3, 4. (a) What are the “seventy weeks,” when did they start, and when end? (b) What events marked the last ‘week of years’ as important?

³ In Daniel 9:24-27 we read of a period of “seventy weeks of years” (An American Translation; Moffatt), or a total of 490 years, as starting “from the going forth of the word to restore and to rebuild Jerusalem.”a When was that? The Bible account at Nehemiah 2:1-7 states that “in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes the king” of Persia, the king himself instructed his Jewish cupbearer, Nehemiah, to return to the city of his forefathers and “rebuild it.” According to secular history, this “twentieth year of Artaxerxes” would be 455 B.C.E. Counting 490 years from that date, we come to the year 36 C.E. Daniel’s prophecy tells us that the last ‘week of years,’ 29-36 C.E., is of special importance. And why?

⁴ It is because “from the going forth of the word to restore and to rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Leader, there will be seven weeks, also sixty-two weeks.” So Messiah would appear at the start of that seventieth week of years.

[Box on page 14]

“SEVENTY WEEKS OF YEARS” (Daniel 9:24-27)

FROM the “going forth of the word” of king of Persia to Nehemiah in 455 B.C.E.

455 - 1 B.C.E. = 454 years

1 B.C.E. - 1 C.E. = 1 year

1 C.E. - 36 C.E. = 35 years

455 B.C.E. - 36 C.E. = 490 years

Messiah “cut off . . . at the half of the week,” April 33 C.E.

TO the end of special favor to Jews in 36 C.E. with conversion of Cornelius’ household