Daniel 9

Today’s Passage: Daniel 9

After the great visions of beasts and the ram and the goat, this chapter turns from the future to a bent knee in the present. Daniel, now an old man in the first year of Darius the Mede, is reading his Bible, and in the scroll of Jeremiah he finds a number: seventy years. That is how long the LORD had said Jerusalem would lie desolate, and Daniel can count. The seventy years are nearly spent. But he does not sit back and wait for the calendar to turn. He turns his face to the Lord and prays one of the most searching prayers in all of Scripture, a prayer that never once says “they” but always “we,” that heaps no blame on God and hides nothing about the people, and that at the last throws itself entirely upon God’s compassion. And while he is still speaking, the angel Gabriel comes flying to him with an answer larger than Daniel had dared to ask, an answer that reaches past the return from exile all the way to an Anointed One who would finish transgression and make atonement for iniquity forever.

As you read, hold this: True prayer owns the people’s sin and casts itself wholly on the mercy of God, whose answer points beyond the exile to the Anointed One who atones.

Daniel 9:1–2 (BSB)

¹ In the first year of Darius son of Xerxes, a Mede by descent, who was made ruler over the kingdom of the Chaldeans— ² in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood from the sacred books, according to the word of the LORD to Jeremiah the prophet, that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years.

See where this whole chapter is born. It is born in a man reading his Bible. Daniel is not granted a fresh vision here; he is simply searching the sacred books, and there in Jeremiah he understands the promise of the seventy years. Notice what that understanding does to him. It does not make him passive, as though a fixed promise meant there was nothing left to do but wait. It drives him straight to his knees. This is one of the sweetest lessons of the chapter, that the surest way to hold a promise of God is to pray it back to Him. Daniel reads that deliverance is near, and his response is to seek the God who promised it with all his heart.

Daniel 9:3–6 (BSB)

³ So I turned my attention to the Lord God to seek Him by prayer and petition, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes. ⁴ And I prayed to the LORD my God and confessed, “O, Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant of loving devotion to those who love Him and keep His commandments, ⁵ we have sinned and done wrong. We have acted wickedly and rebelled. We have turned away from Your commandments and ordinances. ⁶ We have not listened to Your servants the prophets, who spoke in Your name to our kings, leaders, fathers, and all the people of the land.

Watch how Daniel begins, and watch what he does with the word “we.” He opens by lifting his eyes to the greatness of God, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love, and only then does he speak of sin, for the holier God appears the more clearly our sin is seen. And when he names that sin, this is one of the most upright men in all of Scripture, a man of whom the visions could find no fault, and yet he does not say “they have sinned” or “our fathers sinned long ago.” He says we have sinned and done wrong, we have acted wickedly and rebelled. Here is the heart of true intercession. Daniel does not stand above his people to accuse them; he kneels down inside his people to confess with them. He piles up the words for their failure, honest and unsparing, and takes his own place among the guilty.

Daniel 9:7–10 (BSB)

⁷ To You, O Lord, belongs righteousness, but this day we are covered with shame—the men of Judah, the people of Jerusalem, and all Israel near and far, in all the countries to which You have driven us because of our unfaithfulness to You. ⁸ O LORD, we are covered with shame—our kings, our leaders, and our fathers—because we have sinned against You. ⁹ To the Lord our God belong compassion and forgiveness, even though we have rebelled against Him ¹⁰ and have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God to walk in His laws, which He set before us through His servants the prophets.

Now the prayer draws the two great truths of the whole chapter side by side, and it is worth pausing to see them together. To You, O Lord, belongs righteousness, Daniel says, and to us belongs open shame. He does not soften it. The exile is deserved; the fault is theirs and not God’s; every honest heart before God comes at last to this place of owning that the wrong is truly its own. And then, in the same breath, comes the turn that keeps the prayer from crushing him: to the Lord our God belong compassion (רַחֲמִים) rachamim, pronounced rah-khah-MEEM. Strong's H7356, compassion, tender mercy, mercies. This tender word comes from the same root as rechem, the word for a mother’s womb, and that is no accident. It carries the ache of the deepest love there is, the feeling of a parent whose whole being is bound up in a child, and here it is lifted up to describe how God feels toward a people who have wronged Him and deserve nothing. It is plural in the Hebrew, a fullness of mercies, as though one word for pity were not enough to hold what belongs to the Lord. And notice where Daniel places it: right after he has confessed that his people rebelled and would not obey. He does not appeal to their goodness, for they have none to offer. He appeals to the womb-deep mercy of God, and that appeal is never turned away. When you have nothing left to plead but His compassion, you are pleading the very thing that most surely moves Him. and forgiveness. Look at how those belongings are set against each other. To us belongs the shame; to Him belong the mercy and the pardon. That is the whole gospel in miniature, spoken centuries before Bethlehem. When a soul finally stops excusing itself and says the shame is mine, it is precisely then that it discovers where compassion and forgiveness have been waiting all along, not in itself, but in the heart of God.

Daniel 9:11–14 (BSB)

¹¹ All Israel has transgressed Your law and turned away, refusing to obey Your voice; so the oath and the curse written in the Law of Moses the servant of God has been poured out on us, because we have sinned against You. ¹² You have carried out the words spoken against us and against our rulers by bringing upon us a great disaster. For under all of heaven, nothing has ever been done like what has been done to Jerusalem. ¹³ Just as it is written in the Law of Moses, all this disaster has come upon us, yet we have not sought the favor of the LORD our God by turning from our iniquities and giving attention to Your truth. ¹⁴ Therefore the LORD has kept the calamity in store and brought it upon us. For the LORD our God is righteous in all He does; yet we have not obeyed His voice.

Here Daniel does something we rarely have the courage to do. He looks squarely at the disaster that has fallen on his nation and he refuses to call it unfair. The curse written in the Law of Moses has been poured out, he says, exactly as it was promised long ago, and the LORD our God is righteous in all He does. There is no complaint here, no whisper that God has been harsh. The prophets had warned and warned, and the people had not turned. And so Daniel lays the whole weight of the ruin where it belongs, on the sin of the people and never on the justice of God. It takes a humble soul to pray this way, to hold that God is right even in the very judgment that has broken your heart. Yet this is the only ground on which real mercy can be sought, for the man who insists God has treated him unfairly has nothing left to ask; only the one who says God is righteous and I am not can cast himself on grace.

Daniel 9:15–19 (BSB)

¹⁵ Now, O Lord our God, who brought Your people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand, and who made for Yourself a name renowned to this day, we have sinned; we have acted wickedly. ¹⁶ O Lord, in keeping with all Your righteous acts, I pray that Your anger and wrath may turn away from Your city Jerusalem, Your holy mountain; for because of our sins and the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and Your people are a reproach to all around us. ¹⁷ So now, our God, hear the prayers and petitions of Your servant. For Your sake, O Lord, cause Your face to shine upon Your desolate sanctuary. ¹⁸ Incline Your ear, O my God, and hear; open Your eyes and see the desolation of the city that bears Your name. For we are not presenting our petitions before You because of our righteous acts, but because of Your great compassion. ¹⁹ O Lord, listen! O Lord, forgive! O Lord, hear and act! For Your sake, O my God, do not delay, because Your city and Your people bear Your name.”

Now the prayer rises to its plea, and listen closely to the ground on which Daniel asks. He does not say, hear us because we have earned it. He says the very opposite: we are not presenting our petitions before You because of our righteous acts, but because of Your great compassion. That single sentence is the beating heart of all true prayer. Everything Daniel asks, he asks for God’s own sake and God’s own name, not for the people’s worthiness. Turn away Your anger for Your holy mountain’s sake; let Your face shine for Your own sake; act because Your city and Your people bear Your name. And then the requests come tumbling out, short and urgent and almost breathless: O Lord, listen! O Lord, forgive! O Lord, hear and act! This is what it looks like when a soul has finally given up on its own merit and thrown itself completely on the mercy and honor of God. It does not argue; it pleads. And such pleading God has never yet refused.

Daniel 9:20–23 (BSB)

²⁰ While I was speaking, praying, confessing my sin and that of my people Israel, and presenting my petition before the LORD my God concerning His holy mountain— ²¹ while I was still praying, Gabriel, the man I had seen in the earlier vision, came to me in swift flight about the time of the evening sacrifice. ²² He instructed me and spoke with me, saying: “O Daniel, I have come now to give you insight and understanding. ²³ At the beginning of your petitions, an answer went out, and I have come to tell you, for you are highly precious. So consider the message and understand the vision:

See how swiftly heaven answers. While Daniel is still praying, before the amen is even out of his mouth, Gabriel comes to him in swift flight, and the angel tells him something wonderful: at the very beginning of your petitions, an answer went out. The reply was on its way before the prayer was finished. And there is one word here to treasure, spoken from heaven about this bowed old man: you are highly precious. The exiles far from home might have felt forgotten and worthless, a shamed and scattered people, yet here is the word of God’s own messenger over one praying saint, you are greatly beloved. Let that steady you. The soul that comes to God in honest confession and casts itself on His mercy is not despised in heaven; it is dear. And the answer Gabriel brings is far greater than the homecoming Daniel had prayed for. It is a window opened onto the deepest work God ever meant to do.

Daniel 9:24 (BSB)

²⁴ 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.

Daniel had asked about seventy years; Gabriel answers with seventy weeks, a far longer reach of God’s purpose, decreed for the people and the holy city. And notice what these weeks are for, for the list of their purposes is a chain of pure gospel: to stop transgression, to put an end to sin, to make atonement (כָּפַר) kāphar, pronounced kah-FAR. Strong's H3722, to cover, atone, make atonement. This is the great word of the Day of Atonement, and its root idea is to cover, to wipe away, to make things right between a guilty people and a holy God. All through the Law it was the priest’s costly work, the blood on the mercy seat, the covering that let sinners stand before the LORD and live. Here Gabriel places that very word at the center of the seventy weeks, promising an atonement for iniquity that would not need to be repeated year after year but would finish the matter forever. Daniel had spent his whole prayer confessing sins that no exile could undo; this one word answers him. There would come One whose atoning work would cover iniquity to the very bottom, so that the shame Daniel owned so honestly could be taken away entirely. The word the priests spoke over a lamb, God would one day speak over His own Anointed. for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness. This is the true and final answer to Daniel’s whole prayer. Daniel had confessed a nation drowning in sin and shame; God answers by promising an end to sin itself, an atonement that would cover iniquity, and a righteousness that would never pass away. The exile could bring the people home, but only this could bring their sin to an end. Here the prayer of confession meets its everlasting reply, for the God to whom belong compassion and forgiveness was even now decreeing how that forgiveness would be purchased once and for all.

Daniel 9:25–27 (BSB)

²⁵ Know and understand this: From the issuance of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Messiah, the Prince, there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks. It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of distress. ²⁶ Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and will have nothing. Then the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood, and until the end there will be war; desolations have been decreed. ²⁷ And he will confirm a covenant with many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of the temple will come the abomination that causes desolation, until the decreed destruction is poured out upon him.”

Now we come to the part faithful readers have long pondered, and here we should walk humbly. Gabriel measures out the weeks: from a decree to rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince, and then, after the sixty-two weeks, the Messiah will be cut off and will have nothing. Godly interpreters have counted these weeks in different ways and have understood the final week, the covenant, and the abomination that causes desolation along different lines, and Manna Praxis does not press anyone into a single scheme or fasten these words onto particular modern dates or nations. What we can hold with certainty is what every reverent reader has seen: an Anointed One is coming, and He will be cut off, He will have nothing, He will die. Set that beside verse twenty-four and the wonder of it opens up. The Anointed One who makes atonement for iniquity is the very One who is cut off, stripped of everything, for that is how the atonement is made. The prayer that began by owning a people’s sin ends here, at the cost of covering it, in the death of God’s Messiah. Whatever a reader concludes about the timing, the center is sure and it is Christ, and it is enough to make the soul bow down.