_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. If with some you reckon that _Christ_ was born three or four years before the vulgar account, yet his birth will fall in the latter part of the last week, which is enough. How after these weeks _Christ_ was cut off and the city and sanctuary destroyed by the _Romans_, is well known. _Yet shall he confirm the covenant with many for one week._ He kept it, notwithstanding his death, till the rejection of the _Jews_, and calling of _Cornelius_ and the _Gentiles_ in the seventh year after his passion. _And in half a week he shall cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease_; that is, by the war of the _Romans_ upon the _Jews_: which war, after some commotions, began in the 13th year of _Nero_, A.D. 67, in the spring, when _Vespasian_ with an army invaded them; and ended in the second year of _Vespasian_, A.D. 70, in autumn, _Sept._ 7, when _Titus_ took the city, having burnt the Temple 27 days before: so that it lasted three years and an half.