward selves that we have given over all control to God. We put aside all pride. We place ourselves fully into God’s hands for God already holds us firmly.
I prayed to the Lord my God, and confessed . . . We enter into an open and straightforward dialog with God. We say all that is on our minds, all that weighs down our hearts. We admit that we have erred and have sometimes adored false idols.
And we can turn to God because God is good. We can be truthful with God because God is forgiving. We can put away our fears, our defenses and our weapons because God is love.
Know and understand this . . . Jerusalem was to be rebuilt . . .
When we discover that our suffering will not be ending when we first believed it would . . . we can follow Daniel’s model and remember that God always loves, God is always present, God always forgives and welcomes his tired ones home. God does, indeed, respond to human prayer . . . and he sends his messenger to bring us the news that God is with us.
More notes on Daniel 9: “The prophet Jeremiah (25,11; 29,10) prophesied a Babylonian captivity of seventy years, a round number signifying the complete passing away of the existing generation. Jeremiah’s prophecy was fulfilled in the capture of Babylon by Cyrus and the subsequent return of the Jews to Palestine. However, the author of Daniel, living during the persecution of Antiochus, sees the conditions of the exile still existing; therefore in his mediation, he extends Jeremiah’s number to seventy weeks of years (v 24); i.e., seven times seventy years, to characterize the Jewish victory over the Seleucids as the ultimate fulfillment of the prophecy”. (Senior cf. 2, 1100-1101)
To re-visit our reflections on other portions of Daniel 9: We begin with Daniel seeking Ultimate Fulfillment in God; Daniel intones a Prayer in the Desert; then suddenly Gabriel Comes to Daniel in rapid flight. A vision ensues through which Daniel understands that an end will come to the anguish he and his exiled nation suffer . . . but this end is further off than anticipated.
To read more about this prophecy, go to the Daniel – God Calls the Faithful and Faithless page on this blog.
Mays, James L., ed. HARPERCOLLINS BIBLE COMMENTARY. New York, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1988. 631-632. Print.
Senior, Donald, ed. THE CATHOLIC STUDY BIBLE. New York, Oxford University Press, 1990.1100-1101. Print.
A re-post from October 27, 2012.
The Noontimes 