_Yet threescore and two weeks shall it return, and the street be built and
the wall, but in troublesome times: and after the threescore and two weeks
the _Messiah_ shall be cut off, and it shall not be his; but the people of
a Prince to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary_, &c. Having
foretold both comings of _Christ_, and dated the last from their returning
and building _Jerusalem_; to prevent the applying that to the building
_Jerusalem_ by _Nehemiah_, he distinguishes this from that, by saying that
from this period to the _Anointed_ shall be, not seven weeks, but
threescore and two weeks, and this not in prosperous but in troublesome
times; and at the end of these Weeks the _Messiah_ shall not be the Prince
of the _Jews_, but be cut off; and _Jerusalem_ not be his, but the city and
sanctuary be destroyed. Now _Nehemiah_ came to _Jerusalem_ in the 20th year
of this same _Artaxerxes_, while _Ezra_ still continued there, _Nehem._
xii. 36, and found the city lying waste, and the houses and wall unbuilt,
_Nehem._ ii. 17. vii. 4, and finished the wall the 25th day of the month
_Elul_, _Nehem._ vi. 15, in the 28th year of the King, that is, in
_September_ in the year of the _Julian Period_ 4278. Count now from this
year threescore and two weeks of years, that is 434 years, and the
reckoning will end in _September_ in the year of the _Julian Period_ 4712
which is the year in which _Christ_ was born, according to _Clemens
Alexandrinus_, _Irenaeus_, _Eusebius_, _Epiphanius_, _Jerome_, _Orosius_,
_Cassiodorus_, and other antients; and this was the general opinion, till
_Dionysius Exiguus_ invented the vulgar account, in which _Christ_'s birth
is placed two years later.
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