PSALM 22:6-18 (11th CENTURY BC)
(6)But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. (7)All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head saying, (8)He trusted on the LORD that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him. (9)But you are he that took me out of the womb: you did make me hope when I was upon my mother’s breasts. (10)I was cast upon you from the womb: you are my God from my mother’s belly. (11)Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help. (12)Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round. (13)They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion. (14)I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. (15)My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaves to my jaws; and you have brought me into the dust of death. (16)For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have enclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. (17)I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me. (18)They part my garments amount them, and cast lots upon my vesture.
A depiction similar to how Christ would have appeared to the crowd along the Via Dolorosa on May 1, 33 AD. The practice of crucifixion began in the 6′” century BC by the Seleucids, Carthaginians, and Romans, the latter up to the 4′” century AD. In a remarkable Psalm (Ps. 22) pref·iguring the death of the Messiah and written centuries before crucifixion was invented, David of Israel writes: “They pierced my hands and my feet.” The word translated ..pierced” actually means ..to dig open,” and is often used in the Old Testament for the digging of a well by opening the earth, but also of opening the ear to hear (Ps. 40:6). Therefore a more literal rendering of Psalm 22:16b is “they dug open my hands and my feet.” Thus the Spirit-guided psalmist predicts the digging open of the flesh of the Christ, which, in the context of his crucifixion, suggests a picking away at his flesh during the beginning process of nailing, to ensure that the correct location at the anatomical wrist (heel of the hand), probably in the place known as “the space of Destot,” was struck (to help support the body’s weight). The result was not unlike the life-giving water from a well. And so the life-giving liquid in this case was the blood that flowed from the crud· fied Christ, shed for the sins of the world.
ISAIAH 53
(7th to 8th CENTURY BC)
(1)Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
(2)He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground: He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. (3)He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces; he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. (4)Surely he took up our pain, and bore our suffering: yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. (5)But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. (6)We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (7)He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the laughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. (8)By oppression and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished. (9)He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.
(10)Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand. (11)After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. (12)Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
May 3, 33 AD In 1898, Italian photographer Secondo Pia was startled when he created a negative of the Shroud of Turin and found a normal-looking image. Com· posed only of the top surface of the initial threads, the image has no pigment, has been irreproducible, and is believed by many (including myself) to have been produced by an energy burst at the moment of the resurrection of the Christ.” I gave my hack to the smiters, and my cheek· to them tl2at plucked off tbe hair. I bid not my face from shame and spitting’ (Is. 50:6).
ENDNOTES
1 The events in Daniel cover the time when the prophet was about in his late teens, to when he was in his 80s.
2 One of the reasons the German Higher Criticism of the 19th century rejected a 6th century BC date for the book of Daniel was because Greek words are used three times to refer to musical instruments. Critics did not believe Babylonian culture of the 6th century was trade-integrated to this extent. This view was later disproved.
3 Critics generally assign a date to Daniel around the 160s BC.
4 The word in Hebrew is shboim, the plural of shabuwa which means seven; hence sevens. In translations this has been Englished as “weeks.” Yet the word in Hebrew is not technically weeks, but sevens. Daniel 9:24 thus begins: “Seventy weeks (lit. sevens) are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city [Jerusalem]….” Therefore the further question is, sevens of what? Now, normally in the Old Testament the Hebrew word translated in English as “weeks” (Heb. shboim) means weeks as we normally think of them, that is, weeks of days. However, the context of Daniel 9:2 gives us reason to believe Daniel means weeks of years. The reasoning runs as follows. Beginning with verse 2 we are told that Daniel is reflecting on the 70 years of exile which Jeremiah prophesied. Says Daniel:
In the first year of his [Cyrus’] reign, I, Daniel, understood in the scrolls 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 (Dan. 9:2).
The original prophecy regarding the exile is found in Jeremiah 29:10:
For thus saith the Lord, That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon [lit. that/ to bidding of me/ to be fulfilled of/ for Babylon/ seventy year] I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place.
The 70 years which Jeremiah spoke of would be God’s banishment of the Jews from their land, because they had failed to rest the land in the seventh year of a 7-year cycle, upon 70 different occasions (cycles). The idea behind sabbathing the year was to encourage the Jews to trust God to provide in six years the needs for seven. Therefore they were to sabbath (i.e. rest) the land every seventh year (Lev. 25:4). In that year the people were not to sow grain, prune their grapevines, or harvest grapes. Instead, in the 6th year God would give them an overabundance of crops, and this would last them even beyond when they could reap from the sowing which began after the 7th year of rest. However, God said he would exile them to another nation if they failed to rest the land, in which case the land would then rest the time which had been denied it:
And those that had escaped from the sword he [Nebuchadnezzar] carried away to Babylon; where they were servants to him and his sons until the reign of the kingdom of Persia, to fulfill 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 (II Chron. 36:20-21).
Returning to Daniel 9, we find that Daniel, after reflecting on the 70 years of exile which Jeremiah had prophesied, beseeches God to reestablish Jerusalem and his chosen people. It appears from Daniel’s prayer that he may have believed the kingdom of God was about to reign over the earth after this period of divine chastisement of his own people, the Jews. But (in God’s response) the angel Gabriel tells Daniel that there are 70 sevens remaining to be played out (so to speak), before all these things would be accomplished. In other words, even as the failure of the Jews happened over a total of 490 years in which they had failed 70 times to sabbath the land in the 7th year of 7-year cycles, even so would there be a kind of do-over for the Jews of another 490 years. That is, 70 more 7-year periods would transpire before God brought a kind of completion both to Jewish history and to this world’s affairs. Daniel’s reflection upon Jeremiah’s prophecy about sevens of years is thus the natural explanation, i.e., that sevens refers to the kind of 7-year periods which had revealed the Jews’ character. Thus in context the sevens (or ‘weeks’) means sevens of years. The angel Gabriel is thus telling Daniel that 70 more 7-year periods are yet to come to pass in the future, in which God will specifically focus on his relationship with Jerusalem and its people. As this book explains, a total of 69 of these sevens have so far transpired (from 444 BC to 33 AD).
A further argument is that Daniel 9:27 speaks of events in the middle of the last (70th) ‘week’ (lit. seven). Thus these events obviously imply 3½ years, not 3½ days. There is therefore a gap between the 69th and 70th weeks of Daniel. Upon the rejection of the Messiah at his “Triumphal Entry” into Jerusalem (after the 69th seven), God stopped his focus (in some sense) upon the Jews, so that the world would hear the gospel which the Jews rejected. An objection has been made that no such interruption should be allowed between the 69th and 70th week of Daniel’s prophesy. But one must remember that the 490 years (70 sevens) of disobedience of the Jews in the Old Testament was non-contiguous over a course of about 650 years. Additionally, coupling the Old Testament book of Daniel with the book of Revelation in the New Testament yields an interesting insight. In Daniel 9:27 we are told that the Antichrist will confirm the covenant with many for one week (lit. seven), but that in the midst of it he will break the covenant and cause the temple sacrifice to cease. The apostle John, writing at about 68 AD, speaks of two witnesses of God who for 1260 days will have power to bring plagues on the earth because of man’s disobedience (Rev. 11:3). John also states that the Antichrist will be in power for 42 months (Rev. 13:5). The first of these periods works out to 3½ years if the years are composed of 360 days each, and the second period (42 months) may be inferred to be the same length as the first. Many theologians (including myself) believe the two witnesses are active during the first half of the 70th week (half of a seven), and that the Antichrist’s 42-month rule will be the latter half of the 70th week. Daniel actually refers to this latter half as a time of unprecedented tribulation (since ever there was a nation), lasting a “time, times, and half a time” (Dan. 12:1, 7). This latter phrase is interpreted by many scholars as a year, two years, and half a year, or 3½ years total.
All this is a check on the fact that the “sevens” of Daniel’s chapter 9 prophesy are 7-year periods composed of years of 360-days each. In short, the context of Daniel 9 suggests that what is in view are sevens of years, not sevens of days. Further, this seems corroborated by how neatly and exactly the prophecy of Daniel about the coming Messiah and his death is fulfilled to the very day, if we assume sevens of years (as this book explains).
5 The division of 7 weeks and 62 weeks was to show that the restoration and building of Jerusalem would begin with seven troublous weeks, i.e. 49 years. Indeed, the antagonism of the Jews’ enemies toward Nehemiah and the Jewish people is well documented in Nehemiah’s book. After the restoration and building of the City, there would be 434 more years (62 weeks) until the completion of the 69 weeks, after which Messiah would be cut off. Note also the Hebrew parallelism in Daniel 9:25-26a, in which the 69 weeks are given as (a) 7 and (b) 62—in which (a) the street and wall will be built even in troublous times, lasting 7 weeks, (b) followed by 62 weeks, after which Messiah shall be cut off. In my opinion another reason the 69 weeks were divided into two intervals was to allow the Jews to know whether they were on the right track in counting down 360-day years until the Messiah. For they knew from the prophecy that it should take 7 “weeks” (i.e., 49 years of 360-days each) until Jerusalem was rebuilt. And so at that point they could verify to themselves whether their assumption to thus reckon the remaining 62 “weeks” until Messiah the Prince ought to be correct. This would be necessary if there were a loss of knowledge about the original 360-day year. Therefore I believe that if archaeology ever discovers records indicating the date when the rebuilding of Jerusalem was completed, it will be 49 years (of 360 days each) from the beginning ‘bookend’ of Daniel’s prophecy. Thus 17,640 days from (Julian) April 6, 444 BC is (Julian) Monday, July 23, 396 BC.
6 The phrase, “but not for himself” (Dan. 9:26a) in the Hebrew literally states: “and there is no to him.” This may be understood to mean one or more of the following: (1) there is no [sin applicable] to him; (2) there is [a] No [said] to him [by his people setting him at naught]; (3) there is no [thing] to him [of the kingdom he deserved].