And after threescore and two weeks
To be reckoned from the end of the seven weeks, or forty nine years, which, added to them, make four hundred and eighty three years: shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself;
by whom is designed the same with Messiah the Prince in ( Daniel 9:25 ) , not Onias the high priest, as a late writer F7 would have it, an upright person, and of great holiness, taken off by an unjust death; since he was dead many years before the expiration of these weeks; nor Hyrcanus the high priest, slain by Herod, as Eusebius F8 thinks; in whom the succession of the ancient priests terminated, and with whom the priestly unction perished; which indeed bids fairer than the former; but he was not a person of so much note as to be pointed at in such a prophecy; besides, the priesthood continued much longer: nor is King Agrippa intended, as Jarchi and Abarbinel, who, they say, was the last king of the Jews, and was slain by Vespasian at the destruction of Jerusalem; which is not true; he was not properly king of the Jews, having only Galilee for his jurisdiction; was not slain by Vespasian; was a confederate of the Romans, lived some years after the destruction of the city, and at last died in peace; but Jesus the true Messiah is intended, with whom the character, dates, and death, and the manner of it, entirely agree: now to his death were to be four hundred and eighty three years; which years ended, as we have observed, in the thirty third year of the vulgar era of Christ, and the nineteenth of Tiberius; when Jesus the true Messiah was cut off in a judicial way; not for any sins of his own, but for the sins of his people, to make satisfaction for them, and to obtain their redemption and salvation; see ( Isaiah 53:8 ) : or "he is not", as Jarchi, no more in the land of the living, is dead; see ( Jeremiah 31:15 ) , or "there is", or "will be, none for him", or "with him" {i}, to help and assist him in his great work, ( Isaiah 63:5 ) . The Vulgate Latin version is, "they shall not be his people"; the Jews rejecting him shall have a "loammi" upon them, and be no more the people of God. Gussetius F11 better renders it, "he hath not"; or he has nothing, so Cocceius; all things were wanted by him, that is, by Christ; he had neither riches, nor clothes, nor any to stand by him, or to accompany him: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and
the sanctuary;
that is, the people of the Romans, under Vespasian their prince, emperor, and general, should, in a little time after the cutting off of the Messiah, enter into the land of Judea, and destroy the city of Jerusalem, and the temple that stood in it; though some understand this of Messiah the Prince that should come in his power, and in a way of judgment upon the Jewish nation, and destroy them for their rejection of him; whose people the Romans would be, and under whose direction, and by whose orders, all these judgments should be brought upon the Jews; but many of the Jewish writers themselves interpret it of Vespasian, as Aben Ezra, Jarchi, Abarbinel, and Jacchiades: and the end thereof shall be with a flood:
the end of the city and temple, and of the whole nation, should be by the Roman army, which, like a flood, would overspread the land, and carry all before it. It denotes the number, power, and irresistible force of the enemy, and the sad devastation made by them: and unto the end of the war desolations are determined;
from the beginning of the war by the Romans with the Jews, to the end of it, there would be nothing but continual desolations; a dreadful havoc and ruin everywhere; and all this appointed and determined by the Lord, as a just punishment for their sins.