Daniel

Overview

Daniel is two books in one. The first six chapters are stories of four young men taken from Jerusalem to Babylon, and how they lived faithfully in a court that expected them to bow. The last six are visions given to Daniel himself, of empires rising and falling and of a kingdom that will not.

Both halves argue the same thing: the God of Judah has not lost. Judah is defeated, the temple is looted and its king is a prisoner, and the book opens by saying that the Lord gave Jehoiakim into Nebuchadnezzar’s hand. The exile is not God’s failure; it is His doing, and He rules the empires that carried it out.

Background

Babylon took Judah in stages. Daniel came in the first deportation, around 605 BC, as a youth of the royal line; Jerusalem itself fell in 586. He served under Nebuchadnezzar and his successors, and was still in office when Babylon fell to the Medes and Persians in 539 — a career of some seventy years under two empires.

Chapters 2:4b through 7:28 are written in Aramaic, the working language of the empire, with the rest in Hebrew. The Aramaic section is the one about world kingdoms; the Hebrew sections speak more directly to Israel.

Key themes

• God is sovereign over kings and empires, and He removes them and sets them up.
• Faithfulness is lived out in small, costly decisions — the food, the window, the prayer.
• God is able to deliver, and He is God whether He delivers or not.
• Pride brings kings down; Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar are both made to learn it.
• History is going somewhere: a kingdom that shall never be destroyed.

Outline

1. Four young men in BabylonChapter 1

   Taken, renamed and re-educated, they ask for vegetables rather than defile themselves with the king’s meat.

2. The dream of the imageChapter 2

   A statue of four metals broken by a stone cut without hands.

3. The fiery furnaceChapter 3

   Three men refuse to bow, and a fourth is seen walking with them in the fire.

4. Nebuchadnezzar humbledChapter 4

   The king is driven out to live as an ox until he acknowledges heaven rules.

5. The writing on the wallChapter 5

   Belshazzar’s feast, the fingers of a hand, and Babylon taken that same night.

6. The lions’ denChapter 6

   Daniel prays with his windows open, as he always had, and is shut in with lions.

7. Beasts and a ram and a goatChapters 7–8

   The same empires again, now as animals, and the Son of man given an everlasting dominion.

8. Seventy weeksChapter 9

   Daniel prays over Jeremiah’s seventy years and is given a longer measure still.

9. The final visionChapters 10–12

   Kings of the north and south, a time of trouble, and the dead awaking — some to everlasting life.

Key passages

• Daniel 1:8 Daniel purposes in his heart not to defile himself.
• Daniel 2:31-45 The image of gold, silver, brass and iron, and the stone that fills the earth.
• Daniel 3:17-18 "Our God is able to deliver us... but if not, we will not serve thy gods."
• Daniel 4:34-37 Nebuchadnezzar’s reason returns and he blesses the Most High.
• Daniel 5:25-28 MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN — weighed and found wanting.
• Daniel 6:10 Daniel prays three times a day, as he did aforetime.
• Daniel 7:13-14 One like the Son of man comes with the clouds of heaven.
• Daniel 9:24-27 The seventy weeks, and Messiah cut off.

Christ in Daniel

Daniel 7 gives Jesus the title He used for Himself more than any other: the Son of man, who comes with the clouds and receives a kingdom that shall not pass away. He quoted this chapter at His trial, and the high priest understood exactly what He was claiming. The stone cut without hands in chapter 2 breaks every kingdom and fills the earth; the fourth figure in the furnace walks with His people in the fire.

Reading it

• Read chapters 1–6 as one story of a life, not six separate lessons — the same man is older in each.
• In the visions, notice how often Daniel is frightened and does not fully understand. You are in good company.
• Keep Jeremiah 25 and 29 nearby: the seventy years Daniel prays over in chapter 9 are from there.