A Hermeneutical Question for Those Who Favor
the Traditional Interpretations of Daniel 9
The Hebrew prophet Daniel concludes his book with an extraordinary statement concerning his own prophecies: “But you, Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book until the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase” (Daniel 12:4). Again, the angel tells him, “Go your way, Daniel, for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end” (Daniel 12:9).
These statements raise a fundamental hermeneutical question that deserves more attention than it has generally received. The issue is not whether Daniel’s prophecies are inspired, nor whether they ultimately testify to God’s sovereign control of history. Rather, the question is this: If God intentionally withheld the full meaning of Daniel’s visions until a future time when knowledge would increase, by what process did that withholding come to an end? Every interpreter of Daniel must answer that question before proposing a final interpretation.
The traditional interpretation of Daniel 9 has become the consensus view within much of both Jewish and Christian scholarship. Although interpreters differ concerning particular details, most understand the “seventy weeks” to represent seventy weeks of years and build their chronologies upon that assumption. What is seldom discussed, however, is how this interpretation relates to Daniel’s own declaration that the visions were sealed until the time of the end. If the prophecies were sealed by divine command, then the transition from sealed to unsealed understanding should itself be identifiable. When did that occur? By what process did it happen? What event marked the change? These questions are rarely addressed explicitly, even though they arise naturally from the text itself.
The text does not suggest that Daniel’s words were hidden from view. The text of the Book of Daniel has been available for twenty-five centuries. Rather, it implies that the full meaning of the visions was intentionally withheld until God’s appointed time. Daniel himself illustrates this distinction. After hearing the angel’s explanation, he confessed, “Although I heard, I did not understand” (Daniel 12:8). The revelation had been given, yet complete understanding had not. Thus, the prophecy distinguishes between possessing the inspired text and possessing its full interpretation. Daniel’s own experience demonstrates that the revelation was complete while its ultimate significance remained inaccessible until a later time.
If the full meaning of the visions remained intentionally withheld until knowledge increased, interpreters who offer an interpretation should be able to explain how that increase occurred. Several explanations have been proposed. Some appeal to centuries of gradual theological reflection. Others suggest that Christ’s first coming effectively unsealed the prophecies, although no passage in the New Testament explicitly identifies Christ’s first coming as the event by which Daniel’s sealed prophecies became unsealed. Still others point to the continuing illumination of the Holy Spirit within the Church over the centuries. Each of these proposals deserves careful consideration. Yet every one must answer the same question: How does this explanation satisfy Daniel’s own statement that the visions were sealed until a future time when knowledge would increase? The issue is not whether theological understanding is progressive. Certainly, it is. The issue is whether Daniel describes ordinary theological development or a specific process by which sealed prophecies become fully understandable.
Daniel consistently presents his visions as predictions of identifiable historical events. If those events have not occurred, complete understanding would necessarily remain incomplete. Once those events had taken place, however, the historical evidence necessary for identifying their fulfillment would finally become available. Under this understanding, no new revelation is given, no additional prophet appears, and no further Scripture is written. The revelation remains exactly as Daniel recorded it. What changes is not the revelation itself but the availability of historical evidence confirming what God had already revealed. History, therefore, becomes the means by which the sealed prophecies are progressively unsealed for understanding as their predicted events occur.
This question becomes especially significant in Daniel 9. Before Gabriel introduces the prophecy of the seventy weeks, Daniel tells the reader that he had been studying Jeremiah’s prophecy concerning the seventy years of Jerusalem’s desolation (Daniel 9:2). That statement is hardly incidental. Daniel intentionally establishes the timeline of Jeremiah as the immediate biblical context before presenting the new prophecy. Consequently, the interpreter should first ask whether Jeremiah provides part of the hermeneutical framework for understanding the seventy weeks. Yet many discussions of Daniel 9 move immediately to chronological calculations while giving comparatively little attention to why Daniel begins the chapter with the reference to Jeremiah at all. The canonical context established by Daniel himself deserves greater interpretive weight. The answer should arise from Daniel’s own literary context rather than be imported from later theological assumptions.
The purpose of this article is not to resolve the chronology of Daniel 9 but to raise a prior hermeneutical question. Before debating whether the seventy weeks should be interpreted in one manner or another, should we not first explain how Daniel’s prophecies passed from being divinely sealed to being unsealed and fully understandable? If God intentionally withheld their full meaning until knowledge increased, then identifying the process by which that increase occurred is not an optional matter. It is part of the interpretive methodology itself. Until that question has been answered, every proposed interpretation—traditional or otherwise—remains methodologically incomplete.
The debate over Daniel 9 has traditionally focused on chronology. Perhaps the more fundamental issue is hermeneutics. Daniel himself tells the reader that his visions were sealed until a future time when knowledge would be increased. That declaration should shape every subsequent discussion. Before asking, “What do the seventy weeks mean?” we should first ask, “How, according to Daniel himself, were sealed prophecies intended to become fully understood?” Only after that question has been answered can the chronological details of Daniel 9 be evaluated within the interpretive framework established by the prophet himself.
Every traditional interpretation of Daniel 9 found in commentaries, scholarly journals, and study Bibles presupposes an answer to the question of how sealed prophecy came to be fully understood. Thus, before evaluating competing chronologies, should we not first determine whether our proposed explanation of how sealed prophecy became unsealed and fully open for understanding actually arises from Daniel himself? My own answer to that question is presented in my booklet, Daniel’s Amazing Visions, available as a free PDF download on this website.
