Daniel Recalculates the Doomsday Clock
Daniel 9:24
On this annual Earth Day we wonder - does our planet have an expiration date?
Global warming has moved on from threat to crisis and yet too many prefer to look away and pretend the Doomsday Clock is not ticking. (we are 89 seconds to midnight: doomsday-clock )
Can we still do something about it and slow down the end?
Do we count down and hope for the best? Can we recalculate?
Prophets, mystics and messiahs have suggested deadlines for the end of time since time began. But when the mythic math does not meet reality there is always a good reason or an excuse. It’s no different for Daniel - trying very hard in today’s chapter to make sense of an earlier prophecy by Jeremiah - with a timestamp that defies real time.
Sometimes, even the most faithful among us open the old books and sacred promises to wonder if it’s true. When the gap between the promises of hallowed prophets and the grit of reality can feel like a canyon - something in us cracks.
Daniel knew that feeling. Deep in Babylonian exile, even if situated in the royal court, he does the math and realizes that Jeremiah’s famous prophecy that the Babylonian exile would last seventy years - has proven false. It’s been two generations and there is no end in sight: No triumphant return to Judah. No temple. Just dust and disappointment by the rivers of Babylon.
At the top of chapter 9, Daniel narrates describes how the Persian empire has taken over the Babylonians, and yet no good news for his people:
בִּשְׁנַת אַחַת לְמָלְכוֹ אֲנִי דָנִיֵּאל בִּינֹתִי בַּסְּפָרִים מִסְפַּר הַשָּׁנִים אֲשֶׁר הָיָה דְבַר יְהוָה אֶל יִרְמְיָה הַנָּבִיא לְמַלֹּאות לְחָרְבֹת יְרוּשָׁלַ͏ִם שִׁבְעִים שָׁנָה.
"In the first year of the reign of Darius, I, Daniel, was meditating in the books on the number of years concerning which the word of God had come to Jeremiah the prophet, that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years."
Daniel 9:2
Daniel, like generations of readers after him, stands between the book and life, the ideal and the real. The people of Israel across generations have always lived between what’s in the book and what’s happening. And when the world doesn't line up with what’s in the book, we go back and read again, between the lines, until book and reality somewhat sync.
Daniel doesn't throw the book away—he opens it wider. He prays. He confesses the people’s long list of transgressions that caused God’s wrath and continued exile. Maybe sin delayed the promise. Maybe they read the prophecy wrong. Maybe it's both.
And just then, at dusk, after his poetic prayer that will eventually make its way into our prayer books because it is so powerful -- he gets a response.
A heavenly messenger, the angel Gabriel, shows up and does what Jewish tradition does best: reinterprets. Gabriel addresses Daniel kindly and teaches him the truth:
The seventy years prophecy? It’s not seventy years. It’s seventy weeks worth of years— The end is not nigh:
שָׁבֻעִים שִׁבְעִים נֶחְתַּךְ עַל־עַמְּךָ וְעַל־עִיר קׇדְשֶׁךָ לְכַלֵּא הַפֶּשַׁע וּלְהָתֵם חַטָּאת וּלְכַפֵּר עָוֺן וּלְהָבִיא צֶדֶק עֹלָמִים וְלַחְתֹּם חָזוֹן וְנָבִיא וְלִמְשֹׁחַ קֹדֶשׁ קׇדָשִׁים׃
“Seventy Sevens have been decreed for your people and your holy city until the measure of transgression is filled and that of sin complete, until iniquity is expiated, and eternal righteousness ushered in; and prophetic vision ratified, and the Holy of Holies anointed.
Daniel 9:24
What are Seventy Sevens? Most scholars and sages read this as 490 Years.
The exile now has a new clock. One that pushes redemption far into the future. Hope delayed, but not denied.
This dance of delay and reinterpretation has echoed through Jewish time. From Bar Kochba to Shabtai Tzvi, we’ve had more than a few false alarms on the messianic calendar. Still, we hold the book close. We reinterpret, re-translate, recalculate.
And for those of us for whom this global math makes no difference and prophetic projections are meaningless - there are the more simple and sustainable cycles of sevens that give meaning to our lives. Every seven days we stop the clock and celebrate the Sabbath. Every year, right now, we count the seven weeks that lead us from the Exodus to Revelation, from Passover to Shavuot, and from contraction to expansion.
The Counting of the Omer likely started as a farmers’ tool to calculate the 50 days that lead to the wheat harvest, but with time it has become a mystical and practical way to count seven cycles of seven weeks, an exercise in discipline and meaning making. Like Daniel’s prophecy, this is time that stretches. It’s a slow build toward something that is supposed to feel like revelation. Day by day, we honor what is, the blessing of now, and hope for the redemption of the future.
Today, mid Omer Count, on Earth Day, The earth itself is calling us to look at time differently—longer than our attention spans, deeper than our quarterly metrics. What if, like Daniel, we dare to dream of a redemption that takes longer, costs more, and demands our active, prayerful, thoughtful participation?
Daniel teaches us how to hold both: the scroll and the soil. The promise and the process.
Keep counting each blessing, each day, sevenfold of cycles, here and now and yet with our eye on better futures, with less sorrow and more joy, no war and more peace.
And maybe the truest Earth Day is when we do what Daniel did: look to the sky, feet firmly on the ground, cry out, and dig in, reimagine - better.
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