Daniel 9:27

And he shall confirm the covenant with many “The covenant to be confirmed by the Messiah is not a civil, but a religious compact, as such, styled by Daniel himself, the holy covenant, Daniel 11:28; Daniel 11:30; Daniel 11:32, the covenant of grace; which, after the infraction of the first divine law of strict obedience, was, of mere clemency, granted to all mankind by the mediation of Christ. He not only expiated the sins of the world by his death, which was the chief article of the federal system; but in person, by the energy of his miracles, by the efficacy of his doctrine, and, soon after his resurrection, by the gift of the Holy Spirit, he induced many myriads of the Jews to accede to this covenant, which the Prophet Jeremiah so admirably describes, Jeremiah 31:33: compare Hebrews 8:6. He shall confirm this covenant with MANY, not with ALL, which marks the exclusion of the obstinate and impious Jews, whose fate is predicted in the preceding and following clause. By an obvious analogy, the Christian covenant, though offered to all, is still confirmed with many; namely, those only who, by a rational faith and moral subjection, having his law written in their hearts, attain to that exalted privilege.”

For one week “Christ's personal ministry continued to its fourth year. St. John (John 2:13; John 5:1; John 6:4; John 11:15;) distinctly reckons four passovers; the first, A.D. 30, Feb. 15, and the first year of his ministry; the second, A.D. 31; the third, A.D. 32; the fourth, A.D. 33. The half year precedes the first passover from his baptism. The first half week of Daniel is from the beginning of Christ's first preaching, Mark 1:15, Repent ye, and believe the gospel, A. 30, to his death, April 3, A. 33; or rather, to the pentecost following, when all the Christian mysteries were completed. The duration of Christ's ministry is so ascertained by St. John; and is so suitable to the great events of his life as well as to this prophecy, that, as it needs not to be protracted, so it cannot be shortened with any degree of probability. The second half week is from the feast of pentecost, (when St. Peter with so much energy converted three thousand of the Jews,) to the conversion of Cornelius, and the first-fruits of the Gentiles, by the same apostle. The best chronologers place the vision of St. Peter, and the conversion of Cornelius, in the fourth year after the passion; and in the same year we may place the foundation of the church of Antioch, where the disciples were first called CHRISTIANS, Acts 11:26. Thus a prediction, which began with the happy event of rebuilding the earthly Jerusalem, sublimely terminates with the structure of the heavenly, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, JESUS CHRIST himself being the chief corner-stone, Ephesians 2:20. The confirmation of the Christian covenant in one week, or seven years, includes its full effect, both in the conversion of many myriads of the Jews, and in the first-fruits of the Gentile Church.”

And in the MIDST of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease “The sacrifice here specified, with its attendant bread-offering, was eucharistical, as well as propitiatory, being a slain victim, on which the offerers feasted in token of amity and reconciliation with God. When Christ, in the MIDST of the week, offered his own body, that great sacrifice for the expiation of sin, to reconcile sinners to God; by that most holy and acceptable victim, he completed and abolished all the typical sacrifices of the law. The legal sacrifices, indeed, continued to be offered at the temple, for thirty-six years after Christ's death; but, in effect, they ceased, at that instant their efficacy was no more, after that Christ had given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour, Ephesians 5:2. Hence forward the Christian religion abrogated the Levitical sacrifices, as was accurately foretold by the psalmist, Psalms 40:6, as commented by the inspired writer to the Hebrews 10:5.”

And for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate

Or, more literally, And he shall be a desolator by the wing of abominations. Or, And being a desolator, he shall command over a wing of abominations. The desolator is the Roman army of sixty thousand men: Jos., B. J. 3:4. 2. The wing, as well as the flood, is the Hebrew metaphor for great armies. Abominations, in the Jewish style, are idols. The word is so used by Daniel 11:31, for the idol of the Olympian Jupiter, which Antiochus placed on God's altar, 1Ma 1:57. In this prophecy, it denotes the standards of the Roman legions. To every legion was a golden eagle with expanded wings, grasping a thunder-bolt. The eagles, with the standards of the cohorts, ten in each legion, adorned with the image of the reigning Cesar, were deified, adored, and sworn by; each eagle was placed in a little temple, or shrine; and there was a chapel in the camp where all the eagles were adored. At Rome they were deposited in the temple of Mars. Such deified ensigns were an abomination to the Jews: see Joshua 17:7 ; Joshua 17:2; Joshua 18:8. The prediction was minutely verified when the Romans, upon the flight of the seditious into the city, and upon the burning of the temple and adjacent buildings, brought the ensigns to the holy place, fixed them against the eastern gate, offered sacrifices to them, and hailed Titus Imperator, Joshua 6:6. Joshua 6:1. The allusion to the Roman standards is observable in that prediction of Moses; The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as the eagle flieth, a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand, Deuteronomy 28:49: see also Matthew 24:15. The eagles, and the language, and the distance from Rome, discriminate the Romans from the Chaldeans, whose tongue was only a dialect of the Hebrew.”

“The concluding clause, Even until the consummation, and that determined, shall be poured upon the desolate, is elliptical. It may be thus literally translated, and the ellipses supplied; Even until the consummation and excision, the divine wrath shall be poured on the desolate city, temple and people; which expresses so complete a devastation, as cannot be described but in the emphatic words of Christ, when his disciples beheld with admiration the recent magnificence of Herod's temple. See ye not all these things? Verily, I say unto you, there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down. And, Daniel 9:21, Then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. Christ's own prediction was memorably verified against the attempt of the apostate emperor, Julian, expressly to defeat it: an attempt which confirms the principle of prophecy, that the designs and counsels of God are independent of the projects of men, either to frustrate or fulfil them.” The war of Adrian, A.D. 133, may be also intended in this last clause of the prophecy; and the re-duplication of images and expressions, rising one above another, may relate to the two completions. “It is worthy of attention, that the ancient prophecies, prior to this of Daniel, have no such exact specification of the time of their completion. Chronology was not reducible to historic certainty prior to the Olympiads. When that era became the authentic measure of time, God was pleased to give this singular credential to the Christian religion; whose author and original could not be more precisely ascertained than by a measure of time, adapted to the ideas of the Jewish law, including ten jubilees, or seventy sabbatic years, nearly commencing with the war of Peloponnesus [between the Athenians and Lacedemonians;] in the recital of which, the unexampled accuracy of Thucydides led the example of the most exact notation of time to other historians. If chronology for six hundred years after Cyrus had been as perplexed as it was for six hundred years before, it would not have been possible to ascertain the completion of a prophecy, specifying so many particular dates.” Dr. Apthorp. The reader will observe, that several false and evasive systems have been advanced on the subject of this prophecy; but it has not been judged proper to embarrass this exposition of the passage with a refutation of them.