(β) After this restoration of Temple and priest, sixty-two weeks (i.e., four hundred and thirty-four years) are to elapse, during which Jerusalem is indeed to exist "with street and trench"—but in the straitness of the times.[617]
This, too, is clear and easy of comprehension. It exactly corresponds with the depressed condition of Jewish life during the Persian and early Grecian epochs, from the restoration of the Temple, b.c. 538, to b.c. 171, when the false high priest Menelaus robbed the Temple of its best treasures. This is indeed, so far as accurate chronology is concerned, an unverifiable period, for it only gives us three hundred and sixty-seven years instead of four hundred and thirty-four:—but of that I will speak later on. The punctuation of the original is disputed. Theodotion, the Vulgate, and our A.V. punctuate in ver. 25, "From the going forth of the commandment" ("decree" or "word") "that Jerusalem should be restored and rebuilt, unto an Anointed, a Prince, are seven weeks, and sixty-two weeks." Accepting this view, Von Lengerke and Hitzig make the seven weeks run parallel with the first seven in the sixty-two. This indeed makes the chronology a little more accurate, but introduces an unexplained and a fantastic element. Consequently most modern scholars, including even such writers as Keil, and our Revisers follow the Masoretic punctuation, and put the stop after the seven weeks, separating them entirely from the following sixty-two.
3. After the sixty-two weeks is to follow a series of events, and all these point quite distinctly to the epoch of Antiochus Epiphanes.
(α) Ver. 26.—An Anointed One[618] shall be cut off with all that belongs to him.
There can be no reasonable doubt that this is a reference to the deposition of the high priest Onias III., and his murder by Andronicus (b.c. 171).[619] This startling event is mentioned in 2 Macc. iv. 34, and by Josephus (Antt., XII. v. 1), and in Dan. xi. 22. It is added, "and no ... to him."[620] Perhaps the word "helper" (xi. 45) has fallen out of the text, as Grätz supposes; or the words may mean, "there is no [priest] for it [the people]."[621] The A.V. renders it, "but not for himself"; and in the margin, "and shall have nothing"; or, "and they [the Jews] shall be no more his people." The R.V. renders it, "and shall have nothing." I believe, with Dr. Joël, that in the Hebrew words veeyn lô there may be a sort of cryptographic allusion to the name Onias.[622]
(β) The people of the coming prince shall devastate the city and the sanctuary (translation uncertain).
This is an obvious allusion to the destruction and massacre inflicted on Jerusalem by Apollonius and the army of Antiochus Epiphanes (b.c. 167). Antiochus is called "the prince that shall come," because he was at Rome when Onias III. was murdered (b.c. 171).[623]
(γ) "And until the end shall be a war, a sentence of desolation" (Hitzig, etc.); or, as Ewald renders it, "Until the end of the war is the decision concerning the horrible thing."
This alludes to the troubles of Jerusalem until the heaven-sent Nemesis fell on the profane enemy of the saints in the miserable death of Antiochus in Persia.
(δ) But meanwhile he will have concluded a covenant with many for one week.[624]