One day, Daniel decides to pray about the return to exile. He knows from the prophet Jeremiah that it is to be about 70 years before the Jews can return to Jerusalem.
He prays and Gabriel again appears. Gabriel tells him about a series of "seventy" and "sevens". Neither Gabriel nor Daniel interprets what all this means.
However, if one believes that these refer years, then seventy times seven would be 490 years. This would roughly be the time between the destruction of Jerusalem and the Maccabean revolt of 180 BC. This is another reason that Daniel is associated with the Maccabean revolt. But even that logic requires an assumption that these numbers refer to actual years, which is not clarified in the text.
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