Daniel 9:26
And after the sixty-two weeks
Messiah shall be cut off (Jesus is crucified), but not for Himself;
And the people of the prince who is to come (future tense)
Shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. (70 AD)
The end of it shall be with a flood,
And till the end of the war desolations are determined
Antiochus IV Epiphanes died in 164 BC and Jesus died in 30 AD. So who do you think the Messiah was?
It reads the way almost all Old Testament prophets (like Isaiah wrote) when they combine references to different people and different things into one and the same verse:
The Messiah:
"Know therefore and understand, that from the going out of the command to restore and to build Jerusalem, to Messiah the Prince, shall be seven weeks, and sixty-two weeks. And AFTER (Hebrew achar) sixty-two weeks (after the sixty-two weeks which followed the first seven) Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself.
Still no mention of anyone else at this point.
The Messiah:
26 And after sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself.
27 And he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week. And in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the offering to cease.
Verse 26 does not state that Messiah would be cut off after the first seven+62 weeeks minus 1 week. It says after the 62nd week which followed the first seven weeks, i.e after the 69th week. That is in the 70th week, not in the 69th, Messiah was cut off, but not for Himself.
City & Sanctuary:
26 And the people of the ruler who shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. And the end of it shall be with the flood, and ruins are determined, until the end shall be war.
27 and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.
It was the Messiah who confirmed the covenant, and the Covenant He confirmed was the New Covenant in His blood which had been promised by God hundreds of years before to the house of Israel and the house of Judah (Jeremiah 31:31-33).
"To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me? says the LORD; I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of he-goats.
When you come to appear before Me, who has required this at your hand, to trample My courts? Bring no more vain sacrifice; incense is an abomination to Me; the new moon and sabbath, the going to meeting; I cannot endure evil and the assembly! Your new moons and your appointed feasts My soul hates; they are a trouble to Me; I am weary to bear them. And when you spread out your hands, I will hide My eyes from you; yea, when you make many prayers, I will not hear; your hands are full of blood.
Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do good; seek judgment, reprove the oppressor. Judge the orphan, plead for the widow." Isaiah 1:11-17
Hebrews 10:8-10
"Sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein; which are offered by the law; Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second. By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all."
It's not unusual for apocalyptic / prophetic literature to mix two different topics into the same verses in a prophetic text. We see it in prophetic literature all the time, like in this verse:
(a) "Then the sons of Judah and the sons of Israel shall be gathered together, and shall set over themselves one head,
(b) and they shall come up out of the land. For great shall be the day of Jezreel." Hosea 1:11
The above mention of the destruction of Israel (the Northern kingdom) in the Valley of Jezreel in one and the same verse where the uniting of Israel and Judah into one nation (after the restoration of both to God) is suddenly introduced, is just one of many examples that can easily be found all over the prophetic books:
The part speaking about the coming up out of the land and the day of Jezreel (the day and place that Israel was judged) happened in circa 722 B.C (see Hosea 1:4-5), which is what Hosea Chapter 1 is talking about, but the first part of
verse 11 is also speaking of a reuniting of Israel and Judah that would occur many, many years later.
The two are related, and this is why both are mentioned in one and the same verse, but notice that Hosea did not write, "Reader, please take note: This prophecy is about the judgment of the Northern kingdom of Israel ONLY. It's not about anything else just because God inspired me to pop into verse 11 an extra piece of information about the eventual reuniting of Israel and Judah into one nation with one Head".
Hosea offered no explanation of why the first part of Hosea 1:11 should be popped into the a passage where the text is speaking about
the destruction of Israel's Northern kingdom
in the Valley of Jezreel. It's expected that the reader will understand.
It's typical of biblical prophecy. You see it over and over again in almost all the books of the prophets.
It's the same with regard to the mention of
the destruction of city and temple by the people of the prince who would come being popped into the prophecy of the coming of the Messiah and the timing for the coming of the Messiah.
The destruction of city and temple (which we now know took place 40 years layer) is related, so it gets mentioned in verses 26-27 of Daniel 9 - but that doesn't make it the main subject in the passage. The main subject in the passage is the coming of the Messiah.
The Messiah:
26 And
after sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself.
27 And he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week. And in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the offering to cease.
City & Sanctuary:
26 And
the people of the ruler who shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. And the end of it shall be with the flood, and ruins are determined, until the end shall be war.
27 and
for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.
The 70 weeks prophecy was about the coming of the Messiah, and the timing for it. It is not about the timing for the destruction of city and tabernacle (even though it's also mentioned, because it's related).