How long are the seventy weeks of Daniel?

The Hebrew word is shavuim, sevens, not weeks in the ordinary sense. Nearly every interpreter reads it as seventy sevens of years, or 490 years. The main dissent comes from those who read the numbers as symbolic rather than calendrical.

When do the seventy weeks start?

From "the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem" in Daniel 9:25. Four decrees are proposed, from Cyrus in 538 BC, Darius around 520 BC, Artaxerxes I in his seventh year around 458 or 457 BC, and Artaxerxes I in his twentieth year around 445 or 444 BC. The choice changes every date downstream.

Is there a gap between the sixty-ninth and seventieth week?

This is the central dispute. Dispensational futurists place a gap of now more than two thousand years between them, which makes the seventieth week a still-future seven-year tribulation. Amillennial, postmillennial, preterist and historicist readers run the seventieth week straight on from the sixty-ninth and see it fulfilled in the first century.

Who is the "he" who confirms the covenant in Daniel 9:27?

Either Christ or the Antichrist, and that single decision determines everything else. If it is Christ, the seventieth week is his ministry and its aftermath. If it is a coming prince, the week is future and the covenant is a treaty he later breaks.

What do the 2,300 days of Daniel 8:14 have to do with this?

Historicist interpreters apply the day-year principle to both passages and treat the seventy weeks as the opening segment of a longer 2,300-year span. Starting at 457 BC, that arithmetic lands on 1844, which is the calculation William Miller used and the one Seventh-day Adventists retained after his prediction failed.

The Seventy Weeks of Daniel, Drawn Out

Daniel 9 gives an angelic message with a number in it, and almost everyone agrees on the number. Seventy weeks means seventy sevens of years, 490 years, running from a decree about Jerusalem to a set of things God will accomplish.

What people do not agree on is where the count starts and whether it ever stops. The single decision that splits every reading is whether the seventieth week follows immediately after the sixty-ninth or is separated from it by a gap that has now lasted two thousand years. If it runs straight on, the prophecy finished in the first century. If there is a gap, the last seven years are still ahead of us, and they are what most people mean when they say "the tribulation".

The text

Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, 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

Know therefore and understand, that 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: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times. Daniel 9:25

Verse 26 then says that "after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself", and that "the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary". Verse 27 supplies the last week.

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. Daniel 9:27

"Weeks" is not the word

The Hebrew is shavuim, the plural of shavua, which simply means a seven, from sheva, the number seven. English translators reached for "weeks" because our week is a seven, but the Hebrew does not specify seven of what.

One detail decides it for most readers. In Daniel 10:2 the same author writes that he mourned "three full weeks", and there the Hebrew adds a qualifier, sevens of days. Chapter 9 has no such qualifier. That asymmetry is the standard argument that chapter 9 means sevens of years, and it is accepted across almost every tradition.

The arithmetic

The 490 years are not one block. They come in three unequal pieces, and the seams matter.

Segment	Length	What happens in it
7 weeks	49 years	Jerusalem is rebuilt, "the street and the wall, even in troublous times"
62 weeks	434 years	Nothing is described. The clock simply runs
Sixty-nine total	483 years	Reaches "the Messiah the Prince"
1 week	7 years	Covenant confirmed, sacrifice stopped at the midpoint, desolation

The break after the sixty-ninth week is where the disagreement lives. Nothing in the Hebrew says whether verse 27 begins the moment verse 26 ends.

The starting decree changes everything

Verse 25 begins the count at "the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem". Four royal decrees are proposed, and picking one fixes every date that follows.

Decree	Date	Source	What 483 years later gives you
Cyrus, to rebuild the temple	538 BC	Ezra 1:1-4	About 55 BC. Nothing messianic lands there, so those who start here usually read the numbers as symbolic rather than calendrical
Darius I, confirming Cyrus	about 520 BC	Ezra 6:1-12	Around 37 BC. Same problem
Artaxerxes I, seventh year, Ezra's commission	458 or 457 BC	Ezra 7:11-26	About AD 26 or 27, the usual date for the start of Jesus' ministry. Preferred by historicists and Seventh-day Adventists, and by many amillennial readers
Artaxerxes I, twentieth year, Nehemiah and the walls	445 or 444 BC	Nehemiah 2:1-8	AD 32 or 33 once the years are counted as 360 days each. Preferred by dispensational futurists

The last row is where the famous calculation comes from. Sir Robert Anderson, a Scotland Yard official, published The Coming Prince in 1894, counting 483 prophetic years of 360 days each, or 173,880 days, from March 445 BC and arriving at 6 April AD 32, which he identified as the day of the triumphal entry. Harold Hoehner of Dallas Theological Seminary revised the method in 1977, starting from 444 BC and landing on 30 March AD 33. Critics point out that the 360-day year is inferred from Revelation rather than stated in Daniel. Defenders answer that a prophecy given in sevens is entitled to its own reckoning.

Only Nehemiah's decree clearly concerns the city rather than the temple. Only Ezra's reaches Jesus without a special calendar. Both points are fair, and neither is decisive.

"Messiah shall be cut off"

Verse 26 puts the cutting off after the sixty-two weeks. The Hebrew verb is karath, to cut off, used both for making a covenant, literally cutting one, and for a person being cut off from the people, by death or by exclusion.

Nearly every Christian reading takes this as the crucifixion. The main alternative comes from historical-critical scholarship, much of it Catholic and mainline Protestant, which reads the passage against the Maccabean crisis: the anointed one cut off is the high priest Onias III, murdered around 171 BC, and the desolator is Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who desecrated the temple in 167 BC before Judas Maccabeus rededicated it in 164.

The crux: who is "he" in verse 27?

Everything turns on the antecedent of a pronoun. Verse 26 mentions two figures, the Messiah who is cut off and "the prince that shall come" whose people destroy the city. Verse 27 says "he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week". Which one is "he"?

Reading	"He" is	Gap before the 70th week?	The seventieth week is
Dispensational futurist	The coming prince, the Antichrist	Yes, more than 2,000 years so far	A future seven-year tribulation. He signs a treaty with Israel and breaks it at the midpoint
Amillennial	Christ	No	Christ's ministry and the years just after, the covenant confirmed and the sacrifices ended by the cross
Postmillennial	Christ	No	Much the same, read as the launch of a gospel age that succeeds
Preterist	Christ, with the Roman prince supplying the desolation of AD 70	No	Roughly AD 27 to 34, closing at the stoning of Stephen or the mission to the Gentiles
Historicist	Christ	No	The first century, but as the opening segment of a much longer prophetic span
Historical-critical	Antiochus IV Epiphanes	No	171 to 164 BC

Meredith Kline and Kim Riddlebarger, writing from the amillennial side, press the point that the verb translated "confirm" describes strengthening a covenant that already exists, which suits the covenant of grace better than a new political treaty. Dispensational writers answer that verse 26 has just introduced the coming prince and that the nearest antecedent normally wins. Both arguments are grammatical, and grammar has not settled it in a century of trying.

The day-year reading, the 2,300 days and 1844

Historicism produced the most consequential date in the history of American religion, and it did so from this passage.

Historicist interpreters apply the day-year principle, the rule that a prophetic day stands for a literal year. Daniel 8:14 says "Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed." Read as years and started at the same 457 BC decree used for the seventy weeks, and allowing for the absence of a year zero, 2,300 years lands on 1844.

That is exactly the calculation William Miller, a Baptist lay preacher in upstate New York, made public from 1831. His followers, the Millerites, eventually settled on 22 October 1844 after Samuel Snow argued for a further "tarrying time". Estimates of how many people expected Christ that day range from tens of thousands upward, and historians do not agree on a figure. Nothing happened, and the day became known as the Great Disappointment.

Most Millerites left. A small group concluded Miller had the date right and the event wrong, and that what began in 1844 was a work of judgement in a heavenly sanctuary. That became the Seventh-day Adventist doctrine of the investigative judgement.

What actually hangs on this

The seventy weeks look like a chronology problem. They are not. They are the hinge on which a whole eschatology turns.

Accept a gap and you have a future seven-year tribulation, a midpoint, a broken treaty, a rebuilt temple with sacrifices to stop, and a slot for the Antichrist. Refuse the gap and every one of those disappears, because there is no seven-year window left to put them in. Two readers can agree that 490 years are decreed and end up with entirely different futures, from one pronoun in verse 27.

Which is why the useful thing is not to be handed the right answer. It is to see the six timelines drawn out, at the same scale, with the reasoning that produces each one visible underneath it.