Psalms 102:13

102:13 You will rise up and have compassion on Zion. ¹ 

For it is time to have mercy on her,

for the appointed time has come.

Daniel 9:24

9:24 “Seventy weeks ²  have been determined

concerning your people and your holy city

to put an end to ³  rebellion,

to bring sin ⁴  to completion, ⁵ 

to atone for iniquity,

to bring in perpetual ⁶  righteousness,

to seal up ⁷  the prophetic vision, ⁸ 

and to anoint a most holy place. ⁹ 

Habakkuk 2:3

2:3 For the message is a witness to what is decreed; ¹⁰ 

it gives reliable testimony about how matters will turn out. ¹¹ 

Even if the message ¹²  is not fulfilled right away, wait patiently; ¹³ 

for it will certainly come to pass – it will not arrive late.

John 7:8

7:8 You go up ¹⁴  to the feast yourselves. I am not going up to this feast ¹⁵  because my time ¹⁶  has not yet fully arrived.” ¹⁷ 

Acts 1:7

1:7 He told them, “You are not permitted to know ¹⁸  the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.

¹ tn The imperfect verbal forms are understood as expressing the psalmist’s confidence in God’s intervention. Another option is to take them as expressing the psalmist’s request or wish, “You, rise up and have compassion!”

² tn Heb “sevens.” Elsewhere the term is used of a literal week (a period of seven days), cf. Gen 29:27-28; Exod 34:22; Lev 12:5; Num 28:26; Deut 16:9-10; 2 Chr 8:13; Jer 5:24; Dan 10:2-3. Gabriel unfolds the future as if it were a calendar of successive weeks. Most understand the reference here as periods of seventy “sevens” of years, or a total of 490 years.

³ tc Or “to finish.” The present translation reads the Qere (from the root תָּמַם, tamam) with many witnesses. The Kethib has “to seal up” (from the root הָתַם, hatam), a confusion with a reference later in the verse to sealing up the vision.

⁴ tc The present translation reads the Qere (singular), rather than the Kethib (plural).

⁵ tn The Hebrew phrase לְכַלֵּא (lÿkhalle’) is apparently an alternative (metaplastic) spelling of the root כָּלָה (kalah, “to complete, finish”), rather than a form of כָּלָא (kala’, “to shut up, restrain”), as has sometimes been supposed.

⁶ tn Or “everlasting.”

⁷ sn The act of sealing in the OT is a sign of authentication. Cf. 1 Kgs 21:8; Jer 32:10, 11, 44.

⁸ tn Heb “vision and prophecy.” The expression is a hendiadys.

⁹ tn Or “the most holy place” (NASB, NLT); or “a most holy one”; or “the most holy one,” though the expression is used of places or objects elsewhere, not people.

¹⁰ tn Heb “For the vision is still for the appointed time.” The Hebrew word עוֹד (’od, “still”) is better emended to עֵד (’ed, “witness”) in light of the parallelism (see the note on the word “turn out” in the following line). The “appointed time” refers to the time when the divine judgment anticipated in vv. 6-20 will be realized.

¹¹ tn Heb “and a witness to the end and it does not lie.” The Hebrew term יָפֵחַ (yafeakh) has been traditionally understood as a verb form from the root פּוּחַ (puakh, “puff, blow”; cf. NEB “it will come in breathless haste”; NASB “it hastens toward the goal”) but recent scholarship has demonstrated that it is actually a noun meaning “witness” (cf. NIV “it speaks of the end / and will not prove false”; NRSV “it speaks of the end, and does not lie”). See J. J. M. Roberts, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah (OTL), 106. “The end” corresponds to “the appointed time” of the preceding line and refers to the time when the prophecy to follow will be fulfilled.

¹² tn Heb “it”; the referent (the message) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹³ tn Heb “If it should delay, wait for it.” The Hebrew word חָזוֹן (khazon, “vision, message”) is the subject of the third person verbs in v. 3 and the antecedent of the pronominal suffix in the phrase “for it.”

¹⁴ sn One always speaks of “going up” to Jerusalem in Jewish idiom, even though in western thought it is more common to speak of south as “down” (Jerusalem lies south of Galilee). The reason for the idiom is that Jerusalem was identified with Mount Zion in the OT, so that altitude was the issue.

¹⁵ tc Most mss (Ì^66,75 B L T W Θ Ψ 070 0105 0250 Ë^1,13 Ï sa), including most of the better witnesses, have “not yet” (οὔπω, oupw) here. Those with the reading οὐκ are not as impressive (א D K 1241 al lat), but οὐκ is the more difficult reading here, especially because it stands in tension with v. 10. On the one hand, it is possible that οὐκ arose because of homoioarcton: A copyist who saw oupw wrote ouk. However, it is more likely that οὔπω was introduced early on to harmonize with what is said two verses later. As for Jesus’ refusal to go up to the feast in v. 8, the statement does not preclude action of a different kind at a later point. Jesus may simply have been refusing to accompany his brothers with the rest of the group of pilgrims, preferring to travel separately and “in secret” (v. 10) with his disciples.

¹⁶ tn Although the word is καιρός (kairos) here, it parallels John’s use of ὥρα (Jwra) elsewhere as a reference to the time appointed for Jesus by the Father – the time of his return to the Father, characterized by his death, resurrection, and ascension (glorification). In the Johannine literature, synonyms are often interchanged for no apparent reason other than stylistic variation.

¹⁷ tn Or “my time has not yet come to an end” (a possible hint of Jesus’ death at Jerusalem); Grk “my time is not yet fulfilled.”

¹⁸ tn Grk “It is not for you to know.”