Most people read “troublesome times” and think that is some generic figure of speech, it is not but that is why they miss it because they fail to define it as the bible defines it. And the bible defines those “troublesome times” and puts it in specific context with the days of those kings from Herrod in Danile ch 8,11,& 12 to the destruction of Jerusalem via Jesus in Luke 21. …There are two occasions for the street and wall once was in the days of Herrod ~16 years before Christ John 2: 20. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? This is not Nehemiah’s temple for scripture state that it only took 4 years to finish (Ezra 4:24 see Persian kings chart) this 46 years in John is Herrods improvements after the quake of ~40BC? the troublesome times the other is Nehimiah ch 5 in 490 BC both must be accounted for. Nehimiah is common to Daniel with the wall and “even in troublesome times” is synonymous to Herrod and or the days of these kings in which the kingdom would be set up. This is how you know it is 4 times sets not just three…………. For far too long “scholars” have missed the forest for the tree, even though the text specifically mentions 4 times sets they assumed three even though in the same format as the other narratives that discuss some of the same events namelyTIME = 70 weeks TIMES = 62 & 7 weeks & HALF A TIME = middle of one week
Again, no and no and no. The Bible DOES define the troublous times: ENTIRE CHAPTERS are devoted to describing it in Nehemiah. Why do you say that information is not biblical? That was the ONLY time that the wall was built after the exile. The only time! And it was a troublous time (sword & trowel, remember) where Nehemiah even feared for the lives of his people during the building of it, due to Sanballat and Tobias's machinations and plottings against him. This whole "forget what the eyewitness, Nehemiah, said about the troublous times surrounding the wall-building, I'll show you what the Bible actually says about it" is brazen disregard for the Bible, not honoring of the Bible. I'm sorry to be so blunt about it, but you're simply not catching on.
Second, you arbitrarily take a statement from Daniel 12:7, NOT spoken by Gabriel, NOT an answer to Daniel's prayer concerning Jerusalem, which Daniel learned would be destroyed again, and simply, with total arbitrariness, insert it into Daniel 9 as if it was the most natural fit in the world, and that the true meaning of Daniel 9 awaited this conversation (years later!) with someone other than Gabriel, to grant you the license to mix-and-match scriptures as you see fit.
Allen, this is no safe harbor: Gabriel told the truth about the WHEN. He left nothing out. There are no "four" periods into which the 490 years is determined: only three, and only ever were there three subdivisions of the main span of 70 sevens. Note, by the way, that seventy years is TEN sevens, or TEN weeks, and we look in vain for this term in the passage. It doesn't exist. You simply made it up. I don't think you have the right to do that. I don't know why you're doing it, but it makes no Biblical sense.
I guess we're back at the far end of the tether again -- hope we meet back in the common ground at the center soon. I dislike having to take such a contrary position, but you leave me no choice. You appear to think that repeating a wrong strategy enough times makes it a right strategy. It only becomes doubly and trebly wrong for having not been hitherto corrected.
I've encountered folks who say "God uses incorrect grammar." I hope you're not one of them. If you're not, I'd think you'd want to take His word seriously. The Septuagint isn't an infallible guide by any stretch -- God inspired the Hebrew words, and the Septuagint deviates from them quite a bit. Note the difference between the Hebrew and Septuagint Greek of Job 38:22 -- the Hebrew reads "knowest though the ordinances of the heavens?" while the Septuagint reads "knowest thou the turning of the heavens?" Those are NOT the same thought. As has been well said, the word "translator" derives from the root word "traitor" -- someone who betrays the correct meaning of a thought in the process of migrating it to a target language.
You elsewhere make a point about the age of the folks watching the rebuilding who wept at the modest dimensions of Ezra's foundations compared to Solomon's. In this, you misunderstand the distinction between Ezra's raising of the temple, versus Nehemiah's building of the streets and walls and battlements. These are two different things, and Daniel 9 deals with the latter, while Cyrus's decree (followed by the decree of Artaxerxes in the seventh year of his reign) deal with the temple. You're mixing these up almost routinely, then slipping in data about the temple of Herod, when the question had to do with the walls and city built by Nehemiah, not the Ezra temple and its refurbishing by Herod (which I've already discussed at length herein).
Martin
