Who Ends the Sacrifice in Daniel 9:27?

I heard it put this way: the one who makes the covenant strong in Daniel 9:27 is Jesus, the covenant is the new covenant, and the sacrifice stops at his death in the middle of the week. This article is not written to dismiss that reading. It is written to show that the text does not make it definite, and that Daniel, read on his own terms before anything else is brought in, leans hard the other way.

The Seventy Weeks Are About Israel

Before the two verses, the chapter. Daniel 9 opens with Daniel reading Jeremiah’s seventy years “for the completion of the desolations of Jerusalem” (Daniel 9:2, NASB 1995) and turning to prayer. The prayer is specific about who it is for.

“O Lord, hear! O Lord, forgive! O Lord, listen and take action! For Your own sake, O my God, do not delay, because Your city and Your people are called by Your name.”

— Daniel 9:19 (NASB 1995)

Your city, Your people, Your desolate sanctuary (9:16–18). Daniel is asking God to forgive Israel and to act for Jerusalem. The answer keeps the same subject:

“Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy place.”

— Daniel 9:24 (NASB 1995)

The seventy weeks are decreed for Daniel’s people and Daniel’s city. They are about what Israel will face and when that ends. The six things in verse 24 are what the span accomplishes for them: the transgression finished, sin ended, iniquity atoned, everlasting righteousness brought in, vision sealed, the most holy anointed. The destruction of the city in verse 26 lies inside the span; it is not the span’s purpose. The purpose is the end of Israel’s transgression.

That context is the piece a focus on verses 26–27 alone drops, and it bears on the question in front of us. The goals of verse 24 are for “your people and your holy city.” On the Jesus reading the week closes around AD 33–37, and at that point the city is not restored; it is less than forty years from destruction. The reading must then say the goals were met for a people redefined, or for the city in some other sense than the one Daniel prayed for. A final oppressor whose decreed destruction closes the span (9:27) sits inside Daniel’s own pattern — chapter 8 raises a hostile king “when the transgressors have run their course” (Daniel 8:23, NASB 1995) — and leaves “your people and your holy city” meaning what they meant in the prayer.

The Passage

“Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined. And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering; and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate.”

— Daniel 9:26–27 (NASB 1995)

Two figures stand in verse 26: the Messiah, who is cut off, and “the prince who is to come,” whose people destroy the city and the sanctuary. Verse 27 then says “he” without naming him; the Hebrew carries the subject in the verb and names no one. The nearest figure is the prince. That is not proof. It does mean the Jesus reading is a choice the reader makes, not one the sentence makes for him.

Some read verses 26–27 as alternating, Messiah then Jerusalem, Messiah then Jerusalem, so that the covenant and the stopped sacrifice belong to the Messiah and only the abominations belong to the destroyer. That layout is possible. But notice what the clause itself holds together: the stop of sacrifice and the abominations that desolate stand in one sentence, and the desolations determined in verse 26 run straight into the desolator of verse 27. Splitting them is a decision about the verse, and it should be tested against how Daniel uses these pieces elsewhere.

Let Daniel Interpret Daniel

Before Luke or Hebrews is brought to 9:27, there is a prior question: what does a stopped sacrifice mean in Daniel? The visions were repeated for Daniel in different forms, each with its own details, and three other passages carry the pieces found in 9:27.

“It even magnified itself to be equal with the Commander of the host; and it removed the regular sacrifice from Him, and the place of His sanctuary was thrown down.”

— Daniel 8:11 (NASB 1995)

The vision goes on to ask how long the regular sacrifice will be gone “while the transgression causes horror” (Daniel 8:13, NASB 1995), and the interpretation names the figure: “A king will arise, insolent and skilled in intrigue… He will even oppose the Prince of princes” (Daniel 8:23, 25, NASB 1995).

“Forces from him will arise, desecrate the sanctuary fortress, and do away with the regular sacrifice. And they will set up the abomination of desolation.”

— Daniel 11:31 (NASB 1995)

“From the time that the regular sacrifice is abolished and the abomination of desolation is set up, there will be 1,290 days.”

— Daniel 12:11 (NASB 1995)

Precision matters here, so take the passages for what they supply and no more. Chapter 8 pairs the removed sacrifice with a desolating transgression and a king who opposes God. Chapter 11 pairs the removed sacrifice with a set-up abomination and names the king whose forces do it. Chapter 12 pairs the two again without naming anyone in the verse; the king comes from the chapter before it. None of the three repeats a seven-year pact broken at its middle. The pattern is narrower than that, and it is firm: every time Daniel shows the sacrifice stopped, the stopping sits beside desolation, and the figure behind it stands against God. The three say “the regular sacrifice” and 9:27 says “sacrifice and grain offering,” so the shared thread is not a word but the pairing.

This is the weight of the argument. Inside Daniel, a stopped sacrifice is never fulfillment. It is suppression. Daniel supplies that category himself, three times, and 9:27 sits inside it without strain: a sanctuary destroyed in verse 26, a sacrifice stopped and abominations arriving in verse 27, a desolator at the end. Nothing in chapter 9 signals that this stopping is a different kind of stopping. To read it as the Messiah fulfilling sacrifice is to bring a category into Daniel from outside Daniel. The reading may still be chosen, but it should be chosen knowing that Daniel’s own pattern points to the hostile king as the most likely figure.

Questions the Jesus Reading Has to Answer

To be fair to the reading that makes Jesus the one who stops the sacrifice in 9:27, here is the structure its proponents give it. The seventieth week opens with Jesus’s ministry at his baptism. Through that ministry he makes the covenant firm. At the cross, in the middle of the week, he puts a stop to sacrifice — not by closing the temple but by fulfilling what the sacrifices pointed to. The second half of the week is the gospel going to Israel, and the week closes with an event from Acts: Stephen’s death, Paul’s conversion, or the gospel reaching Cornelius.

Each question below comes from setting that structure against Daniel’s wording. These are questions, not proofs. Anyone who teaches that Jesus is the one who stops the sacrifice should be able to say how the timing of 9:27 fits the cross before building anything on that identification.

The middle. Daniel sets the covenant at the week’s start and the end of sacrifice at its middle. If the covenant is “the new covenant in My blood” (Luke 22:20, NASB 1995) — and Matthew 26:28’s “My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many” is the closest the Gospels come to Daniel’s wording, so this is the Jesus reading’s best link — then the covenant was made at the cup and the sacrifice ended at the cross the next day. The covenant’s first day and the sacrifice’s last day fall together, where Daniel puts them three and a half years apart. Proponents answer by distinguishing announcing the covenant during the ministry from ratifying it at the death, and reading “make firm” as the announcing. That is a possible answer. The question it leaves is whether Daniel’s “make a firm covenant for one week” describes a covenant that spends half its week not yet in force. The verse gives no sign of it.

The end. Daniel does mark the week’s close. The seventy weeks are decreed “for your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin” (Daniel 9:24, NASB 1995), and the desolator of 9:27 runs “even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out.” The desolations against Daniel’s people end at the close of the seventieth week, with a decreed destruction. Daniel also gives the whole week to one subject: he makes the covenant firm for one week, and he stops the sacrifice in its middle. If Jesus’s ministry opens the week, then the one who opened it should be the one who closes it, and the close should carry what Daniel put there. Instead the Jesus reading hands the week’s end to a later event and other people — Stephen, Paul, Cornelius — and none of those carries a decreed destruction or the finishing of transgression for Daniel’s people. The reading must then either move the end of 9:27 outside the week, to AD 70, or leave it unplaced. Choosing among the Acts events is arbitrary, and an arbitrary endpoint is not a strong position for a reading that depends on the week’s shape.

The bound. Why is the making-firm given a term at all? “For one week” bounds it. Whether that bound limits the covenant itself or only the confirming of it is for the Jesus reading to say. Either way it has to explain why a sacrifice Hebrews calls finished — “having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down” (Hebrews 10:12, NASB 1995); “by one offering He has perfected for all time” (Hebrews 10:14, NASB 1995) — sits at the middle of a seven-year confirming rather than at its close.

The growth. Some answer that making the covenant firm pictures the growth of the church, its spread among “the many.” Then why does Daniel limit the growth to one week? When Daniel speaks of what the Messiah establishes, he does not use week-language; he uses forever-language. The kingdom the God of heaven sets up “will never be destroyed… it will itself endure forever” (Daniel 2:44, NASB 1995). The Son of Man’s “dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away” (Daniel 7:14, NASB 1995). The saints receive “an everlasting kingdom” (Daniel 7:27, NASB 1995). Daniel knows how to say that something of the Messiah’s has no end, and he says it repeatedly. In 9:27 he says “one week.” A seven-year term for the growth of the church is not how Daniel describes the Messiah’s work anywhere else.

A king’s pact raises none of these questions. A term agreed, a sacrifice stopped partway, a desolation to follow: each piece is one Daniel has already drawn.

Where It Leaves Jesus

Inside Daniel the stopping of sacrifice has one meaning, and it is the desolator’s. The king may or may not be the same from passage to passage; the role is, and the role belongs to what God finds abominable.

So making Jesus the one who stops the sacrifice in 9:27 sets him side by side with that role. This is not an accusation. No one who reads the verse this way is calling Jesus the desolator, and the article does not say they are. The point is narrower: the Jesus reading places the Messiah in the half of the verse that, in every other telling, is the desolator’s, and two identities that should never be merged are now standing next to each other in a single sentence.

That is why this verse calls for care, and a lot of it. The danger runs both ways. Hold the Jesus reading as settled, and if it is wrong, you are teaching that Jesus does what the text says evil does. Hold the hostile-king reading as settled, and if it is wrong, you have handed a work of Christ to a desolator. Either mistake merges Jesus with what God finds abominable, or the reverse. The error is not to lean one way or the other; the text leaves room to lean. The error is to hold a reading as dogma or creed, because a creed stakes a stand, and if the stand is wrong here, the wrong is not small. A verse like this one asks for real openness and humility.

Jesus himself points to “the abomination of desolation which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet” as the signal for his people to flee (Matthew 24:15–16, NASB 1995). That does not settle who stops the sacrifice in 9:27. It does show where Jesus places himself relative to the abomination: not in it, but warning against it. That is what first prompted this article.

Daniel Drives the Meaning

Three passages, one pattern: a stopped sacrifice, a desolation, a figure against God. A reader may still choose the Messiah in 9:27; the text does not forbid it. But the text does not make that choice, and Daniel, interpreting himself, points to the prince who is to come, the prince of the people who destroy the city and the sanctuary — the last oppressor in a span decreed for Israel, whose end is the end of Israel’s transgression.