What is the seven-year covenant of Daniel 9:27?

Question 10189.

The seven-year covenant of Daniel 9:27 is the agreement that begins the final week of Daniel’s seventy, and it is the event that starts the prophetic clock running again after a long pause. Everything in the Tribulation timetable is dated from it.

So who makes it, with whom, and what does it do? The verse is short and the answers are more definite than you might expect.

What the verse says

Daniel 9:27 reads that he shall make a strong covenant with the many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering, and on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out.

Three movements sit in that sentence. A seven-year covenant is made with many, sacrifice is stopped at the midpoint, and desolation follows until the end that God has decreed. The Hebrew for covenant here is berith, the standard word for a binding agreement, and the verb translated make strong suggests imposing or forcing it through rather than gently proposing it.

The week is a seven, the unit Daniel has used throughout the chapter, and on the prophetic year of three hundred and sixty days it gives a period of seven years divided precisely in half at twelve hundred and sixty days each.

The arithmetic is worth having in front of you. Sixty nine sevens of prophetic years from the decree brings you to the presentation and cutting off of Messiah, which is why Daniel 9:26 places His death after the sixty ninth seven and before the destruction of the city. One seven remains, and Daniel 9:27 describes it.

Who is the he who makes it?

The nearest antecedent is the prince who is to come in verse 26, whose people destroy the city and the sanctuary. Since Rome destroyed Jerusalem in AD 70, that coming prince is Roman in background, which is consistent with Daniel’s fourth empire in chapters 2 and 7.

Some take the he to be the Messiah, on the ground that Jesus confirmed a covenant and ended sacrifice by His death. I understand the attraction and I cannot make it fit. Jesus did not make a seven-year covenant, He did not stop the offerings at a midpoint, and He is not naturally described as bringing abominations that make desolate.

So the maker of the seven-year covenant is the man Paul calls the lawless one and John calls the beast. His career begins in an act of apparent diplomacy, which is worth remembering when we imagine what evil looks like on arrival. See the article on the Antichrist.

There is one further reason the Messianic reading of the he will not stand. Verse 26 says the people of the prince who is to come destroy the city and the sanctuary, and that destruction is dated after Messiah is cut off. The prince therefore belongs to the people who did the destroying, which points to Rome and not to Jesus.

Made with whom, and for what?

The many is a term Daniel uses for his own people, as in 11:33 and 12:3, so the seven-year covenant is made with Israel or with her leadership. The content is not stated, but the effect is visible: Israel worships in a temple with sacrifice and offering in operation, apparently secure, apparently at peace.

That fits the pattern the prophets condemned. Isaiah 28 speaks of a covenant with death made by rulers who trusted an arrangement rather than the Lord, and said it would not stand. A nation which has refused her Messiah accepts protection from a man who promises what only God can give.

For the temple arrangements this covenant implies, see the article on temple sacrifices in the Tribulation.

The breaking at the midpoint

Halfway through, the seven-year covenant is broken. Sacrifice and offering stop, and something is set up which Daniel calls the abomination that makes desolate. Paul describes the same moment as the man of lawlessness taking his seat in the temple of God and proclaiming himself to be God.

Jesus treated that moment as a signal. In Matthew 24 He told those in Judea to flee to the mountains when they saw the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel standing in the holy place, and He told them not to go back for a coat. That is the language of immediate danger.

From that point the second half runs, and it is the great tribulation. The betrayal at the midpoint is what turns a false peace into the worst period Israel has known. I take up the sign itself in the article on the abomination.

The midpoint also marks a change in the character of the persecution. Up to that point the arrangement has looked like protection; afterwards it is open hostility, with the dragon pursuing the woman according to Revelation 12:13. A betrayal is always worse than an attack, and this one falls on the nation at the centre of God’s promises.

Why the seven-year covenant matters for the timetable

It matters because it is the only dated starting gun in the programme. The rapture is undated and unsignalled. The Tribulation, by contrast, begins with a specific agreement and runs a specific length, which is why Revelation can count months and days with such confidence.

That also means the Tribulation does not begin when the church is removed. There may be an interval, short or long, between the rapture and the signing, and Scripture nowhere tells us how long. Anyone who dates the Tribulation from the disappearance of the church has added a clause to the text.

For the way this fits the wider sequence, see the article on the seventy weeks and the article on the Tribulation.

What we should not do with this

We should not scan current negotiations for the seven-year covenant. Peace proposals concerning that region have come and gone for decades, and every attempt to identify one as Daniel’s agreement has failed. The document will be recognisable by its terms and its consequences, and the church will not be here to read it.

Nor should we treat the doctrine as a spectator sport. Daniel received this prophecy while praying and fasting over the sin of his people, and his response to it was not excitement but weakness and prayer. That is a rebuke to the way prophecy is often consumed.

Keeping the distinction between what is revealed and what is speculation is the whole discipline here, and I press it in the article on date setting.

Daniel’s own response is the model here. He had been reading Jeremiah, he had worked out that the seventy years were nearly complete, and he responded by confessing the sins of his people as though they were his own. The prophecy came to a man who was praying about Scripture rather than calculating from it, and the sequel to his prayer was more revelation rather than less. That is worth copying.

What it tells us about God

Look at what the verse assumes. God knows the terms of an agreement not yet drafted, by a man not yet born, with a nation which at the time of writing was in exile. He knows when it will be broken and how long the consequences will run, and He has already decreed the end.

The last clause is the comfort. Desolation continues until the decreed end is poured out. Even the worst period of human history has a boundary God set before it began, and the man who breaks the seven-year covenant is operating inside a limit he did not choose and cannot extend.

That is why Daniel could receive this news and keep working for a pagan administration for the rest of his life. He knew who was actually running the timetable.

Notice also how the verse ends. The desolation continues until the decreed end is poured out, and the word decreed points back to the whole seventy sevens which were themselves decreed. From beginning to end this is a measured period, and the man who signs the seven-year covenant is filling a slot in a timetable he did not draw up.

It also tells us that God is not embarrassed by the details. He was willing to commit Himself in writing, centuries in advance, to a specific sequence with specific durations. A God who did not intend to keep the appointment would have spoken more vaguely.

So, now what?

If you find prophecy unsettling, notice how Daniel got this material. He was praying over Scripture and confessing his people’s sin when the answer arrived. Prophetic understanding was given to a man on his knees, not to a man with a chart.

So take the one certainty that touches you directly. The seven-year covenant cannot be signed while the church is here, which means the next event on your horizon is a Person, not a document. What difference should that make to tomorrow?

And he shall make a strong covenant with the many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering.

Daniel 9:27 (ESV)