17. “And now, listen to the prayer of your servant and to his pleas for mercy. Shine your face upon your desolate sanctuary for your sake, O Lord.
18. Incline your ear, my God, and listen; open your eyes and look at our desolation and the city that is called by your name, for we are not presenting our pleas for mercy before you because of our righteousness, but rather because of your great compassion.
19. Lord, listen! Lord, forgive! Lord, pay heed and act! You must not delay for your sake, my God; because your city and your people are called by your name.”
20. Now I was still speaking and praying, and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my plea before Yahweh my God, on behalf of the holy mountain of my God.
21. And I was still speaking in prayer, and the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision previously, in my weariness touched me at the time of the evening offering.
22. And he instructed me and he spoke with me and he said, “Daniel I have now come out to teach you understanding.
23. At the beginning of your pleas for mercy, a word went out, and now I have come to declare it, for you are highly esteemed, and so consider the word and understand the vision.
24. “Seventy weeks is decreed for your people and for your holy city, to put an end to the transgression and to seal up sin and to make atonement for guilt and to bring in everlasting righteousness and to seal vision and prophet and to anoint the most holy place.
25. And you must know and you must understand that from the time of the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem until an anointed one—a leader—will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be restored and will be built with streets and a moat, but in a time of oppression.
26. “And after the sixty and two weeks an anointed one shall be cut off, and he shall have nothing, and the people of the coming leader will destroy the city and the sanctuary, and its end will be with the flood and on to the end there shall be war; these desolations are determined.