⁹ Then I looked up and saw two women flying toward us, gliding on the wind. They had wings like a stork, and they picked up the basket and flew into the sky.

Israel Harvests the Whirlwind

²⁶ “After this period of sixty-two sets of seven,^[a] the Anointed One will be killed, appearing to have accomplished nothing, and a ruler will arise whose armies will destroy the city and the Temple. The end will come with a flood, and war and its miseries are decreed from that time to the very end. ²⁷ The ruler will make a treaty with the people for a period of one set of seven,^[b] but after half this time, he will put an end to the sacrifices and offerings. And as a climax to all his terrible deeds,^[c] he will set up a sacrilegious object that causes desecration,^[d] until the fate decreed for this defiler is finally poured out on him.”

⁴⁹ “The Lord will bring a distant nation against you from the end of the earth, and it will swoop down on you like a vulture. It is a nation whose language you do not understand,

¹⁹ the stork, herons of all kinds, the hoopoe, and the bat.

²⁸ Just as the gathering of vultures shows there is a carcass nearby, so these signs indicate that the end is near.^[a]