“Seventy weeks are determined For your people and for your holy city, To finish the transgression, To make an end of sins, To make reconciliation for iniquity, To bring in everlasting righteousness, To seal up vision and prophecy, And to anoint the Most Holy.
Parallel translations
- WEB Seventy weeks are decreed on your people and on your holy city, to finish disobedience, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy.
- KJV Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.
- BSB Seventy weeks are decreed for your people and your holy city to stop their transgression, to put an end to sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy Place.
- NASB “Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the wrongdoing, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for guilt, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy Place.
- NLT “A period of seventy sets of seven has been decreed for your people and your holy city to finish their rebellion, to put an end to their sin, to atone for their guilt, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to confirm the prophetic vision, and to anoint the Most Holy Place.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Seventy weeks are decreed to deal finally with sin, bring everlasting righteousness, and anoint the most holy. This famous prophecy points to God's ultimate redemptive purpose.
Overview
Gabriel announces seventy weeks, literally sevens, decreed for Israel to end transgression, atone for iniquity, bring in everlasting righteousness, and anoint the most holy. These goals reach their fulfillment in the atoning work of Christ, who finishes sin and brings everlasting righteousness. While faithful interpreters differ over the precise reckoning of the weeks, this verse states the saving aim toward which the whole prophecy moves.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 40
- Heb 9:11–14But Christ having come as a high priest of the coming good things, through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation,
- Rom 5:10For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we will be saved by his life.
- Jer 23:5–6“Behold, the days come,” says Yahweh, “that I will raise to David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.
- Num 14:34After the number of the days in which you spied out the land, even forty days, for every day a year, you will bear your iniquities, even forty years, and you will know my alienation.’
- Isa 51:6Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look on the earth beneath; for the heavens will vanish away like smoke, and the earth will wear out like a garment; and its inhabitants will die in the same way: but my salvation will be forever, and my righteousness will not be abolished.
- Lev 25:8“‘You shall count off seven Sabbaths of years, seven times seven years; and there shall be to you the days of seven Sabbaths of years, even forty-nine years.
- Isa 61:1The Lord Yahweh’s Spirit is on me; because Yahweh has anointed me to preach good news to the humble. He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to those who are bound;
- Acts 3:22For Moses indeed said to the fathers, ‘The Lord God will raise up a prophet for you from among your brothers, like me. You shall listen to him in all things whatever he says to you.
- Ps 2:6“Yet I have set my King on my holy hill of Zion.”
- Isa 56:1Yahweh says, “Maintain justice, and do what is right; for my salvation is near, and my righteousness will soon be revealed.
- Isa 51:8For the moth will eat them up like a garment, and the worm will eat them like wool; but my righteousness will be forever, and my salvation to all generations.”
- Ps 45:7You have loved righteousness, and hated wickedness. Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows.
- Ezek 4:6“Again, when you have accomplished these, you shall lie on your right side, and shall bear the iniquity of the house of Judah. I have appointed forty days, each day for a year, to you.
- Rev 14:6I saw an angel flying in mid heaven, having an eternal Good News to proclaim to those who dwell on the earth, and to every nation, tribe, language, and people.
- Heb 2:17Therefore he was obligated in all things to be made like his brothers, that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make atonement for the sins of the people.
- Isa 53:10–11Yet it pleased Yahweh to bruise him. He has caused him to suffer. When you make his soul an offering for sin, he will see his offspring. He will prolong his days, and Yahweh’s pleasure will prosper in his hand.
- Rom 3:21–22But now apart from the law, a righteousness of God has been revealed, being testified by the law and the prophets;
- Rev 3:7“To the angel of the assembly in Philadelphia write: “He who is holy, he who is true, he who has the key of David, he who opens and no one can shut, and who shuts and no one opens, says these things:
- 2 Chr 29:24Then the priests killed them, and they made a sin offering with their blood on the altar, to make atonement for all Israel; for the king commanded that the burnt offering and the sin offering should be made for all Israel.
- John 3:34For he whom God has sent speaks the words of God; for God gives the Spirit without measure.
- 1 Cor 1:30Because of him, you are in Christ Jesus, who was made to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption:
- Heb 9:26or else he must have suffered often since the foundation of the world. But now once at the end of the ages, he has been revealed to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
- John 1:41He first found his own brother, Simon, and said to him, “We have found the Messiah!” (which is, being interpreted, Christ ).
- Luke 1:35The angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore also the holy one who is born from you will be called the Son of God.
- 2 Pet 1:1Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have obtained a like precious faith with us in the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ:
- Luke 4:18–21“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to heal the broken hearted, to proclaim release to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, to deliver those who are crushed,
- Lam 4:22The punishment of your iniquity is accomplished, daughter of Zion; he will no more carry you away into captivity: He will visit your iniquity, daughter of Edom; he will uncover your sins.
- Luke 24:44–45He said to them, “This is what I told you, while I was still with you, that all things which are written in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms, concerning me must be fulfilled.”
- Col 2:14wiping out the handwriting in ordinances which was against us; and he has taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross;
- Matt 1:21She shall give birth to a son. You shall call his name Jesus, for it is he who shall save his people from their sins.”
- Acts 3:14But you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you,
- 2 Cor 5:18–21But all things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ, and gave to us the ministry of reconciliation;
- Mark 1:24saying, “Ha! What do we have to do with you, Jesus, you Nazarene? Have you come to destroy us? I know you who you are: the Holy One of God!”
- Luke 24:25–27He said to them, “Foolish men, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!
- Heb 7:26For such a high priest was fitting for us: holy, guiltless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens;
- Lev 8:15He killed it; and Moses took the blood, and put it around on the horns of the altar with his finger, and purified the altar, and poured out the blood at the base of the altar, and sanctified it, to make atonement for it.
- Heb 10:14For by one offering he has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.
- Matt 11:13For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John.
- Heb 1:8–9But of the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. The scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your Kingdom.
- Col 1:20and through him to reconcile all things to himself, by him, whether things on the earth, or things in the heavens, having made peace through the blood of his cross.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
Christ at the center
Daniel sees the stone cut without hands that shatters the kingdoms, and 'one like a son of man' given everlasting dominion — titles and visions Jesus claims as his own.
How Daniel 9:24 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.
How traditions read this
How the 490 years run — and where they end.
The seventy "weeks" (490 years) run continuously from a decree to rebuild Jerusalem to Christ, who as the Anointed One is "cut off" and "confirms a covenant with many" — the new covenant — in the final week. The traditional Reformation reading.
Key points · 490 years to Christ; Messiah "cut off"; the last week fulfilled in Christ''s covenant.
John Calvin; Martin Luther; E. J. Young
The "weeks" are symbolic periods, not a literal 490 years, stretching from the Persian decree to Christ; the latter part of v.27 reaches across the church age to final judgment. A common contemporary evangelical reading.
Key points · Symbolic, not literal, numbers; fulfilled in Christ; v.27 spans to the end.
Iain Duguid; Sam Storms; Andrew Steinmann
A gap (the church age) falls between the 69th and 70th weeks; the final week is a still-future seven-year tribulation in which a coming ruler makes and breaks a covenant with Israel, after the church has been raptured.
Key points · Gap between week 69 and 70; future 7-year tribulation; Antichrist''s covenant.
C. I. Scofield; John Walvoord · Scofield Reference Bible
Each view is stated as that tradition would put it, with representative sources. Limitless Word presents them side by side and endorses none — see the methodology.