Untitled article | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, November 26, 1867

WHO CONFIRMS THE COVENANT?

BRO. CROCK.—Please say to whom the personal pronoun “he” in Daniel ix. 27 refers, and oblige. Yours, C. C.

The text referred to reads thus in the common version, “And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week; and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.”

We know of no passage of scripture of the same length that has such a variety of readings as Daniel’s famous prophecy of the seventy weeks. Dr. Adam Clarke has collected “upward of thirty various readings in the compass of four verses, and several of them of great moment.” In the expression, “He shall confirm the covenant with many for one week,” the pronoun “he” is supplied by the translators, but in the judgment of many of the best critics, it is implied. We understand it as being properly supplied and as having reference to the Messiah.

Albert Barnes says, “There has been a difference of opinion, however, as to the proper nominative to the verb confirm—whether it is the Messiah, or the foreign prince, or the ‘one week.’ Hengstenberg prefers the latter, and renders it, ‘And one week shall confirm the covenant with many.’ So also Lengerke renders it. It seems to me that it is an unnatural construction to make the word ‘week’ the nominative to the verb, and that the more obvious interpretation is to refer it to some person to whom the whole subject relates. It is not usual to represent time as an agent in accomplishing a work. In poetic and metaphorical language, indeed, we personate time as cutting down men, as a destroyer, &c., but this usage would not justify the expression that ‘time would confirm a covenant with many.’ This is obviously the work of a conscious, intelligent agent; and it is most natural, therefore, to understand this as of one of the two agents who are spoken of in the passage. These two agents are the ‘Messiah,’ and the ‘Prince that should come.’ But it is not reasonable to suppose that the latter is referred to, because it is said (verse 26) that the effect and the purpose of his coming would be to ‘destroy the city and the sanctuary.’ He was to come ‘with a flood,’ and the effect of his coming would be only desolation. The more correct interpretation, therefore, is to refer it to the Messiah, who is the principal subject of the prophecy; and the work which according to this, he was to perform was, during that ‘one week,’ to exert such an influence as would tend to establish a covenant between the people and God. The effect of his work during that one week would be to secure their adhesion to the true religion; to confirm to them the divine promises, and to establish the principles of that religion which would lead them to God. Nothing is said of the mode by which that would be done, and anything, therefore, which would secure this would be a fulfillment of the prophecy.”

That Titus, the “prince” who led the Roman army at the siege and destruction of Jerusalem, A. D. 70, was not the one who was to “confirm the covenant,” is obvious from the fact that no covenant ever existed between him and “many” of the Jews to be confirmed by him. No trace of such a transaction can be found in Josephus, or the Latin histories; and the obstinacy and infatuation of the chiefs of the Jewish factions at that time were such as to preclude the idea of any league between them being consummated.

The attempt of some writers to carry the prophecy into the future for a fulfillment by some Roman or Syrian “prince,” we regard as untenable. We have never seen reason to consider any other than the Messiah as being the subject of it. As Mr. D. N. Lord remarks:

“He filled the great office ascribed to him in verse 27. He confirmed the covenant to those who listened to his voice during the period of his ministry by appearing himself as the Son of God to take away the sin of the world, and promising eternal life to all who believed on him; by working innumerable miracles, by which he demonstrated his deity; and at length, by dying on the cross to make expiation for sin. He confirmed it also, after his death, by his resurrection, by commissioning his disciples to preach the glad tidings of redemption through his blood; and by pouring out the Holy Spirit and renewing a great multitude of the Jews, and giving them assurance of their interest in his salvation by the supernatural knowledge and miraculous powers with which they were endowed. This confirming of the covenant with many of that people, continued through three years and a half; when his disciples were directed no longer to confine the proffer of salvation to them, but to proclaim it also to the Gentiles.

“It was, in consequence, accordingly of this confirmation of the covenant which he accomplished by his ministry and death, that in the midst of the week he caused the sacrifice and oblation to cease. As He whom the sacrificial offerings typified had come and wrought the expiation by his blood which their blood foreshadowed, there was no longer necessity for the presentation of animal sacrifices. And we find in fact, that after his resurrection those offerings were discontinued by his disciples. Not a hint appears in the Gospels, and the Acts, or the Epistles that a solitary victim was presented by any believer, after his crucifixion.

“All that is foreshown in this verse, thus had a full and sublime verification in him. It must, therefore, be taken as its true and only fulfillment if it is to receive. To deny it, is to deny that the acts and the only acts that correspond to the prediction have any title to be considered as its accomplishment: and that is to turn the prophecy into a mockery. What more shocking desecration of the passage can be conceived, than to strike from it the Redeemer, as those writers do, and substitute in his place, in the greatest and most gracious acts of his life and death—a mere man, whom these very authors depict as being, and to be, the greatest monster that ever strode the earth!”—Advent Herald.