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Originally posted by Brett Dobbs in the Pentecostal Theology Facebook group.
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Part 8 (Final Study)
Daniel 9:26–27 — The Messiah, His People, and the Destruction of Jerusalem
Who Destroyed Jerusalem?
When we read Daniel 9:26–27, we need to ask several questions.
Who is the Prince? Who are the people of the Prince? Who brings the city and sanctuary to destruction? And what does Daniel mean when he describes the end coming like a flood and a figure who makes desolate?
My position is that we must interpret this passage in its immediate context, preserve the continuity of the seventy-week prophecy, and then compare the prophecy with the historical account of Jerusalem’s destruction in AD 70.
The central argument is this: Jesus Christ is the Messiah the Prince, the Israeli Jewish people are the people associated with Him, and Rome is the military power that ultimately overwhelms Jerusalem and completes its destruction.
Establishing the Context: (Context is King) Daniel’s People and the Holy City
Let’s begin with Daniel 9:19:
“O Lord, hear! O Lord, forgive! O Lord, listen and act! Do not delay for Your own sake, my God, for Your city and Your people are called by Your name.” — Daniel 9:19, NKJV
Daniel is praying for his people and Jerusalem.
This context continues into Daniel 9:24:
“Seventy weeks are determined for your people and for your holy city…” — Daniel 9:24, NKJV
Notice the specific language: your people and your holy city.
The prophecy concerns Daniel’s people, Israel, and Jerusalem. We should therefore pay attention to how these same themes continue through the following verses.
Daniel 9:25 then identifies the coming figure:
“Until Messiah the Prince…” — Daniel 9:25, NKJV
The Prince in this verse is the Messiah, Jesus Christ.
The prophecy is not introducing an unrelated ruler without warning. It is describing the redemptive work of the Messiah within a prophecy concerning Daniel’s people and their holy city.
This establishes the context for our examination of the next verse.
Who Are “The People of the Prince”?
Daniel 9:26 says:
“And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary.” — Daniel 9:26, NKJV
A common interpretation often identifies the people as the Roman armies and the prince as Titus, the Roman commander associated with Jerusalem’s destruction. Or a future anti-Christ individual in some future distant period of time.
But are those the only possible ways to read the passage?
We have already encountered the Prince in verse 25. He is Messiah the Prince. The prophecy concerns Daniel’s people, and the Messiah comes within that context.
My interpretation maintains that we should read “the people of the Prince” in continuity with this established relationship. The people associated with the Messiah are the Isreali Jewish people of the first century.
This is an interpretive conclusion drawn from the context rather than an explicit ethnic identification in the Hebrew wording. The phrase itself does not say “the Isreali people,” so we must recognize that this is a point to be argued from the relationship between the verses.
Nevertheless, it gives us a different way to examine the destruction of Jerusalem. Instead of assuming that the phrase refers to Rome simply because Roman soldiers physically destroyed the temple, we can ask whether the Jewish people themselves played a decisive role in bringing about the city’s destruction.
And that leads us to the historical record.
The Historical Evidence: Josephus and the Jewish Civil War
In The Jewish War, Josephus describes the events leading to Jerusalem’s destruction.
Before Rome completed its conquest, Jerusalem was torn apart by internal Jewish conflict. Rival factions fought for control, killed one another, and destroyed resources that could have sustained the population during the siege.
Josephus describes the burning of provisions and the devastating consequences of the factional warfare.
Think about the significance of this.
Jerusalem was not simply a united city defending itself against an outside army. Internal violence had weakened the city before the Romans completed their conquest.
The Jewish factions contributed to the destruction of their own city through civil war, the destruction of food supplies, and continued conflict even as the Roman siege intensified.
This does not mean that the Jewish factions alone demolished the temple. Rome carried out the military conquest, and Roman soldiers played a decisive role in the final destruction. But the historical sequence is more complex than simply saying that Rome arrived and destroyed a city whose inhabitants had played no role in their own catastrophe.
Josephus’s account helps by showing how the people associated with Jerusalem could contribute to its destruction before the Roman army completed the devastation.
Josephus, The Jewish War, Book 5, Chapter 1, §1
Josephus describes the Zealots’ attacks on their fellow citizens as:
“the beginning of the cities destruction”
He describes the bloodshed inside the Temple itself and laments the destruction caused by internal conflict.
Josephus, The Jewish War, Book 6, Chapter 4, §5
This passage is particularly important because Josephus addresses the origin of the fire that destroyed the Temple:
“Although these flames took their rise from the Jews themselves, and were occasioned by them.”
Josephus then explains that Jewish fighters attacked the Romans who were trying to extinguish the fire in the Temple’s inner court. During the fighting, a Roman soldier set fire to a golden window, and the flames spread.
“The End of It Shall Be With a Flood”
Daniel 9:26 continues:
“The end of it shall be with a flood, and till the end of the war desolations are determined.”
The flood imagery communicates overwhelming destruction.
In prophetic language, a flood can be used figuratively to describe the overwhelming advance of hostile forces. Daniel itself uses flood imagery in descriptions of military conflict elsewhere in the book.
I understand the flood in this passage as the Roman military power that ultimately overwhelms Jerusalem.
The sequence:
1. Jerusalem is already being devastated by internal Jewish conflict.
2. The city is weakened by factional warfare and the destruction of its provisions.
3. The Roman army surrounds and besieges Jerusalem.
4. The Roman military campaign overwhelms the city and completes its destruction.
The Jewish factions and the Roman army have different roles in this sequence. Internal conflict contributes to the city’s devastation, while Rome becomes the overwhelming force that brings the destruction to its conclusion.
This distinction allows us to consider both the historical causes and the final military outcome without confusing them.
The Seventy Weeks Must Remain Continuous
Now we must establish the chronology.
Daniel 9:24 gives us seventy weeks. My previous study presents these as seventy weeks of years, totaling 490 years, and holds that the weeks run continuously without a gap between the sixty-ninth and seventieth week.
Under the chronological reconstruction I am using:
* AD 27, Jesus begins His public ministry and the final week begins.
* AD 30, Jesus is crucified in the middle of the final week.
* Around AD 33–34, the seventieth week reaches its conclusion. (Most likely with the stoning of Stephen)
* In AD 70, Jerusalem and the temple are destroyed.
The reason for pointing this out is to display that the seventy weeks are completed before Jerusalem’s final destruction.
This matters because Daniel 9:26 announces the destruction of the city and sanctuary, while verse 27 describes the covenant and the cessation of sacrifice associated with the final week.
The passage can therefore be read as announcing a later judgment in verse 26 and then supplying additional details concerning the final week in verse 27.
The text does not explicitly say, “The destruction will occur after the seventy weeks.” That conclusion follows from the chronology being proposed. If the seventy weeks conclude around AD 33–34, the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 is a subsequent historical event.
We should not insert a gap into the seventy weeks if we believe the prophecy runs continuously. Instead, we should distinguish the completion of the prophetic period from the later execution of the judgment announced against Jerusalem.
Jesus Announces the Judgment Against Jerusalem
Now let’s compare Daniel’s prophecy with the words of Jesus.
Luke 19:41–44 records Jesus weeping over Jerusalem and predicting that its enemies would surround it and destroy it.
Jesus explains that this judgment is connected to the city’s failure to recognize the time of its visitation.
Matthew 23:37–38 records His lament:
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! … See! Your house is left to you desolate.” — Matthew 23:37–38, NKJV
Then Matthew 24:2 records Jesus’ prediction that the temple buildings would be demolished.
Luke 21:20 gives a further detail:
“But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation is near.” — Luke 21:20, NKJV
These passages connect Jerusalem’s coming destruction with divine judgment.
This is important because the destruction of Jerusalem does not need to be understood as an event independent of God’s purposes simply because Roman soldiers carried it out.
The Old Testament provides the same pattern in the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem. God used Babylon as an instrument of judgment, while the Babylonians remained the historical agents who invaded the city.
Likewise, in the first century, the Roman army could be the historical instrument through which the judgment announced by Jesus was carried out.
God’s sovereignty and human responsibility are not mutually exclusive.
Who Is the One Who Makes Desolate in Daniel 9:27?
Daniel 9:27 says:
“And on the wing of abominations shall be one who makes desolate, even until the consummation, which is determined, is poured out on the desolate.”
The Prince in verse 26 is distinguished from the desolating figure in verse 27.
The Prince is Jesus Christ. The desolator, in the historical setting of Jerusalem’s destruction, is identified with Titus and the Roman military campaign.
Titus commanded the Roman forces during the siege and conquest of Jerusalem. Josephus describes the final fighting around the temple and the fire that consumed the sanctuary. His account reports that Titus attempted to prevent the temple’s destruction, although the reliability of that particular portrayal is debated by historians.
Whatever Titus’s precise intentions, the Roman campaign ultimately resulted in the destruction of the temple and the devastation of Jerusalem.
The language of abominations may also be understood in relation to the pagan and idolatrous character of the Roman forces and their religious symbols. Some interpreters propose a deeper connection with demonic powers, but the Hebrew phrase itself does not explicitly identify a demon. That connection would require a broader theological argument.
The central point is that the figure associated with desolation need not be identified automatically with the Messiah simply because the preceding verse mentions the Prince.
The Desolation Continues Until the Appointed End
Daniel 9:27 concludes:
“Until the consummation, which is determined, is poured out on the desolate.”
The judgment is not presented as an event outside God’s control. Its outcome is determined.
This is consistent with the wider message of Daniel: kingdoms rise and fall, rulers exercise power for a time, and God remains sovereign over history.
Jerusalem’s destruction was not merely a Roman military victory. In the New Testament’s theological interpretation, it was also the execution of a judgment Jesus had announced.
This does not mean every Roman action was righteous or that the Jews alone were responsible for every aspect of the catastrophe. It means that human actions can become part of a larger divine judgment without removing the responsibility of those who carry them out.
Distinguishing the People, the Flood, and the Desolator
Daniel 9:26–27 can be summarized in five points.
First, the prophecy concerns Daniel’s people and Jerusalem, and Daniel 9:25 explicitly identifies the coming Messiah as the Prince.
Second, I understand “the people of the Prince” in verse 26 as the Jewish people, whose rebellion and internal warfare contributed to Jerusalem’s destruction. This is a contextual interpretation.
Third, the flood imagery describes the overwhelming Roman military power that ultimately conquered Jerusalem and completed its destruction.
Fourth, the seventy weeks run continuously, reaching their conclusion around AD 33–34 under the chronological reconstruction presented here. Jerusalem’s destruction in AD 70 therefore occurs afterward.
Fifth, the desolating figure in verse 27 identifies with Titus in the historical events of AD 70, while recognizing that both the identity of the figure and the meaning of the “wing of abominations” remain debated exegetical questions.
The larger theological principle is that the people whose actions contribute to a catastrophe, the army that completes the destruction, and God as the ultimate judge can all occupy distinct roles in the same historical event.
Daniel’s prophecy, the words of Jesus, and Josephus’s historical account allow us to examine these different layers of causation while keeping the distinction between biblical wording, historical evidence, and theological interpretation clear.
Comments (2)
- 2026-10-17 05:55: TOOO many parts AND non are pre-trbi
- 2026-10-17 05:51: Amen! Amen!
