What these things in the previous verse mean in very concrete terms will become clear later in this chapter. The Lord now first calls Daniel’s attention to the period of the seventy weeks. The period of the first seven weeks begins with Jeremiah’s prophecy about the return to and the restoration of Jerusalem until the day that the anointed prince shall appear.
This announcement of the anointed prince is not the Lord Jesus! We will have to think of another anointed person here. He is also called God’s anointed one in another passage of the Bible. We are talking about the Persian king, Cyrus. It was he who gave Israel permission to return to the Promised Land. He called on them to rebuild the temple. We read this in Ezra 1:1–3: In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing: ‘Thus says Cyrus king of Persia: The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel—he is the God who is in Jerusalem.
Isaiah is already prophesying of Cyrus as an anointed of the Lord even before this man is born. We read this in Isaiah 45:1, Isaiah 45:4: Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped, to subdue nations before him and to loose the belts of kings, to open doors before him that gates may not be closed...For the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen, I call you by your name, I name you, though you do not know me.
When Cyrus gave God’s people permission to return, the first seven-week period had come to an end. That was how far matters had progressed in the same year that Daniel prayed the prayer we read about in this chapter.
Then comes a long period in which the temple is being built. The temple with all that belongs to it will be restored and the people will again worship God in the temple every day. This is the period of the sixty-two weeks. This is the period in which the second temple is built. It would not be easy. The other inhabitants of the land are actively working against it. We read about this in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. For the people it was a time of oppression and of distress. During this time, much oppression also came from outside. Think of Antiochus Epiphanes and the time of the Roman occupation.
The Lord provides a long time in which the second temple will exist. It is the period when the people see and are involved in the ministry of reconciliation. Yet the temple will not last forever. It is not forever that only Israel will represent God’s people on earth. There will come a day when the Lord no longer seeks to be worshipped in the temple in Jerusalem. There will be a very long time when the people of Israel will not live in Canaan. In Daniel 9:26–27 the Holy Spirit shows what is about to happen as the seventy weeks draw to a close.
25 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. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time.