What does the Old Testament say about Satan?

The following program is recorded content created by Truth Network. I'm Joe Brown coming your way once more from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania where I'm having just a wonderful time at Randy Clark's Global Awakening Theological Seminary. In fact, I'll tell you what happened last night in a moment, but phone lines are open if you have a Jewish related question or comment of any kind 866-348-7884.

So it's Thursday, which is Thoroughly Jewish Thursday, which means any Jewish related call or comment will gladly talk about that on the air. And we're going to look at texts from the Tanakh, from the Hebrew Bible, from the Old Testament that talk about Satan. Is this the same Satan as we talk about in the New Testament? Does Satan in the Old Testament have the same type of power that he has in the New Testament?

How should we understand these texts? What about Lucifer? Is that something that applies to the devil in the Old Testament? We'll look at those questions. We'll dig through the texts together. It's on the heels of what I did yesterday, talking about demons are real according to the New Testament. I was glancing at some of the YouTube comments, which I often don't get to do, and noticed one of our Orthodox Jewish listeners, Yoel, posting some Talmudic references to demons, Shaddim. So, interested to see that.

Thanks for doing that, sir. Okay, before I talk to you about what Scripture says about Satan, and want to share with you a little later in the show a very interesting article in Israel Today about where some of the more radical Arab parties are within Israel, and an interesting perspective I think is worth sharing. Before I get into any of that, so I'm teaching here this week.

It's been every night, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, again tonight. Basically going from 6.30 in the evening until 9.45, just with a short break in the midst of it, some day teaching Q&A as well. And my subject is revival in the Old Testament. So we're looking at the subject of revival, what it is, the season of unusual divine visitation. And then we're looking to see Old Testament principles, when this happened on a national level or an individual level within the Old Testament.

And what we can glean from that today. And everyone in the class is either at Master's level studies or D. Men, Doctor of Ministry studies. So they're here for advanced study of the text and theological discussion, but very much with a heart for the things of the Spirit and very open to the moving of the Spirit today. So it's a great environment to teach and it's word and spirit together. So I was talking last night about God looking for people with whom he can share his heart. You know, you don't share your heart with everyone.

There are things that are very intimate. You might only share it with your family, with your spouse, with your closest friend. And God does not share everything with all of his people. He shares those things that are dearest to his heart with those who are closest to him. We see that historically with the prophets, that God would reveal his secrets to his servants, the prophets. We see that Jesus called the apostles friends and that he shared things with them, even an inner circle within them that he shared with, with the apostles that he would share with him, not everybody else.

So it's the same today. God's sharing his heart, his burden with us. I don't mean information about salvation that's not in the Bible. Oh, here's a secret God told me. No, I mean his heart. I mean that we feel some of the pain that he carries and understand some of his burden. And when you think about God's pain, this is something that Scripture does speak about.

It is something that comes up on a regular basis. And if Jesus is the Word made flesh and if we've seen him, we've seen the Father, if we see Yeshua, we see the Father, certainly Yeshua carried that pain. And certainly he wept over Jerusalem in Luke 19.

This reflects the Father's heart. So I was talking about this and I was sharing some Jewish interpretation of some text in Jeremiah from my commentary which spoke of God's heart and God's pain. And I was holding back the tears as I was teaching because it's very powerful stuff. And then I just played a short clip, maybe two or three minutes from a clip by David Wilkerson talking about anguish and how God, when he's ready to move, will baptize one of his servants with a holy anguish.

And David Wilkerson was saying whatever happened to anguish. And the burden started to get deeper in the room. And next thing, people just started to break down crying. People started praying.

I don't know, maybe you have 25, 30 people in the class. And next thing, people just got out of their chairs. I said, let's just pray. Started to get out of their chairs, got on their faces. Others just sat and prayed. And I was conscious that this was during prayer time.

I also was conscious that this was an environment that would absolutely welcome the Holy Spirit moving like this. But I was praying and others were, maybe many were praying just quietly, some were weeping, some crying out and then being quiet. So I looked around and, okay, maybe we start teaching again.

But every eye was closed. Because obviously it's easy to get people to pray that love the Lord and have a spirit of prayer. But probably went on for an hour before I could teach again. And then even there, the last 45 minutes of the class or so, it was just very sacred ground that we were on. And I want to acknowledge the Lord and be publicly thankful that He does share His heart with His people. I remember when Leonard Ravenhill said to me in 1989, as we were just becoming close, he said, Mike, I'm praying that God will trust us with a little more of His travail. That may sound like a very strange concept to some, but what does that mean?

That God would trust us with a little more of His travail. Just as a mother births a child into the world, prayer births things into the world. Paul said in Galatians 4 that he was in the pains of childbirth for the believers in Galatia, that Christ, the Messiah, would be fully formed in them.

Fallen from grace, and we're in a precarious position. So he was experiencing the pains of childbirth in prayer, in a spiritual way. Well, God does these things.

To this day, He births things in us through prayer. But it's a very sacred thing when He entrusts that with us. If you are one that regularly feels the burden of the Lord, or you feel the cry of a dying world, or you feel the pain of the lost sheep of the house of Israel, this is something very precious. Don't just take it in an introspective way and become melancholic. Rather, turn it into prayer.

And think of this. Paul writes in Romans the 9th chapter that he has a continual pain in his heart for his Jewish people because they're cut off from the Messiah. Now, he's an apostle writing, and he could just say, I have this continual sorrow and grief. But he says, I speak the truth in Messiah, I'm not lying, my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit. There's basically a five-fold affirmation there of his feelings. I speak the truth, I speak the truth in Messiah, I'm not lying, my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit.

That's five different ways he's saying, I am not exaggerating a word. I carry this pain all the time. And sometimes we want to see God work through us and do great ministry through us, but we don't want His heart. We want to have a great healing ministry without the pain of compassion for the sick. We want to have a great evangelistic ministry without a devastating burden for the lost. We want to be used in prophetic ministry without being shattered by a vision of the glory of God and the sinfulness of people. We want to have a thriving church as pastors without carrying the weight of the flock with the Lord on our shoulders.

These things don't come cheaply. And if you really want to be used effectively in God, there's the breaking of the heart. There's the carrying of spiritual pain. Again, I know to some of you, you're sitting there nodding and some of you are teared up because you feel it. Others are saying, I don't get what this guy's talking about. And it's not a put-down. It's not saying, oh, you're dense if you don't get it. I don't mean it like that at all.

It may be language you're not familiar with or concepts you're not familiar with. But if you know the Lord, say, Lord, share your heart with me more. Lord, bring me into that closer place of prayer where I can know your heartbeat. I can know what matters to you.

When I go on my monthly prayer retreats, roughly once a month, could be five or six weeks, but on average about once a month. So I'm just going to be shut in Friday night, Saturday, Saturday night, Sunday, Sunday night and spend the bulk of the time praying and seeking God. One of the things I'll – unless I'm immediately burdened to pray a certain way, I'll say, Lord, what's on your heart? What's on your heart for this weekend? How can I please you? How can I glorify you? How can I accomplish what you want me to accomplish in prayer? Or what do you have in store?

What's your plan? What's on your heart, God? And the prophets carry that. And that's why sometimes you can't tell in an oracle when it's God speaking or the prophet speaking.

It's a fascinating thing. I remember when I was doing my Jeremiah commentary, I shared this with Nancy, and she said – she can always articulate things in such a concise way. She said it's like you can't tell where God ends and the prophet begins or the prophet ends and God begins because the I, I say to you, it's so intertwined and the prophet is such a spokesperson of the Lord. And it's interesting, Jewish tradition interprets certain verses like in Jeremiah 9 where the prophet calls for the mourning women, the women who cry out lament to raise a lament for us, a cry for us. And rabbinic tradition says that that means for God and the people because the people are being judged but God's heart is breaking for them, raise up a lament for us. So I didn't plan on sharing any of this right now. I was going to get right into the Old Testament text about Hasatan, Satan, which we'll do shortly.

But it's something to really consider. One of my favorite verses in the Bible is where Yeshua says to his disciples in Luke 22 at the Last Supper, I've eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. You think, what? Jesus eagerly desired to sit with them? I mean, these were his disciples. He knows within a few minutes they're going to have a discussion among them as to which of them is the greatest.

Really? Read it, Luke 22. He knows that shortly they're going to fall asleep praying with him in the Garden of Gethsemane. He knows that they're going to forsake him. Peter's going to try to chop somebody's ear off. He knows this is who they are in all their weakness. But they're his friends. And he was really looking forward to having a meal together with them.

Wow. That's very, very sacred stuff. God wants to commune with you and me through his word, through prayer, through the voice of his spirit, through worship. Let's draw near to him and ask him, God, give me your heart for the lost sheep of the House of Israel. May I feel your pain.

May I have your vision. All right, we'll be right back. Welcome, welcome to Thoroughly Jewish Thursday, Michael Brown. To those watching, yeah, you can picture the big smile, but we are audio only. Everyone listening on radio, podcasts, it's always audio only.

Welcome to the broadcast. Any Jewish-related question of any kind, Jewish-related comment of any kind, 866-348-7884. That is the number to call. And I'm going to go to the phones pretty soon. We've got some scriptural ground to cover first. And speaking of Thoroughly Jewish Thursday, come on, some of you are still, oh, can we make it to Israel? I know it's a serious investment of finances to do a trip like that overseas and a full tour.

But, boy, is it worth it. If you've been wrestling with it and can do it, we'd love to have you. It's still time to sign up, but the trip is, what, right now? Is it exactly six months from now, being in Israel together? So go to the website, askdrbrown.org, askdrbrown.org.

And then scroll down on the page, you'll see some slides that are changing, and that's right where the Israel information is. So get the information. Maybe you have friends that want to go. Maybe you're a pastor, you've been wanting to take folks from your church, but you don't have enough retour. Grab some of your folks, join us.

It'll be the trip of a lifetime. Okay, let me read a couple of texts to you from the Hebrew Bible, okay? First, I want to read to you from 2 Samuel, chapter 24, verse 1. And it says this, Again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, Go, number Israel and Judah. So the anger of the Lord is kindled against Israel, and he incites David to number Israel and Judah. Now, let's look in 1 Chronicles, chapter 21, verse 1. It says this, Then Satan stood against Israel and incited David to number Israel. Friends, it's the exact same account.

I mean exact. The exact same account, but in 2 Samuel, which is hundreds of years earlier when it's written, it says that the anger of the Lord incited him. In 1 Chronicles, which is written after the exile, after the return from Babylonian exile, it says that Satan stood and incited David. So the obvious way you put these texts together is because God was angry with David and Israel. There was obviously sin in the camp, and he was angry with them that he used Satan or allowed Satan to incite David to number Israel and thereby come under judgment.

Alright, so why does one text mention the anger of the Lord and the other text mention Satan? It's my understanding of the Scriptures that before the Babylonian exile, after which much of the idolatry, the blatant open idolatry that had been there in Judah, was purged from the people, that before that time, God would not fully reveal who Satan was, lest the people would now fall into idolatry of worshiping Satan, lest he would become the God of the nation when they realized his power. Remember, in Numbers the 21st chapter, that when the children of Israel sinned and these poisonous snakes, these snakes with burning venom, bit them and they were dying, so God instructs Moses to build a pole with a bronze snake on it, and as the people looked to that snake, they're healed, right? By 2 Kings 18, we read that they were worshiping it. They called it Nechushtan, which is a play on words for both snake and bronze, and they were worshiping this physical, material snake. Can you imagine if they had a revelation of Satan with all of his power, with all of his might, with all of his destructive energy, that he would have been worshipped by many of the people. So, as God made reference in the Old Testament to the other gods, Mihamocha by Limad and I, who is like you among the gods, O Lord, in Exodus 15 and Exodus 12, where God tells Moses they're going to bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt, there were these deities that the people worshipped, there were these hidden beings that they made statues to and worshipped, and they were really demons.

It could be fallen angels that they were worshipping, or demonic powers that they were worshipping, but they weren't gods at all, and God was going to expose their non-deity status by being who he is in their midst. Now, when it comes to Satan, it is true that you have the snake in the Garden of Eden, but he's not referred to as Satan there. We understand over a period of time, reading the whole Bible, that it is Satan working through the snake. And one reason in Genesis it's just a snake is it's also God's way of demythologizing the other accounts, because you had ancient and recent belief where you had powerful snake deities or Leviathan, a seven-headed serpent, and these kinds of beings, and here it's just an animal. It's just an animal. But clearly, we see through the rest of Scripture that it is Satan speaking through the snake that deceives Eve.

But he's not revealed as such. You say, well, hang on, what about the book of Job? That's the oldest book of the Bible. That's a commonly taught thing in popular circles, but it's not accurate.

It's not accurate. We can see clearly, even though the book is written in a Hebrew that would be very ancient, it would be me writing it like writing today in Shakespearean English, so to have the literary genius to be able to do that. It's clear the author of the book of Job was the literary genius. But it's also clear based on allusions to other parts of the Bible in the book of Job that it's written much later. It's probably written close to the exile or perhaps even during or after. In other words, it's referring to accounts that are ancient and written in an ancient Hebrew, but the book itself, which mentions Hasatan, the adversary, directly in Genesis 1 and 2, and which the Septuagint recognizes as the devil, that this is not the earliest book written or one of the earliest books written.

It refers to ancient events that likely could have taken place in the time of the patriarchs. But the reference to Satan in this overt way is later, the same way in the book of Zechariah in the third chapter where he is mentioned overtly and directly, that Hasatan, the adversary, is accusing Yahushua, Joshua, the high priest. And you see, there he is, he's doing what he does in the book of Job.

He is destructive, he's murderous, he's irreverent. Here in Zechariah, which is also after the exile, it's also a later book. So you see there, too, that there's a direct reference to Satan being Satan, doing what he does.

His adversary, a hostile, destructive work, his accusing of the brothers, etc. that Revelation 12 speaks of. He's doing the same in the Hebrew Bible, but only mentioned overtly after the exile.

As I say, his idolatry was largely purged from Israel. And this is not a unique view to me, it's a view I came to on my own studying Scripture, but it's a view that's common among other Old Testament scholars that would see this revelation of Hasatan, the adversary, the accuser, later. What about Isaiah 14, which speaks of the fall of this shining one, son of the dawn in Hebrew, Helel ben Shachar. It's an oracle against the king of Babylon, which could also refer to the king of Assyria there, and how he's going to fall.

But then it goes behind the scenes, and it begins to point to one that fell back in time. So behind this description of the fall of the king of Babylon, slash, Assyria, is a picture of the fall of the shining one, son of dawn, which in the Latin Vulgate becomes Lucifer, light-bearer, hence becoming a name by which Satan is called. So Isaiah 14, 12, how you are fallen from heaven, O Daystar, son of dawn, how you are cut down to the ground, you who lay the nations low. You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven above the stars of God. I will set my throne on high, I will sit on the mount of assembly. In the far reaches of the north, I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.

I will make myself like the most high, but you are brought down to Sheol. So this is a judgment oracle on the proud king of Babylon and or Assyria. But behind it is a picture of the fall of this shining one, son of dawn, which we understand to be a picture of Satan himself.

Hence, light-bearer in Latin becomes now a name for Satan, Lucifer. And then in Ezekiel, the 28th chapter, it speaks of this one, this time speaking of the king of Tyre and his fall, and now goes to a spiritual force behind him. In other words, just like you think you're a god, God says you're coming down because your heart is proud. You said, I am a god, I sit in the seat of the gods in the heart of the seas, yet you're a man but no god, though you make your heart like the heart of a god. And now he goes on, you're indeed wiser than Daniel. No secret is hidden from you by your wisdom and your understanding.

You've made wealth for yourself. And it goes on, and the more it speaks of this king, it starts to go behind the scenes. And it now speaks of this guardian angel that was once full of splendor and beauty, and God brings him down. So behind the word about the fall of this king is a word about the fall of Satan, who is a guardian angel in the presence of God, before pride entered his heart and he was cast down. So you do have these extraordinary words. Look at this. Son of man, raise lamentation over the king of Tyre. Say to him, Thus says the Lord God, You are the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God.

And it goes on and on. On the day that you were created, these things were prepared. All of the beauty that clothed you. You were an anointed guardian cherub.

I placed you. You were on the holy mountain of God. In the midst of the stones of fire, you walked.

Wow! That was who this being was before pride entered his heart. And he fell. And he became Hasatan, the adversary, the accuser, Satan, the devil.

The New Testament just tells us the rest of the story as to his ongoing activity. And in Jesus, Yeshua, we have victory over him. Pretty intense stuff, huh? Back with your calls.

This is how we rise up. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the line of fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown.

Boy, I just want to sit back and take that in and listen to it. Welcome to Thoroughly Jewish Thursday, Michael Brown. Delighted to be with you. 866-34-TRUTH.

Any Jewish-related question of any kind. Love to talk with you today. We're going to start with Solomon in Iowa. Welcome to The Line of Fire. Are you there?

All right. Not sure what happened to Solomon. Let's go over to John in Everett, Washington. John, you're on the line of fire.

Hey, good day to you, Dr. Brown. So, I've heard a lot of different interpretations of Genesis 3.16, where it says to the woman, your desire shall be for your husband, but he will rule over you. The ESV says, desire shall be contrary to your husband.

So, you being a Hebrew scholar, could you shine some light? How do you think that's best translated there? What does it mean?

What does it mean also? Right. So, remember, this is part of the curse, right? Right.

This is part of the negative. So, God goes in reverse order. God confronts Adam, he blames Eve. God confronts Eve, she blames the snake. God curses the snake, then Eve, then Adam.

This goes back in reverse order. So, this is something negative, right? And, I'm going to read it to you from a few different translations. The most natural translation, if I didn't know anything about history of interpretation or debate about this, I would immediately read it as saying, your desire will be towards your husband and he'll rule over you. Now, remember what's also been said about pain in childbirth, right? So, what would be the curse of your desire would be towards your husband? Okay, you're going to be in these relationships where you were dominated by a man, childbirth is going to be terribly painful and difficult, yet you're still going to desire and want the man. You're still going to want to be married, you're going to want to be with a man, but you're going to be in these dominating relationships and you're going to have the pain of childbirth.

So, that would be the logic behind it. So, King James greatly multiplied sorrow with thy conception and sorrow thou shalt bring forth children and thy desire shall be to thy husband. Same thing, New King James, your desire shall be for your husband. ESV, as you mentioned, your desire shall be contrary to your husband. NIV, your desire will be for your husband. NRSV, your desire will be for your husband. NIV, you will want to control your husband, but he will dominate you. And the new JPS, yet your urge shall be for your husband, he shall rule over you. Again, the most natural way for me to understand the Hebrew words is that it is to, towards, and even as it says in the NJPS, I'll make most severe your pangs in childbirth, child bearing and pain shall you bear children, yet your urge shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you. So, despite the negative context here, the NET saying he will dominate you and you're going to have all these pains, difficulties in childbirth, you're still going to want to be with the man, you're still going to want to be married, you're still going to be drawn to him, that to me is the most natural way to read it. Now, one last thing, the NET, which also renders, as we saw, your desire will be to control your husband.

Let me just scroll down to how they try to explain that and justify it. Hebrew, and toward your husband will be your desire. Again, elecha, the form that's used there, most naturally means toward. It says the nominal sentence does not have a verb, goes on, many interpreters conclude that it refers to sexual desire here because the subject of the passage is the relationship between a wife and her husband and because the word is used in a romantic sense, however this interpretation makes little sense in Genesis 3. It goes on trying to argue that it means something else, but I understand it the way it's been translated, most all these translations, as I just explained it. Okay, and what would you say to someone who makes the argument that this is all a curse and we need to overcome this curse by making everything equal, like the egalitarian argument, sort of how people say that we overcome the curse of thorns by wearing gloves or using tractors, what would you say to that? Right, so the role of the husband in a righteous godly relationship is not to rule over the wife. For the husband to be the head of the home is not in a dominating way of rulership like a king because the word for rule over it is the way a king would rule, hence the NETs dominate. So in Messiah, that is broken. Now a woman still has pain in childbirth, right?

You pray for it to be lessened, but a woman still has pain in childbirth, that's an ongoing reality. But in terms of the relationship, where it's up to us, the husband, I don't rule over Nancy, I don't dominate Nancy, but I am the head of the home. Everything we do is together, there's a mutuality. I deeply respect and honor her, and nine times out of ten, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, when she has wisdom on something and I see it's the right way to go, hey, let's do that. But she absolutely recognizes me as the head of the home. She feels the responsibility for the well-being of the home ultimately falls on me. In other words, let's say there was a crisis and we were under attack, her thing would be do something about it. In other words, that's your role.

You carry this. So that's a holy thing, that's a godly thing. And if I said, I know that I know that I know that this is what we have to do, that's what we'd end up doing. I mean, the different places where we moved, in some cases she sensed in advance that that's what God was telling us to do, and I realized later, in others I've had the burden to do it.

But in a way, it was based on me saying, okay, this is what we're doing, and as a family we did it. So there is that responsibility and headship in a holy and sacred way, but no, we don't rule over. So the egalitarian argument to me just goes one step too far.

It gets rid of the wrong, but now levels things out in a way that's different than God intended. So, again, equality, mutuality in the relationship, equal dignity, respect. But, you know, the New Testament does plainly say that the calling of the husband is to lay down his life, love his wife as Messiah, love the body, love the church, and lay his life down for it. That's the calling on the husband, but the wife is called to submit to her husband. So as the husband leads in a godly way and loves his wife as Messiah, love the body, it's only natural for her to have that respect and esteem and honor.

But that's what she's called to do, even if he's not walking worthy of it. So that would be how I would respond. Thank you for your time. You are very, very welcome. Thank you for the call.

866-348-7884. There's a question over on Twitter that I was asked. Let me see if I can find who asked it.

Of course, if you were the one that asked it, you would know immediately that it was you. It was about the 70 weeks of Daniel and how I understand those and how they should be divided up. I want to go over there.

It's something that can be very complex, but I want to do my best to make it as simple as possible and not get lost in the weeds of details and difficulties. Daniel 9, verse 1—In the first year of Darius, the son of Ahasuerus, descended by descent a Mede who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans, in the first year of his reign I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years that, according to the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet, must pass before the end of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely 70 years. So in Jeremiah 25 and Jeremiah 29, it's prophesied that the children of Israel would be in exile for 70 years. The Jewish people would suffer Babylonian exile for 70 years.

Now we know the Temple is destroyed in 586 B.C., the Temple in Jerusalem, so 586 to 516 is 70 years. But there were waves of exiles that had gone into exile almost 20 years earlier, Daniel being among that first wave. And because of that, Daniel's been in exile even longer, right?

So even though the national exile with the destruction of the Temple, maybe those people only in exile about 50 years, Daniel's looking and saying, wait a second, I've been in exile almost 70 years, and there have been other exiles with me almost 70 years. So he prays about this, and it's one of the most beautiful prayers recorded in Scripture where he confesses his sin. He's a man in the Bible whose sin is never mentioned.

In other words, there's never anything about his shortcomings, his sins, like you have about Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and their shortcomings and David and Moses and their shortcomings and Peter and others and their shortcomings, you don't have that recorded about Daniel. It's just something very beautiful about his life and his spirit so that those other things are not even mentioned. So he pours out his heart in prayer, we have sinned, we've done wrong, we've acted with you, Heshana Maradnehu, we've rebelled against you, and he goes on, we've done wickedly, and we, we, we, so he is one of his people in praise in this amazing way, and he asks for mercy. He points out who God is, oh Lord, according to all your righteous acts, let your anger and your wrath turn away from your city Jerusalem, your holy hill, because of our sins, so recognize this fully, this is all our guilt, this is all on us, but God, have mercy. So verse 20, while I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel and presenting my plea before the Lord my God for the holy hill of my God, while I was speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel, whom I'd seen in the vision at the first, came to me in swift flight at the time of the evening sacrifice. He made me understand, speaking with me and saying, oh Daniel, I have now come to give you insight and understanding. At the beginning of your pleas for mercy, a word went out, and I have come to tell you, for you are greatly loved, therefore consider the word and understand the vision. So God is now about to explain through the angel Gabriel that it is not just 70 years to be focused on, but 70 times seven, 70 weeks, 70 sevens, which based on everything that has to happen over this period of time, we understand to be weeks of years. Now what's really interesting is in the 10th chapter at the beginning, Daniel says that he is fasting and praying, and it says for three weeks of days. Now you could use that expression, it's an unusual expression, but it's as if saying, okay, we're back to regular weeks now, where I'm talking about regular weeks, because we were just talking about weeks of years.

So it's a period of 70 times 70 years, 490 years, within which time some major things have to come to pass. So I think I can break this down in the way everybody can follow, as well as worthwhile for those who like to dig deep. We'll do it on the other side of the break. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown, get on The Line of Fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH, here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome back to Thoroughly Jewish Thursday. Boy, there's an interesting question, Sid, I want to get you in a moment, so stay right there.

I do want to get to your question. When we get into Daniel 9, normally in our English translations we're used to reading that there'll be 7 weeks and 62 weeks, so 49 years and 34 years, so 483 years between them out of the 490, 70 times 7. And we're reading it as one stretch, and it mentions a Mashiach, an anointed one, which in some of our translations is capital anointed one, or capital and Messiah, some even say the Messiah, even though the definite article, the word the, is not there. And then the seven-year period at the end, is that still future, is it something that happened with the destruction of the temple after the death of Jesus, because that's separated. It says after these things, then you have the final week. So that's where we're used to seeing it, but if you look at a Jewish translation, it'll talk about a period of seven weeks, so 49 years, and certain things happening, and then 434 years, and then the final seven. So the Masoretic accents, the traditional accents, which are added centuries after the New Testament, they're not original in the text, they're added later, but they reflect some ancient traditions and readings, they would suggest that you divide it into these three periods, 49, 434, and 7. The common Christian reading is that you put the 49 and the 434 together. The question would be, why not just say 69 weeks and the 70th week? Why divide it with seven weeks, and now you've got another division here, 62 weeks, and then the final one. I have no problem reading it in this three-fold division, that you have a period of 49 years, this is when the temple's basically being rebuilt, the city restored, and there is an anointed one, a Mashiach involved, and then you have this period of 434 years, which gets you right up to the time of Jesus, it's where reading it and understanding it, there's endless debate about dating, but as we understand it gets you right up to the time of Yeshua, and that's when this Mashiach, so a second one called an anointed one, is cut off without anything, so this is now talking about the death of Messiah, and then sometime after that, so a generation later, the temple destroyed, all these other things happening, which is the culmination of the 70th week, as I understand it. Some see it as still future, but that's how I understand it.