Daniel Lesson 39

Interruption, Problem II, When is the Beginning? – Daniel 9:25

Daniel chapters 7-8 record the evening and morning vision, two parts of which were spread apart by three years, and this morning and evening vision gave the nature of the kingdom of man from the standpoint of its moral character. That is, it gave the standpoint, the moral viewpoint of western history from 500 BC, thereabouts, all the way on down through our present era. The four great kingdoms of Daniel are presented as beasts. The meaning of that symbolism is that the kingdom of man in all of its forms is anti-humanitarian in its deepest sense. Only the millennial kingdom, so to speak, is fit for man; only that kingdom which is run by God’s law and by God’s Savior.

Then in Daniel 8, the last part of that evening and morning vision we have a portrait of the antichrist. We had certain data given to us in that Scripture which will fit and predict actually the outline of the antichrist and for Christian citizens seeking to make judgments on the political scene today, the portrait of Daniel 8 is also useful, because candidates could be rated on a scale approximating or not approximating that which we see in Daniel 8.

In Daniel 9 we have seen one of the great prayers and we have seen God answer that prayer. Daniel 9 is a revelation of Israel’s role in the new era of the kingdom of man. And during this chapter we find Daniel being taught Israel’s new role, for Israel never saw anything like this. Remember that a Jew, living in Daniel’s day, when he thought of the restoration he thought in terms of what preceded 586 BC. He thought of that glorious kingdom of the past, with the Shekinah glory dwelling in the temple, with an active Levitical priesthood, with an active Urim and Thummim through which direct communication with God could occur. The Jew in Daniel’s day was not prepared for the kind of restoration he’s going to get. And so therefore Daniel 9 is to deliberately prepare the Jews for what lies ahead. They are going to have to live in a new type of situation, a situation in which the Gentiles are supreme, a situation in which they will eventually rebuild the temple, but it will be a small one, and it will have no glory in it. It will be a situation in which only part of the Jews live in the land of Israel, most in fact live outside the land of Israel. There will be no continuing line of prophets; there will be no continuing direct revelation. All these characteristics are new. And so Daniel 9 is a preparation of believers for a new kind of history, a history that will go on until that great fifth kingdom of the Son of Man.

In Daniel 9 we have seen one of the great prayers of history, a prayer that led to all this teaching, and a prayer which teaches many principles. We’ve gone through each of those principles so we can summarize them again briefly, and that is that this prayer teaches us the area of fatalism, it tells us to avoid it; it tells us that one of the quickest places that fatalism will show up in your spiritual life is in your prayer life, and that people who do not pray are people who basically are fatalists, what will happen will happen regardless of whether or not I pray, and yet the Bible teaches that you have not because you ask not.

This prayer also teaches the value of Biblically designed petition. When Daniel makes his prayer he makes sure that his petitions fit the known Word of God. And this teaches us that even if you have to write out your prayers ahead of time, get them organized and have the petitions thought out in line with Scripture. You’ll see amazing things happen when you do. It’s uncanny to watch how God answers prayer once you seemingly latch on to this technique of designing petitions that are Biblical. After all, that’s what 1 John 5 says, “This is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will He hears us.” This prayer also teaches a grace oriented attitude. When a person prays with a clear understanding that the only merit that he has is that being extended to him in the present moment through the Lord Jesus Christ, then he’s on proper praying ground. We have no room on God’s doormat apart from that space marked out given to us by the Lord Jesus Christ.

Finally, another prayer principle is that this prayer was great because it looked at the big picture. Often when we pray we think of the little picture, the details. This prayer looked at the big picture and traced the reasoning behind God answering these prayers all the way back to the glorification of God’s character.

Now when Gabriel interrupted Daniel he gave him one of the most difficult sections of the Word of God that we have in the entire Old Testament. We are currently studying verses 24-27; this is a very complicated passage. As we said last time, there are at least seven major interpretation difficulties with this passages that must be met, must be dealt with and must be solved if we are to understand what this passage means. Last week we dealt with the first major interpretation problem, verse 24, what are the seventy weeks? We said those seventy weeks or seventy sevens are not seven day periods but seven year periods. They’re not vague, they’re specific, and we gave reasons why we say this. First, this word used as “week” is used for seven years in Genesis 29:27. Second, the context of Daniel 9:2 compared with the context of Daniel 10:2-3 shows that years are on Daniel’s mind, not days, not something else. And third, the Jewish Mishna, a series of writings around this period, clearly uses this word for year period. That being the case, we’re on safe ground by saying the seventy weeks are seventy sevens, or a period of four hundred and ninety years.

So translated, verse 24, “Four hundred and ninety years are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.” So we have a four hundred and ninety year period. This means that God is going to postpone Israel’s blessing. And that gives us a principle. Jeremiah spoke of seventy years; Daniel was obsessed with those seventy years, he wanted to find out, because those seventy years were up in the year 535 BC, and in that year they were to have a return from Babylon. Now that return from Babylon was an answer to a prophecy given in Jeremiah 29:10 which specifically stated that at the end of seventy years God would return them from Babylon. But what bothered Daniel wasn’t Jeremiah 29:10 but Jeremiah 29:11-14 because that spoke of an ultimate return, not just from Babylon but from all the world, from all the nations where the Jews had been dispersed. And that prophecy, that section, dealt with the ultimate final restoration of the nation Israel. So Daniel hoped that the year 535 BC would see not just a return from Babylon, and a fulfillment of verse 10, but the year 535 BC would see a return from all the nations of the world and a fulfillment of Jeremiah 29:11-14. That’s what Daniel hoped.

Daniel got a “no” answer on his prayer, and out of that “no” answer there comes tremendous application. The “no” answer was look, said Gabriel, it’s not seventy years that you ought to worry about Daniel, it’s seventy times seven that you ought to worry about. Now Gabriel didn’t tell Daniel then why the four hundred and ninety year delay. But we can infer that delay, as we did last time, from various passages. The point was that the original seventy years was computed by God on the basis of the fact that the economy, the businessmen of the day, who were farmers because it was an agribusiness, basically the whole country, the business people of the day did not apply the Word of God to their business. They’re like a lot of Christian business people today that think of Christianity as some sort of witnessing thing, which it is, but it’s not just that, it’s a lot bigger than that, and they never think to apply the Word of God to the job. Labor unions never think of it either, people are fond of quoting the Sabbath, God wants the laborer to rest, but it also says and labor six day. It’s very interesting how that verse is misused, we always take the part we like and drop out the other part. God is for a 48 hour week, much to the chagrin of modern labor.

When we think in these terms of applying the Word to our job and to our business, we ought to remember back in these days the farmer said okay, look, I need production, therefore I am not going to observe the Sabbath rest. So I’ll use my assets, which was his land, if you want to translate this into business the land equals your capital; I will use my capital to produce every year with no rest, I’ll use that land, I’ll use it over and over and over. And God says I do not want you to use your capital to produce, produce, produce, produce all the time, I want you to have a period when you rest. So you work that land six years and then one year out. But they didn’t do it so God just simply said okay, you omitted this sabbath, this sabbath, this sabbath, this sabbath, and He went on through their history and said I see seventy Sabbath years that you missed, so to make you take the rest I’m going to kick you out where you’re going to have to rest, and you’ll have your rest because I said you were going to have your rest, period. So they had to sweat it out in Babylon for the seventy years that they didn’t rest.

Now to further drill home the point, God then says all right, if one year in seven, so you have a 6 to one ration, if one year in seven is a rest year, and there are seventy rest years, then for the whole period of four hundred and ninety years prior to the exile, for that period of time, you had a violation of God’s Word in business. This meant that God is going to say all right, you people delayed your sanctification by disobedience so I’m going to delay your blessing an equal number of years. And the principle we get out of Gabriel’s answer is that the more we disobey the longer our suffering. Now that isn’t an absolute principle because there are exceptions in the way God works, but as a general working principle, the longer we delay in applying the Word of God to areas where we know we ought to be applying it, then the longer God is going to make us wallow in the mess, because we are going to learn to apply the Word, one way or the other, but we will learn. And so God to press home the point is going to keep Israel going for four hundred and ninety more years, just to see if they’ll learn the lesson.

Now we come to verse 25, “Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.” Now the two words, “know” and “understand” look like this; they are two Hebrew words, yada, and sakal; the first word, yada translated in the King James as “know” is the word to recognize by becoming personally involved with something. That means that Daniel is to take this prophecy and make it part of his soul. He is to put the divine viewpoint into the mentality of his soul. So when we think of Daniel’s soul and think of his mind and how it works, Daniel is to take all this doctrine and file it in his mind, so that in his mind he begins to develop a divine viewpoint framework that will control history. Now why does God want Daniel, the statesman, to have in the mentality of his soul this kind of a catalogue of history? Because Daniel is a leader of his people and he is going to teach his people how to respond in history, other people are going to read his writings, and he is going to become a teacher to the next generation. So therefore, because Daniel is in this situation Daniel has to have a divine viewpoint not only for himself but also to those who look to him for leadership.

In other words, when you see that word “know” in verse 25 you are looking at God’s warning to people in leadership positions to know doctrine. That’s the preparation for any office or any position of leadership is to know the Word of God. And people who have a lackadaisical attitude to the Word make lousy leaders. Oh, there’s some good leaders because unintentionally they have utilized principles of the Word. But “Know therefore,” he says I am going to sit here, Daniel, and I’m going to explain this and I want you to get personally involved with this so this becomes part of you, so you can think this thing through, tell it to me in your own words, and it becomes apart of your everyday thinking.

“Know, therefore, and understand,” sakal is the word for skill, and it has reference, really, to the application of what Daniel was to know. Daniel was to become personally involved with it and he’s to become skillful in using this. How is Daniel going to use this kind of information? Counseling. How’s he going to use it in counseling? Suffering believers, believers who will be whining and saying why did God let this happen to me? And Daniel will say okay, here’s what God really is allowing to happen to you, and here are the reasons why, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and he’ll go back into the whole concept of the Sabbaths and so on, and he says if you want to shorten this period, or see that God doesn’t add to it again, then you can do this, this, this and this. Now that’s relative in counseling, that’s telling a person what they can do to avoid future sorrow and more sorrow in their life. So Daniel will be using this.

“Know, therefore, and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and build Jerusalem,” now we come to the second great interpretation problem of the passage. The first interpretation problem is what are the weeks? The second interpretation problem is in this verse and it deals with what we call the terminus a quo, now we could use s simple word like beginning but you never know when you might encounter this in a crossword puzzle. Terminus a quo is the beginning point of this decree, and that’s the question: when did this thing start. When does it say “from the going forth of the commandment,” when does that start.

So that’s the second problem we’ve got to solve to understand this passage. Let me go through the process of answering the question. Before we go any further notice what happens in the rest of verse 25 and this will shape your understanding of those four hundred and ninety years. The four hundred and ninety years are divided into three sections. Notice verse 25, “from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto Messiah, the Prince, shall be seven sevens,” so take our seventy and divide it up”, seven sevens so we have a forty-nine year period, that would be the first period that the angel mentions; we’ve got to solve that one too later on, why is this divided up like that. “Seven sevens” and then notice the next one, “threescore and two,” sixty-two sevens. So we’ve got a seven out of the seventy and sixty-two out of the seventy, so you get four hundred thirty four. All right, “threescore and two weeks” is the second part of those seventy sevens. Then notice in verse 26, “After threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for Himself, and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city….” Verse 27, “And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week,” or one seven year period. So now look what we’ve got. We’ve got seven sevens, sixty-two sevens and one seven.

Now history is divided this way and this, if we understand it correctly ought to fit real history. Messiah is going to come here, Messiah is going to be cut off, and then there’s going to be something later on about a seven year period so we’ve got to place all this into perspective and answer these questions. But right now we’re not interested in all these three, we’re interested in when did this whole thing start off, because we can’t tell when it’s going to end if we can’t tell when it’s going to start.

So our second major problem of interpretation is the terminus a quo of Daniel’s seventy weeks. When? Well, it says when, it says “from the going forth of the commandment,” but the problem is that there were four commandments that went forth. And here they are, and we’ll look at some Scripture associated with each one of these commandments because two of these four much debate surrounds; these are all contenders for “the going forth of the commandment.” These are four commandments that went forth at this time in history and we’ve got to pinpoint which of the four is the one we’re after, otherwise we can’t really this thing because remember what the angel said, “know and be able to use it.” Well, we can’t use the passage of Scripture if we don’t know its anchor prediction.

The first one, Cyrus’ decree in 538 BC, that’s the first decree. Now some Scripture on that; 1 Chronicles 36:22, “Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying, [23] Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the earth hath the LORD God of heaven given me; and he hath charged me to build him an house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all his people? The LORD his God be with him, and let him go up.”

Notice in the next book, Ezra 1:1-4, “Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying, [2] Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, The LORD God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me to build him an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. [3] Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the LORD God of Israel, (he is the God,) which is in Jerusalem. [4] And whosoever remaineth in any place where he sojourneth, let the men of his place help him with silver, and with gold, and with goods, and with beasts, beside the freewill offering for the house of God that is in Jerusalem.”

So that is the decree of Cyrus. Now besides this passage in 2 Chronicles and Ezra, turn to Isaiah 44:28, “Who saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure; even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid.” Isaiah 45:13, again speaking of Cyrus, God says, “I have raised him up in righteousness, and I will direct all his ways; he shall build my city, and he shall let not go my captives, nor for price nor reward, saith the LORD of hosts.”

So you’ve got one decree, one “going forth” and that is Cyrus’. So, did the four hundred and ninety years begin with Cyrus? Well, if they do, we’ve got a problem because four hundred and eighty three of those years, working down from seven, four hundred eighty three years plus four hundred thirty eight added to that date yield 55 BC and no Messiah showed up in 55 BC. So we’ve got a calculation difficulty, it may not be insurmountable… it may not be insurmountable but we’ve got a difficulty there if Cyrus’ decree is that decree.

The second decree that is a contender for the whole thing is a decree by Darius Hystaspes, this is not the same Darius, the Mede, this is another man. Darius Hystaspes, and this is listed in Ezra 6, you needn’t turn there because this isn’t a very serious contender for the race simply because this was a confirmation of Cyrus’ decree; it’s just a reconfirmation, same decree said a second time.

A third contender in this race is the first decree of Artaxerxes Longimanus, Artaxerxes decree, and this decree was given in 457 BC, it was given to Ezra and it was given in Ezra 7, again you need not turn there, but in Ezra 7 Artaxerxes Longimanus said that Ezra ought to go back to Jerusalem and reestablish a functioning priesthood… a functioning priesthood. But if Artaxerxes Longimanus’ decree is spoken of in Daniel 9 we’ve still got a calculation problem because four hundred and eighty three years gives the year 26 AD and no Messiah came then either. So we still have a problem; again the calculations may not be the fatal objection for the simple reason our chronology may be off; we may be using the wrong calendar so these aren’t lethal objections to the position, just a difficulty. Artaxerxes Longimanus’ decree, but this one is not a leading contender either because it has emphasis on the priesthood and temple, not the city.

So, so far of the three decrees the only one that looks solid is Cyrus’ decree, though there’s a problem with the timing of it. It looks solid because it’s talking about the city being rebuilt.

Now we come to the fourth degree, Artaxerxes Longimanus in the year 445 BC made another decree. Nehemiah 2, Nehemiah was kind of the prime minister of Israel under the restoration. He was to Israel in that day as David Ben Gurion was to Israel in 1948. Nehemiah 2:1-8, here is Artaxerxes Longimanus and the prelude to Nehemiah 2 is found in Nehemiah 1:3, this is the historical situation that led to the decree. Nehemiah said in verse 3, “And they said unto me, The remnant who are left of the captivity there in the province,” that is in Israel, “are in great affliction and reproach; the wall of Jerusalem also is broken down, and its gates are burned with fire.” A very important verse because you see, we’re going to have to decided between number one and number four in this race to fit these decrees into Daniel 9. We have to choose one or the other. Cyrus’ decree said the city was going to be rebuilt, bur Artaxerxes Longimanus’ decree was given after verse 3 and in verse 3 the city obviously is not yet rebuilt because the walls are still down and the gates are still down.

Now in Nehemiah 2:5, after a little bit of negotiation, Nehemiah attains a decree from the king, and in this decree, “And I said unto the king, If it please the king, and if thy servant have found favor in thy sight, that thou would send me unto Judah, unto the city of my fathers’ sepulchers, that I may build it.” Now in the context of verse 5, which is Nehemiah 1:3, building it must refer to the walls and the gates, because that’s what the problem was that was on Nehemiah’s mind.

So we must choose now between contender number one and contender number four. Contender number four, if it was at 445 BC plus 483 years yields 38 AD and that doesn’t work out very well either. So obviously we can’t use how well the dates work out to be our criteria of choice. What we’ve got to work out is on this terminus a quo, a beginning, we’ve got to pick between Cyrus’ decree and Artaxerxes’ decree, which one fits the context of Daniel 9 best. So let’s go back to Daniel 9 and look carefully what verse 25 says. It says, “from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem,” now the word “restore and build” is a word, it doesn’t mean just build but to build to its former state. There are two words, “restore and build,” restore means to bring back to its former state, it is used in Jeremiah 33:7 and Ezekiel 16:65; in those passages this word shuv, or to return is used to restore to a former state. So there’s a particular kind of building going on in Daniel 9:25, it’s not just building the city again but it’s building it back to its former state; that’s the point.

Now looked at it that way, which decree fits best? Obviously number four. So we pick the decree of Nehemiah, and that’s what most people do who study this passage; it was Nehemiah’s decree, the one given in Nehemiah by Artaxerxes Longimanus, in 445 BC and that was a signal for God’s time clock to start in history. In the year 445 BC, if our secular chronology is right, and we’ve always got a problem there, whatever the year was, 445 BC or whatever, that’s when these years began, that’s when the seventy sevens start, from God’s point of view because then the order was given to restore and build Jerusalem.

Now the restoration and building of Jerusalem encompasses three things and out of these three things we obtain insight into society, divine viewpoint of society and national entities. City, people, temple, those three things are united in God’s mind. God does not think of a people without their temple, and God does not think of a temple without the city. Notice the way these words were used in Daniel 9:16, “O Lord, according to all Thy righteousness, I beseech Thee, let Thine anger and Thy fury be turned away from Thy city, Jerusalem, Thy holy mountain; because of our sins, and for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem, and thy people are become a reproach to all that are about us.” Then verse 17, “Now, therefore, O God, hear the prayer of Thy servant, and his supplications, and cause Thy face to shine upon thy temple [sanctuary],” so in verses 16 and 17 you have city, people and sanctuary linked together.

Now notice Daniel 9:24, “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city,” and the last phrase, “to anoint the most Holy place,” the temple. So you’ve got the same three elements that occur over and over and over again. Now when you read in verse 25, it says “from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem,” it must mean the command to restore the city to its fullness, which means a functioning temple, a good sized urban population, and a functioning city.

Now what’s a functioning city? If it’s to be distinct from the temple, what does God mean by a city? Read further in verse 25, it says two things about the city, the last part of the verse, “the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.” Now the place that’s translated “street” in your Bible is actually the word “plaza,” it’s an open place, it’s used in Nehemiah 8:1, 3 and 16. It means an open place where the people can gather together for a political rally, or they can gather together with a lot of materials to sell, an open market place. So the word “street” doesn’t just mean a street, it means an open plaza and therefore stands for the business life of the city, the economic dimension of the city. God says when Jerusalem’s economy is restored, and it will be restored “in troublous times.” And it says when here “wall” shall be built. Now the word “wall” is an enigma because the original word doesn’t mean wall, it means a trench, it means to dig down and make a hole. And so we guess that it must mean wall for reasons you’re about to see. So we take these two translations, the first word “street” or “plaza,” and the second word, which is translated “wall” stands for what? What was the wall used for in the ancient world around a city? Military defense.

So from God’s point of view when a society functions the two key elements are its economy and its military. Any people who do not have a strong military are asking for it when they live in a fallen world. The military is the reason we exist; people have died to give us the freedom to speak, and when you desecrate the military you are running over personal freedom because it’s the military that has given us the freedom. There has never been a free people in the history of the earth, with one exception, that gained their freedom apart from victory in war and the exception is Israel gaining their freedom in the Exodus, and even then it was freedom in war but their army didn’t do anything, they didn’t have any army, Jesus Christ used His angelic armies so freedom has always come by military victory in history. Freedom is always built on superior strength in a fallen world; the enemy has to be crushed and when it is, then you have freedom; not until.

So we have a prophecy, to summarize this in verse 25, we’re saying that the four hundred and ninety year period starts from the decree of Artaxerxes to restore Jerusalem to its full status. Now to appreciate some of the vocabulary here we are going to see some slides of the city of Jerusalem and by these slides I hope you’ll have some idea of what we’re talking about by a street and the wall. This is a city map of Jerusalem; this whole area is the modern city of Jerusalem around the temple; here is the temple area, here is the Garden of Gethsemane and down here is the Kidron Valley. In the Bible most of the city of Jerusalem was in this area, but this is the modern city. The Turks built a wall around it and that’s the wall in these pictures; the wall in Biblical times is long since gone. Down here is the old city of David, today it’s just a series of Arab homes. {he continues showing slides and commenting, without the slides it doesn’t communicate much} Right there is a section of unearthed wall that dates before the time of David. Here’s an archeological dig and the archeologists are discovering some stairs, in this whole area are sections that Nehemiah built and are currently being unearthed. So again the decree to go and build Jerusalem and build the wall and troublous times, the one underneath here is the one that the Scripture is talking about.

Now in Daniel 9 we just read about the plaza, “the plaza and the wall will be built in troublous times,” this shows you why they needed a plaza, you can’t assemble a group of people in this kind of a narrow street, and because most cities have these kinds of streets you had to have an open place to meet, and it’s that open place that Daniel is talking about; he’s not talking about this kind of street. This is what a plaza would look like, an open place where people could come and sell various kinds of things, and that’s what Daniel is talking about in this prophecy, the plaza must be built, an open place where business can be conducted. Incidentally, back at this wall again, to dig the wall down, they had to dig down into footings, and this is why, when they dug these footings, you had the word for “trench” used in Daniel 9:25, you dig the trench as the foundation pit for the wall. Summarizing from Daniel 9:25, hopefully visualizing from those pictures a little bit about walls and plazas and streets, we can make certain conclusions from verse 25.

The whole reason for the four hundred and ninety year period is a delay time due to believer’s disobedience to the Word of God. But because God has elected believers to a certain destiny, because God has elected Israel to a certain destiny, therefore that destiny will be accomplished, and thus by interpretation, the end of verse 25 speaks of the fact that the believer will be successful through “troublous times,” it will not be as easy in plan B as it was in plan A. But nevertheless, because God has chosen us to be victorious in Christ, then we will be victorious in Christ. And verse 25 is both at one time a prophecy of what will come to pass, but it also is an exhortation, believers, do not be discouraged. The streets and the necessary accouterments of sanctification, in this case the city of Jerusalem, will occur. God is sovereign in history and God can use the Gentile powers of Medo-Persia to have His decree and He can so manipulate history to get believers into a position of blessing. So He can also do for us.

Next week we’ll deal with the third interpretation problem what about these kinds of weeks, what about those three periods.