The Seventy Weeks: Exact Timing of the Messiah
Written in Babylon in 539 BC, Daniel predicted the exact year the Messiah would begin his ministry, 483 years after the decree to rebuild Jerusalem.
Prophecy & Fulfillment
Old Testament Prophecy
Daniel 9:24-26
"Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place. 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. And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing."
New Testament Fulfillment
Luke 3:1-2, 23
"In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea... the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness... Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age."
Commentary
Daniel 9 is the most mathematically precise prophecy in Scripture. The angel Gabriel tells Daniel that 69 "weeks" (units of 7 years = 483 years) would elapse from the decree to rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One appears. Artaxerxes I issued that decree in 457 BC (Ezra 7:12-26). Adding 483 years, accounting for the absence of a year zero when crossing from BC to AD, yields AD 27, the very year Luke records Jesus beginning his public ministry at approximately 30 years of age. The phrase "cut off" (Hebrew: karat) is a technical term for a violent, covenantal death, fulfilled at the crucifixion in AD 30-31.