This is the Darius who in cooperation with Cyrus conquered the Chaldeans and Babylonians. We are not to think of that other Darius in the second year of whose reign the temple was built (as Porphyry supposes in making out a late date for Daniel); nor are we to think of the Darius who was vanquished by Alexander, the king of the Macedonians. He therefore adds the name of his father and also refers to his victory, inasmuch as he was the first of the race of the Medes to overthrow the kingdom of the Chaldeans. He does this to avoid any mistake in the reading that might arise from the similarity of the name.

We must distinguish between the reign of Darius son of Ahasuerus and that of Darius the Persian. In this way, the things that are now being read will harmonize with the things that were spoken earlier. He did not simply introduce Darius as Darius the Mede but rather as one from the race of the Medes. Now, as it is clear, he was not a Mede on both sides of his family, that is, on his father’s and mother’s side. At the same time he ruled over the kingdom of the Chaldeans, when Belshazzar was killed in the middle of the night by a divine intervention after his godless act. According to my research, this Darius seems to have reigned for a very brief time.

Darius, the son of Astyages, who destroyed the Babylonian Empire with the help of his kinsmen Cyrus, was sixty-two years old when he attacked Babylon. He is called by another name by the Greeks. He took the prophet Daniel and led him into the middle of his court and feted him with every honor. Daniel himself made mention of this Darius: In the first year of Darius . . . . In his chronology, Eusebius counts thirty years from the destruction of Jerusalem to the beginning of the reign of Cyrus, king of the Persians. Julius Africanus, however, counts seventy years. Moreover, Jerome has this to say in his exposition of the prophet Daniel: The Hebrews pass on a story of this sort up until the seventieth year, when Jeremiah had said that the captivity of the Jews would come to an end. Zechariah also speaks about this at the beginning of his book. ^[1] DANIEL PRAYS ONLY AT THE APPOINTED TIME. ISHO‘DAD OF MERV: When the time fixed for the captivity is completed, Daniel begins to pray for the return; indeed, he had not dared to pray [to that purpose] before that moment, in order not to press God needlessly and in order not to hear the word that had been addressed to Jeremiah: Do not pray for this people, and do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you.^[1] But after seeing that the sentence had been executed, he prays with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. At the same time he thought that the Jews might stay a longer time in captivity because of their sins, according to the fact that God had added thirty years to the Jews in Egypt and had reduced [the time for repentance conceded] to the generation of Noah of twenty years and of fifty in the case of the house of Ephrem. Moreover, it is not at the beginning of their fault that the sinners ask questions of the judge but after the punishment. ^[2]

Jeremiah had predicted seventy years for the desolation of the temple,^[1] at the end of which the people would again return to Judea and build the temple and the city of Jerusalem. However, this fact did not render Daniel careless but rather encouraged him to pray that God might through his supplications fulfill that which he had graciously promised. Thus he avoided the danger that carelessness might result in pride, and pride cause offense to the Lord. Accordingly we read in Genesis that prior to the deluge, 120 years were appointed for humankind to come to repentance;^[2] and as they refused to repent even within so long an interval of time as a hundred years, God did not wait for the remaining twenty years to be fulfilled but brought on the punishment earlier that he had threatened for a later time.^[3] So also Jeremiah is told, on account of the hardness of the heart of the Jewish people: Pray not for this people, for I will not hearken to you.^[4] Samuel also was told, How long will you mourn over Saul? I also have rejected him.^[5] And so it was with sackcloth and ashes that Daniel requested God to fulfill what he had promised, not because Daniel lacked faith concerning the future, but because he would rather avoid the danger that a feeling of security might produce carelessness, for carelessness in turn might produce an offense to God.

Nor is it merely a change of nature, or aversion of perils or obliteration of sins but likewise the recognition of mysteries that fasts will merit from God. Look at Daniel’s example. . . . In the first year of King Darius, when, after careful and repeated meditation on the times predicted by Jeremiah, he set his face to God in fasts and sackcloth and ashes. An angel was sent to him and immediately stated this had been the cause of the divine honor; he said, I came to show you, wretched as you are, namely, because he had been fasting.

What will you say, Daniel? You are among the good; you enjoy honor before God and people; why do you concern yourself with the others? But Moses also acted the same way. And what does he say? He asked for the things that were due with fasting, sackcloth and ashes. Why did he do that, if what he was asking was due the Israelites? He did it so that he might not make them unworthy of this. For there is no compulsion that can be applied to God; he is above all laws. He did this to seek in prayer and petition.

[Daniel] calls [God] great and wonderful for his ability to do great and wonderful things. Godly people, after all, are accustomed to apply divine names on the basis of benefits conferred. He spoke of his keeping covenant and mercy with those who love him in recalling the promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Being very precise in his prayer, he mentions that he does not keep it with anyone but with those who love him and keep his commandments; if someone transgresses your commands, he renders himself unworthy of the promises.

It is not therefore the case that what God promises will come to pass without further ado, but rather he fulfills his promises toward those who keep his commandments.

Although Daniel has already received manifold grace due to his faith and innocence and although he has received quite a reputation before the Lord in regard to his virtues and praises, he strives with fasting to be worthy of God; he puts on sackcloth and ashes and makes confession with tears.

Then to bring out God’s constant care for them and the people’s great insensitivity, [Daniel] went on, We have not hearkened to your servants the prophets, who kept speaking in your name to our kings, to our rulers, to our fathers and to the whole people of the land. Your grace did not cease watching over us and speaking through the prophets, at one time to kings and rulers, at another to priests and teachers, referring to them as fathers, and on many occasions to the whole people. Yet even when this happened, we continued to contradict you.

Lord, the things done by you proclaim your righteousness. But we are ashamed because of our great transgression and denounced for our own ingratitude. No harm comes to you because of our godlessness, but we have reaped the fruit of these seeds. He speaks in a pitiable fashion. Daniel both accuses his kin and associates himself with their trespasses.

Yours is the victory, O Lord, in this case,^[1] because you foresaw our many sins and threatened those about to sin with many curses, keeping your watch lest we might sin. Righteousness is on your side, O Lord, because no evil will besiege us that was not an-nounced to us beforehand. So now confusion has overwhelmed us everywhere, and we are dispersed in every place.

Daniel was despondent and in pain. It was not merely the present troubles alone that bothered him but also the troubles to come, since he had not yet been allowed to learn those things through his prophetic eyes. When he saw that the Jews had not yet been freed from their earlier servitude, he was compelled to see another captivity fall-ing on them, and he saw the city that had not yet been rebuilt being captured again. He saw the temple defiled by sacrifices and made desolate and the Holy of Holies overturned.

Each of these would be enough to turn the most savage person to tears, not to mention what it would do to the gentle and humane individual. Through these words he shows that not only the lowest and unnoticed of the people had been filled with shame but also the kings themselves and the princes and the priests—the latter he called fathers. Then, to show the justice of the punishment, he added, because we sinned against you.

Concerning the same God of whom [Daniel] had previously said, To you, O Lord, belongs justice, he now says (since the Lord is not only just but also merciful): To you belongs mercy. He says this in order that he might call on the judge to show mercy, after his sentence has been imposed.

That is, you have not poured out on us all your wrath, for we should not have been able to bear it, but you have poured forth a mere droplet of your fury, in order that we might return to you once we have been enmeshed in your snare. . . . In Deuteronomy, we read the curses and blessings of the Lord,^[1] which were afterwards uttered in Mount Gerizim and Ebal on the righteous and on the sinners.

If some had sinned while others had been diligent keepers of your laws, they would not have awaited this misfortune. But since their transgression was common to all and had been undertaken by all, Daniel quite reasonably says, The curse has fallen on. . . . By oath he refers to the one made in Deuteronomy: I will raise my hand to heaven and I will swear by my right hand and I will say, ‘As I live forever, I will sharpen my sword like lightning, and my hand of judgment will be stretched out, and I will avenge. . . .’ And a little before this he says, I said, ‘I will scatter them and make the memory of them to cease from among humankind.’ ^[1] He is describing the curse that was uttered by the six tribes that were on Mount Ebal.^[2] So he is saying that the oath and curse that had been spoken in the law of Moses is actualized with us.

Their stubbornness was so great that even in the midst of their toils they would not entreat God, and even if they had entreated him, it would not have been a genuine entreaty, because they had not turned back from their iniquities. Yet to consider the truth of God is equivalent to turning back from iniquity.

Whenever we are rebuked because of our sins, God is keeping watch over us and visiting us with discipline. But whenever we are left alone by God and we do not suffer judgment but are unworthy of the Lord’s rebuke, then he is said to slumber. And so we read in the Psalms as well: The Lord has risen up as one who was slumbering or as a man out of a drunken sleep.^[1] For our wickedness and iniquity inflames God with wine, and whenever it is rebuked in our case, God is said to be keeping careful watch and to be rising up out of his drowsy sleep, in order that we who are drunken with sin may be made to pay careful heed to righteousness.

Daniel remembers God’s ancient kindness in order that he may appeal to him for a similar act of clemency.

And now, O Lord our God, who brought your people out of the land of Egypt, let your anger and wrath, we pray, turn away from Jerusalem, that is, You made, O Lord, your name renowned everywhere when you divided the sea and submerged the Egyptians into the water, and now, since your people are banished because of their sins and wander through every land in exile, draw near to us and have mercy on your holy mountain and your city Jerusalem, which have become a disgrace among all our neighbors.

This appeal is couched in anthropomorphic language, with the implication that whenever our prayers are heard, God seems to incline his ear; and whenever God deigns to have regard to us, he appears to open his eyes; but whenever he turns his face away, we appear to be unworthy of attention either from his eyes or his ears.

This was the evening fast, which offers a richer prayer to God, since it takes place with fasting during the evening.

This passage reveals to us . . . that there is one and the same God the Father, who was declared by the prophets but made manifest by Christ. The Lord confirmed those things Daniel prophesied about the end, when our Lord said, When you see the abomination of desolation that was told by Daniel the prophet. The angel Gabriel explained the visions to Daniel. This Gabriel is both the archangel of the Creator (Demiurge) and the one who proclaimed to Mary the coming and incarnation of Christ. Thus, most clearly, it must be one and the same God who sent the prophets and who sent forth his Son and called us to recognize him.^[1]

The effect of his prayer was considerable, and the promise of God was fulfilled that says, While you are yet speaking, see, I am at hand.^[1] And Gabriel appears not as an angel or archangel but as a person (vir), a term used to indicate the quality of virtue rather than specifying his gender. . . . It is stated that he flew, because he had made his appearance as a human being. It is said that it was at the time of the evening sacrifice, in order to show that the prophet’s prayer had persisted from the morning sacrifice even to the evening sacrifice and that God for that reason directed his mercy toward him.

Let them read that Daniel says, And behold, the man Gabriel. But why do we delay to shut up their mouths with another most evident and weighty proof, where no angel is mentioned individually or humankind in the plural, but rather the angels in their entirety are mentioned, namely, when it is said that through the angels not just any old word was spoken, but the law itself was given? Certainly, none of the faithful doubts that God gave Moses the law so that the people of Israel might be made subject to it, but nonetheless the law was given through angels. Thus Stephen says, You received the law proclaimed by angels, and yet you do not keep it.^[1] What is more evident than this? What is stronger and with such authority? The law was given to that people in the proclamations of the angels, but the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ was arranged and foretold through the law. Christ himself, the Word of God, was in a marvelous and indescribable manner in the angels, in whose proclamation the law was given. Thus he says in the Gospel, If you believed Moses, you would believe me also, for he wrote about me. Therefore, the Lord was speaking then through the angels; through the angels the Son of God, the one who would be the mediator between God and humankind, arranged his coming from the seed of Abraham so that he could find those who would receive him and confess themselves guilty, inasmuch as their failure to keep the law had made them transgressors.

As is clear to all, Daniel himself gave the name of the very angel in the book of his prophecy, when he learned from the angel those mysteries of the weeks that would take place concerning the birth of Christ. . . . According to the Gospel, the wonderful name of the very angel was found to have been given again in these times, for the same angel told Zechariah, I am Gabriel and I stand before God.

Gabriel is translated from Hebrew into our tongue as might of God. Wherever God’s power or might is shown, Gabriel is sent. Therefore, also at that time, when the Lord was about to be born and triumph over the world, Gabriel came to Mary and announced him who had humbly agreed to come to defeat the powers of the air.

The vision was so obscure that the prophet needed the angel’s teaching. . . . Daniel, I have now come out to give you wisdom and understanding. That is, I have been sent to you and have come forth, not from the presence of God in the sense of departing from him but only in the sense of coming to you.

That is, at the time when you did begin to ask God, you did immediately obtain his mercy, and his decision was put forth. I have therefore been sent to explain to you the things of which you are ignorant, inasmuch as you are a man of desires, that is to say, a lovable man, worthy of God’s love—even as Solomon was called Idida (variant: Jedida) or man of desires. I have been sent because you are worthy, in recompense for your affection for God, to be told the secret counsels of God and to have a knowledge of things to come.

So consider the word, which I will speak,^[1] that is, investigate and weigh carefully the meaning and the strength of the proposed vision; and in those things that I am about to tell you about it, contemplate a sort of expressed image of the future events.

The Lord . . . sent me to convey the future to you. For your part, give precise attention to what is said; what will be said is too profound for a human being (the meaning of understand what is in the vision), that is, what will be said in riddles, and requires of you precise attention for grasping it. Now, riddles occur when divine realities are spoken and written, the purpose being to prevent what is revealed to the holy ones becoming clear to everyone; after all, familiarity breeds contempt.

I realize that this question has been argued over in various ways by people of greatest learning, and each of them has expressed his views according to the capacity of his own genius. And so . . . I shall . . . leave it to the reader’s judgment as to whose explanation ought to be followed.

As the end of the seventy-year period was drawing near, during which Jerusalem would be left desolate, as the Lord had foretold through the prophet Jeremiah, Daniel poured forth his prayer. . . . The archangel Gabriel came to his aid and told him about the mysteries that would take place. There would be seventy brief weeks among his people and in the holy city so that sin could end and trespasses be sealed up and unrighteousness ended and eternal righteousness brought in. Also the visions of the prophets would end, and the Holy of Holies would be anointed. From the time that this word went out in reply and Jerusalem would be built up would be seven weeks; until Christ, the prince, would come, sixty-two weeks.

This means that there will be quietness for your people, so that the transgressions may be finished and the sins expiated through the seventy years of the bondage in Babylon may end, as well as all the crimes of the children of Israel. Again to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin: here he also hints at the transgressions and sins of the Gentiles, which will happen in the end of the seventy weeks. And to atone for iniquity: and this began from the baptism of John; to bring everlasting righteousness: and soon Christ will appear, the Author of justice, who had been announced by the prophets before the centuries, and he will justify then sinners. To seal both vision and prophet: certainly Christ fulfilled all the oracles of the prophets with his advent, passion and death, and he showed that they were true through facts. And to anoint a most holy one: from the conclusion of this prophecy you will learn this: he endowed the holy ones with holiness.

Daniel . . . teaches that God decided that a period of 490 years should be allotted to Jerusalem to enjoy divine gifts as usual until it committed that sacrilegious and fearsome crime—I mean, the crucifixion of the Savior, who is known as Holy of Holies for his being the fount of holiness; he is anointed in his humanity by the Holy Spirit, and seals and confirms the ancient prophecies by fulfilling everything foretold by them and grants forgiveness of sins to those who believe in him. ^[1] ALL THE PREDICTIONS ARE FULFILLED IN CHRIST. ISHO‘DAD OF MERV: The words seventy weeks will linger,^[1] that is, until the destruction caused by the Romans. In fact, even though, in the meantime, they are sometimes afflicted, they will not be abandoned completely. Seventy weeks make 490 years; they are calculated from the time when they will come back from Babylon and will begin to build the temple to the year when the Romans will make war against them after the ascension of our Lord. ^[2]

Since there is much testimony from the writings of the Law and the Prophets concerning the coming of the Savior, so that the Jews cannot deny it, the more thoughtful among them admit that he will come but say that he has not yet come. We have deemed it fitting, therefore, to offer this proof from the discourse of the archangel Gabriel as he spoke precisely of the times to the prophet Daniel in the vision that came to him. . . . When the times were fulfilled in the days of Augustus, the foretold Christ came to his people, was crucified and fulfilled all the things written about him through the holy angels and prophets. Thus, even if they do not blush on hearing the testimony of the archangel, let them cease from their vain waiting for the Messiah. Since the prophet Daniel was one of those longing to see the coming of the Messiah, our Lord himself says about him and the others, Many prophets and just people longed to see those things that you see, but they did not see them, and to hear those things that you hear but did not hear them.^[1]

Now, it gave Christ a second name as leader. . . . He is our leader in his humanity as the firstborn of all creation,^[1] that is, a new creation: If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation^[2]—and as firstborn from the dead, so as to have, as Paul says, first place in everything.^[3] Hence holy Gabriel called him Christ the leader. To him from the rebuilding of Jerusalem, therefore, are seven weeks and sixty-two weeks.

Now you hesitate to believe what we have stated, although you see that these things have happened. Therefore we ought to seek again the times that were foretold, both as pertaining to the birth and suffering of Christ and the removal of the city Jerusalem, that is, its destruction. Daniel says that the holy city and its sanctuary will be removed when the prince comes and that its pinnacle would be utterly destroyed. The times for the coming of the Christ must be sought again, as we found out in Daniel. When we have made a reckoning of these things, we will prove that he had already come, based on the chronology that had been foretold, the signs that accompanied him, his works and the events that followed him, which would take place after his coming, as had been foretold, so that we might believe that all these predictions had been fulfilled. Daniel had thus foretold about him, so that he showed when and where he would free the nations and in what year after his passion the holy city would be removed.

This is what [Daniel] says when he talks about the seventy weeks: Seventy weeks will be for the rebuilding of Jerusalem and sixty-two weeks until Christ the prince. After the sixty-two weeks the Christ will be killed, and he will have nothing. And a people with their leader will come and destroy the city and the sanctuary. A little later: He will confirm a covenant with many for a week, and in the middle of the week the offering and sacrifice will fail, and there will be an abomination of desolation. Since these things must be understood to refer to Christ’s first coming, in which those things were done and also received their outcome, nonetheless that portion after the division of the weeks (which he had distributed in a rather secret manner of heavenly inspiration, first making mention of seven, then sixty-two, finally one, which he also divided into two parts), that is, the final week is aptly applied to the end of the first coming of Christ and to the beginning of his second coming. To state it more clearly, I think that it necessarily must apply to both comings in an interpretation that applies harmoniously to both. For after seven and sixty-two weeks the Christ would come and be killed, and he would reprove those who killed him, just as it was said that the same people will not be his. And as for his confirming a covenant with many during one week, one would rightly understand that all the words of the Old Testament and the actions that foretold by type the Christ’s coming have been fulfilled by the truth of his presence, who is the end of the law. Nonetheless, I think that the intention of this week most aptly pertains to the end of the world, since I hear soon thereafter, And in half a week offering and sacrifice will come to an end. ^[1] THE LAW COMES TO AN END. ISHO‘DAD OF MERV: Theodoret interprets (the king who will come) as the foreign kingship and the unlawful doctrine.^[1] Others say, With the king who will come, meaning with the Christ who will come. Instead of the words the anointed one shall be killed, the Jews [say foolishly], The oil^[2] shall be cut off. Therefore, since there is no oil, and the oil of the anointment does not flow anymore, and it stops and does not proceed anymore, there was nobody to anoint with it both the kings and the priests according to the rule observed since Moses and afterwards. It was necessary that the law come to an end, because without priesthood and without the anointment of all that was anointed under the law, the law itself could not survive anymore. In the same manner, with what will your anointed prince be anointed, as there is no oil or ointment? Its end shall come with a flood and with destruction just like in the deluge of the generations of Noah. ^[3]

Christ was killed not immediately after the sixty-two weeks but at the end of the seventieth week. As far as we can figure out, [Daniel] separates this last week from the others, for he was going to say more about this week. Christ was crucified in that week. . . . The events that follow—the fact that a people and their general would destroy the city and the sanctuary and that its end would be devastation and after the end of the war desolation would be decreed for it—these events do not pertain to the seventy weeks. It had foretold that those weeks extend up to the leadership of the Christ, but still the Scriptures, after foretelling his coming and passion, wanted to show what would take place thereafter to the people who refused to welcome him. He says that Titus would come with the Roman people, who in the fortieth year after the passion of our Lord destroyed the city and the temple so that not even one rock remained on top of another. But having given a taste of these things in anticipation, he soon returns to expounding the week that he had glossed over. He will confirm a covenant with many during one week, that is, in that last week in which John the Baptist, our Lord and the apostles converted many to the faith. And in the middle of the week offering and sacrifice will come to an end. The middle of this week was the fifteenth year of Tiberias Caesar, when at the baptism of Christ the purification brought by the sacrifices began to grow obsolete, as far as the faithful were concerned. Again that which follows, In the temple there will be an abomination of desolation, and the desolation will remain until the consummation and the end, has a view to the era that follows. The history of past generations and the events of our own times confirm the truthfulness of this prophecy.

But what else did Daniel proclaim? He was prophesying not that which had already been done but that which would take place. What is the abomination of desolation that he proclaimed would take place when the Romans came, unless it is those things that now threaten? What is the oracle that we often mention as having been declared by the most high God, that the city will perish down to its foundation, when their own prince will have been killed at the hands of his fellow tribe members, unless it is that which we now see being fulfilled? And perhaps because it did not please them to keep the temple unstained by innocent blood, it pleases God to purify it by fire.

Certainly this end of the Jews will be by no means similar to their transmigration to Egypt or Babylon; in fact they were dismissed from there after four hundred years, and from here after seventy. This ruin fixed by the decree of God the judge will remain immutable to the end. He shall make a strong covenant with many: Christ will make the Testament holy and firm through one week and half a week, until he removes the victim and the sacrifice. He is the one who set the victim and the sacrifice but who also abolishes them. In their place shall be an abomination that desolates: the Romans,^[1] after submitting Judea to their power, placed the eagle, symbol of their emperor, in the temple. And this is what we read: So when you see the desolating sacrilege standing in the holy place, as was spoken by the prophet Daniel.^[2] Until the decreed end is poured out on desolation, that is, until the full execution of the divine decrees, the city will be given to oblivion and will lie destroyed and abandoned.