But who is the “he” in this verse. There are many who lump all of the pronouns “he” together in Daniel 9:24-27 as referring to Jesus, or Messiah. This would be incorrect simply because of the law of first antecedent, meaning that the “he” in verse 27 must be referring back to the closest actual noun or person. We need to figure out who that noun is before we can continue. If it is Jesus, how would He make a covenant and then do something to halt the sacrifices halfway through the week? Historically, any time the sacrifices have ceased it has been due to something bad, something that desolated the Temple area and we’ve talked about the incident in 168 BC with Antiochus Epiphanes IV previously, which is an excellent example (cf. Daniel 8).
Since Daniel was thinking in terms of years, Gabriel’s words to him were almost a play on words. In effect, Gabriel was saying, “Daniel, it’s not seventy years, but seventy sevens of years.” The Hebrew word shābûá in the text literally means “sevens” or more precisely, “a period of sevens.” Had the Hebrew word meant “weeks,” (as translated) the text in the original language would have been shavuot.
Version 1.0.0
StudyGrowKnow