“Seventy sevens are decreed on your people, and on your holy city, to finish transgression, and to make and end of sin, 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 (‘one' or ‘place').”
The seventy sevens are here seen as not only making the situation right between the nation and God, resulting at the commencement in the rebuilding of the city and the sanctuary in the first ‘seven', (which was what the seventy years of Jeremiah had in mind), but also as resulting in the making of a way of final full restoration and acceptability with God, and the final fulfilment of all prophecy, which includes all nations. The whole world is in mind.
‘Seventy sevens.' These seventy ‘sevens' are in contrast with Jeremiah's seventy ‘years'. Thus the idea is that final and full deliverance will occur in God's timing. What Gabriel is saying is that far beyond the limited statement of Jeremiah concerning seventy years there was rather to be a period of seventy ‘sevens' which would result in the fulfilment of God's final purposes. In other words the ‘sevens' (divinely perfect time periods) replace years. This expresses the ultra divinely perfect period. Seven is the number of perfection and seventy is an intensification of that number (see Genesis 4:24). Thus there are to be a divinely perfect number, not of years per Jeremiah, but of divinely perfect periods. God has them measured, even if man does not, and they are perfect within His will. The word for ‘sevens' is unusually in the masculine plural, as in Daniel 10:2-3 (and in Genesis 29:27 in the singular). Perhaps this was to stress the importance of these periods. They would be powerfully effective. (Further consideration will shortly be given to the interpretation of ‘sevens').
‘Are determined on your people and on your holy city.' The limited view that suggests that therefore these verses only refer to Israel misses the point. God's purpose for Israel and the holy city (Isaiah 2:2-4; Micah 4:1-3; Jeremiah 3:17; Zechariah 14:8-9) was that finally they should be a blessing to the world. So Israel was not here for itself, it was here for the world. From the time of the first promise to Abraham of blessing on all nations (Genesis 12:3), through the appointment of Israel as a kingdom of priests in the Sinai covenant (Exodus 19:6), to the recognition that they were to be God's servant to the nations in Isaiah 42 onwards, the divine emphasis was always on their status and position as world functionaries (see Isaiah 49:6). What God determined on His people He determined for the sake of the world. Thus this prophecy has a world view.
The result of the seventy sevens is to be:
1) ‘To shut up (restrain) transgression.' This and 2). are parallel ideas. Transgression has raged through the world since man's first days. Men have flouted God's laws. Now it is to be restrained, to be brought under control, to be imprisoned, to be finally dealt with.
2) ‘And to make an end of sins (or ‘seal up sin').' Job 14:17 refers to ‘the sealing up of sin' where the idea is that God has sealed it up so as to bring it to account. The restraining and imprisonment of transgression and the making an end of or sealing up of sin could only have in mind both the binding and restraining of the Evil One and the cessation of the power of sin over men's lives both in penalty and effectiveness. This would be brought about through a sufficient sacrifice for sin which put away sin (Hebrews 9:26), and effective transformation through the Holy Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:18) so that men became blameless before God. Sin would finally be dealt with by mercy and judgment.
3) ‘And to make reconciliation for (or more literally ‘cover') iniquity.' This means such a reconciliation that man can come to God and be received as His with no shadow of failure between (2 Corinthians 5:19; Ephesians 2:16). It was to remove any shadow or barrier between God and man. Transgression, sin and iniquity will all have been dealt with.
4) ‘To bring in everlasting righteousness.' This signifies that the stain of sin and evil is removed for ever, both judicially before God as men are covered in perfect righteousness (1 Corinthians 1:30; 1 Corinthians 2 Corinthians 2:21), and in fact, so that man will actually be holy, blameless and unreproachable before Him for ever (Colossians 1:22; Ephesians 5:27). Note that everlasting righteousness is ‘brought in' from outside. There is clear reference here 1). to God ‘bringing near' righteousness and salvation (Isaiah 46:13), everlasting salvation and righteousness (Isaiah 51:5-6), and 2). to the work of the One Who came to do it as the perfectly righteous one, bringing His righteousness for men (Romans 5:17; 1 Corinthians 1:30; 2 Corinthians 5:21) and sacrificing Himself for sin.
5) ‘To seal up vision and prophecy.' This signifies its final and complete fulfilment so that it is no longer required and is past instead of future.
6) ‘To anoint ‘the most holy' (literally ‘the holy of holies' - that which is most holy)'. Anointing indicates a new dedication to God, a setting apart for Him, within His purposes. This can refer either to the anointing of the everlasting King (as mentioned later in the chapter of ‘the anointed One') or more likely to the anointing of the supreme everlasting sanctuary, in the heavenly Jerusalem (Exodus 40:9; Hebrews 12:22; Revelation 21), the eternal dwellingplace of God with men. Whichever we choose, it is an indication of the fulfilment of God's final purposes in holiness.
In our view these descriptions cancel out any interpretation of these seventy ‘sevens' that falls short of resulting in final perfection. There is no space for an inadequate ‘kingdom age' to follow. Perfection has been achieved. And although there is a genuine sense in which Christ's work on the cross and His resurrection fulfilled what is described here up to a point, it did not at that time bring it to complete fulfilment. That awaits the coming of Christ in glory and the final judgment. In our view it is not sufficient to stop short in a partial fulfilment at Christ's first coming, glorious and initially complete though that was. Daniel is clearly, in the end, thinking of the final consummation.
It has been said that there is no clear indication of what closes off the seventieth ‘seven', but we find this suggestion quite remarkable. For we have it stated here quite clearly. It is closed by the final fulfilment of all God's purposes brought to a state of perfection and completion. In terms of Daniel 9:27 it is closed by ‘the consummation'.