Damien F. Mackey
“The author might be using
the approximate age of Darius, sixty-two (62),
to emphasize the prophecy of
the seventy weeks determined
upon Israel and Jerusalem
(Dan 9:24).
This prophecy of the seventy
(70) weeks is divided into three segments:
seven (7) weeks + sixty-two
(62) weeks + one (1) week (Dan 9:25-26)”.
George R. Law
By now I have concluded in various articles that the enigmatic biblical
king, ‘Darius the Mede’ (e.g. Daniel 5:31), was likely the same as King Cyrus ‘the
Great’.
One of these articles involved my connecting, as just the one incident, both the prophet Daniel in
the den of lions at the time of Darius (Daniel 6), and Daniel’s ordeal in the
den of lions in the time of Cyrus, as narrated in Bel and the Dragon. And so I asked:
Was Daniel Twice in the Lions' Den?
and I concluded that, no he wasn’t – and that Darius must be Cyrus.
George R. Law is another who has come to the conclusion that Darius the
Mede was Cyrus, though using different means. In his 2010 article, “Identification
of Darius the Mede” (p. 9), Law
surprisingly suggests a link between the age of Darius, 62 years, and the 62 weeks
of the prophecy of the Seventy Weeks:
God’s decree took
the kingdom from Belshazzar and gave it to Darius the Mede, who actively received
the kingdom.
In the introduction
of Darius the Mede, there is an incidental hint, the approximate sixty-two-year-old
age of Darius. The identification method employed in chapter four of this dissertation
shows the value of knowing someone’s age and using it as an identifying mark.
The matching
of the age of Cyrus the Great with the age of Darius the Mede was a significant
qualifying characteristic which helped to identify Cyrus as Darius the Mede, but
there might be another reason why the author provided this hint.
This number, which
is otherwise extraneous information, is specific to three things in
the book of Daniel:
1) Darius, 2) Cyrus, and 3) the prophecy of the weeks. The author might be using
the approximate age of Darius, sixty-two (62), to emphasize the prophecy of the
seventy weeks determined upon Israel and Jerusalem (Dan 9:24).
This prophecy of
the seventy (70) weeks is divided into three segments: seven (7) weeks + sixty-two
(62) weeks + one (1) week (Dan 9:25-26). Cyrus, the 62-year-old conqueror, gave
the commandment granting the Jews permission to return to the land and to
rebuild their temple in Jerusalem. In Daniel 9:25, after a commandment is given
to initiate the restoration of Jerusalem and its temple, and after the
conclusion of the prophesied 62 weeks, that temple, which Cyrus commanded to
rebuild, is to be destroyed. The link between the 62-year-old Darius the Mede and
the 62-year-old Cyrus the Great reinforces this prophecy concerning the 62
weeks which is to pass before the new Temple will be destroyed. ….
[End
of quote]
Whilst I think that George
R. Law has rightly concluded that Darius the Mede is to be identified with
Cyrus, his suggested connections here seem to me to be rather tenuous.
Good luck to anyone
hoping to identify the biological age of Cyrus in the present state of knowledge
of Medo-Persian history.
And, do 62 weeks
really separate the beginning of the reign of Cyrus from the destruction of the
new Temple?
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