Daniel 9:1

1. For “Darius the Mede” see our Introduction, III, 3, (5), and note Daniel 5:31. If this king really was Gubaru, appointed vicegerent by Cyrus when he captured Babylon, then this prophecy of the “seventy year-weeks” is represented as being given in the very year when the Jews received permission to return and rebuild their temple; that is, at the end of their “seventy weeks” of captivity in Babylon.

Son of Ahashuerus This may possibly have been a marginal note, though the versions do not indicate it.

If the reference here is to the Book of Esther’s famous Ahasuerus (Xerxes) it is a bad mistake; for he was the son of Darius Hystaspes, not the father of Darius the Mede. But a famous man is usually preceded by less famous men bearing the same name. In official documents of the fifth century B.C. and later the name Ahasuerus ( Khsyrs, mighty) occurs in many forms. The Hebrew ear was not keen nor the tongue glib, so that no objection can be properly raised here because of the Hebrew spelling of this name. In the very first year of the reign of the celebrated Xerxes (485 B.C.) his name was spelled in official records, Akhsu-varsi, Akki-sarsu, Akhsi-varsa, Aksi-yarsu; the form fixing itself later as Akhsi-yarsu (Oppert, Revue des Etudes Juives, 1894).