Daniel eBook

By John C Jeske

What is the book of Daniel about? Who was Daniel in the Bible?As a young man, Daniel was among the first of the Jews to be deported to Babylon in exile. A man of great faith, he held important government positions during the difficult time of Israel' s captivity. Through Daniel, God showed his exiled people what the future would hold and he reminded his people that he would care for them in every situation.Want to learn more? If you' re wondering what the book of Daniel is all about, this helpful resource is for you!Daniel is a reliable Bible commentary. It' s down to earth, clearly written, easy to read and understand, and filled with practical and modern applications to Scripture.It also includes the complete text of the book of Daniel from the NIV Bible. The Christ-centered commentaries following the Scripture sections contain explanations of the text, historical background, illustrations, and archaeological information. Daniel is a great resource for personal or group study!This book is a part of The People' s Bible series from Northwestern Publishing House.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Northwestern Publishing House
• Release date: Jul 1, 1985
• ISBN: 9780810025288

Book preview

The People’s Bible

Daniel

John C. Jeske

NORTHWESTERN PUBLISHING HOUSE

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Cover art by Frank Ordaz.

Interior illustrations by Glenn Myers.

Map by Dr. John Lawrenz.

Covers of first edition volumes and certain second edition volumes feature illustrations by James Tissot (1836–1902).

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

The NIV and New International Version trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires the permission of International Bible Society.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—except for brief quotations in reviews, without prior permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Card 84–62090

Northwestern Publishing House

1250 N. 113th St., Milwaukee, WI 53226–3284

© 1985 by Northwestern Publishing House

ISBN 0–8100–1181–6

CONTENTS

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Editor’s Preface

Introduction to Daniel

God’s man in the king’s court (1:1–21)

Four passing empires and a new everlasting kingdom (2:1–49)

The golden image and the fiery furnace (3:1–30)

The king’s boast and his madness (4:1–37)

Belshazzar’s dinner—and his doom (5:1–31)

Daniel in the lions’ den (6:1–28)

Four beasts, four kingdoms, and an eternal ruler (7:1–28)

Two frightening eras ahead for God’s people (8:1–27)

The prophecy of the seventy sevens (9:1–27)

Supernatural powers in conflict over God’s people (10:1–11:1)

The most detailed prediction in Scripture (11:2–45)

A final word of cheer (12:1–13)

Bibliography

ILLUSTRATIONS

The statue in the dream

Portrait of Daniel

The fiery furnace

The writing on the wall

MAP

The four kingdoms

EDITOR’S PREFACE

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The People’s Bible is just what the name implies—a Bible for the people. It includes the complete text of the Holy Scriptures in the popular New International Version. The commentary following the Scripture sections contains personal applications as well as historical background and explanations of the text.

The authors of The People’s Bible are men of scholarship and practical insight, gained from years of experience in the teaching and preaching ministries. They have tried to avoid the technical jargon that limits so many commentary series to professional Bible scholars.

The most important feature of these books is that they are Christ-centered. Speaking of the Old Testament Scriptures, Jesus himself declared, These are the Scriptures that testify about me (John 5:39). Each volume of The People’s Bible directs our attention to Jesus Christ. He is the center of the entire Bible. He is our only Savior.

The commentaries also have maps, illustrations, and archaeological information when appropriate. All the books include running heads to direct the reader to the passage he is looking for.

This commentary series was initiated by the Commission on Christian Literature of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod.

It is our prayer that this endeavor may continue as it began. We dedicate these volumes to the glory of God and to the good of his people.

INTRODUCTION TO DANIEL

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Historical Background

The book of Daniel was written on the historical background of the Babylonian captivity of the Jewish people. To appreciate what this fascinating book has to say, we will need to remember that centuries earlier God had raised up the descendants of Abraham to become the united and powerful kingdom of Israel. Sad to say, Israel’s glory years did not last long. Under the reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon this united kingdom lasted for a little more than a century.

A split in the kingdom of Israel occurred in 931 B.C., when the ten northern tribes broke away and formed a kingdom of their own. This northern kingdom, also known as Israel, lasted about two hundred years. During those two centuries, Israel was ruled by 19 kings (20, if you include one pretender to the throne), and all of them were wicked in the sight of God. In his judgment upon this unbelieving and rebellious people, God let the Assyrians invade the homeland of the northern tribes, defeat them on the field of battle, and lead them off into the Assyrian captivity, from which they never returned.

Now all that was left of God’s ancient people were the two tribes to the south, with their capital at Jerusalem. This remnant, known as the kingdom of Judah, continued for about 350 years after the split in the kingdom (from 931 B.C. to 586 B.C.). Like her sister nation to the north, Judah had 19 kings (again there was a 20th, a royal pretender), of whom God considered eight to be good kings. Although the people of Judah had the temple, the earthly dwelling place of God, in their midst, with its beautiful and meaningful worship services designed by God himself, they failed to appreciate their blessings. They were indifferent to the Word and will of Jehovah, their Savior-God. They ignored and sometimes even persecuted the prophets God sent to speak to them. More and more, they began to resemble the heathen nations around them.

True to his word, God sent a fearful judgment on the nation of Judah and its capital city of Jerusalem. Over a 20-year period, beginning in 605 B.C., the armies of Babylon invaded Judah three times, smashing Judah’s armies, plundering and destroying their cities, and leading tens of thousands of Jews, including Daniel, into exile in Babylon. In 586 B.C, the city of Jerusalem, with its beautiful temple of Solomon, was destroyed (2 Kings 24:1–25:30; 2 Chronicles 36; Daniel 1:1, 2). The Babylonians remained the leading world power for only about three-quarters of a century. They were toppled by the Medo-Persian Empire under King Cyrus in 536 B.C.

Significance of the Exile for the Jews

The destruction of Jerusalem and the violent uprooting and transplanting of the Jews into exile was a bitter experience for God’s ancient people. Its immediate result was to put an end to the independence of the Jewish nation. But the exile involved still more. In the Old Testament the people of God actually formed an earthly kingdom, which took its place alongside the other nations of the ancient world. This nation of Israel enjoyed the special guidance and protection of God. We call this a theocracy (government by God). Ancient Israel was God’s chosen nation. He established his earthly dwelling place on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. He revealed his sacred secrets directly to no other ancient nation, but only to Israel. As Psalm 147:19, 20 states:

He has revealed his word to Jacob,

his laws and decrees to Israel.

He has done this for no other nation;

they do not know his laws.

Israel’s kings were God’s servants, whose prime responsibility was to keep the nation loyal to Jehovah. This theocracy came to an end when the Jewish nation was led into exile. It was never restored. Even though after 70 years in exile the Jews were permitted to return to Jerusalem, the theocracy was not reestablished. Only a very small group of exiles returned, and the government they established was little more than a Persian puppet. Jerusalem’s walls and its temple were rebuilt by the returning exiles, but the old order of things was gone forever.

In spite of suffering the judgment of God in exile, however, Israel remained the nation through which God chose to carry out his good intentions toward humanity. A new order of things would come with the Deliverer that God had promised to send from the royal line of David. In him God’s rule would reach its high point. Through the work of the promised Messiah, God would gather his special people, his sons and daughters—no longer from just one nation, but from all nations on earth.

The Lot of the Exiles in Babylon

With the defeat of Judah’s armies and the collapse of her government, tens of thousands of Jewish citizens were forced into exile. A century and a half earlier, the Assyrians had led the Northern Kingdom of Israel into exile, and that conquered nation had never recovered; it had simply ceased to exist. Would the same thing happen to the much smaller Southern Kingdom?

Through the prophet Jeremiah, God had foretold that the nation of Judah would not be extinguished in Babylon, but that after 70 years the Jews would be permitted to return from exile to their homeland (Jeremiah 25:11; 29:10). But even if they believed this promise of God, most of the deportees realized that they would not live long enough to see their homeland again.

What was life like for the exiles in Babylon? One would naturally expect that being forced to live as a captive in a foreign land a thousand miles away from home would be hard, and it was. It would not be correct, however, to imagine that living in Babylon was like living in a slave labor camp. The picture we get is that life in exile was not totally unpleasant for the Jewish exiles.

The prophet Ezekiel speaks about a settlement of Jewish exiles near the Kebar River, an important irrigation canal. It seems possible that farming was the livelihood of many of the exiles. They had their own homes, enjoyed freedom of movement, and carried on correspondence with people in their homeland. The Babylonians granted their captives a considerable measure of liberty. They were permitted to form colonies and to keep their religious institutions of priest and prophet. Before Jerusalem fell to the armies of Babylon, the prophet Jeremiah had urged the citizens to prepare for an exile of 70 years. He told them, Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters.… Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper (Jeremiah 29:5–7). Many of the Jews actually grew so prosperous during the exile that years later when they had the opportunity to return to Jerusalem, they chose to stay in Babylon.

In spite of these factors, living in exile must have been especially difficult for the believing Jews. The man who wrote Psalm 137 put into words the heartache that the Jewish believers felt, as well as their longing for God’s house in Jerusalem, now lying in ruins:

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept

when we remembered Zion.

There on the poplars

we hung our harps,

for there our captors asked us for songs,

our tormentors demanded songs of joy;

they said, Sing us one of the songs of Zion!

How can we sing the songs of the LORD

while in a foreign land? (verses 1–4)

Being uprooted violently from the land of their birth was a shock, although one can argue that it ought not to have been a complete surprise. Throughout the history of Israel, God’s spokesmen, as early as Moses, had warned the Jews that if they consistently ignored Jehovah and his good will, he would uproot them and scatter them among the nations (Deuteronomy 28:36, 37, 63–68). But now, when Judah’s finest young men and women were deported, when the Jews saw their splendid temple looted and destroyed, when they saw their capital go up in flames, they were shocked and shaken.

What hurt all the more was that God’s gracious promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had been tied up with the nation of Judah. And now that chosen nation was the victim of a disaster from which no nation had ever recovered. If the nation of Judah went under, would God’s promises be canceled?

In the face of this, even the believing Jews needed God’s help in the Babylonian exile. They needed help in understanding that for the faithful, this act of God’s judgment was not a condemning judgment but a purifying one. The believing Israelites needed God’s help to make sense out of the apparent contradiction that a holy God would seemingly allow a wicked nation to have its way in the world. The believing exiles needed to have God speak to them in Babylon. And God did speak.

Message

The book of Daniel is more than Jewish national literature. It is not a series of folk legends passed down from generation to generation and finally put into writing. The book of Daniel claims to be divine revelation. Revelation is that miracle by which God pulls back the veil and shows human beings truths that they could not have known otherwise. The writer of the book of Daniel states repeatedly, The mystery was revealed … in a vision.… The revealer of mysteries showed … what is going to happen (2:19, 29). The writer of the book claims that by means of dreams and visions God showed what would happen in the future (7:1; 8:1; 10:1) and that God’s messenger then interpreted the dream or the vision (8:16) to give the writer insight and understanding (9:22).

When God through the book of Daniel lifted the veil and showed the exiles what the future held, the picture they saw was not entirely pleasant. Although the exiles would be permitted to return home from their captivity, the nation of Israel would never again be powerful or prominent. Heathen world powers would dominate the international scene. About 536 B.C. Babylon would be overthrown by the Medo-Persian Empire, whose power would be unchecked for two centuries, until Greece’s famous Alexander the Great became the world conqueror. God revealed, furthermore, that Alexander’s sudden death would unleash a struggle for power among his successors, and that this struggle would mean bloodshed and persecution for the descendants of the Jews. By comparison with the heathen world powers, the people of God indeed seemed insignificant and powerless.

But throughout the book of Daniel, God also revealed the truth that all earthly kingdoms would, one after the other, go down to defeat and disgrace. The God of Israel is superior to the gods of the heathen. His rule, and only his, is lasting. And his people will share in his final victory over all enemies. World powers may have their day, but God will have the last word.

The message of the book of Daniel was a comforting message for the people of God to hear. It still is. At the time of the exile, it was a sobering warning for God’s enemies to hear. It still is.

Author

Unlike other prophets (see Isaiah 1:1; Jeremiah 1:1), the book of Daniel contains no heading or clear statement calling Daniel its author. Yet the book does point to Daniel as the author. We have here a situation something like that of the first five books of the Old Testament, in which Moses often writes of himself in the third person, as does Daniel here.

At times Daniel refers to himself in the first person: I, Daniel, had a vision (8:1); I, Daniel, understood from the Scriptures … that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years (9:2). If Daniel is named as the one who received the divine revelation recorded here, then it follows that he is the author.

The question Who wrote the book? is settled finally for us by Christ himself. Quoting from the book of Daniel, Jesus referred to the words as being spoken … through the prophet Daniel (Matthew 24:15). Both the Jewish and the Christian churches have for centuries agreed that Daniel wrote this book during the sixth century B.C.

For a number of reasons, many Bible scholars prefer to think that the book of Daniel was not written by Daniel, and not in the sixth century B.C., but by an unknown author, some pious Jew, in the second century B.C. At the heart of the debate about the date of the book is the matter of predictive prophecy, since Daniel frequently refers to events in the distant future. Many scholars reason as follows: It is impossible for any human being to predict events that lie in the future; therefore, a book that contains such predictions must have been written after the events which it predicts. But if we believe that the God who controls the future chose to reveal to Daniel events that were still in the future, then there is no valid reason for contesting the book’s claim to be the record of the life and visions of Daniel himself.

Daniel the Man

More is known about the writer of the book of Daniel than about any other Old Testament prophet. He was one of the group of bright young men who were the first to be deported to Babylon (1:1–6), to be trained for important positions in government. These young men came from the king’s family and from the most distinguished families of Israel.

Daniel is described in the Scripture as a man of great faith, a son who was steadfastly loyal to his heavenly Father. Ezekiel, a contemporary of Daniel, mentions Daniel along with Noah and Job as an example of a God-fearing man (Ezekiel 14:13, 14, 19, 20). Although he was surrounded by the corruption of the Babylonian royal court, Daniel remained faithful to the God of his fathers. He maintained the honor of the true God in heathen Babylon, with the result that even heathen kings sang the praises of Israel’s God (2:47; 4:34, 35; 6:25–27). Daniel was a gifted young man to begin with, but in addition God endowed him with the special ability to interpret dreams, as well as with the gift of supernatural prophecy.

Daniel the Civil Servant

God accomplished great things for his people through Daniel. He permitted Daniel to be taken to Babylon much earlier than the main groups of captives. Daniel had been in exile eight years when the Babylonians deported ten thousand soldiers and craftsmen (2 Kings 24:12–14 ), and 19 years by the time of the main captivity and the destruction of Jerusalem. This allowed Daniel the opportunity to be promoted to a position in the government from which he could work for the welfare of his people. The Jews who were deported to Babylon naturally expected their lot to be hard. Apparently, this was not the case for most of the exiles, as has been mentioned previously. Daniel may very well have been responsible for this. Unlike the prophet Ezekiel, Daniel lived at the royal court.

After the years of captivity were over, Daniel may have had much to do with helping the captives return to their home without delay. In spite of the fact that a complete change of government had taken place and he himself was an old man, Daniel still held a position of influence. He may even have been used by God to persuade Persian King Cyrus to issue the decree authorizing the Jews to return to their homeland.

In the course of the events described in the first six chapters of the book, we see a change in Daniel from a very young man, very likely in his teens, to a very old one, perhaps in his 80s.

Language

The 12 chapters of the book of Daniel are written in two languages. The section from 2:4 through chapter 7 is written in Aramaic. The rest is Hebrew.

Hebrew was, of course, the language of the Jews, and those portions of Daniel’s book intended especially for the Jews were given to them in their language. Aramaic, a member of the Semitic family of languages and thus closely related to Hebrew, was the official language of much of the Near East at the time of Daniel. It was the language of diplomacy and of commerce in the ancient world, just as English is the universal language today. Those portions of Daniel’s prophecy that speak of God’s judgment on the world powers were written in Aramaic, the language which the nations of the world could understand.

Outline

The book of Daniel is a fascinating portion of God’s Word, written to teach us. Chapters 1 to 6 make up the historical section of the book. They describe historical events in Babylon over a period of about 70 years.

Chapters 7 to 12 make up the prophetic section. They record a series of dreams God gave to Daniel, visions of future events.

PART ONE

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God’s Man in the King’s Court

(1:1–21)

Daniel 1:1–2

1 In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. ²And the Lord delivered Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the articles from the temple of God. These he carried off to the temple of his god in Babylonia and put in the treasure house of his god.

The year was 605 B.C. In the Middle East the Assyrian Empire was in decline; a half-dozen years earlier its proud capital, Nineveh, had fallen. For more than a decade, Babylon¹ and Egypt had each been struggling to replace Assyria as the leading world power. In early summer of 605 B.C. these two powerful enemies met in battle at Carchemish (2 Chronicles 35:20; Jeremiah 46:2), an important city situated on what is today the border between Turkey and Syria. Babylon won a decisive victory over Egypt (2 Kings 24:7). This changed the entire course of world history and greatly affected God’s people.

The Babylonian commander who engineered the crushing defeat of Egypt was the young crown prince, Nebuchadnezzar, destined to become king after his father’s death later that summer. Shortly after the battle, he led his armies south about 400 miles (perhaps following retreating remnants of the Egyptian army) and attacked Jerusalem.

Daniel identifies the year as the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah at that time. Critics of the Bible claim to have found a contradiction between this statement and the statement of the prophet Jeremiah that the battle of Carchemish took place "in the fourth year of Jehoiakim" (46:2). The apparent discrepancy can be explained by the fact that ancient historians commonly used several different systems for computing the length of a king’s reign.²

Jehoiakim, third last king of Judah, was a wicked king. Although he was the son of pious king Josiah, he did evil in the eyes of the LORD (2 Chronicles 36:5). The prophet Jeremiah, who lived during Jehoiakim’s reign, characterized him as having his eyes and heart set only on dishonest gain, on shedding innocent blood and on oppression and extortion (Jeremiah 22:17). We can see one particularly flagrant example of Jehoiakim’s wickedness when he burned up the scroll of Jeremiah’s prophecy because it predicted God’s judgment on Judah and her wicked king (chapter 36). The king’s conduct is all the more evil in view of the fact that his primary task as Israel’s king was to keep her citizens loyal to Jehovah, their Savior-God.

Nebuchadnezzar’s purpose in his first campaign against Judah and Jerusalem was not to destroy the nation and its capital, but rather to frighten the people into surrendering their independence and thus to make Judah a vassal state of Babylon. It was in Babylon’s interest to have a reliable buffer state between her and Egypt.

The Lord delivered Jehoiakim … into his hand. It was not Babylon’s military muscle, but the Lord, who was responsible for delivering wicked King Jehoiakim into the hand of the Babylonians. It is significant that God is referred to here not as LORD (Jehovah), the Old Testament name that describes him as the Savior, but as the Lord, the name that describes him as the sovereign Master and Ruler of all. Jehoiakim must have surrendered peacefully, because the Babylonians permitted him to rule over Judah for another eight years.

According to the heathen view, Babylon’s victory over Judah showed that Bel, the Babylonian god, was superior to Jehovah, Israel’s God. To announce this, Nebuchadnezzar carried some of the sacred vessels and equipment from Jehovah’s temple in Jerusalem back to Babylon and placed them in Bel’s temple. A century earlier the prophet Isaiah had predicted this would happen (39:6); now his prophecy was being fulfilled: The time will surely come when everything in your palace … will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left, says the LORD.

Daniel 1:3–7

³Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring in some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility—⁴young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve in the king’s palace. He was to teach them the language and literature of the Babylonians. ⁵The king assigned them a daily amount of food and wine from the king’s table. They were to be trained for three years, and after that they were to enter the king’s service.

⁶Among these were some from Judah: Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. ⁷The chief official gave them new names: to Daniel, the name Belteshazzar; to Hananiah, Shadrach; to Mishael, Meshach; and to Azariah, Abednego.

Another demand that Nebuchadnezzar made of the puppet government in Jerusalem was that some of the brightest young Jews be deported to Babylon, to be trained for government service. To be chosen for this honor, the young men, probably in their teens, had to meet some rigid qualifications. To begin with, they had to be members either of the royal family or of one of the distinguished families of Israel. Josephus, Jewish historian of the first century A.D., claims that all four of the young men mentioned here were from the royal family, although the Bible is silent about this.

The young men chosen for special training had to be young men without any physical defect, handsome.… If they were to be a credit to the king’s court, they had to have a pleasing appearance. Some of the physical qualifications that the prospective government servant had to meet are illustrated by an ancient Babylonian text. It discourages anyone from seeking a high office who has any imperfection of limb or of countenance, whose eyes are not sound, who has any teeth missing, who has lost a finger, whose countenance has a sickly look or who is pimpled (G. Contenau, Everyday Life in Babylon and Assyria, page 281).

In order to study the literature of Babylon, the young men were going to have to learn a language much different from their native Hebrew, a language written not with letters representing individual sounds of the alphabet but with wedge-shaped characters representing various syllables. These young men, therefore, had to be intelligent and quick to understand. It has been suggested that their three-year course of study probably included training in astronomy and astrology, mathematics (the ancient Babylonians had divided the circle into 360 degrees and the hour into 60 minutes), natural history, mythology, agriculture, and architecture. The best students would undoubtedly be picked for important positions in the government.

The statement among these were some from Judah seems to imply that the young men chosen for training in Babylon came from various countries that Nebuchadnezzar had conquered.

Put yourself in the place of the four young Jewish men. In the prime of their young adulthood they were snatched from home and family and friends and plunged into a heathen culture. Yet even in this apparent tragedy we can see the opportunity God was giving these young sons of his to fulfill one of the purposes he had had in mind in raising up the nation of Israel. Israel was to serve as a light to the nations, to spread the reputation of the one true God.

Very soon these teenagers had some unusual decisions to make. In particular, they had to react quickly to three major changes the heathen Babylonians wanted to introduce into their lives. As has been indicated, they were to immerse themselves in the study of a heathen culture. Second, they were to adopt heathen names, to help them establish a new identity in their new homeland. We can recognize the meanings of their Hebrew names; each name contains one of the names of Israel’s God. El is one of the Hebrew names for God; the element -iah is an abbreviation of the Hebrew name Jehovah. Daniel means God is my Judge; Mishael means Who is what God is? (Who is comparable to God?); Hananiah means Jehovah is gracious; Azariah means Jehovah helps me. The meanings of their new Babylonian names have not been satisfactorily identified, although it seems that the first syllable of Daniel’s new name is the name of the god the Babylonians considered to be the ruler of earth.

The third demand that the Babylonians made of the four young Jews was that they eat heathen food. For the three years of their training they were to eat and drink a daily amount of food and wine from the king’s table.

How did the young men react to these changes? The first one caused no problem. The four men realized that they had been transplanted by God into a heathen culture and that, following the example of Moses, who had been educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians (Acts 7:22), they could learn the language and literature of Babylon without believing its falsehoods.

Nor did the young men protest when their names were changed. God had placed them under the power of the Babylonians; the heathen Babylonians could call them whatever they wanted. It was a different matter, however, with the third requirement made of the young Jews.

Daniel 1:8–13

⁸But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with