Preaching Christ from Daniel by Greidanus Sydney;

Author:Greidanus, Sydney;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

An Anointed One Cut Off (v. 26)

After Daniel has heard that God will answer his prayer for the restoration of Jerusalem and the temple, God’s revelation continues to the next major event. Verse 26 reads, “After the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing, and the troops of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war.” “After the sixty-two weeks” means that we have now entered the final, seventieth week. Speaking for the Greek view, Collins writes, “Modern critics generally recognize here a reference to the murder of the high priest Onias III, recorded in 2 Macc 4:23-28, in about 171 B.C.E. (see also Dan 11:22).”44 Being “cut off” does indeed refer to a violent death;45 “the Niphal Hebrew verbal form is usually used in the sense of ‘be cut off, be removed, be destroyed,’ and intensively in the sense of ‘exterminate.’”46 But it is highly unlikely that this major event taking place after the 62 weeks should be a former high priest (he had been displaced by his brother).47 A counter opinion is that this “is the Antichrist.”48 But it is equally unlikely that the Antichrist would be called “messiah,” anointed one.

There can be little doubt that the prediction that “an anointed one shall be cut off” (v. 26) was fulfilled in the crucifixion of Jesus Messiah. He was literally “cut off.” “This verb (kārat) is used of ‘cutting a covenant,’ a ritual that involved the death of the sacrificial victim (Gen 15:10, 18); it was also frequently used of death generally.”49 Isaiah uses a similar verb (gāzar) to describe the Suffering Servant: “He was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people” (Isa 53:8). Jesus’ death on the cross would bring about what verse 24 predicted for the seventieth week: “to finish the transgression . . . , and to atone for iniquity.”

Verse 26 adds that this anointed one “shall have nothing.” When Jesus hung on the cross between heaven and earth, he had “nothing”: deserted by his disciples, rejected by his own people (“We have no king but the emperor”; John 19:15), crucified by the Roman world empire, and forsaken by God.

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