Bijlage I
The two Nagids, and the nagid berit of Daniel 11:22
1. Count the Nagids
The Hebrew of Daniel 9:25-27 introduces two figures bearing the title נָגִיד nagid ("prince, leader, appointed ruler"), separated by a single verse and a devastation of historic scale. The title itself is morally colorless — it fits a righteous man as readily as a scoundrel. The whole difference falls on the words around it. Confusing these two is the source of nearly every muddle in the chapter.
The first Nagid (v. 25): מָשִׁיחַ נָגִיד mashiach nagid — "Anointed Prince." - Anointed (mashiach): designated and equipped with oil. - Bound to the end of the sixty-ninth week (457 BC + 483 years = AD 27). - In v. 26b passively cut off (yikareth, Niphal): He undergoes it.
The second Nagid (v. 26): נָגִיד הַבָּא nagid ha-ba — "a coming prince." - Not anointed. - Placed grammatically in the future: the article (ha-) plus the participle בָּא ba ("coming") mark him as still-to-come from Daniel's standpoint. - His people are the acting subject: they "shall destroy" (yashchit, Hiphil, imperfect, active) the city and the sanctuary.
2. Three markers that separate the two
The two Nagids are not one figure in two phases, but two persons, and the text distinguishes them with three independent grammatical signals:
Anointing. Mashiach stands only with the first. The second bears the title nagid without mashiach.
Verb stem. The first is grammatically passive (is cut off); with the second it is his people who are active (destroy).
Time. The first is bound to a completed count (the 69 weeks, AD 27); the second is made expressly future by article plus participle.
One neutral title, two opposite bearers. The cut-off Anointed One (Jesus, AD 31) and the coming prince (the end-time figure) thus cannot be confused — unless one ignores the grammatical signals.
3. Who owns the seventieth week?
This is the practical payoff of the distinction. Verse 27 opens with a nameless "he": "and with overwhelming power he shall make a covenant strong for the many [...] and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease." The question is: who is "he"?
Grammatically the nearest possible antecedent is not the cut-off Anointed One of v. 26b, but the coming prince of v. 26e — the last-named nagid. The cut-off Anointed One is moreover passive (He undergoes), whereas the "he" of v. 27 acts actively (makes strong, halts). With that, the seventieth week — the covenant of overwhelming power, the halted sacrificial service, the abomination — belongs not to the cross of Christ (a frequently made reading), but to the career of the coming prince. This is precisely why God's Algorithm (Appendix E) and this book read the seventieth week as future, physical seven years, and place the cutting off (AD 31) on the hinge before it.
4. The bridge: nagid berit (Daniel 11:22)
Daniel 11:22 supplies the key that rivets chapter 11 to chapter 9. The text speaks of a נְגִיד בְּרִית nagid berit, a "prince of the covenant," who is "broken" — and indeed "swept away" (sheteph, flood). Three words connect this verse to 9:26-27:
nagid — the title from 9:25-26;
berit — the covenant from 9:27a (higbir berit);
sheteph (flood) — the image from 9:26f (ba-sheteph).
Three shared keywords in a single verse are no coincidence; they are a deliberate link between the two chapters.
5. A Janus, honestly weighed
Who is the nagid berit who is broken? Here the discipline of the book must hold: where there is genuine ambiguity, there is no choosing, only weighing.
The dominant reading — the victim. Grammatically the nagid berit is the one who is broken. Historically this points to Onias III, the lawful high priest, murdered around 171 BC — and typologically to the cut-off Anointed One himself, the Prince of the covenant who is cut away (9:26). This is the syntactically strongest reading.
The second layer — an echo of the coming prince. Through the bridging words (nagid + berit + sheteph) the coming prince of 9:26-27 also resonates — the one who, by contrast, makes the covenant strong with overwhelming power. And that connects the figure to the white horse of Revelation 6:2: a conqueror who goes out "conquering, and to conquer," with a crown but — strikingly — without an arrow on the bow: conquest through feigned peace, not through open war. Precisely the higbir berit pattern of 9:27a: overwhelming power presenting itself as peace and advantage.
Honestly: the dominant grammar makes 11:22 the victim; the antichrist layer (running continuously from 11:21 through to 11:45, see chapter 9) is a second layer that is kept as a layer, not forced. Yet that very doubleness suits an oracle that writes deliberately on two levels: the broken prince of the covenant (Christ's type) and the prince who makes the covenant strong with overwhelming power (the antichrist) stand in a single taut formula over against each other — Mashiach and his counter-image, as Mashiach and Meshomem elsewhere (Appendix E).
6. The continuous "he" of Daniel 11
Finally, the broader syntactical ground. From 11:21 ("a contemptible one") one unbroken "he" runs through the chapter, without a second figure ever being formally introduced, until "he comes to his end, and none helps him" (11:45). And since that end — the self-deification above every god (11:36), the fall between the sea and the holy mountain (11:45) — cannot possibly fit Antiochus (who died ill in Persia), the "he" cannot silently switch persons halfway through. The contemptible one of 11:21 is, in his deepest layer, the same as the end-time king of 11:45 — and the nagid berit of 11:22 stands precisely on the seam where the antichrist layer (the prince of overwhelming power) and the Messiah layer (the victim) touch.
With that, the grammatical backbone is complete: two Nagids in chapter 9, one continuous two-layered "he" in chapter 11, and in 11:22 the bridge that connects both chapters, and both layers, with each other.
Compare God's Algorithm, Appendix E (Two Princes, Not One), and The Master Clock of Revelation (the white horse, Rev. 6:2).