To seal up vision and prophecy. The main body of OT prophecy centers on the glorious Return of Christ to earth, and His subsequent kingdom. Therefore, the bulk of prophecies will be fulfilled at the end of the seventy weeks.
And to anoint the Most Holy Place. At the beginning of the thousand-year reign, the temple described in Ezekiel 40-44 will be anointed or consecrated in Jerusalem. The glory will return in the Person of the Lord (Eze_43:1-5).
9:25 So you are to know and understand that from the issuing of the command to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. This was the decree of Artaxerxes in 445 B.C. (Neh_2:1-8).
Until Messiah the Prince. This refers not merely to the First Advent of Christ, but more particularly to His death (see v. 26a).
There shall be seven weeks (forty-nine years) and sixty-two weeks (434 years). The sixty-nine weeks are divided into two periods, seven weeks and sixty-two weeks.
The city shall be built again, with plaza and moat, even in troublesome times. Jerusalem would be rebuilt (during the first seven weeks) with public square and protective channel, but not without opposition and turmoil.
9:26 Then after the sixty-two weeks—that is, after the sixty-two week portion of time, which is really at the end of the sixty-ninth week,
The Messiah shall be cut off. Here we have an unmistakable reference to the Savior's death on the cross. A century ago in his book The Coming Prince, Sir Robert Anderson gave detailed calculations of the sixty-nine weeks, using "prophetic years," allowing for leap years, errors in the calendar, the change from B.C. to A.D., etc., and figured that the sixty-nine weeks ended on the very day of Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, five days before his death.
But not for Himself, or literally and have nothing. This may mean that He had received nothing from the nation of Israel, to which He had come. Or it may mean that He died without apparent posterity (Isa_53:8). Or it may be a general statement of His utter poverty; He left nothing but the clothes that He wore.
And the people of the prince who is to come. This prince who is to come is the head of the revived Roman Empire, identified by some as the Antichrist. He will come to power during the Tribulation. His people, of course, are the Romans.
Shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. The Romans, under Titus, destroyed Jerusalem and its magnificent gold-trimmed white marble temple in A.D. 70.
The end of it shall be with a flood. The city was leveled as if by a flood. Not one stone of the temple, for instance, was left on another. Titus forbade his soldiers to put Herod's temple to the torch, but in order to get the gold they disobeyed, thus melting down the gold. To retrieve the melted gold successfully from between the stones they had to pry loose the great stones, thus fulfilling Christ's words in Mat_24:1-2, as well as Daniel's prophecy.
And till the end of the war desolations are determined. From that time on, the history of the city would be one of war and destruction. The end here means the end of the times of the Gentiles.