Quote:
Originally Posted by mfblume
Actually, it is not applied to Daniel's 70 weeks, because a WEEK in Hebrew is literally a SEVEN. Not "seven days" or "seven years," just "SEVEN". And the units of days or years are not even mentioned. We read English translations of the word WEEK and think it means seven days. But if you read Hebrew, you would literally read There are 70 sevens. It's like saying DOZENS without saying dozens of "what".
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They just happen to be sevens of days though, which were fulfilled as sevens of years.
The word "week" in the KJV old testament is "shabua":
Fulfil her
week, and we will give thee this also for the service which thou shalt serve with me yet seven other years. And Jacob did so, and fulfilled her
week: and he gave him Rachel his daughter to wife also.
(
Gen 29:27-28)
But if she bear a maid child, then she shall be unclean two
weeks, as in her separation: and she shall continue in the blood of her purifying threescore and six days.
(
Lev 12:5)
Seven
weeks shalt thou number unto thee: begin to number the seven
weeks from such time as thou beginnest to put the sickle to the corn. And thou shalt keep the feast of
weeks unto the LORD thy God with a tribute of a freewill offering of thine hand, which thou shalt give unto the LORD thy God, according as the LORD thy God hath blessed thee:
(
Deu 16:9-10)
Neither say they in their heart, Let us now fear the LORD our God, that giveth rain, both the former and the latter, in his season: he reserveth unto us the appointed
weeks of the harvest.
(
Jer 5:24)
So when Daniel is told there are seventy shabuas, he and every Judean would understand there are seventy weeks, seventy Sabbath-cycles. Since the seventy weeks turned out to be seventy weeks of actual years, the prophecy in Daniel is a demonstration of the so called "Year-Day Principle". There are others in Scripture as well:
Fulfil her week, and we will give thee this also for the service which thou shalt serve with me yet seven other years.
(
Gen 29:27)
The marriage feast was a week (seven days), and corresponds to the seven years Jacob was willing to serve for his wife (and which Laban demanded of him for both Leah and Rachel). Both Jacob and Laban were familiar with the year-day correspondence, as it apparently was common practice to equate days with years, and to measure years in groups of seven, ie weeks of years, just as the regular week was seven days, the year-week was seven years. Calendrical time was created by God. The first element was the Day, which was then placed in groups of seven to make the week (the shabua) due to the sanctification of the seventh day of creation, the Sabbath. This is a wholly unnatural division of time, the only reason for a seven day week is because God blessed and sanctified and thus separated the seventh day as a demarcation in the time keeping. Later, this would be incorporated into the agricultural land sabbaths, every seven years, every week of years the land would enjoy a sabbath-year, just as man enjoyed a sabbath-day every week of days. (See
Judges 14 for an example of a seven day wedding feast.)
It was also used in prophecy:
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, and ye shall know my breach of promise.
(
Num 14:34)
Lie thou also upon thy left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it:
according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon it thou shalt bear their iniquity. For I have laid upon thee
the years of their iniquity,
according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days: so shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days:
I have appointed thee each day for a year.
(
Eze 4:4-6)