And instead of 'and to seal vision and prophet', Aquila seems to me to have rendered it more accurately, saying, 'and to complete vision and prophet.' For our Savior and Lord did not come to shut up and, as it were, seal the prophetic visions; rather, having removed the seals that lay upon them as they were formerly obscure and sealed up, he opened and unfolded them, delivering to his own disciples the meaning of the divine writings.
Whence it says: 'Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah has conquered, and he himself has opened the seals that lay upon the book', according to the Revelation of John. And what seals but the obscurities of the prophets? Which, knowing full well and exactly, Isaiah too said: 'And these words shall be as the words of a sealed book.'
Christ of God, then, did not come to shut up vision and prophet, but rather to throw them open and bring them to light. Wherefore it seems to me that Aquila speaks more accurately, saying, 'to complete vision and prophet.'
This also agrees with what was said by the Savior himself: 'I did not come to destroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfill them.' For Christ is the end of the law, and all the prophecies concerning him remained unfulfilled and incomplete until he himself, appearing, set an end upon all the things previously proclaimed concerning him.
But 'to seal vision and prophet' can also, according to the interpretation of the Seventy, bear such a sense as this: since the law and the prophets lasted until John, and from that time those who were formerly borne along by the Spirit among the nation of the Jews, and who proclaimed the predictions concerning Christ, have ceased, as have those who soundly beheld the visions in the sacred writings — who indeed came to an end, the divine grace itself having been shut up and, as it were, bound with seals; wherefore it comes about that from that time no prophet has been active among them, nor is anyone called a seer among them, all these things having ceased from the times indicated even down to us.
To these he adds 'to anoint the Holy of Holies.' And this too is immediately evident: that up to the times of our Savior, the high priests among the Hebrews were anointed 'holy of holies', according to the sacred rite performed under the law of Moses; but from that time these also have ceased, in accordance with the prophecy.
The proclamation of Jacob addressed to Judah, then, signified the eclipse of the leaders and rulers of the nation of the Jews, according to what has been set forth above.
But since the leadership of the people had formerly depended on prophets and priests, the discourse, having accordingly foretold, through the prophecy already cited, the destruction of the rulers and leaders of the nation of the Jews at the coming of Christ, now, through the prophecy in hand, proclaims the failing of the prophets and priests who formerly flourished among them — implying that these too would cease at the manifestation of Christ, which indeed the coming of our Savior confirmed by its very works.
But since Aquila rendered 'to anoint the sanctified one of holy ones', one might suppose that the high priest of old among the Jews is thereby indicated, since the many priests subordinate to him were called 'holy', but only the high priest set above all was 'holy of holy ones' — since this too, understood in its plain sense, is true.
For up to the times of our Savior, the high priests, who had succeeded one another from of old, at the same time also led the whole people, and continually performed the service of God in accordance with the worship legislated by Moses; but from the times of our Savior, first the order pertaining to them was thrown into confusion, and a little later it was utterly extinguished.
But I myself, having nowhere found in divine Scripture the high priest among the Jews called ‘Holy of Holies,’ consider that by this phrase only the Only-begotten Word of God is properly and truly signified and is worthy of this title. For it is a welcome thing for men who have advanced from among mankind and attained to the limit of virtue open to them, to be styled ‘holy’ at some point, by participation and partaking in him who said, ‘You shall be holy, for I the Lord am holy.’
But who could properly be called ‘Holy of Holies’ except the beloved Child of the Holy One alone — proclaimed ‘Holy of Holies,’ just as he is ‘King of kings’ and ‘Lord of lords’? To him alone, then — inasmuch as he differs from all who were ever anointed with Moses’ earthly and manufactured oil — it was said, ‘You have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your companions.’
With this [oil], being anointed, he himself also says in his own person, in Isaiah, ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because of which he has anointed me.’ Since, then, our Savior alone, above all who were ever anointed, is testified to have been anointed with a spiritual anointing — or rather, with the anointing of the Godhead — he is fittingly named, as one might say, ‘Holy of Holies,’ ‘High Priest of high priests,’ and ‘Sanctified of the sanctified,’ according to the oracle given through Gabriel.
All these things reached their fulfillment at the completion of the seventy weeks, at no other time than in the days of the manifestation of our Savior. Since, then, the angel mentioned above had proclaimed to the prophet, in summary form, that these things would so come to pass, he takes up again the discourse concerning the seventy weeks, teaching precisely, point by point, whence the reckoning of the times must begin, and what will occur at the several periods indicated.
He says, then: ‘And you shall know and understand, from the going forth of the word to answer and to build Jerusalem, seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; and it shall return, and the broad place and wall shall be built.’ In regard to these matters, it seems good to me not to conceal the interpretation of these passages given by one before us, but to set it forth also as suitable for those who will read this — for it has been well said that the possessions of friends are held in common.
And since it is fitting, while gratefully making use of what has been well said by others, not to deprive the fathers of their offspring, nor those who first begot them of their own seed, I will set forth his very words.
These words are found in the fifth book of Africanus’s Chronographies, and run in this manner: ‘This passage, then, being of this sort, signifies many marvelous things; but for now we shall confine our discourse to what is needed concerning the times and the matters bearing upon them.’
That these things, then, are said concerning the coming of Christ, who was to appear after seventy weeks, is plain. For it is in the case of the Savior, or from him, that the transgressions grow old and the sins are brought to an end; and on account of the forgiveness, both the iniquities are blotted out by propitiation after the wrongdoings, and an everlasting righteousness is proclaimed, surpassing that which is of the Law; and visions and prophecies continue until John; and the Holy of Holies is anointed. For before the coming of our Savior these things did not yet exist, but were only expected.
The angel proposes that the number, that is, of the seventy weeks — which are four hundred and ninety years — begins from the going forth of the word to answer and to build Jerusalem. Now this took place in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes, king of the Persians. For Nehemiah, his cupbearer, having made petition, obtained an answer that Jerusalem should be built, and a word went forth commanding this. For up until that time the city had lain desolate.
For after the seventy years of the captivity, Cyrus having sent down, of his own free will, each of those who wished [to return], those who came down with Jesus the great priest and Zerubbabel, and those after them together with Ezra, were at first prevented from building the temple and from throwing a wall around the city, on the ground that this had not been commanded.
So it remained thus until Nehemiah and the one hundred and fifteenth year of the reign of Artaxerxes and of the dominion of the Persians; and from the capture of Jerusalem this comes to one hundred and eighty-five years. And then King Artaxerxes commanded the city to be built. Nehemiah, having been sent down, presided over the work, and the broad place and the surrounding wall were built, as had been prophesied. And reckoning from that point, the seventy weeks are completed for us, [leading] to Christ.
For if we should begin our reckoning from some other point and not from here, the time will not agree, and very many absurdities will result. For if we make the beginning of the reckoning of the weeks from Cyrus and the first sending-down, it exceeds by a hundred years and more; and the time is even greater if reckoned from the day on which the angel prophesied to Daniel; and much greater still, if from the beginning of the captivity.
For we find that the kingdom of the Persians is comprised within two hundred and thirty years, and that of the Macedonians extends to three hundred and seventy years, and from that point to the sixteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, sixty years [more].
But from Artaxerxes the seventy weeks are completed unto the time of Christ, according to the reckoning of the Jews. For from Nehemiah, who was sent by Artaxerxes to rebuild Jerusalem, in the one hundred and fifteenth year of the Persian kingdom, and in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes’ own reign, and in the fourth year of the eighty-third Olympiad — down to this present time, which was the second year of the two hundred and second Olympiad, and the sixteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar — four hundred and seventy years are gathered, which, reckoned as Hebrew years, come to four hundred and ninety, since their years are numbered according to the lunar course — as is easy to state — of three hundred and fifty-four days, whereas the solar cycle consists of three hundred sixty-five and a quarter days; for the twelve lunar months fall short by eleven and a quarter days.
For this reason the Greeks and the Jews insert three intercalary months every eight years. For eight times eleven and a quarter makes three months. The four hundred and seventy-five years, then, come to fifty-nine periods of eight years and three months. And since an intercalation of three months occurs for every eight-year period, this amounts to fifteen years, lacking a few days. These, added to the four hundred and seventy-five years, complete the seventy weeks.
This, then, is what Africanus says. But if it is necessary for us also to bring forward our own interpretation of these passages, I say that the discourse concerning the seventy weeks has not made its division in vain or at random. For having divided them into a first seven, then another sixty-two, and, after a very great deal said in between, having added the final one, it thus marked off the number of the seventy weeks.
He says, then: ‘And you shall know and understand, from the going forth of the word, to answer and to build Jerusalem, until a leader: seven weeks and sixty-two weeks.’ Then, having introduced certain other things in between, he adds the last one, saying, ‘And he shall strengthen a covenant with many: one week.’
And that these things have not been composed in vain, nor apart from divine inspiration, I consider that everyone who attends to them as the words of God will acknowledge.
This, then, we have thought good to note first of all, leaving to those who read it the precise resolution of the question that has been raised. But if we too must not conceal what occurs to us, I say that, according to another understanding or interpretation, the ‘anointed leader’ indicated in the passage before us — in the words ‘from the going forth of the word, to answer and to build Jerusalem, until an anointed leader’ — is none other than one drawn from the list of high priests who led the people after this prophecy and after the return from Babylon, whom Scripture is accustomed to call ‘anointed ones’ (christs).
For we have received that these alone led the nation, beginning from Jesus [Jeshua] the son of Jozadak, the great priest, after the return from Babylon, and down to the times of the coming of our Savior Jesus Christ.
I think, then, that the intervening time of their presiding office, during which they governed, is signified by the words, ‘from the going forth of the word, to answer and to build Jerusalem, until an anointed leader: seven weeks and sixty-two weeks’ of years — the weeks, when totaled, coming to four hundred and eighty-three years, extending from the reign of Cyrus down to the dominion of the Romans, under which Pompey, the Roman general, having come upon Jerusalem, took the city by siege, and reduced the whole nation to servitude under the Romans, so that from that time they paid tribute and were obedient to the commands of the Romans.
It is up to this time, then, that the number of four hundred and eighty-three years is bounded — the time at which those who, according to the law of Moses, had received by succession from their fathers the presidency of the nation and the priesthood, came to an end; and it is these, I suppose, whom the divine Scripture in the present passage calls ‘the anointed leader.’
But if it is necessary also to set out the catalogue of the succession of high priests who lived in the intervening time referred to, there is no reason to grudge doing this too, in order to establish the truth of what has been said. First, then, after the prophecy of Daniel, in the time of Cyrus, king of the Persians, after the return from Babylon, Jesus [Jeshua], son of Jozadak, who had been styled the great priest, goes up from the captivity together with Zerubbabel, and lays the foundations of the temple; but the work having been hindered by the surrounding peoples, the first seven weeks of years indicated through the prophet are completed, during which the work of the building of the temple remained unfinished.
For this reason the divine word marks off the first seven from their connection with the remaining weeks, saying ‘seven weeks,’ and then, next, adding, after a pause, ‘and sixty-two weeks.’ Seven weeks of years, then, are found from Cyrus to the completion of the building of the temple.
Setting out from this, the Jews said to our Savior, ‘This temple was built in forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But these men declared that the temple had been built in forty-six years. For that is the number of years reckoned from the first year of Cyrus’s reign — who was the first to release from Babylon those of the Jews who wished to return to their own land — down to the sixth year of Darius’s reign, in which the whole work of the building was brought to completion.
Josephus, however, a Hebrew by birth, states that another three years were needed for the completion of the external structures around the temple, so that it is reasonable that for this reason the first seven weeks, extending to forty-nine years, should have been marked off according to the word of the prophecy, while the remaining sixty-two are reckoned to begin from the reign of Darius — in which, once again, Jesus [Jeshua] son of Jozadak and Zerubbabel son of Salathiel, both prolonging their lives to that point, presided together over the renewal of the temple, while Zechariah also prophesied. After them, Ezra and Nehemiah, likewise having come up from Babylon, built the wall of the city, while Joakim held the high priesthood — he being the son of Jesus [Jeshua] son of Jozadak. After him Eliasib succeeded to the high priesthood, then Jehoiada; after him Jonathan; after him Jaddus.
The Scripture of Ezra also mentions these, saying, ‘And Jesus begot Joakim, and Joakim begot Eliasib, and Eliasib begot Jehoiada, and Jehoiada begot Jonathan, and Jonathan begot Jaddus.’
Alexander ended his life at the beginning of the one hundred and fourteenth Olympiad, two hundred and thirty-six years after Cyrus, who became king of the Persians in the first year of the fifty-fifth Olympiad.
After the death of Alexander the Macedonian and after the aforementioned high priest, Onias led the nation, having himself also laid hold of the honor of the high priesthood. In his time Seleucus, having gained control of Babylon, put on the diadem of Asia, in the twelfth year after the death of Alexander, at which point the whole time from Cyrus amounts to two hundred and forty-eight years.
From this point the Scripture of the Maccabees begins to reckon the kingdom of the Greeks. After Onias, the high priest Eleazar leads the Jews; in his time the Seventy, having translated the divine Scriptures, dedicated them to the libraries at Alexandria.
After him, another Onias, whom Simon succeeds, in whose time Jesus son of Sirach became known, who composed the work called ‘All-Virtuous Wisdom.’ After him, yet another Onias, bearing the same name as those before, leads; in his time Antiochus, having besieged the Jews, was compelling them to adopt Greek customs.
After him, having taken charge of affairs, Judas, surnamed Maccabeus, cleansed the land of the impious; his brother Jonathan succeeds him. And again Simon, at whose death the book called First Maccabees reckons the one hundred and seventy-seventh year of the Syrian dominion, bringing its narrative to a close at this point in time.
So that, from the first year of Cyrus and the Persian kingdom to the end of the Scripture of the Maccabees and to the death of Simon the high priest, four hundred and twenty-five years are gathered. After this, Jonathan, as Josephus says, succeeds to the high priesthood for twenty-nine years. After him, Aristobulus leads for one year — the first, after the return from Babylon, to put on the royal diadem in addition to the high priesthood.
Alexander succeeds him, king and high priest at once, he too having presided over affairs for twenty-seven years. Down to him, the total gathered from the first year of the reign of Cyrus and the return of the Jewish nation from Babylon is four hundred and eighty-two years, during which high priests presided, whom I consider to be called by the prophecy ‘the anointed leader.’
After these men, when their last high priest, Alexander, died, the affairs of the Jewish nation were left without a ruler and without a leader, so that their kingdom passed over to a woman. And when the two sons, Aristobulus and Hyrcanus, fell into factional strife with one another, Pompey, the Roman general, having come upon Jerusalem, took the city by siege, and defiled the holy things, going forward even into the innermost sanctuary of the temple.
And this took place in the first year of the one hundred and seventy-ninth Olympiad, four hundred and ninety-five years after the reign of Cyrus, which began in the fifty-fifth Olympiad.
Then, therefore, Pompey, having taken Jerusalem by force, sent the aforementioned Aristobulus away to Rome as a prisoner, and delivered the high priesthood to his brother Hyrcanus; and from that time he made the whole nation tributary to the Romans.
After him, Herod, the son of Antipater, having killed Hyrcanus, receives from the Roman senate the kingship of the Jews at his hand, and he himself is the first of a foreign race to rule as king over the nation, having corrupted the order of the high priests as established by the law of Moses.
For the divine law commands that the high priest of the highest rank should serve God as a priest for life; but Herod did not assign this office to those of the [priestly] family, nor to those to whom it was fitting, but to certain men estranged and alien to the succession of the high priests, and not even to these permanently, but for some brief and limited time, granting the honor in turn to different men at different times — so that the first seven weeks are bounded from Cyrus to Darius, and the remaining sixty-two from Darius to Pompey, the Roman general.
And, according to a third way of considering it, you would find, reckoning the times differently, that the seven and sixty-two weeks, which extend to four hundred and eighty-three years, [come down] to Augustus himself and to Herod, the first to reign who was of a foreign race, in whose time the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ is recorded as taking place, if you calculate the number indicated beginning from Darius and the completion of the temple.
For the prophet Zechariah indicates that the seventy-year period of the desolation of Jerusalem was completed in the second year of Darius, saying, ‘On the twenty-fourth day, in the eleventh month, that is Shebat, in the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to Zechariah son of Berechiah.’
Then next he adds, ‘And the angel of the Lord answered and said, Lord Almighty, how long will you not have mercy on Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, which you have disregarded these seventy years?’ It was this very period, then, that Daniel, having beheld it by the divine Spirit, notes down, saying, ‘I, Daniel, understood in the books the number of the years concerning which the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet, for the fulfillment of the desolation of Jerusalem, seventy years; and I set my face toward the Lord my God, to seek prayer and supplication.’
Then, after the prayer, the angel, appearing to him, proclaims the things concerning the seventy weeks, and signifies the time from which the reckoning must begin, saying, ‘And you shall know and understand, from the going forth of the word, to answer and to build Jerusalem, until an anointed leader.’ Now the first answer, that Jerusalem should be built, came in the time of Cyrus, but it did not proceed to actual work, since the surrounding peoples had prevented it.
But afterward, when Darius commanded, and the building of the temple had been completed under him, the prophecy of Daniel took from this point the beginning of its fulfillment — the prophecy which says, ‘from the going forth of the word, to answer and to build Jerusalem,’ and through which it is said, ‘I, Daniel, understood in the books the number of the years concerning which the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet, for the fulfillment of the desolation of Jerusalem, seventy years.’
In the second year of Darius, then, the fulfillment of the seventy-year period is shown to have been accomplished, so that we must in every way begin the seventy weeks from the sixty-sixth Olympiad and from the second year of Darius, in which the matters of the building were completed.
From this point, then, if you were to number the succeeding years, you would find, down to Herod himself and Augustus, sole ruler of the Romans, in whose time the birth of our Savior appeared to the world, the four hundred and eighty-three years, which are seven and sixty-two weeks, bounded according to the prophecy of Daniel.
For from the sixty-sixth Olympiad to the one hundred and eighty-sixth, there come, between them, one hundred and twenty-one Olympiads, [that is] four hundred and eighty-four years, each Olympiad comprising a four-year period — at which time Augustus, king of the Romans, in the fifteenth year of his reign, held sway over Egypt and the rest of the inhabited world, under whom Herod, the first of a foreign race, received in hand the kingdom of the Jews, and our Savior and Lord, Jesus the Christ of God, was born — the times of his birth and the completion of the sixty-two and seven weeks recorded in Daniel coinciding at the very same point. After these, once divided off and set far apart, after very many things prophesied in the interval concerning the one remaining week, all the rest, spoken through the midst of the oracle’s prediction, is accomplished — matters which run in this manner: ‘And after the sixty-two and seven weeks an anointed one shall be cut off, and there is no judgment in him; and he shall destroy the city and the holy place together with the coming leader, and they shall be cut off in a flood, and even to the end of the war it is decreed with desolations.’
And these things too have received a clear fulfillment in the time of Augustus himself and of Herod, in whom we say the aforementioned seven weeks are summed up. In due course and order, then, the anointing pertaining to the high priesthood having continued until the times of Herod and Augustus, and the succession of the ancient high priests having been marked off as ending with Alexander, the father of Hyrcanus, Herod, having killed Hyrcanus, is said no longer to have entrusted the ministry to those who succeeded by descent from their fathers, but to certain obscure and undistinguished men.
And this the oracle also foretold in advance, saying, ‘And after the seven and sixty-two weeks an anointing shall be utterly destroyed, and there is no judgment in him.’
This the other translators have also clearly set down: Aquila, saying, ‘And after the seven weeks and sixty-two an anointed one shall be utterly destroyed, and there is nothing for him’; and Symmachus, ‘And after the seven weeks and sixty-two an anointed one shall be cut off, and there shall be nothing existing for him.’ From which it seems to me especially to be established that ‘the anointed leader’ is what has been shown according to our interpretation.
After the completion of the aforesaid weeks, then, ‘an anointed one shall be utterly destroyed,’ it says. Who is this but the leader — the one who, by succession, presided over the nation from the priestly family? This man, then, continued as long as the number of the weeks was not yet fulfilled; but when these came to their end, in accordance with the prophecy, the one who presided over the nation by succession of family was cut off. This was Hyrcanus, whom Herod himself, having slain him, seized the kingship over the nation — which was of no concern to him [by right] — and was himself the first foreigner to rule.
It was not, then, Hyrcanus alone, being an anointed one and the last of the ancient high priests, who was cut off, but also the succession descending from the ancestors of old, from the high priests of ancient time, together with the very anointing according to the laws, which no longer came about according to just judgment, but disorderly and in confusion, not according to what had been legislated by Moses. All these things coincided together, in accordance with the prophecy which said, ‘An anointing shall be utterly destroyed, and there is no judgment in him.’
A trustworthy witness of these things is Josephus, himself a Hebrew, who records the events of these times in this manner, in the eighteenth book of the Jewish Antiquities: ‘But Herod, having received the kingship from the Romans, no longer appointed as high priests those of the Hasmonean family — these were the ones called Maccabees — but certain obscure men, who were only Hebrews, except for one, Aristobulus, whom, being the son of Hyrcanus, he appointed high priest, and married his sister Mariamme, seeking to win over to himself the goodwill of the multitude on account of the memory of Hyrcanus.’
‘Then, fearing lest all should incline toward Aristobulus, he did away with him at Jericho, having contrived that he should be drowned while swimming, as we have already shown. After him, he no longer entrusted the high priesthood to the descendants of the sons of Hasmoneus. And his son Archelaus did likewise, in the matter of the appointment of high priests, and after him the Romans, having taken over the kingdom of the Jews.’ (continue the Josephus quotation opened in 8:2.93 with opening/closing quotation marks bracketing this whole paragraph)