Daniel 9:3

3. It was now nearly seventy years since Daniel had been carried captive to Babylon (Daniel 1:1), and as the time of the captivity seemed drawing to a close he is represented as becoming deeply and solemnly interested in its fulfillment. Kautzsch’s idea that Daniel’s sadness proves that according to the writer’s calculation the time of fulfillment must have been already past ( Beilagen, p. 205), curiously misinterprets the prophetic temperament. There is no necessary anachronism here. Daniel’s sorrow is not said to be because of Jehovah’s failure to keep his promise of deliverance, but because of his people’s sins which had brought upon them these terrible calamities. So earlier prophets, notably Jeremiah, had sorrowed with equal bitterness. (See also note Daniel 10:2-4; Daniel 10:15-16.) As the number “seventy” was the common symbolical number of perfection and fullness of time (see our Introduction to Ezekiel, VIII), no elaborate calculation is necessary as to the year when these “desolations” commenced. If they began with Jehoiachin’s captivity (598 B.C.) there were yet ten years before the seventy years of ruin would literally come to an end.