Summary: Bible - Book of Daniel

The GIST

Daniel, a book of the Bible, is two books in one binding. Its first six chapters are court tales: a young Jewish exile and his three friends hold to their God at the court of Babylon and come through furnace and lions unharmed. Its last six are apocalyptic visions: beasts rising from the sea, a ram and a goat, angels at war, and a countdown to the end. The Hebrew Bible places it among the Writings; Christian Bibles group it with the major prophets. It is written in two languages, opening in Hebrew, switching to Aramaic and returning to Hebrew.

The story is set in the sixth century BC, and its hero speaks in the first person through the visions. Mainstream scholars hold that the book reached its final form in the second century BC, between 167 and 164, when the Greek king Antiochus IV Epiphanes moved against Jewish worship in Jerusalem, and that it was written under Daniel's name as other Jewish apocalypses were written under famous names. Its message to those first readers, as scholars reconstruct it, was direct: the God who rescued Daniel will rescue his people now.

What It Says

Four young men in Babylon (chapter 1). In the third year of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar besieges Jerusalem and carries some of the Temple vessels to the treasury of his god. He orders that young men of royal and noble blood be trained for his court. Among them are Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, renamed Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. The first test is at the table: "But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's meat, nor with the wine which he drank". He proposes a trial of ten days on pulse and water, and the four come out healthier than the rest. When the king examines them he finds them "ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers" in his realm.

The statue and the stone (chapter 2). Nebuchadnezzar has a troubling dream and makes an impossible demand: his wise men must tell him the dream itself and then its meaning, or die. Daniel asks for time, tells his companions, and receives the secret in a vision. Before the king he takes no credit: "But there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets". The king saw a great image with a head of gold, breast and arms of silver, belly and thighs of brass, legs of iron and feet of iron mixed with clay. A stone "cut out without hands" struck the feet, and the whole image broke apart. "Thou art this head of gold", Daniel tells him; lesser kingdoms will follow, and at the last "shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed". The king answers, "your God is a God of gods, and a Lord of kings", and promotes Daniel and his friends.

The fiery furnace (chapter 3). Nebuchadnezzar sets up a golden image in the plain of Dura and orders everyone to bow. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego will not. Their answer is one of the great statements of faith without guarantees. God can save them, they say, and then: "But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up." The furious king has the furnace heated "seven times more" than usual and the three thrown in. Then he stares: "Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt". He calls them out and blesses their God.

The king who ate grass (chapter 4). This chapter is told by Nebuchadnezzar himself. He dreamed of "a tree in the midst of the earth", vast and sheltering, and of a heavenly voice crying, "Hew down the tree". Daniel, shaken, explains that the tree is the king. He will be driven from human company to live with the beasts "till thou know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men". It happens as he is boasting: "Is not this great Babylon, that I have built". He eats grass like an ox until his hair is like eagles' feathers and his nails like birds' claws. When he lifts his eyes to heaven his reason returns, and he praises the one "whose dominion is an everlasting dominion".

The writing on the wall (chapter 5). King Belshazzar gives a feast for a thousand lords and drinks from the sacred vessels of the Jerusalem Temple. Then "came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote" on the plaster of the palace wall. Daniel is sent for, rebukes the king for his pride and reads the words: "MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN." God has numbered the kingdom and finished it. "Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting." The kingdom will go to the Medes and Persians. That night Belshazzar is killed, "And Darius the Median took the kingdom".

The lions' den (chapter 6). Under Darius, Daniel rises so high that rival officials look for a way to bring him down and find it only in his religion. They persuade the king to decree that for thirty days no one may pray to any god or man but the king, under "the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not." Daniel goes home, and with "his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day", as he always had. The king, trapped by his own law, sends him to the lions with a wish: "Thy God whom thou servest continually, he will deliver thee." Darius spends the night fasting and sleepless, and at dawn calls into the den "with a lamentable voice". The answer comes: "My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions' mouths". The accusers are thrown in instead, and the king proclaims Daniel's God.

The four beasts and the Ancient of days (chapter 7). The book now moves back in time and changes key. In Belshazzar's first year Daniel dreams that "four great beasts came up from the sea". The fourth is the most terrible, with ten horns and then "another little horn" with human eyes and "a mouth speaking great things". Then a court sits: "the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow". The beast is judged, and "one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven" and receives the kingdom. An interpreter explains that the beasts are kings, that the horn will "wear out the saints of the most High" for "a time and times and the dividing of time", and that in the end the kingdom will belong to those saints for ever.

The ram and the goat (chapter 8). Two years later Daniel sees "a ram which had two horns" pushing in every direction until "an he goat came from the west", moving so fast it "touched not the ground", and shatters it. The goat's great horn breaks, four take its place, and from one of them grows a little horn that reaches toward "the pleasant land" and stops the daily sacrifice. How long? "Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed." The angel Gabriel is told to explain: the ram is the kings of Media and Persia, and the goat is Greece.

The seventy weeks (chapter 9). Reading Jeremiah, Daniel understands that Jerusalem's desolation was to last seventy years. He prays a long confession on behalf of his people: "O LORD, righteousness belongeth unto thee, but unto us confusion of faces". While he is still praying Gabriel arrives, calls him "greatly beloved", and gives a new reckoning: "Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city". Within that span an anointed one will come and one will be "cut off", the city and sanctuary will be destroyed, and sacrifice will cease.

The last vision (chapters 10 to 12). In the third year of Cyrus, by the river Hiddekel, Daniel sees "a certain man clothed in linen" and is left trembling. The messenger tells him he was delayed twenty-one days by "the prince of the kingdom of Persia" until Michael came to help. Chapter 11 then unrolls a long history of wars between the king of the south and the king of the north, ending with a ruler who is checked by "the ships of Chittim", turns his rage on the holy covenant, and whose forces "shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate". Yet "the people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits."

The final chapter looks past that crisis. Michael will stand up in a time of trouble like no other, and everyone written in the book will be delivered. "And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." The wise "shall shine as the brightness of the firmament". Daniel is given further numbers of days he does not understand, told to "shut up the words, and seal the book", and dismissed with a promise: "for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days."

Why It Matters

Scholars generally hold that the book grew in stages: a collection of Aramaic court tales, legendary in origin, to which the Hebrew visions were added during the persecution under Antiochus. The visions follow the events of his reign closely, including his campaigns in Egypt and the desecration of the Temple in 167 BC, but miss the manner of his death, which is why they are dated just before it. On this reading the little horn is Antiochus, the goat's great horn is Alexander the Great, and the four kingdoms are Babylon, the Medes, Persia and the Greeks. Traditional interpretation has more often named them Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome. The one "like the Son of man" is taken by scholars to stand for the holy people who receive the kingdom. Christian interpreters have always seen in these visions Christ and the events of the New Testament.

The Greek version of Daniel is longer, with three additions, among them Susanna and Bel and the Dragon, which Catholic and Orthodox Bibles keep and Protestants set aside in the sixteenth century. Copies of the book were being read at Qumran not long after it was finished.

Its influence is hard to overstate. The final chapter holds what is called the earliest clear biblical statement of resurrection. The gospel writers and the Book of Revelation drew on it, and movements from the Montanists to the Fifth Monarchy Men of the English Civil War took their bearings from it. Isaac Newton studied it, and it has inspired artists including Michelangelo and Rembrandt.

Who Should Read It

Read it for the stories, which are among the best told in the Bible, and stay for the visions if you want to understand where so much later talk of the end of days began. It will speak to anyone trying to keep faith and integrity inside a system that asks for both to be given up.