Can Hebrew linguistics help clarify the 70 weeks in Daniel 9:25?

rakovsky

Well-known member
One major issue in discussions of the prophecy of the 70 weeks of years in Daniel 9 is whether and how to break up the sets of weeks among the predicted periods in Verse 25.

The NKJV has for Daniel 9:
24. “Seventy [e]weeks are determined
For your people and for your holy city,
To finish the transgression,
[f]To make an end of sins,
To make reconciliation for iniquity,
To bring in everlasting righteousness,
To seal up vision and prophecy,
And to anoint [g]the Most Holy.

25. “Know therefore and understand,
That from the going forth of the command
To restore and build Jerusalem
Until Messiah the Prince,
There shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks;
The [h]street shall be built again, and the wall,
Even in troublesome times.

26. “And after the sixty-two weeks
Messiah shall [j]be cut off, but not for Himself;
And the people of the prince who is to come
Shall destroy the city and the sanctuary.
The end of it shall be with a flood,
And till the end of the war desolations are determined.

27. Then he shall confirm a [k]covenant with many for one week;
But in the middle of the week
He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering.
And on the wing of abominations shall be one who makes desolate,
Even until the consummation, which is determined,
Is poured out on the [l]desolate.”

Daniel 9:24 The Most Holy Place
Daniel 9:25 Or open square
Daniel 9:25 Or moat
Daniel 9:26 Suffer the death penalty
Daniel 9:27 Or treaty
Daniel 9:27 Or desolator

I have seen some "non-Messianic" explanations of this prophecy try to say that the seven weeks (49) years in verse 25 are about the coming of the Messiah the Prince, so that this "Messiah" is not the Davidic Messiah (Yeshua), but some anointed ancient ruler like one of the High Priests in Jerusalem. That is, those who take a non-Messianic interpretation would break up the words in verse 25 (NKJV) this way:
Know therefore and understand, That from the going forth of the command To restore and build Jerusalem Until Messiah the Prince, there shall be seven weeks.
And sixty-two weeks the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublesome times.

Personally, I don't find this non-Messianic interpretation to be persuasive. The phrase "And sixty-two weeks the street shall be built again" sounds bad grammatically in English, but I don't know about Hebrew. In English, one could either say:
(A) "From the going forth of the command to restore Jerusalem until 'Messiah the Prince' there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks. The street will be built again..." And then go on to explain why the 70 weeks are divided into 7 weeks and 62 weeks.
Or one could say
(B) "And for sixty-two weeks, the street shall be built again..." (The necessary word "for" is not found in the verse here, though.)
But one can't say correct:
(C) "And sixty-two weeks, the street shall be built again..."
This doesn't sound correct grammatically.

Granted, Daniel's story is apocalyptic, so it might not need to follow normal grammar rules, but it does seem that grammar should be a key guide and starting point in understanding verses, instead of trying to force Daniel's prophecy to fit a non-Messianic exegesis.

The Hebrew for Daniel 9:25 (Leningrad Codex) runs:
וְתֵדַ֨ע וְתַשְׂכֵּ֜ל מִן־מֹצָ֣א דָבָ֗ר לְהָשִׁיב֙ וְלִבְנֹ֤ות יְרֽוּשָׁלִַ֙ם֙ עַד־מָשִׁ֣יחַ נָגִ֔יד שָׁבֻעִ֖ים שִׁבְעָ֑ה וְשָׁבֻעִ֞ים שִׁשִּׁ֣ים וּשְׁנַ֗יִם תָּשׁוּב֙ וְנִבְנְתָה֙ רְחֹ֣וב וְחָר֔וּץ וּבְצֹ֖וק הָעִתִּֽים׃

This says word for word:
Therefore know and understand
From the going forth of the command to restore and to build Jerusalem until Moshiach Prince
weeks seven and weeks sixty and two
again and shall be built the street and the wall
and even in troublesome times

However, Hebrew word order can be different than in English.

Theodotion was a Jewish (or Nazarene?) translator in the 2nd century AD who translated Daniel into Greek, and his translation ended up as the most common one that Christians use for the LXX.

J.J. Collins in A Commentary on the Book of Daniel, notes:
Theodotion, however, reads "seven and sixty-two weeks," so that sixty-nine weeks would elapse before the coming of the anointed prince. This understanding of the passage was followed by Jerome, and became a mainstay of the messianic interpretation, as it allowed the identification of the anointed one of v 25 to with the one in v 26.

In contrast, the 1984 rabbinical JPT Tanakh translation below separates the 62 weeks from the statement about "Messiah Prince":
And you shall know and understand that from the emergence of the word to restore and to rebuild Jerusalem until the anointed king [shall be] seven weeks, and [for] sixty-two weeks it will return and be built street and moat, but in troubled times.

Maimonides considers Daniel to have made a prophecy calculating the date for the arrival of the Messiah. Maimonides wrote:
Your letter mentions the calculations that Rabbeinu Saadiah Gaon made for the date of the coming of Mashiach. You should be aware that no human being will ever be able to determine the exact date [of Mashiach's coming], as Daniel stated, "For these words are secret and sealed to the time of the end" (Daniel12:9). Nevertheless, many theories were suggested by a few scholars who thought that they had discovered the date. This was predicted by Daniel, "Many will run far and wide and opinions will increase" (Daniel 12:4). In other words, there will be much speculation about it. Furthermore, Hashem informed us through His prophets that many people will calculate the time of the coming of Mashiach; the date will pass and nothing will happen. We are warned against yielding to doubt and misgivings because of these miscalculations.
...
Daniel declared the date of the final redemption a deep secret. Our Sages have discouraged the calculation of the time of the coming of Mashiach. They feared that the masses may be confused and led astray when the predicted time arrives and Mashiach does not come. This led our Sages to say, "May the people that calculate the final redemption meet with adversity" (Sanhedrin 97b). Although making calculations of the time of redemption is forbidden, we must judge Rabbeinu Saadiah Gaon favorably. The Jews of his time were influenced by many distorted ideologies. If not for [Rabbeinu Saadiah's] work of explaining the perplexing portions of the Torah and strengthening their faltering faith with the power of his word and his pen, they would have abandoned the Torah altogether.

SOURCE:
The Essential Maimonides: Translations of the Rambam, edited by Avraham Yaakov Finkel
 
Seems to be about punctuation, and is a seemingly resolved issue.

From https://hermeneutics.stackexchange....paration-of-seven-and-sixty-two-in-daniel-925
_______________________________________________________________________________

"While it has been a convention of English versions — particularly versions produced by Christian translators — to render Daniel 9 as depicting two time periods of sixty-nine weeks and one week, there is no legitimate reason for this in the underlying Hebrew text.
J.J. Collins, A Commentary on the Book of Daniel, 355-356:
there will be seven weeks: The MT places an atnaḫ between the seven weeks and the sixty-two weeks.
An atnaḫ is a Hebrew punctuation mark that denotes a 'strong break' within a sentence. As defined in the Biblical Hebrew Reference Grammar (ed. C.H. van der Merwe), 45:
[ʾatnāḥ] Indicates the main pause in a verse. ... It divides the verse into two and has the approximate force of a semi-colon.
Collins continues:
Theodotion, however, reads "seven and sixty-two weeks," so that sixty-nine weeks would elapse before the coming of the anointed prince. This understanding of the passage was followed by Jerome, and became a mainstay of the messianic interpretation, as it allowed the identification of the anointed one of v 25 to with the one in v 26. There can be no doubt that the MT punctuation is correct. There is no other reason for dividing the period into seven and sixty-two. The MT understanding of the passage is well attested in early Christianity before Jerome [e.g. Hippolytus, Clement], as well as in Jewish tradition [Seder ʿOlam Rabbah].
In other words, the Hebrew text explicitly divides the seventy weeks into three periods. Separating the seven weeks and the sixty-two weeks is the only valid reading of the text.

Collins (Ibid., 346) conveys the force of the break by translating it as a period:
You shall know and understand that from the going forth of the word to restore and build Jerusalem until there is an anointed ruler will be seven weeks. For sixty-two weeks it will be built again with square and moat, but in distressful times.
Other English translations which similarly use a period or semi-colon include the ESV, the JPS Tanakh, and the NRSV. It may be implied by the ERV, which uses a colon."
 
Seems to be about punctuation, and is a seemingly resolved issue.

From https://hermeneutics.stackexchange....paration-of-seven-and-sixty-two-in-daniel-925
_______________________________________________________________________________
Thanks for sharing. I am open minded on the topic. It sounds ambiguous at first glance, reminding me of how Josephus, seemingly referring to the book of Daniel wrote about the Jewish rebels of 70 AD finding a Messianic prediction in an "ambiguous oracle.
Josephus, Wars of the Jews, Volume 6, https://lexundria.com/j_bj/6.310-6.315/wst

One legitimate reason to have Daniel render a period of 69 weeks is that it would mean that the Messiah Prince in verse 25 would be the Messiah and Prince in verse 26, thus making the chapter's references to "Messiah" and "Prince" intelligibly cohere. Near the end of his talk on the passage, Thomas Ice says that the phrase "the Prince who is to come" in verse 26 refers in Hebrew to an antecedent figure, the Prince in verse 25 (The Seventy Weeks Of Daniel - Thomas Ice,
)

A second reason is that if the 7 weeks and 62 weeks go in the same sentence as 69 weeks, then the street building in verse 25 could be for the 7 weeks, and the wall building could be for the 62 weeks or the total 69 weeks.

"While it has been a convention of English versions — particularly versions produced by Christian translators — to render Daniel 9 as depicting two time periods of sixty-nine weeks and one week, there is no legitimate reason for this in the underlying Hebrew text.
J.J. Collins, A Commentary on the Book of Daniel, 355-356:
 
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"While it has been a convention of English versions — particularly versions produced by Christian translators — to render Daniel 9 as depicting two time periods of sixty-nine weeks and one week, there is no legitimate reason for this in the underlying Hebrew text.
J.J. Collins, A Commentary on the Book of Daniel, 355-356:
Thanks for sharing.

A third reason is that if the 7 weeks and 62 weeks go in the same sentence as 69 weeks, then the 7 weeks could be for the rebuilding of the Temple, and the 62 weeks could be for the laying of the street and walls, so that the time from the command to rebuild the Temple until Messiah would be "7 + 62" (69) weeks, thus making the 7 and 62 weeks add up to a coherent 69 year period. In that case, the time it took to rebuild the Temple would be allocated a specific period in verse 25.
 
Thanks for sharing.

A third reason is that if the 7 weeks and 62 weeks go in the same sentence as 69 weeks, then the 7 weeks could be for the rebuilding of the Temple, and the 62 weeks could be for the laying of the street and walls, so that the time from the command to rebuild the Temple until Messiah would be "7 + 62" (69) weeks, thus making the 7 and 62 weeks add up to a coherent 69 year period. In that case, the time it took to rebuild the Temple would be allocated a specific period in verse 25.
There is no mention of the rebuilding of the Temple in this part of Daniel. The 7 weeks is clearly: "From the issuance of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, until the Messiah."
 
Thanks for sharing. I am open minded on the topic. It sounds ambiguous at first glance, reminding me of how Josephus, seemingly referring to the book of Daniel wrote about the Jewish rebels of 70 AD finding a Messianic prediction in an "ambiguous oracle.
Josephus, Wars of the Jews, Volume 6, https://lexundria.com/j_bj/6.310-6.315/wst
This likely comes from misconstruing prophecies in Zechariah, Micah and Isaiah relating to Jesus, not Daniel.
See https://www.jstor.org/stable/3264566?seq=1

One legitimate reason to have Daniel render a period of 69 weeks is that it would mean that the Messiah Prince in verse 25 would be the Messiah and Prince in verse 26, thus making the chapter's references to "Messiah" and "Prince" intelligibly cohere. Near the end of his talk on the passage, Thomas Ice says that the phrase "the Prince who is to come" in verse 26 refers in Hebrew to an antecedent figure, the Prince in verse 25 (The Seventy Weeks Of Daniel - Thomas Ice,
)
This isn't the right forum to discuss premillennialism / pretribulational rapture interpretations of Daniel.

I take a wholly different and more conventional view of the 70 weeks prophecy, per Farrar, that the 70 weeks refers to the return of the Jewish exiles from Babylon, and to Cyrus as the Messiah, and Antiochus IV Epiphanes as the prince who is to come and wreak havoc.

A second reason is that if the 7 weeks and 62 weeks go in the same sentence as 69 weeks, then the street building in verse 25 could be for the 7 weeks, and the wall building could be for the 62 weeks or the total 69 weeks.
I think that is fanciful conjecture and not born out by the language.
 
Thanks for writing back, Cjab. A fourth issue is whether it would take 62 weeks of years to rebuild the streets and walls, or else just 7 weeks of years.

Do you know Hebrew? I wonder how in Hebrew it would sound grammatically to make a separate sentence starting with "And 62 weeks and the street and the walls will be built again..."?
שִׁבְעָ֑ה וְשָׁבֻעִ֞ים שִׁשִּׁ֣ים וּשְׁנַ֗יִם תָּשׁוּב֙ וְנִבְנְתָה֙ רְחֹ֣וב וְחָר֔וּץ וּבְצֹ֖וק הָעִתִּֽים׃

In English, one would need to add a word like "during" or "for", as in:
"And during 62 weeks the street and the walls will be built again..."
But Hebrew is not English, so I don't know if the same principle applies.
 
A sixth reason, which Glenn Miller asserts below, is that Hebrew sentences usually start with a verb, entailing that "And sixty two weeks" should be after the beginning of a sentence, not at the start of one.

Your friend has added the word ‘for’ in front of ‘sixty-two’. But it is not explicit in the text. The JPS translates it that way, but so does several Christian translations (NRSV, WBC), but it should be noted that most Hebrew sentences BEGIN with a verb. So, when verse 25 moves from the word “two” to “be restored” [as in, "And the streets and walls will be restored/built again"], that would TYPICALLY mean to start a new sentence after the “two”. In other words, there would be an English punctuation-period (or strong semi-colon, introducing a new clause) after the ‘two’, and “Be Restored” would be the start of another sentence or thought. This is how the more literal translations handle this—in standard Hebrew syntax fashion: “There shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; The street shall be built again, and the wall,” [NKJV] and “and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress.” [NASV]

However, this 6th reason can be undermined by Daniel 9:27, where "And in middle of the week" seems to start a conjunctive clause:
והגביר ברית לרבים שבוע אחד וחצי השבוע ישבית ׀ זבח ומנחה ועל כנף שקוצים משמם ועד־כלה ונחרצה תתך על־שמם׃ פ

And he shall confirm covenant with many for week one and in the middle of the week he shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering and on wing of abominations shall be one who makes desolate and Even until consummation and which is determined is poured out on the desolate

Daniel 9:27 brings up one reason against putting 7 weeks with 62 weeks in Daniel 9:25: If Daniel 9:27 is viewed in comparison with verse 25, then the break in the phrase "week one; and in middle of the week" could be seen as supporting a break between weeks in verse 25's phrase "And 7 weeks and 62 weeks".

Conversely, comparisons between the sets of weeks in verse 25 and verse 27 can suggest a seventh reason for combining "7 weeks and 62 weeks". Verse 27 begins with "the prince that shall come" confirming a covenant for a duration of time, and this statement is followed by an event performed in the middle of that duration of time. By comparison, verse 25 gives a duration of time (from the command to restore Jerusalem until messiah prince) and then an action (rebuilding the street and walls), so an analogous placing of this latter action (rebuilding the streets) in verse 25 would put it inside the verse's stated duration of time (from the command to restore Jerusalem until messiah prince).

A second possible reason against putting the 7 weeks with the 62 weeks is that the phrase "7 weeks and 62 weeks" instead of "69 weeks" sounds a little clunky. Is this phrase used elsewhere in scripture? Granted, we are dealing with prophecy/poetry, so this clunkiness might not be dispositive.
 
  • One legitimate reason to have Daniel render a period of 69 weeks is that it would mean that the Messiah Prince in verse 25 would be the Messiah and Prince in verse 26, thus making the chapter's references to "Messiah" and "Prince" intelligibly cohere. Near the end of his talk on the passage, Thomas Ice says that the phrase "the Prince who is to come" in verse 26 refers in Hebrew to an antecedent figure, the Prince in verse 25 (The Seventy Weeks Of Daniel - Thomas Ice,

This isn't the right forum to discuss premillennialism / pretribulational rapture interpretations of Daniel.
I don't consider myself a Dispensationalist/Premillenialist or whatever the right term is.

Rather, Ice brings up one legitimate reason for connecting "7 weeks and 62 weeks": It would make the reference to an "anointed prince" or Messiah Prince in verse 25 cohere with the reference in the next verse to the anointed one cut off after 62 weeks and the prince referenced in that next verse.

That is, verses 25-26 have:
25. Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem until anointed one (or "Messiah") Prince shall be
seven weeks
and 62 weeks
the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.
26. And after 62 weeks shall anointed one (or "Messiah") be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary
It seems generally accepted that the 62 weeks in verse 26 is the same 62 weeks mentioned in verse 25.

Verse 25 mentions "moshiach" (anointed one) and "prince" with the phrase moshiach nagid (anointed one Prince). Are the moshiach and prince mentioned in verse 26 the same as the moshiach prince in verse 25. Is it just a coincidence that both verses use both terms? It is more coherent to relate these terms in these verses to each other. Granted, considering them all three figures could still allow for some coherency in terminology by theorizing that Daniel used overlapping terms in order to suggest a common conceptual theme of anointed ones and princes.

Putting aside common known interpretations and just taking these two verses by themselves, it would seem to make sense to equate some of the figures. Here is one hypothetical construction: The rebuilding could last until an anointed prince comes, he could be cut off (a term that seems to most often mean "killed" elsewhere in Tanakh) and "be no more" (the Hebrew phrase is rare, and Enoch is one of the few people who are spoken of this way in Tanakh), and then that prince's people would destroy the temple, perhaps in revenge over the killing. But if someone accepts this hypothetical construction, how does one explain that "he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week"? Would one have to theorize that the killed anointed prince got resurrected and then confirmed the covenant? The idea of a resurrected anointed prince would match the Christian idea, and Jesus confirming the covenant is one of the Christian readings of verse 27.

But the idea that the messiah's people destroyed the Temple seems harder to fit with a Christian interpretation. I might have seen some theory that the prince's people refers to gentiles or Romans because of the idea that they were coming to Christ, but I don't recall exactly. There is this little issue in the Gospels about allegations of Jesus saying to destroy the Temple, and whether he was talking about his own body. To reinterpret the "holy place" in verse 24 and the destroyed "sanctuary" in verse 27 as being Jesus' body and the prince's people as being the world whom Jesus died for seems to go beyond the plain reading of these verses.
 
Reason #4 (above) comes up in some Christian literature like the Essay, "The Seventy Weeks of Daniel: The Literal, Grammatical, Historical Interpretation of Daniel 9:24-27 and Other Interpretative Approaches":
Notice the phrase "there shall be seven weeks Then for sixty two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time." Herein lies a problem with the ESV translation. They are telling the reader that Gabriel told Daniel that it would take 434 years to build the plaza and moat, which is ridiculous and makes no sense whatsoever. This translation tells the reader that it took several hundred years to finish restoring Jerusalem which does not agree with the facts of history."

An eighth argument for putting the 7 weeks with the 62 weeks, although it doesn't really address Collins' statement about the underlying Hebrew text specifically, is that Theodotion in the mid-2nd century made a Greek translation of Daniel 9 where he put the 7 weeks and 62 weeks together. The earlier "Old Greek" version didn't deal very clearly with verse 25. Aquila was a non-Christian Jewish translator who made a Greek translation that put the 7 weeks and 62 weeks together. The Aramaic Peshitta translation of the OT also puts the 7 and 62 weeks together. These translations are considered by scholars to precede the Masoretes' introduction of punctuation like the atnah mark (the atnah mark being a third reason against putting the 7 weeks with the 62 weeks).

The essay above also gives a ninth argument, claiming that an atnah doesn't necessarily mean a dissasociative break:
Some have erroneously contended that an atnah always served as a disjunctive accent, marking a major area between clauses. However an atnah did not always indicate a full disjunctive accent but had many functions. It can have an emphatic function as in Genesis 1:1 [In the beginning God atnah]. It was a distinguishing feature that the Hebrew verse is divided into two parts which is called "dichotomy." This was for the purpose of chanting. In Genesis 35:9, an atnah indicates a pause rather than a full disjunction. It can have a parenthetical purpose as in 1 Kings 8:42. As Tanner has cited, Wickes in his detailed analysis of Hebrew accentuation, has cited instances where an atnah was wrongly placed.

 
A fourth argument against the 7 weeks and 62 weeks being together was advanced by Ian Foley in his book, "The Time is Near." He suggested on p. 180 that there is a chiastic symmetry in verse 25 that separates the 7 weeks and 62 weeks:
  • A. Therefore know and understand From the going forth of the command
    • B. to restore and to build Jerusalem until anointed prince
      • C. weeks seven
      • C1. and weeks sixty and two
    • B1. again and shall be built the street and the wall
  • C1. and even in troublesome times
 
I found a most informative article:
Thanks, Shoonra. Beckwith's article came up in my research. Can you read Hebrew? Are there arguments that you think I missed?
Even if we put the 7 weeks and 62 weeks separately and don't count the "anointed one prince" in verse 25 as the Davidic Messiah, it doesn't disprove a Messianic reading elsewhere in Daniel 9. Daniel 9 seems the chapter most likely in the Book of Daniel to be giving a Messianic date prediction like what Rambam (Maimonides) refers to.
 
I think an argument based on the pointings (vowels and accents) provided by the Massoretes in the 6th century is exceptionally weak. Daniel is not easy reading. I suspect that this portion of Daniel is a late addition, possibly worked up and inserted in the Maccabean Era, intended to pretend to be an ancient prophecy of something or someone Maccabean.
 
I think an argument based on the pointings (vowels and accents) provided by the Massoretes in the 6th century is exceptionally weak.
Shoonra, can you read Hebrew?

I agree that it's actually a much weaker argument than it sounds at first for a couple reasons. One is that the Jewish translators Theodotion and Aquila in their own translations in the 2nd century AD put the 7 weeks and 62 weeks in the same sentence, which suggests that when they studied the text, there wasn't a disjunction like the athnah suggests. A second reason is that in ancient times, they didn't have pointings.

A third reason is that if the Book of Daniel was written in the Maccabean period, then there might not be a clear oral authoritative tradition explaining it. Whoever wrote the text might say, "Look at this ancient Persian-era text that I found" instead of "I wrote this, here's what it means, and here's where the sentence breaks go." In that case, the Masoretes might not have inherited reliable instructions coming down from the text's author about where punctuation should go, etc.

On the other hand, supposedly Clement of Alexandria and Hippolytus, writing around the end of the 2nd century AD after Aquila and Theodotion, separated the 7 weeks and 62 weeks, so the idea to separate these two periods is also old.
 
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I suspect that this portion of Daniel is a late addition, possibly worked up and inserted in the Maccabean Era, intended to pretend to be an ancient prophecy of something or someone Maccabean.
Another complicating trail about the origin of Daniel 9:25 is that this section is practically missing in the DSS fragment due to loss of papyrus. So we can't go to the DSS as a very useful insight into what this verse looked like in the 2nd-1st century BC.

11Q13 in the DSS says:
This is the day of [Peace/Salvation] concerning which [God] spoke [through Isa]iah the prophet, who said, [How] beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who proclaims peace, who brings good news, who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion: Your ELOHIM [reigns] (Isa. lii, 7). Its interpretation; the mountains are the prophets... and the messenger is the Anointed one of the spirit, concerning whom Dan[iel] said, [Until an anointed one, a prince (Dan. ix, 25)] ... [And he who brings] good [news] , who proclaims [salvation]: it is concerning him that it is written... [To comfort all who mourn, to grant to those who mourn in Zion] (Isa. lxi, 2-3).
The part in brackets is just the modern editor's guess, so it's not very clear exactly what the author of the DSS was referencing in Daniel, although the "anointed one" in Daniel 9 would be a good guess.

Further, normally one would want to check Daniel 9 in the Septuagint, especially if the Septuagint version was translated about the same era as Daniel was written (2nd-1st century BC). However, if we check the "Old Greek" version of Daniel 9, it's very very sloppy as a translation of Daniel, to the point where it is barely helpful.
 
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One issue is whether the phrase 7 weeks and 62 weeks works in Hebrew. It sounds clunky in English, and normally in Hebrew you would just say 69 weeks, not this broken up format. So I thought to look to see whether the Bible elsewhere has expressions like "a time and a time" or "____ days and ___ days". A bit of something like this comes up in Daniel 7:25:
He shall speak pompous words against the Most High, Shall persecute the saints of the Most High, And shall intend to change times and law. Then the saints shall be given into his hand For a time and times and half a time.

Why wouldn't the author just say 2 and a half years, or 2 and a half days? It seems that Daniel's author might have an unusual way of breaking up times when he talks about durations.

This kind of phrase comes up in Dan 12:7:
And I heard the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters of the river, when he held up his right hand and his left hand unto heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever that it shall be for a time, times, and an half; and when he shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people, all these things shall be finished.
 
"And he [the man in linen] said, "Go, Daniel, for the matters are obscured and sealed until the time of the End." " -- Dan 12:25
 
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