Why does Daniel say the anointed one shall be cut off?

Daniel 9:26 is one of the most compressed sentences in the Old Testament: ve-acharei ha-shavuim shishim u-shenayim yikkaret mashiach ve-ein lo — "and after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and have nothing." The question worth pressing is not "when?" but "what does cut off mean here, and where does it come from?"

The verb is not generic. The word for "cut off" is H3772 karat, and in the passive form Daniel uses (yikkaret, "shall be cut off"), it is the karet formula — the specific covenantal excision penalty that runs through the Pentateuch for violations that remove a person from the covenant community. The same Niphal form (ve-nikhrat / yikkaret) appears at Exodus 12:15 for eating leavened bread at Passover, Exodus 31:14 for breaking the Sabbath, Leviticus 7:27 for eating blood, and Leviticus 23:29 for not observing the Day of Atonement. In every case, the penalty is the same: cut off from the people.

The word appears twice in Exodus 30 — for the anointing oil. What makes Daniel 9:26 remarkable is where that same penalty-word appeared most recently in connection with the Anointed One's own substance. Exodus 30 prescribes a formula for the holy anointing oil and a formula for the holy incense, and both end with the identical clause: ve-nikhrat me-ammav — "he shall be cut off from his people" (Exo 30:33, 38). The penalty falls on anyone who counterfeits the sacred compound — and the very word chosen for that penalty reappears in Daniel, attached now not to the counterfeiter but to the Anointed One himself.

The connection is in the words, not the theme. This is the only verse in the entire Hebrew canon where H3772 karat and H4899 mashiach stand together. The standard cross-reference lists rightly connect Daniel 9:26 to the suffering-servant passages (Isaiah 53:8) and to what the New Testament makes of the Messiah's death. But they do not trace it back to Exodus 30:33 — the verse that first attached this cutting-off word to the anointing formula. That connection surfaces only from the words themselves.

Why this matters. The mashiach is built from the verb mashach (H4886), "to anoint" — the verb that Exodus 30:30 uses to describe what the holy oil does: timshach, "you shall anoint Aaron and his sons." The oil of Exodus 30:25 produces the mashiach; the karat of Exodus 30:33 guards the oil's formula; and then Daniel 9:26 applies that same karat to the mashiach himself. The one whom the unreplicable formula makes will undergo the unreplicable penalty. The cutting verb is the covenant verb — the same karat that makes covenants (karat berit, "to cut a covenant," appears eighty-three times) is the verb that severs the one who breaks them, and now the verb that falls on the Anointed One.

וְאַחֲרֵ֤י הַשָּׁבֻעִים֙ שִׁשִּׁ֣ים וּשְׁנַ֔יִם יִכָּרֵ֥ת מָשִׁ֖יחַ וְאֵ֣ין ל֑וֹ — ve-acharei ha-shavuim shishim u-shenayim yikkaret mashiach ve-ein lo — "and after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and have nothing" (Dan 9:26).

The Greek deepens it further. The Septuagint's translation of Daniel 9:26 does not transliterate mashiach; it renders the clause apostathēsetai chrisma — "the chrisma will be removed and will not be." The word chrisma (G5545) is the Septuagint's own name for the holy anointing oil of Exodus 30:25 — used six times in Greek Exodus for the sacred compound. At the moment the Anointed One is cut off, the Greek names him with the oil-word. The substance and the person collapse into a single noun exactly at the point of death.

What Jeremiah foresaw as a new covenant (Jer 31:31 — karat berit, the covenant-cutting verb again) required this cutting. The formula sealed at Sinai, which no hand was permitted to copy, would be opened by the death of the one the formula was for.

The full study on Exodus 30:22-38 works through the karat hinge in detail, showing how the penalty word of Exodus 30 becomes the prophetic word of Daniel 9 and the theological key to 1 John 2:20.