[1] '_Seventy weeks are [2] cut out upon thy people, and upon thy holy city, to finish transgression, and [3] to make an end of sins, to expiate iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, to consummate the Vision and [4] the Prophet, and to anoint the most Holy_. '_Know also and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to cause to return and to build _Jerusalem_, unto [5] the Anointed the Prince, shall be seven weeks_. '_Yet threescore and two weeks shall [6] it return, and the street be built and the wall; but in troublesome times: and after the threescore and two weeks, the Anointed shall be cut off, and [6] it shall not be his; but the people of a Prince to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary: and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war, desolations are determined_. '_Yet shall he confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in half a week he shall cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease: and upon a wing of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that which is determined be poured upon the desolate_.' _Seventy weeks are cut out upon thy people, and upon thy holy city, to finish transgression_, &c. Here, by putting a week for seven years, are reckoned 490 years from the time that the dispersed _Jews_ should be re-incorporated into [7] a people and a holy city, until the death and resurrection of _Christ_; whereby _transgression should be finished, and sins ended, iniquity be expiated, and everlasting righteousness brought in, and this Vision be accomplished, and the Prophet consummated_, that Prophet whom the _Jews_ expected; and whereby _the most Holy_ should be _anointed_, he who is therefore in the next words called the _Anointed_, that is, the _Messiah_, or the _Christ_. For by joining the accomplishment of the vision with the expiation of sins, the 490 years are ended with the death of _Christ_. Now the dispersed _Jews_ became a people and city when they first returned into a polity or body politick; and this was in the seventh year of _Artaxerxes Longimanus_, when _Ezra_ returned with a body of _Jews_ from captivity, and revived the _Jewish_ worship; and by the King's commission created Magistrates in all the land, to judge and govern the people according to the laws of God and the King, _Ezra_ vii. 25. There were but two returns from captivity, _Zerubbabel_'s and _Ezra_'s; in _Zerubbabel_'s they had only commission to build the Temple, in _Ezra_'s they first became a polity or city by a government of their own. Now the years of this _Artaxerxes_ began about two or three months after the summer solstice, and his seventh year fell in with the third year of the eightieth _Olympiad_; and the latter part thereof, wherein _Ezra_ went up to _Jerusalem_, was in the year of the _Julian Period_ 4257. Count the time from thence to the death of _Christ_, and you will find it just 490 years. If you count in