Daniel 9

While he was still speaking, confessing his sin and his people’s, presenting a plea for the holy hill, the answer is already on the way. Wesley’s silence here is not disagreement. The prayer of 9:1–19 is still in the prophet’s mouth.

Daniel does not stop confessing in order to be heard. He names his own sin with Israel’s. The holy hill remains the burden of the plea. Mercy for a people and a place is still the subject when heaven begins to speak.

Calvin: the prayers were by no means useless. Gabriel is sent to elevate his mind with confidence and to console the whole church with hope of return. Daniel, among the most perfect, still confesses himself a sinner and renounces his own righteousness. Even he places his only hope in mere mercy.

God extends grace to the wretched who fly to it. Daniel’s own sin is not a courtesy. The man God will call greatly loved is still in the flock of sinners while he prays for the mountain of the sanctuary.

Wesley: the evening sacrifice was a solemn set time of devotion. Though the altar was in ruins and no oblation was offered, the pious were daily thoughtful of the hour, hoping prayer would be set forth as incense. This was peculiarly a type of that great sacrifice which Christ was to offer; and it was in virtue of that sacrifice that Daniel’s prayer was accepted, when he prayed for the Lord’s sake.

Gabriel comes at a remembered hour. Wesley will not treat the time as empty custom. The ruined altar still points forward. Acceptance is in Christ’s offering, which Daniel’s “for the Lord’s sake” had already named.

Calvin notes that seventy years had passed without Daniel seeing a sacrifice, yet he still speaks of the evening offering as if the temple’s hours remained. The fathers’ signs can still tutor the heart in exile. Gabriel, seen in the former vision, comes in swift flight as a minister of grace.

God answers in the ordinary holy hour the prophet still kept. The messenger is the same Gabriel. Consolation is sent to a man at prayer, not to a speculator of times. The ruined altar has not erased the day’s appointed remembrance.

Gabriel comes out to give insight and understanding. The seventy weeks will not be a riddle for its own sake. Daniel is made to understand. Wesley’s later notes will spend the understanding on Messiah’s redemption, not on a later calendar war.

Classical Arminians receive the stated purpose: skill to understand. The angel does not scold the prayer. He answers it with light. What follows is for a beloved man who asked mercy for his people.

Calvin: the angel prepares Daniel’s mind—he came from heaven to teach. Such a gift must not be neglected. God opens his heart by the word; teachers are sent so that what would be hidden may be interpreted. The gospel itself is preached for the obedience of faith.

Insight is given, not seized. Daniel will be told to consider and understand because God has sent the messenger. The seventy weeks are instruction for the church, not a puzzle God refused to explain.

At the beginning of the pleas a word went out. Daniel is greatly loved; therefore he must consider the matter and understand the vision. Love does not annul the duty to attend. It grounds it.

Pastorally: the answer was decreed as the prayer began, yet the prophet must still consider. Grace that loves a man also teaches him. Wesley will read the vision as Messiah’s work for our salvation. The beloved hearer is not excused from understanding.

Calvin: the word went forth from the time Daniel began to pray—God heard, then promulgated what he had already decreed. Promises do not make us slothful. The saints plead what God has spoken, and he grants what he had determined, as if obedient to their desires.

You are greatly loved is not flattery; it is why the angel has come. Consider the matter and understand the vision. The seventy weeks are a published decree, timed to a plea God had already chosen to answer.

Wesley: these weeks are weeks of days, and these days are so many years. The angel first names the disease in three words covering all sorts of sin, which the Messiah should free us from by his full redemption; then the cure—to finish transgression, make an end of sin, make reconciliation: to pardon, blot out, destroy. Everlasting righteousness is justification by the free grace of God in Christ, and sanctification by his Spirit—everlasting because Christ is eternal, and so are the acceptance and holiness purchased for us.

He brings this in by his merit, by his gospel declaring it, and by faith applying and sealing it by the Holy Ghost. To seal up is to abrogate the former dispensation of the law and ratify the gospel covenant. To anoint alludes to the name Messiah and Christ: anointed at conception, at baptism, to his three offices. Both weeks of years and a messianic aim: Wesley will not let the verse stop at a rebuilt city.

Calvin: seventy weeks of years—490—cut off upon the people and holy city, a sevenfold span of grace after Jeremiah’s seventy of judgment, until God sets forth salvation in his Christ. The angel announces remission: to close up wickedness, seal sin, expiate iniquity. Christ poured out his blood, offered himself as an expiatory victim, and satisfied God by his death. Law sacrifices were shadows; had sins then been truly expiated, Christ need not have come.

Eternal righteousness is brought in because his death sufficed for all transgressions, unlike daily offerings. Vision and prophecy are sealed in him—fulfilled, and the obscure age of figures gives way to gospel light. To anoint the Holy of Holies points to the true tabernacle: Christ’s body the temple, the spiritual anointing when the Spirit rested on him. Calvin, like Wesley, reads history that lands on Christ, not a later rapture scheme.

Wesley: from the going forth—from the publication of the edict, whether of Cyrus or Darius, to restore and to build. He will not pretend the starting decree is clearer than the text. Seven weeks and sixty-two follow; the street and wall rise in troublous times.

Restoration is actual history—squares, moat, trouble. The anointed prince is still the aim of the count. Wesley’s “whether” is modesty about which Persian word began the clock, not doubt that Messiah is where the weeks run.

Calvin requires the going forth of the edict to be Cyrus’s decree, when a free return was granted. The seven weeks (forty-nine years) belong to the repair of city and temple amid hostility—the narrow, anxious times of Ezra and Nehemiah. He will not start the seventy weeks at a later Darius as if the chain from Jeremiah’s seventy years were broken.

Consolation depends on continuity. After seventy years of exile, seven weeks of troubled rebuilding, then sixty-two toward Messiah the Leader. The street is built with a sword in one hand. God still builds in the anxieties of the times.

Wesley: after the seven and the sixty-two, Messiah is cut off—not for himself, but for our sakes and for our salvation. The people of the prince who comes are the Romans under Titus. God has decreed to destroy that place and people by the miseries of war.

And messianic together: the cut-off Anointed is Christ dying for others; the ruined city is Jerusalem under Rome. Wesley does not turn the verse into a later Antichrist timetable. The salvation for which Messiah is cut off is the same full redemption named in verse 24.

Calvin: after the sixty-two weeks, Christ shall be cut off. He refuses Jewish evasions that make Agrippa the “Christ,” or Vespasian the covenant-maker. The death is ignominious: nothing shall remain to him, as if he vanished from men’s sight—Isaiah’s unlovely servant. The people of the coming leader destroy city and sanctuary; the end comes like a flood; desolations are decreed.

The cutting off belongs with the last week’s work, when the covenant is confirmed and the Messiah is slain. History (Rome, flood of war) sits under a decree. Calvin and Wesley agree the ruined sanctuary is not a denial of the gospel. It is what God said would follow the rejected Christ.

Wesley: he shall confirm—Christ confirmed the new covenant by the testimony of angels, of John the Baptist, of the wise men, of living saints, of Moses and Elijah; by his preaching, signs, holy life, resurrection and ascension, and by his death and blood-shedding. He causes sacrifice to cease: all the Jewish rites and Levitical worship. By his death he abrogated that laborious service forever.

“That determined” Wesley reads as the spirit of slumber God would pour on the desolate nation until the time draws near when all Israel shall be saved. The weeks remain Messiah’s week. The desolation is authentic and long. It is not a third-party Antichrist as the Arminian side of a modern chart.

Calvin: Christ confirms the covenant with many for one week when he assumes the Leader’s office and promulgates grace. “Many” reaches beyond the old narrow church to Gentiles joined with Jews. Sacrifice and offering cease for half a week at the resurrection: after he offered himself, the law’s rites closed; continued slaughter of beasts could no longer be legitimate.

The last week is gospel confirmation, then the city’s devastation under a decreed end. Calvin will not give the confirming “he” to Vespasian bargaining for surrender. Christ is the confirmer; Rome is the flood. Ruin, messianic covenant—the same two beams Wesley uses, fitted differently in the week’s interior.