This is the more controversial part of the passage. Here we have more detail on the seventieth week.
If Christ died in the middle of the last seven, the last week as it were, and ended the sacrifice, how could he confirm the covenant with many for a week? The traditional answer is that his confirming the covenant included the inauguration of the mission to the Gentiles. The confirming of the covenant had two aspects: Christ ratified the covenant of God and kept the law and deserved heaven for all his people, and also since it was the ancient promise of God that God's mercy would extend to the Gentiles, he – not personally because he died halfway through the last seven – through the apostles inaugurated the Gentile mission. So the confirming of the covenant meant that he ratified it, and extended the covenant of grace practically to the Gentiles, and there is the great mission work of the apostle Paul. So the seventieth seven sees the accomplishments of Calvary in the middle and at the end of that final period, there is the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple.
The Dispensational interpretation of this passage detaches this seventieth week, and puts it at the end of time. According to this view, the prophetic clock stops ticking with the coming of the New Testament church, and it will not restart until God’s purpose returns to focus on national Israel at the end of the age. It is not an idea which fits with Christ’s words that there will be one fold and one shepherd (John 10:16). Neither does it agree with Paul’s teaching that Christ ‘is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us [permanently]’ (Ephesians 2:14), that is, between Jew and Gentile. Nor does Scripture ever deal with numbers by splitting them in this arbitrary way. The natural sense is that the seventieth week follows directly and is a week when Christ has his ministry. The history of dispensationalism is interesting. Historically it was popular with people who had little interest in covenant theology. They have stopped rejoicing in the covenant. ‘In the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease’ – he theologically ended the usefulness of the sacrifice. Dispensationalism replies, but he did not end it; the sacrifices went on. We answer that he emptied them of their significance (their being required by positive law). ‘In the middle’ – the final week does not end with his death, but probably extends to the destruction of Jerusalem, although no terminus is given of this last week is given in the passage.