The Timeline: 70 Weeks
Before we get to the siege itself, we need to talk about something that happened six centuries earlier. Because to understand why the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 meant so much to so many people, you need to know about a vision that came to a Jewish exile named Daniel during the Babylonian captivity.
Daniel was praying one day, confessing the sins of his people and pleading for Jerusalem's restoration, when the angel Gabriel appeared to him with a message. It's one of the most cryptic and debated prophecies in the entire Bible, but here's what Gabriel said:
"Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place. Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time. And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed."
Now, if you're scratching your head trying to figure out what that means, you're in good company. Jewish and Christian interpreters have been debating this passage for two thousand years. But here's the basic framework most people work with:
The "seventy weeks" aren't literal weeks of seven days. They're "weeks of years"—seventy periods of seven years each, totaling 490 years. This interpretation is based on the Hebrew word used and on the broader biblical concept of sabbatical cycles. So Gabriel is essentially giving Daniel a timeline: 490 years from a specific starting point to... something. Something involving an anointed one being "cut off" and the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple.