Biblion Bible Commentary
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Then the Sanctuary Will Be Cleansed
Daniel 8:14
14 He said to me, “To two thousand and three hundred evenings and mornings. Then the sanctuary will be cleansed.” · WEB
The longest time prophecy in Scripture, answered in one sentence — and the verb at the end is a courtroom word: the sanctuary will be set right.
He said to me, "To two thousand and three hundred evenings and mornings. Then the sanctuary will be cleansed" Daniel 8:14.
The answer is given to Daniel although the question was another's, and it has two halves: a term, and what happens at its end.
Evenings and mornings is not a way of saying half-days. It is how Scripture counts whole ones — there was evening and there was morning, six times over at the creation Genesis 1:5 Genesis 1:8 Genesis 1:13 — and it is also the sanctuary's own way of marking a day, since the continual ministry the horn had taken away was offered morning and evening Exodus 29:39 Numbers 28:4. The question was about the continual; the answer is counted in the units of the continual. Two thousand three hundred days.
And prophetic days stand for years by a rule Scripture states rather than one imported here: Israel bore its guilt forty years, a year for each day of the spies' report Numbers 14:34, and Ezekiel was told to lie on his side a day for each year Ezekiel 4:6. Applied to a symbolic vision of empires spanning from Persia to the time of the end, the count reaches far past anything the Greek period could contain — which is what Gabriel insists on three times in the verses that follow: the vision belongs to the time of the end, to the latter time of the indignation, to many days to come Daniel 8:17 Daniel 8:19 Daniel 8:26. Where the line begins is the one thing this chapter never says, and the omission is repaired in the next vision, where an angel comes back to finish the explanation and starts by giving a period cut off from a longer one, with a datable decree for its beginning Daniel 9:23–25.
The verb at the end is the surprise. It is not the ordinary word for washing something ritually clean; it is the word for being justified, vindicated, put in the right — the courtroom term. The sanctuary will be set right: restored to the standing the horn had denied it, its ministry cleared, its Prince vindicated in the sight of the host that had asked the question. What was cast down Daniel 8:11 is not merely tidied up. It is justified.
Which identifies what this promise answers to. The previous vision had shown a court convening while the horn was still speaking — thrones placed, the Ancient of Days seated, the books opened, and judgment given in favor of the saints Daniel 7:9–10 Daniel 7:22. This verse is the same event in the sanctuary's language, and the sanctuary supplied one day in its year for exactly this work: the day the holy place itself was cleansed and the camp's accounts were settled Leviticus 16:16 Leviticus 16:30 Leviticus 16:33. A judgment dated, conducted above, concerning a ministry that the New Testament locates in the true tabernacle where Christ entered for us Hebrews 8:1–2 Hebrews 9:24. The question was how long; the answer names a date and calls it a vindication.
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