It’s 2300 Days, Not Years

Objection:

Daniel 8:14 does not equate to 2300 years but 2300 days. Evenings and mornings are stated specifically for a very good reason.

Answer:

An essential principle of interpreting time prophecies is the year-day principle—under which a day of prophetic time equals a year of calendar time. Some of the Bible’s reasons for this principle are as follows:

1. The year-day principle is in harmony with the principle of symbolically interpreting beasts as kingdoms, horns as powers, oceans as peoples, etc.
2. The Lord, speaking in Numbers 14:34 and Ezekiel 4:6, upholds the principle.
3. The 2300 days (years) of Daniel 8:14 cover the history of the Medo-Persian, Grecian, and Roman empires, as the angel explains in verses 19–26 (“at the time of the end shall be the vision”). These empires lasted many times longer than 2300 literal days. The period must begin with “the vision;” consequently, it commences at the height of the Medo-Persian power. Nothing can fit except the year-day principle.
4. These days are further proved to be years in the 9th chapter, where the angel told Daniel to understand the matter and consider the vision, and as there was no other vision, the vision of the 2300 days must be the vision he was to understand. He gave him 70 weeks, which history and chronology prove to have been fulfilled in 490 years, as many years as there are days in 70 weeks. Therefore, the 2300 days must be fulfilled in 2300 years and begin with the decree to build Jerusalem 457 BC, or the communication to Daniel could give him no understanding respecting the vision.
5. Furthermore, in Daniel 9, God saw that Daniel had misapplied the days. Therefore, at the beginning of his supplication, an angel was sent swiftly, to set him right—even the angel Gabriel, whom he says he had seen in the vision at the beginning. He informed Daniel, talked with him, and told him that he had now come forth to give him skill and understanding, and he says, “I am come to show thee, for thou art greatly beloved; therefore, understand the matter and consider the vision.” The information that he then gave Daniel could not but convince him that he had been laboring under a mistake as to the time and that the vision could not be fulfilled in 2300 literal days; for said he, “seventy sevens are cut off” (for so all our Hebrew scholars admit the original reads, and there is nothing from which to cut the seventy sevens, but from the 2300 days) “upon thy people” etc, “and to anoint the Most Holy.” These seventy sevens reach to AD 34, and as they were cut off from the 2300 days, they must be sevens of just such periods as those days symbolized. If, therefore, those sevens were sevens of years, as proved by the result and are admitted to be, then the days they were cut off from were symbols of years.
6. Daniel 11 is an expansion of the prophecy of Daniel 8, yet Daniel 11 is not symbolic. It speaks of “years” (verses 6, 8, 13) as a parallel of “days” in Daniel 8:14 three times.
7. The angel explained to Daniel that these prophecies concerned “the time of the end” (8:19, 26; 10:13, 14). The prophecies would not make sense if the “days” were literal.
8. A day for a year was a common way of speaking in Old Testament Hebrew. See Leviticus 25:8; Genesis 29:27.
9. That Daniel used a day for a year is demonstrated in the fulfillment of the time, times, and dividing of time of Daniel 7:25 and other places.
10. The book of Revelation unlocks the prophecies of Daniel, showing that their fulfillment was still future in the time of the apostles.

Further, the year-day principle has been recognized and accepted as valid by many careful Bible students such as Joachim of Floris, Wycliffe, Joseph Mede, Sir Isaac Newton, Bishop Thomas Newton, Alexander Keith, and many others.