King Cyrus favoured as ‘Darius the Mede’

          

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

 

“The author might be using the approximate age of Darius, sixty-two (62),

to emphasize the prophecy of the seventy weeks determined

upon Israel and Jerusalem (Dan 9:24).

This prophecy of the seventy (70) weeks is divided into three segments:

seven (7) weeks + sixty-two (62) weeks + one (1) week (Dan 9:25-26)”.

 

George R. Law

 

 

 

By now I have concluded in various articles that the enigmatic biblical king, ‘Darius the Mede’ (e.g. Daniel 5:31), was likely the same as King Cyrus ‘the Great’.

One of these articles involved my connecting, as just the one incident, both the prophet Daniel in the den of lions at the time of Darius (Daniel 6), and Daniel’s ordeal in the den of lions in the time of Cyrus, as narrated in Bel and the Dragon. And so I asked:  

 

Was Daniel Twice in the Lions' Den?

 

https://www.academia.edu/24308877/Was_Daniel_Twice_in_the_Lions_Den

 

and I concluded that, no he wasn’t – and that Darius must be Cyrus.

 

George R. Law is another who has come to the conclusion that Darius the Mede was Cyrus, though using different means. In his 2010 article, “Identification of Darius the Mede” (p. 9), Law surprisingly suggests a link between the age of Darius, 62 years, and the 62 weeks of the prophecy of the Seventy Weeks:

 

God’s decree took the kingdom from Belshazzar and gave it to Darius the Mede, who actively received the kingdom.

In the introduction of Darius the Mede, there is an incidental hint, the approximate sixty-two-year-old age of Darius. The identification method employed in chapter four of this dissertation shows the value of knowing someone’s age and using it as an identifying mark.

The matching of the age of Cyrus the Great with the age of Darius the Mede was a significant qualifying characteristic which helped to identify Cyrus as Darius the Mede, but there might be another reason why the author provided this hint.

This number, which is otherwise extraneous information, is specific to three things in

the book of Daniel: 1) Darius, 2) Cyrus, and 3) the prophecy of the weeks. The author might be using the approximate age of Darius, sixty-two (62), to emphasize the prophecy of the seventy weeks determined upon Israel and Jerusalem (Dan 9:24).

This prophecy of the seventy (70) weeks is divided into three segments: seven (7) weeks + sixty-two (62) weeks + one (1) week (Dan 9:25-26). Cyrus, the 62-year-old conqueror, gave the commandment granting the Jews permission to return to the land and to rebuild their temple in Jerusalem. In Daniel 9:25, after a commandment is given to initiate the restoration of Jerusalem and its temple, and after the conclusion of the prophesied 62 weeks, that temple, which Cyrus commanded to rebuild, is to be destroyed. The link between the 62-year-old Darius the Mede and the 62-year-old Cyrus the Great reinforces this prophecy concerning the 62 weeks which is to pass before the new Temple will be destroyed. ….

[End of quote]

 

Whilst I think that George R. Law has rightly concluded that Darius the Mede is to be identified with Cyrus, his suggested connections here seem to me to be rather tenuous.

 

Good luck to anyone hoping to identify the biological age of Cyrus in the present state of knowledge of Medo-Persian history.

 

And, do 62 weeks really separate the beginning of the reign of Cyrus from the destruction of the new Temple?