Daniel 8:14

14. Days Literally, evenings-mornings; that is, successive evenings and mornings. Since it is a question of the suspension of the daily sacrifice the verse alludes, no doubt, to the evening oblation (Daniel 9:21) and the morning oblation (note Daniel 9:26; Exodus 29:41). There have been libraries of discussion over the meaning and application of these words, but they most probably refer to the fact that there should be twenty-three hundred omissions of the daily sacrifices, covering a period of some eleven hundred and fifty days. This most naturally applies to the “three years and six months” during which time Josephus says Antiochus “put a stop to the daily offerings” (Wars, I, 1, i). There is no need to suppose that Josephus’s reckoning of three and a half years (twelve hundred and sixty days) is exact to the day. Daniel calculates one period of this temple defilement to be twelve hundred and ninety days (Daniel 12:11) and another period to the complete triumph of righteousness thirteen hundred and thirty-five days (Daniel 12:12); while here a certain section of this persecution is computed at twenty-three hundred evenings-mornings. This might possibly mean twenty-three hundred full days (Genesis 1:5); but since there is no period of six and a half years known to us which would offer a natural explanation of the use of such a time reckoning, it is probably better to consider it as eleven hundred and fifty days, and explain it as above though there can be no doubt that the persecutions of Antiochus covered a period of six years and longer. We are as yet not sufficiently acquainted with the daily history of the Jews during this awful time of trouble to understand in all cases what these numbers mean. Indeed it may be possible that Dr. Terry is right in his suggestion that this difference of enumeration, referring to the same general period, was to enforce the truth that the “time, times, and dividing of a time” (Daniel 7:25; Daniel 12:7) could not be reckoned with mathematical accuracy. (Compare Acts 1:7.) Since, however, these figures are not made up of the usual symbolic numbers of Scripture we prefer to accept them as referring to events well known then, although hidden from us.

Then shall the sanctuary be cleansed Or, “justified” (R.V., margin). “The justification of the sanctuary is the vindication of the cause; for so long as it is polluted it lies under condemnation.” Bevan.