Hey, this is Tim at the Bible Project, and today's episode we're going to be carrying forward

a conversation between John and myself about the seventh day rest.

We're multiple episodes in.

We've been tracing these patterns of the number seven in the storyline of the Bible.

We camped out for quite a while on page one in Genesis.

We saw there the number seven, there's seven days of creation in the Genesis one account.

We go from a place of darkness and disorder, and God creates a world of complete order

and beauty in a pattern of seven.

Then we just started tracing that through.

So many stories of the Bible are riffing off of that basic theme.

In fact, the whole story of the Bible in a way is working out this gigantic

storyline of darkness and disorder to the seventh day rest.

So at this point in the story of the Bible, we've tracked through up to Israel's exile.

How God brought them into the Promised Land, they blew it, and they are exiled.

And what Leviticus presented as like this inverted pattern of seven.

So in this episode, it's our last stop in the Hebrew Scriptures.

We're going to focus in on a puzzling and fascinating story in the book of the Prophet Daniel.

And lo and behold, it all revolves around the number seven.

This is in Daniel chapter nine.

Daniel is praying for the restoration of Jerusalem and his people from exile.

And the answer that he gets is not what he expected.

And it all revolves around the meaning and symbolism of the number seven.

...