Page 229 - Daniel

duration of the sanctuary’s desecration. The answer given in verse 14
has touched off almost endless exegetical controversy: “For 2,300
evenings and mornings. Then the sanctuary shall be restored to its
rightful state.” The answer was given to Daniel rather than to the other
angel. Obviously, these angels were brought in for Daniel’s benefit. The

interpretation and fulfillment of this passage is to some extent the crux
of this entire chapter.

The Seventh Day Adventists erroneously understood that the 2,300
days referred to years which, on the basis of their interpretation, were to
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culminate in the year 1884 with Christ’s second coming. If the 2,300
days are to be considered as days, instead of years, two basic alternatives
are offered. Many have taken this as 2,300 twenty-four-hour days. 39
Because the days are related to the cessation of the evening and morning
sacrifices, another theory is that the phrase actually referred to 1,150

40
days, that is, 2,300 evenings and mornings. The interpretation of this
difficult time period is determined largely by the expositor’s desire to
find fulfillment either in Antiochus’s total time of oppression over the
Jews or in the specific time when the temple was desecrated. On one
side of the debate stand scholars like Keil:

A Hebrew reader could not possibly understand the period of 2300
evening-mornings as 2300 half days or 1150 whole days, because

evening and morning at the creation constituted not the half but the
whole day. Still less, in the designation of time, ‘till 2300 evening-
mornings,’ could ‘evening-mornings’ be understood of the evening and
morning sacrifices, and the words be regarded as meaning that till
1150 evening sacrifices and 1150 morning sacrifices are discontinued.
We must therefore take the words as they are, i.e., understand them as
2300 whole days. 41

Keil supports this by numerous arguments including the fact that

“when the Hebrews wished to express separately day and night, the
component parts of a day of a week, then the number of both is
expressed. They say, e.g., forty days and forty nights (Gen. 7:4, 12; Ex.
24:18; 1 Kings 19:8), and three days and three nights (Jonah 2:1; Matt.
12:40), but not eighty or six days-and-nights, when they wish to speak of
forty or three full days.” 42