Page 247 - Daniel

first year of his reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of
years that, according to the word of the LORD to Jeremiah the prophet,
must pass before the end of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely,

seventy years.

Daniel received this vision “in the first year of Darius,” which means

the events of Belshazzar’s feast in chapter 5 occurred between the
visions of chapters 8 and 9. It is not clear where chapter 6 fits into this
order of events, but it also may well have occurred in the first year of
Darius’s reign, either immediately before or immediately after the events
of chapter 9. If Daniel’s experience at Belshazzar’s feast as well as his

deliverance from the lions had already been experienced, these
significant evidences of the sovereignty and power of God may well have
constituted a divine preparation for the tremendous revelation now
about to unfold.

The immediate occasion of this chapter, however, was Daniel’s
discovery in the prophecy of Jeremiah that the desolations of Jerusalem
would be fulfilled in seventy years. In addition to his oral prophetic
announcements, Jeremiah had written his prophecies in the closing days

of Jerusalem before its destruction by the Babylonians. In 597 B.C.
Jeremiah had even written a letter to the exiles in Babylon (Jer. 29) in
which he had announced that their time in captivity would last seventy
years (v. 10). Jeremiah himself had been taken captive by Jews rebelling
against Nebuchadnezzar and had been carried off to Egypt against his
will to be buried in a strange land in a nameless grave. But the timeless

Scriptures that he wrote found their way across desert and mountain to
faraway Babylon and fell into the hands of Daniel. How long Daniel had
been in possession of these prophecies is not known, but the implication
is that Daniel had now come to fully comprehend Jeremiah’s prediction
and realized that the seventy years prophesied had about run their
course. The time of the vision recorded in Daniel 9 was 538 B.C., about 67

years after Jerusalem had first been captured and Daniel carried off to
Babylon (605 B.C.).

Jeremiah had prophesied, “This whole land shall become a ruin and a
waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years.
Then after seventy years are completed, I will punish the king of