Seventy Weeks, No Gap

The Jubilee Continuum Behind Daniel 9, and Why the Seventieth Week Is Not Future

“Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city.” — Daniel 9:24 (KJV)

Author’s Note on Terminology: This paper uses the traditional Christian terms “Old Testament” and “New Testament” for clarity. The author recognizes that the books of the Old Testament are the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh, which Jewish tradition holds as complete Scripture in its own right, and quotes them with respect for that tradition.

A note on what follows. The interpretation in this paper is my best understanding of Scripture, reached by following its own examples and patterns. It is held to one rule above all others:

Rule 1: No Scriptural conflicts. No conclusion here may contradict any passage of Scripture. Where Scripture does not settle a detail, I say so plainly.

Scripture is quoted from the King James Version. Pronouns for God and Christ are capitalized in the author’s own words; KJV quotations are left as written.

1. Why This Question Matters

Many Christians have been taught that Daniel’s seventy weeks ran for sixty-nine weeks, then stopped. In this view the clock paused at the cross, has been paused for almost two thousand years, and will restart someday for one final week: a seven-year period of tribulation that begins when a future ruler signs a covenant with Israel and breaks it in the middle.

A great deal is built on that pause: the seven-year tribulation, a treaty with an antichrist, a rebuilt temple, and a rapture timed before or in the middle of those seven years. If the pause is not in Scripture, all of it has to be tested again.

This paper asks one question: did God stop the count? It answers from Scripture first, and then from the calendar God gave Israel to count its years, the sabbath years and the Jubilee.

2. God Has Never Stopped a Clock He Started

Before we look at Daniel, look at how God handles every other measured period He gave His people. Each one ran straight through to its end, without a pause.

The years in Egypt. God told Abraham the length in advance: “Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years” (Genesis 15:13). When the time came, it ended on the day: “And it came to pass at the end of the four hundred and thirty years, even the selfsame day it came to pass, that all the hosts of the LORD went out from the land of Egypt” (Exodus 12:41).

The forty years in the wilderness. “After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years” (Numbers 14:34). The forty years ran in full, and the generation that refused to enter died in the wilderness (Numbers 32:13).

The seventy years of captivity. “And this whole land shall be a desolation, and an astonishment; and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years” (Jeremiah 25:11). They ran “to fulfil threescore and ten years” (2 Chronicles 36:21).

Nebuchadnezzar’s seven times. “and let seven times pass over him” (Daniel 4:16). They passed, and “at the end of the days I Nebuchadnezzar lifted up mine eyes unto heaven, and mine understanding returned unto me” (4:34).

Not one of these periods paused. God named a number, and the number ran its course. A gap of two thousand years inside Daniel’s seventy weeks would be the only time in Scripture God started a measured count and then stopped it. If He had, we would expect the text to say so. As we will see, it says the opposite.

Some prophecies do span long ages without marking them. Isaiah wrote, “To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God” (Isaiah 61:2), and Jesus stopped reading at “the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:19-20). But that verse gives no count. Daniel 9 is different: it gives a number, seventy weeks, and divides it into seven, sixty-two and one. A measured count is not the same thing as a prophetic view across the ages, and in every measured count Scripture records, God counted straight through.

3. The Calendar God Gave Israel

God gave Israel a calendar of years, counted in sevens. Every seventh year the land rested: “Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof; But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land” (Leviticus 25:3-4).

Seven of those weeks of years made a Jubilee cycle: “And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years” (Leviticus 25:8). The Jubilee was proclaimed on the Day of Atonement: “Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubile to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof” (25:9-10).

Two things about this calendar matter for Daniel 9.

It is a count of “weeks” of years. Leviticus calls the seven-year unit a “sabbath of years,” and seven of them a Jubilee cycle. When Gabriel speaks of “weeks,” he is using the unit of this calendar. Daniel himself shows the difference when he means ordinary weeks of days: “I Daniel was mourning three full weeks” (Daniel 10:2), literally “three weeks of days.” No such qualifier appears in chapter 9.

It is a continuous count. A Jubilee is the fiftieth year: you cannot know which year it is unless you have counted every year before it. The count does not depend on anyone keeping the rest years. As the next section shows, God kept counting even when Israel stopped.

4. The Count Ran Even When Israel Stopped Keeping It

God warned Israel what would happen if they ignored His sabbath years. He would scatter them, and the land would take its rest without them: “And I will scatter you among the heathen... Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in your enemies’ land; even then shall the land rest, and enjoy her sabbaths. As long as it lieth desolate it shall rest; because it did not rest in your sabbaths, when ye dwelt upon it” (Leviticus 26:33-35).

Think about what that requires. For the land to “enjoy her sabbaths” in exile, someone had to be counting every sabbath year Israel skipped, through all the years no one kept them. A debt of missed rest years can only be repaid if the count of years never stopped.

That is exactly what happened. Jeremiah shows God tracking even the release of servants commanded every seventh year (Jeremiah 34:13-14), and the people’s broken promise brought the judgment: “Ye have not hearkened unto me, in proclaiming liberty, every one to his brother, and every man to his neighbour: behold, I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the LORD, to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine” (Jeremiah 34:17). And the Chronicler explains the length of the exile in the language of Leviticus 26: “To fulfil the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath, to fulfil threescore and ten years” (2 Chronicles 36:21).

So the calendar behind Daniel 9 is one God had been counting without a break for centuries, through obedience and disobedience alike.

5. Daniel’s Prayer, and an Answer in the Same Measure

Daniel 9 opens with Daniel reading that very prophecy: “In the first year of his reign I Daniel understood by books the number of the years, whereof the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem” (Daniel 9:2).

He confessed the cause, naming the curse of Leviticus 26: “Yea, all Israel have transgressed thy law, even by departing, that they might not obey thy voice; therefore the curse is poured upon us, and the oath that is written in the law of Moses the servant of God, because we have sinned against him” (9:11). “As it is written in the law of Moses, all this evil is come upon us” (9:13).

That curse was measured in sevens. Four times in Leviticus 26 God says the punishment will be “seven times” for their sins: “I will punish you seven times more for your sins” (26:18; also 26:21, 24, 28).

Gabriel answered in the same measure: “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city” (Daniel 9:24). Seventy weeks of years is 490 years: seventy sabbath-year cycles, and exactly ten Jubilee cycles of forty-nine years. Daniel prayed about seventy years of missed sabbaths, and he was answered with seventy sabbath cycles, counted on the same calendar whose count had never stopped.

Gabriel’s very first number is a Jubilee cycle: “from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks” (9:25). Seven weeks of years is forty-nine years, “the space of the seven sabbaths of years” (Leviticus 25:8). Daniel, who had just confessed breaking the law that commanded those Jubilees, would have heard it at once: this countdown is measured in the Jubilee calendar.

6. What the Text of Daniel 9 Says, Verse by Verse

Verse 24: one block of time. “Seventy weeks are determined.” Gabriel speaks of seventy weeks as one determined period, with six purposes to be accomplished within it. He does not speak of sixty-nine weeks now and one later.

Verse 25: consecutive counting. The count starts at one event, “the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem,” and runs “unto the Messiah the Prince”: seven weeks, then sixty-two weeks, sixty-nine in all. Nothing in the verse separates the parts; each follows the last.

Verse 26: the Messiah cut off after the sixty-ninth week. “And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself.” After the seven and the sixty-two, that is, after the sixty-ninth week, the Messiah is cut off. The verse places the cross after the sixty-ninth week, which means within the seventieth. The same verse adds what would follow later, as a consequence of rejecting Him: “and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.” That came in AD 70, when Rome’s armies destroyed the city, as Jesus foretold: “when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh” (Luke 21:20).

Verse 27: the Messiah confirms the covenant. “And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease.” The only person named as the subject in the verse before is the Messiah, and the one who destroys the city in verse 26 is not “the prince” but “the people of the prince” (see Section 10). The one who confirms the covenant is the Messiah, and Jesus used Daniel’s very words at the Last Supper: “For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins” (Matthew 26:28). “Confirm the covenant with many”; “shed for many.” Hebrews calls Him “the mediator of the new testament” (Hebrews 9:15).

In the midst of the week, the sacrifices ended. When Jesus died, “the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom” (Matthew 27:51). Hebrews explains what that meant: “But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God” (Hebrews 10:12), and “Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin” (10:18). The priests went on offering for forty more years, but the offerings had lost their purpose. He caused the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, in the midst of the week.

Nothing in these four verses lifts the last week out of the count and moves it two thousand years ahead. The gap has to be brought to the text; it is not found in it.

7. The Six Purposes Were Fulfilled by Christ

Gabriel said the seventy weeks were determined “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” (Daniel 9:24).

The New Testament says these were accomplished in Christ:

• To make an end of sins, and to finish the transgression: “but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26).
• To make reconciliation for iniquity: “To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them” (2 Corinthians 5:19); “we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son” (Romans 5:10).
• To bring in everlasting righteousness: “But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested” (Romans 3:21); “by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14).
• To anoint the most Holy: “How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power” (Acts 10:38), at His baptism, when He began His ministry (Luke 3:21-22; 4:18).
• To seal up the vision and prophecy: the prophecy is confirmed by its fulfillment, as Jesus said of Himself: “all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me” (Luke 24:44).

The purposes of the seventy weeks are the Messiah’s own work. If they were fulfilled by His work, the weeks that measured that work were fulfilled with it.

8. Counting the Weeks on the Continuous Jubilee Calendar

The Continuous Jubilee Calendar (CJC) is simply Israel’s sabbath-year and Jubilee count, run without a break. It uses one formula for every year, so anyone can check every date:

• B = year + 1437 (for AD years), or 1438 − year (for BC years).
• Cycle = (B − 1) ÷ 49, rounded down, + 1.
• Y = B − (Cycle − 1) × 49. Year 1 of every cycle is a Jubilee.
• Position = the remainder of Y ÷ 7. Position 4 is the middle of a seven-year week.

Here is what the formula gives for the seventy weeks:

The seventy weeks begin on a Jubilee and end on a Jubilee, exactly ten cycles later, because 490 is exactly ten times forty-nine. The sixty-nine weeks reach AD 27, the year Jesus was baptized and began His ministry, and AD 27 is the first year of a new week of years. The final week covers AD 27 through 33, and its exact middle, Position 4, is AD 30, the year of the cross.

Now try to take the seventieth week out. If the count stops after the sixty-ninth week, the seventy weeks no longer run from Jubilee to Jubilee, the cross no longer stands in the middle of any week, and the ten-cycle frame that Gabriel’s numbers create falls apart. The only way all the pieces fit is the way the calendar itself works: straight through.

AD 34, the close of the seventy weeks “determined upon thy people,” is the year commonly given for the death of Stephen and the scattering of the church, when the gospel went out beyond Jerusalem for the first time: “Therefore they that were scattered abroad went every where preaching the word” (Acts 8:4). The order matches Jesus’ own: “ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8), “to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16). (The date of Stephen’s death comes from the order of events in Acts, not from an outside record, so it is offered as a strong fit, not a proof.)

9. The Count Kept Running After the Seventy Weeks

The calendar did not stop at AD 34 either. The same formula, without adjustment, places later events where Scripture and history put them:

• AD 70, the destruction of the city and the Temple: Cycle 31, Year 37, forty years after the cross, the “generation” Jesus warned: “All these things shall come upon this generation” (Matthew 23:36).
• 1994, Cycle 71, Year 1: the seventieth Jubilee, which completes the Jubilee count.

A count that runs from the Exodus era through the captivity, through Daniel’s seventy weeks, through AD 70 and on to the seventieth Jubilee has no room for a two-thousand-year pause in the middle of one of its most important stretches.

10. Common Objections, Answered

“The ‘he’ of Daniel 9:27 is the antichrist, ‘the prince that shall come.’” Gabriel has already named the Prince in verse 25: “unto the Messiah the Prince.” The same title returns in verse 26, and this research reads it as the same Prince. The destroyers are His “people,” the armies Jesus described in His own parable of the wedding: “But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city” (Matthew 22:7); “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate” (Matthew 23:38). Many commentators read the coming prince as Titus, whose legions burned the city; even then, the verse says it is “the people of the prince” who destroy, and the one carried into verse 27 is the Messiah who was cut off. The covenant is confirmed “with many,” the very words Jesus used for His blood (Matthew 26:28). Scripture nowhere speaks of an antichrist confirming a covenant with anyone for seven years.

“Prophecy often skips ahead without warning, so why not here?” It does, when no count is given (Isaiah 61:2 and Luke 4:19-20 are an example). But Daniel 9 gives a number and divides it into parts, and every measured count in Scripture runs straight through (Section 2).

“The 483 years must be counted in 360-day years.” Scripture never uses a 360-day year for this count, and it is not needed: in ordinary years, from the decree of 457 BC, the count reaches AD 27, the year the Messiah was anointed, exactly. (Some scholars date Artaxerxes’ seventh year to 458 BC, depending on how his reign is counted; see One Commandment.)

“If the seventieth week is past, where is the seven-year tribulation?” Scripture never describes a seven-year tribulation. The great tribulation is real and still ahead, but it is measured in Daniel 12, not Daniel 9: “a time, times, and an half” (Daniel 12:7), with markers at 1,290 and 1,335 days (12:11-12). Jesus called it “great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matthew 24:21). Its length and its timeline are covered in “The Jubilee Calendar and the Story of the End” and “The Shepherd’s Gathering.”

“Doesn’t Israel still have a future?” Yes, and Paul describes it: “blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved” (Romans 11:25-26). That promise does not depend on a postponed week of Daniel 9; it is fulfilled as Jew and Gentile come to Christ, grafted into one olive tree (Romans 11:17-24).

11. What This Paper Shows

Scripture states: every measured period God gave Israel ran straight through to its end (Genesis 15:13; Exodus 12:41; Numbers 14:34; 2 Chronicles 36:21); God counted Israel’s sabbath years even when Israel did not keep them, and collected the missed years in the exile (Leviticus 26:34-35; 2 Chronicles 36:21); Daniel’s prayer confessed the curse of Leviticus 26 (Daniel 9:11), and Gabriel answered with seventy weeks (9:24); the Messiah is cut off after the sixty-ninth week, confirms the covenant with many, and causes the sacrifice to cease in the midst of the week (9:26-27; Matthew 26:28; 27:51; Hebrews 10:18).

The pattern: seventy weeks of years are ten Jubilee cycles. Counted without a break, they run from a Jubilee in 457 BC to a Jubilee in AD 34, with the Messiah anointed in AD 27, the first year of the final week, and the cross in AD 30, its exact middle.

Interpretation: that AD 34 marks the close of the seventy weeks with the gospel going out beyond Jerusalem, and the identification of each historical date, are offered as my best understanding, held to Rule 1.

The seventy weeks are not a clock that God stopped and will someday restart. They are the clock God had been keeping all along, the sabbath years and Jubilees of His own law, and they struck the hour of the cross exactly on time. “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son” (Galatians 4:4).

Sources and References

Scripture: all quotations are from the King James Version (KJV).

Larry W. Wilson: Wake Up America Seminars, for Rule Four of apocalyptic prophecy (the Jubilee Calendar and the measure of prophetic time).

Related CJC papers

• One Commandment — How Four Persian Decrees Point to the Messiah
• In Due Time — How Scripture’s Covenant Clock Ties the CJC Evidence Together
• Daniel’s 70 Weeks Prophecy Explained — From the Decree to the Cross
• The Crucifixion Date of Jesus — AD 30 or AD 33?
• Could It Have Been Planned? — The Timeline of the Messiah and the Question of Providence
• Math Lessons

Continuous Jubilee Calendar: Welsh, Chip. The CJC Research Kit and the CJC papers above, available at https://scripturescjc.com/.