Here is a partial narrative on 9:27...
Daniel 9:27
27And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.
The book of Daniel is not merely a historical record of successive world empires—it is prophetic revelation, and at its center stands the Messiah and God’s plan of salvation. He is not a distant figure in the backdrop; He is the focal point toward whom the prophecy moves. Daniel’s visions are not ultimately about human kingdoms rising and falling, but about God bringing His covenant purposes to completion through His Anointed One. From beginning to end, Christ is present in every chapter—visible to those who desire to see Him. But as with all spiritual truth, He can be missed… if one chooses to.
Daniel 9:24–27 is among the clearest messianic passages in the Tanakh. In four tightly packed verses, God reveals the timing and purpose of the Messiah’s coming, the completion of covenant objectives, and the consequences that follow rejection. These verses form the destructive counterpart to the restorative promises of verses 24 and 25: restoration is decreed, fulfillment arrives, rejection occurs, and judgment follows. Within this short prophecy, several key actors appear:
The Messiah — the Anointed One who arrives as “Messiah the Prince,” is “cut off,” and fulfills the redemptive objectives listed in verse 24.
The Jews (“your people”) — the covenant people to whom the seventy weeks are first appointed.
The people of the prince who is to come — those connected to pagan Rome, who would destroy the city and sanctuary.
The many — those who receive the covenant blessings the Messiah confirms.
A critical turning point in understanding the passage is properly identifying the pronoun in Daniel 9:27a:
“And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week…”
The immediate context strongly supports the conclusion that this “He” is the Messiah:
He is “Messiah the Prince” of verse 25, who appears after the sixty-nine weeks.
He is the One “cut off, but not for Himself” in verse 26—language that naturally points to the Messiah’s sacrificial death.
And He is the One who “confirms the covenant” in verse 27—fulfilling what Jeremiah foretold: a covenant written on the heart (Jeremiah 31:31–34), not merely maintained through external ceremony.
In this same final week, the Messiah brings the sacrificial system to its appointed goal—not by abolishing it through violence, but by fulfilling what it always pointed toward. The offerings cease in meaning because the true Offering has been given. The shadow reaches its substance.
Daniel’s prophecy therefore moves forward as a seamless sequence. It does not require a prophetic pause inserted between verses 26 and 27. The seventy weeks are presented as a unified, continuous decree that culminates in the Messiah’s ministry, His being “cut off,” and the immediate aftermath that follows. For this reason, as we enter verse 27, we will treat the text with care and restraint—avoiding additions or speculative frameworks that pull the passage away from its central subject. Daniel 9 is not a prophecy designed to relocate attention to a distant future figure; it is God’s blueprint of redemption centered on the Messiah and the covenant He confirms.
So as we begin the individual narratives in verse 27—starting with “He and the covenant”—the foundation is set:
The “He” is the Messiah.
The covenant confirmed is God’s covenant promise brought to completion in Christ.
The final week belongs to His mission, His sacrifice, and His fulfillment.
He and the Covenant
The verses in Daniel 9 are a direct response to Daniel’s prayer—a prayer grounded in covenant faithfulness, confession, and longing for restoration. And the divine answer he receives is nothing less than a prophetic blueprint for salvation, culminating in the coming of the Messiah, the Anointed One. Daniel’s focus is not a distant end-time figure inserted from outside the text; it is the Messiah Himself. The “He” of Daniel 9:27a refers to the Messiah.
This Messiah is the One who “confirms the covenant with many”
during the final week. He is the same “Messiah the Prince” of verse 25, who arrives after the sixty-nine weeks, and who is then “cut off, but not for Himself” in verse 26. The covenant He confirms is not new in God’s heart or God’s purpose—it is the covenant promise God has been unfolding from Abraham onward—but now brought to its appointed completion through the Messiah. What was once administered through shadows—priests, offerings, and ritual blood—is now ratified by the true sacrifice: His own blood.
As Hebrews explains, the former covenantal system could not accomplish what it continually pointed toward. Its sacrifices testified to sin, but could not remove it (Hebrews 10:1–4). Christ enters not with the blood of bulls and goats, but with His own blood (Hebrews 9:12). He is the surety of a better covenant (Hebrews 7:22), established on better promises (Hebrews 8:6)—because it is grounded in a better Priest and a final, sufficient offering.
Under the old administration, God’s people were marked by physical circumcision; under the new, God marks His people by circumcision of the heart (Philippians 3:3). This is the covenant promised in Jeremiah 31:31–34—a covenant written not on tablets of stone, but inwardly, on the hearts of those who receive it. It is personal, permanent, and unalterable—not dependent on external ritual or human mediators, but sealed by the Holy Spirit.
“They shall all know Me… for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” (Jeremiah 31:34)
The Messiah’s blood inaugurates this covenant (Matthew 26:28), making reconciliation possible for both Jew and Gentile. The “one week” of Daniel 9:27 is the final week of the seventy-weeks prophecy—a literal seven-year period. In the middle of the week, after three and a half years of ministry, Jesus is crucified—confirming the covenant not with ritual repetition, but with His own blood. He fulfills every sacrificial shadow. The daily offerings, the Day of Atonement, the blood at the mercy seat—each was a signpost pointing forward to Him. As Paul writes:
“But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ… so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace… that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross.” (Ephesians 2:13–16)
In Christ, the dividing wall falls. The veil is torn. Jew and Gentile are reconciled into one spiritual body—not through a future political arrangement, but through the cross.
