That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew: Part 15: Daniel's Prophecy 1

These seventy weeks (says Gabriel) are to extend to the time of a Messiah of such a sort that in his time, when the weeks have elapsed, sin and iniquity shall be finished, forgiveness and everlasting righteousness brought in, and vision and prophecy fulfilled. Now I ask them both, Jews and everyone else: Did such things come to pass in the days of Cyrus? In the time of Cyrus and after him no more special righteousness was brought upon earth than what existed before and since under other kings. Moreover, in the days of David and Solomon the level of righteousness was much higher than at the time of Cyrus, but Scripture does not designate this as everlasting righteousness. The righteousness of which Gabriel speaks must therefore be far superior to that which prevailed in the time of David, the most holy king, let alone to such righteousness as the pagan Cyrus had in his day.

And further, when Gabriel says here that the city of Jerusalem shall be rebuilt in seven weeks, and that afterward the Messiah shall be cut off after sixty-two weeks, how can that apply to King Cyrus, who was slain before the seven weeks began, or-if their calculation is correct-at any rate before Jerusalem was rebuilt? How can the Messiah be someone who was slain before the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and then was cut off sixty-two weeks later after Jerusalem was rebuilt?

So now we have it; their defense is fallacious, and the passage cannot be interpreted in terms of Cyrus. Since Scripture designates no one as Messiah after Cyrus except the only true one, and since such great and exalted qualities cannot be attributed to any temporal king, we conclude-and thus mightily overcome the error of the Jews-that the true Messiah came after the rebuilding of Jerusalem [by Nehemiah] and prior to its destruction [by Titus]. For no Messiah was put to death before the destruction of Jerusalem except our Lord Jesus Christ, whom we call Messiah, that is, Christ, or the Anointed One. For this reason we will now examine the text, and see how exactly it conforms to our Lord Jesus Christ.

Luther goes to the prophecy of Daniel found in the book by the same name. Now Daniel is an interesting book. The first half of the book contains Aramaic as Daniel records for us official government correspondence. One could say that the first chapter is

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