Daniel 9:27
What does Daniel 9:27 mean?
He will make a firm covenant with many for one week. In the middle of the week he will cause the sacrifice and the offering to cease. On the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate; and even to the full end, and that determined, wrath will be poured out on the desolate.”
The short answer
Daniel 9:27 is the final verse of one of the Bible's most discussed prophecies: the vision of seventy weeks. Earlier in the chapter, Daniel has been praying over Jeremiah's promise that Jerusalem's desolation would last seventy years. The angel Gabriel answers with a reworked timetable: not seventy years, but seventy "weeks" of years — 490 in all — divided into stages that move toward a final, decisive period.
Verse 27 describes that last week. A figure makes "a firm covenant with many" for one week, but at its midpoint he stops the sacrifice and offering in the temple. Worship itself is interrupted. Then comes the haunting image of desolation arriving "on the wing of abominations" — a desecration so severe it empties the holy place of its meaning. Yet the verse does not end in open-ended despair. Wrath is poured out only "to the full end, and that determined." The desolation has a boundary. It has been measured, decreed, and given an expiration.
This is why the seventy-weeks framework matters for reading the verse. By stretching Jeremiah's seventy years into seventy weeks of years, Daniel 9 treats exile not as a single dated event that ended long ago, but as a longer condition — one that persists until God brings the whole scheme to its appointed close. The final week, with its broken worship and its decreed wrath, is the dark passage just before that close.
Read this way, Daniel 9:27 is less a puzzle to be decoded than a promise with a hard edge: things will get worse before the end, but the end is fixed. The desolator does not set the timetable. God does, and the decree runs against the desolation itself.
What scholars say
How did Daniel arrive at seventy 'weeks' when Jeremiah spoke of seventy years? Ackroyd traces how the seventy-year period becomes a 490-year span of sabbaths, making exile less a dated event than a condition ended only by the final age, while Hayes and Holladay show that Daniel 9 belongs to a wider biblical pattern of appropriating and reinterpreting older traditions, drawing here on Jeremiah 25 and 29.
“Here the interpretation of the seventy-year period, having been taken literally in some measure by both Zechariah and the Chronicler, is linked with the weeks of years which mark the sabbath periods of years, and the whole period from the fall of Jerusalem to the restoration under Judas Maccabaeus becomes a period of sabbaths. It is in effect an exile lasting 490 years, and with this we reach an understanding of exile and restoration which takes us well beyond the consideration of the sixth century. Here the exile is no longer an historic event to be dated in one period; it is much nearer to being a condition from which only the final age will bring release.”
“A third aspect of the external history of a passage relates to the way in which certain parts of the Bible have incorporated older biblical traditions and presented them in a new, modified form. In the OT books of Chronicles, we find material from the books of Samuel and Kings presented in a new way and written from a different viewpoint. Similarly, the book of Daniel appropriates and reinterprets older biblical traditions. In Daniel 9, the interpretation of the seventy years of desolation draws on Jeremiah (25:11–12; 29:10), which itself is based on an earlier ancient Near Eastern formulaic tradition. In the NT, most scholars agree that Matthew and Luke depend directly on Mark, even though they expand Mark’s story, changing it in many respects.”
What it means for you
It is easy to live as though a hard season has no edges — as though grief, injustice, or spiritual dryness simply is the new normal. Daniel 9:27 pushes back on that. Even the bleakest stretch of the prophecy, when worship stops and desolation spreads, is bounded by a determined end. The verse invites you to name your own desolations honestly, without pretending they are lighter than they are, while refusing to grant them permanence.
It also models something practical: Daniel got here by praying over an older scripture and asking what it meant for his moment. Reading the Bible with that kind of patient, questioning attention is itself an act of hope.
Daniel 9 in context
Daniel 9 opens with Daniel studying Jeremiah's prophecy that Jerusalem's desolation would last seventy years. Realizing the time is near, he prays a long confession on behalf of his people, pleading for God's mercy on the ruined city. In response, the angel Gabriel arrives with an answer that reframes the question: seventy weeks of years are decreed to finish transgression, atone for iniquity, and bring in everlasting righteousness. Verses 24–27 lay out that timetable in stages, and verse 27 is its climax — the final week, the halted sacrifice, and the decreed end of desolation.