DANIEL IS A BOOK OF PARADOXES. The first six chapters are deceptively simple stories of faith under pressure. Daniel and his three friends have been forced to leave their homeland, Israel, and settle in the Babylonian king’s palace. They are compelled to learn foreign ways in preparation to serve the government, which has made a hostile incursion against Israel and looms dangerously over that country of their birth. Each chapter brings new challenges, and each time they rise to meet the crisis. Neither Daniel nor his three friends waver in their faith or ponder their actions. They certainly seek divine help, but they are confident in their God, even if God might not preserve their lives through a trial (cf. 3:16–18). God, however, is up to the task, demonstrating his sovereignty, his power over evil human intentions, again and again. Clear and encouraging, these six stories have spoken forcefully to many believers, including the youngest of children. Many of us who grew up in the church remember the stories of Daniel as a staple of children’s Sunday school programs and vacation Bible school lessons.
Not so with the second half of the book, however! The simple division between chapters 6 and 7 masks a radical shift in genre and complexity. While children resonate with the lessons of Daniel 1–6, seasoned Bible scholars scratch their heads over Daniel 7–12 with the move from simple stories to obscure apocalyptic visions (see description and discussion of apocalyptic at the beginning of the commentary on chapter 7). The first half of the book are stories about Daniel; the second half are visions of Daniel. Even though there is a dramatic contrast in genre between the two halves of the book, however, the overall message of the book is uniform: In spite of present appearances, God is in control.1
THE BIBLE IS a book about God. Daniel is no exception; it too is a book about God. We emphasize this at the beginning because the focus of the camera, to use a film analogy, is often on the human characters: Daniel, the three friends, Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Darius, Cyrus. But we must not be misled; Daniel’s main function is to reveal God to us, the readers.
The Bible, however, is not interested in presenting its readers with an abstract understanding of the nature of God. We have little in the Bible that resembles modern systematic theology; certainly there is no listing and description of his attributes. God reveals himself in relationship with his people. We can see this in the dominant metaphors of God in the Bible. He is king, warrior, shepherd, husband, father, and mother, assuming that his people are his subjects, his soldiers, his sheep, his wife, his children.2 As we will see, the book of Daniel utilizes some of these metaphors of relationship in support of the overall theme of divine sovereignty, but here I wish to draw attention to the fact that his sovereignty is not described abstractly in this book, but in the midst of the historical process, in the nitty-gritty of life.
We can anticipate fuller treatments by simply mentioning the first few verses of chapter 1, where we see that it is really God, not Nebuchadnezzar, who is behind the Babylonian’s assertion of power over Judah. It is God, not Nebuchadnezzar and his educational and dietary regime, who is behind the extraordinary skills of Daniel and his three friends. It is God who is behind Daniel’s ability to penetrate the secret of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in chapter 2. Each chapter tells a different story, but each one is a story of divine sovereignty.
God is all-powerful, and this narration and demonstration of his power has one important purpose: the encouragement of a beleaguered people. Faithful Israelites must have suffered in exile as they remembered the good relationship that they as a people had with their God in the land of Palestine. They must have suffered as they were forced to work for the good of the nation that oppressed them. And they did suffer as they found themselves in situations where they were pressed to compromise or else face dire consequences. The message of Daniel that God is all-powerful and in control in spite of present conditions intended to present a powerful encouragement to these people.
But who were these people? Who were Daniel’s original audience? And, for that matter, who was Daniel himself? These questions lead us into the midst of one of the thorniest questions of the book.
Daniel and Its Original Audience
THE BOOK OF Daniel sets Daniel in the sixth century B.C. There is no doubt or dispute about that. Major figures from this time period, known from other biblical and ancient Near Eastern sources, play an important role in the book: Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Cyrus, as well as Jehoiakim. Daniel 1:1 is dated to the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim (605 B.C.) and the latest references include one to the “first year of King Cyrus” (1:21; 539 B.C.) as well as that great king’s third year (10:1; 537 B.C.).
Details of this period as they relate to the text will be given at the appropriate place. However, briefly, the sixth century was a crucial moment for God’s people and an interesting epoch in the history of the ancient Near East. In terms of the latter, the beginning of the book of Daniel coincides with Babylon’s rise on the dust of the Assyrian empire. Nebuchadnezzar’s incursions into Palestine from his command center in Riblah, Syria, coincide with Babylon’s bid to push Egyptian power out of the region. Under Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon grew stronger and stronger and reached the height of its power. After his death, that power slowly dissipated, though there were interesting moments under such rulers (not named in the book of Daniel) as Neriglissar and Nabonidus (for the latter’s association with Belshazzar, see comments on Dan. 5). On the horizon lurked the developing power known as Persia, beginning in the middle of the sixth century to expand its imperial pretensions. Under Cyrus Persia finally took Babylon in 539 B.C.
With this crucial date we can turn to the story of Israel, more specifically the southern kingdom of Judah, in the sixth century. The year 539 B.C. was an important one for God’s people because with the ascension of Persian power came a change of policy toward subjugated peoples. While the Babylonians exiled the leaders of captured peoples like the Judeans to utilize their skills and resources at the center of the empire, the Persians felt it better to return these people to their homeland. The exile from which the Israelites returned in 539 B.C. began in earnest in 587/586 B.C., though earlier incursions are documented in 597 and, as we argue in the commentary on Daniel 1:1–3, in 605 B.C.
Of course, the setting of material like what we have in Daniel 1–6 does no more than give us the earliest date for the composition of the book. Nowhere do these chapters claim that Daniel or anyone else wrote them. There is no claim for a sixth-century date of the book. They are accounts about the sixth century, not necessarily compositions of the sixth century.
The same may be said of the last six chapters of the book, but here there is a wrinkle. As mentioned above, these chapters contain prophecies by Daniel. The prophecies are recounted in the first person, but note that there is a third person frame. For example, the second section begins: “In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream, and visions passed through his mind as he was lying on his bed. He wrote down the substance of his dream. Daniel said …” (7:1–2a). The composition of the final form of Daniel 7–12 likewise, therefore, makes no claim on a sixth-century composition.
However, we cannot use these textual facts to escape an exegetical problem that has plagued the study of the book of Daniel for many years. Though the prophecies have a third person frame, they are delivered by Daniel in the first person and therefore make an implicit claim to originate in the sixth century. The prophecies themselves, in other words, require a sixth-century setting, and here is the problem.
The issue concerns the fact that the first six chapters, while presenting themselves as historical narrative, are surrounded by issues of historical accuracy, while the second six chapters, which are prophecy, are uncannily accurate and precise through the second century B.C., at least up to a definite point. To many, these facts appear to result from a second-century date of composition, where some of the historical persons and events of the Babylonian and Persian periods are a bit murky, while the more recent events of the Greek period are well known and clear. In other words, chapters that present the events of the third and second centuries B.C. as prophecy appear to have been written after the fact, and we can recognize the attempts at real prophecy by their failure to predict accurately (see the extended discussion in connection with the prophecy of ch. 11).
The conundrum is that faithful interpreters find themselves on two sides of the debate. On the one hand, there are those who believe it is necessary to stick to a sixth-century composition. Others feel that the text drives them to a second-century date, and if they believe that the Bible is the Word of God, they must then struggle with the theological issue of a book that, at least on the surface, attempts to deceive its audience into thinking it is prophesying future events when in reality it is casting the past into a future tense.
One attempt to get around this conundrum is to point to the well-established use of pseudonymity in the ancient Near East.3 Indeed, such pseudonymity was well practiced and often involved no attempt at deception. The original audience knew what the author was doing.4 However, I would argue that this approach fails when applied to the book of Daniel. The only way that Daniel’s intention as demonstrated in the text can be achieved is by duping the audience. In other words, in prophecy given after the fact (vaticinium ex eventu) the idea was to convince the audience that the prophet was a true prophet to whom God had revealed the future. After showing that by predicting events that had already passed, then there was an attempt at a real prophecy. This is more than a literary device, and one must question whether such a textual strategy would find a place in God’s Word.
This should not, however, obscure the extent of the difficulties of promoting a sixth-century date. The historical problems in the first part are real, and the solutions to some we can only speculate about (see commentary). Moreover, there are problems that need to be addressed at the end of chapter 11, when the prophecy appears to fail. We will provide another explanation than a late date at that point in the commentary, but we will not glibly push the problem under the rug.
These are difficult issues that will divide faithful interpreters for years. We must resist the temptation to turn this issue into a simple litmus test. Some argue that anyone who holds to a sixth-century date is a hopeless “fundie” who refuses to look at the evidence. Others will brand those who opt for a second-century date as “liberals” or “compromisers.” I know that there will be reviewers of my work and approach who will view me as softminded or softhearted on this issue, but I argue that it is an unhelpful simplification to categorize on the basis of someone’s conclusions on this matter. At the very least, we need to look at the motives and arguments behind the conclusions as well as at the treatment of the text in the light of the commentator’s conclusions on the date of the book.
In view of the evidence and in spite of the difficulties, I interpret the book from the conclusion that the prophecies come from the sixth century B.C. I find the problems amenable to hypothetical solutions and the theological issues of a late date difficult to surmount. However, two brilliantly insightful commentators on the book would strongly disagree with me. J. Goldingay interprets the book as finally redacted in the second century B.C. (for a description of this century, see the commentary on Daniel 11), but at the same time he is motivated by a strong desire to follow the teaching of the text. He also clearly believes in the supernatural universe presented by the Bible and does not doubt that God can speak about the future. Furthermore, as we look below the surface of Sibley Towner’s excellent contribution on Daniel,5 we note that he understands the book to be divine self-revelation, even though he categorically denies the possibility of the type of prophecy we find in the latter part of the book. To simply rule out these two theologically astute interpreters on the basis of their late date of the book would be a tragedy.6
In short, while the present commentary still finds a sixth-century date defensible, it refuses to discount all those who interpret from a second-century date. We agree with J. Baldwin, also an eminent interpreter of the book of Daniel,7 who in one of her last publications before her death stated: “The fact that the standpoint of the writer (sixth or second century B.C.) cannot be ascertained for certain does not greatly affect the interpretation.”8
Bridging Contexts
THE ISSUES SURROUNDING the relevance and application of the Old Testament to our lives and society at the turn of the third millennium A.D. is complex and debated. How does a text that was originally addressed to an audience in the sixth century B.C. retain its significance? Many Christians have difficulty relating to the Old Testament because of its distance from our lives. I would describe the book of Daniel’s distance from us in three areas:
(1) Chronological. The book of Daniel was written over two and a half millennia ago. Times change. I recently watched a television show about America in the 1950s and was struck by how different life was in my youth than it is now, and there we are only speaking about forty years.
(2) Cultural. Daniel was addressed to Israelites living in Babylonian exile. The world of Daniel was an ancient Near Eastern world. Our Western culture is completely different, and even current Middle Eastern cultures bear only the slightest resemblance to the world in which Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar lived.
(3) Redemptive-historical. Perhaps here is where Daniel and the whole Old Testament are strange to Christians. In a word, Daniel lived in the world before the coming of Christ. We live looking back on his earthly ministry, death, and resurrection. Christians find the New Testament more immediately applicable for obvious reasons.
That there is continuity between the New Testament and the Old Testament is obvious to anyone who reads the Bible. The New Testament is saturated with Old Testament references. It builds on the foundation of the Old, and there are a number of passages that strongly assert its continuing validity. Perhaps most notable is Jesus’ affirmation of the Law and Prophets (a first-century A.D. way of referring to what we know as the Old Testament):
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matt. 5:17–20)
Jesus then goes on to talk about some specific ethical issues from the Old Testament, and the amazing thing is that, while he affirms the Old Testament teaching on murder, adultery, divorce, and so forth, he subtly transforms that teaching to something more internal and demanding. Adultery is not just sleeping with a woman; it is lusting after her. Murder is not just physically killing another person; it is anger toward another. Some would argue that Jesus draws a distinction not with the Old Testament teaching, but with human tradition that had grown up around the law, but I don’t think a careful reading of the Sermon on the Mount in the light of the Old Testament can sustain that analysis. As we read the New Testament, there is neither strict continuity (as theonomists would insist) nor discontinuity (as some dispensationalists would have it), but rather both continuity and discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments.9
Sorting out continuity and discontinuity cannot be reduced to a formula or simple principle. We have to ask questions about the transformation of culture and the movement of redemptive history. We will sort these issues out as we deal with specific passages in Daniel.10 However, here we may introduce a couple of major issues that will affect our approach throughout.
Christ, the Center of Biblical Revelation
THE BIBLE IS a book about God. It is God’s self-revelation, and as we have seen, the book of Daniel masterfully demonstrates God’s sovereignty over his people’s past, present, and future. God’s sovereignty infuses his people with confidence and hope in the midst of a difficult world. When Daniel’s original audience read the book, they were given a new vista on their situation and their God.
Christians need to read the Old Testament from the perspective of the original audience, to be sure. But it would be a mistake to stop there. After all, we have received further revelation, and this further revelation casts its illuminating light back on the Old Testament. Saint Augustine captured what I mean with his well-known and catchy phrase: “The New Testament is in the Old concealed, and the Old Testament is in the New revealed.”
The point is that continuing revelation has not imparted new meaning to the Old Testament but has illuminated the richer meaning of many texts that were not clear to the Old Testament people of God. Though debated, I believe this is what 1 Peter 1:10–12 indicates:
Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.
Perhaps most illustrative of the point I am making are two comments made by Jesus after his resurrection. His disciples were in a quandary about the events surrounding his death. They did not understand what was happening. How could their leader, in whom they had invested such hopes, end his life in such an ignominious way? Jesus chides two different groups of his followers in two different, but similar passages:
He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. (Luke 24:25–27)
He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.”
Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. (Luke 24:44–45)
Most Christians would affirm that a handful of passages in the Old Testament predict Christ’s coming in a spectacular way. If asked, they would point to the promise of the virgin birth in Isaiah 7, a reference to the “Anointed One” or Messiah in Psalm 2, and a few other passages. If we looked closely at these passages, we would see that they too have an Old Testament setting and are not messianic in a narrow sense. However, the point I want to emphasize is that Jesus’ words invite a much broader understanding of how the Old Testament anticipates his coming. In Luke 24 Jesus speaks in global terms (“Moses and all the Prophets,” “all the Scriptures,” “the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms”). As we read the Old Testament, we can read it with the expectation that we will encounter Christ there.11
This principle can be and often is abused. It is wrong to take a short passage of Scripture out of context and twist it until some vague connection with Christ is seen. It is dangerous to read the Old Testament in the light of the New before first reading the Old Testament in its original context. But it is equally incorrect for a Christian to neglect to read the Old in the fuller light of the New Testament. After all, the Bible, while composed of many different writings from many different time periods, is ultimately one organic revelation, whose author is God himself. We would naturally expect that later revelation will more fully disclose the truths of earlier Scripture. We will operate with this principle in the commentary that follows. Of course, the reader will have to judge whether we have persuasively shown how Christ is anticipated in a particular passage or whether we have fallen into the trap of pressing the case too strongly.
“Go Thou and Do Likewise”: Do We Follow the Example of Daniel?
AS WE STUDY the book of Daniel, we expect to hear God’s story. The book is filled with human characters and actions, but God is the subtle background character. We have also just argued that the Old Testament, including Daniel, is not just a theocentric book, but also a Christocentric book. Christ is anticipated in the Old Testament and proclaimed in the New. By emphasizing what might be called the theological message of the book, we avoid a common fallacy—a purely moralistic approach to the Old Testament. Most sermons and teaching on the book err by falling into the trap of simply turning Old Testament characters into heroes and villains: “Be like Daniel!” or “Don’t be like Belshazzar!” Such teaching removes the focus of the biblical book from the intended main point, God, and thus misses the power of the passage.12
There is a further pitfall for which we need to account. Daniel 1–6 is historical narrative; it tells us what happened to Daniel and his three friends in the Babylonian and Persian courts. Is it legitimate to assume that just because Daniel is a hero of the faith that his actions are presented as normative for all time? When the question is presented baldly in this manner, the answer is certainly no. Just because Daniel acted in a certain way does not mean that his actions are instructions to how we should behave today. Daniel’s vegetarian diet in the first chapter certainly should not have us pushing meat away from our tables. We don’t have to pray in an upstairs room or in a room with windows (6:10) to pray sincerely. We must be very careful not to fall into the trap of saying that Daniel’s actions are necessarily normative for our actions.
However, neither are they totally irrelevant. The Bible is not only a theological book; it is also an ethical book. The Old Testament historical books are not just there to teach us what happened in the past or about the nature of God in the abstract, but also intend to shape our emotions and our actions.13 God could have given us a philosophical or theological treatise if his goal was to simply inform us about his nature, but instead he gave us his Word in the form of stories and poems that evoke the whole person—will and emotions as well as intellect. That the Old Testament narratives have a didactic intention14 is suggested by the preface to Psalm 78:
O my people, hear my teaching;
listen to the words of my mouth.
I will open my mouth in parables,
I will utter hidden things, things from of old—
what we have heard and known,
what our fathers have told us.
We will not hide them from their children;
we will tell the next generation
the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD,
his power, and the wonders he has done.
He decreed statutes for Jacob
and established the law in Israel,
which he commanded our forefathers
to teach their children,
so the next generation would know them,
even the children yet to be born,
and they in turn would tell their children.
Then they would put their trust in God
and would not forget his deeds
but would keep his commands.
They would not be like their forefathers—
a stubborn and rebellious generation,
whose hearts were not loyal to God,
whose spirits were not faithful to him. (Ps. 78:1–8)
The “parables” that follow in Psalm 78, which have as their intention obedience, are stories from Israel’s past, mostly behavior to avoid. History can have a didactic function, and Old Testament history’s lessons continue in an important sense in the New Testament period as well. After reminding his readers of the crossing of the Red Sea and the desert wandering, Paul asserts: “Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did” (1 Cor. 10:6). Throughout the New Testament, different historical episodes of the Old Testament are recited to serve as paradigms of behavior in the post-Christ period (e.g., Heb. 11:4–40; James 5:10–11, 16–18).
However, warnings about simple appropriation of the Old Testament are crucial. The chronological, cultural, and redemptive-historical distance must be taken into account as we adjudicate the application of an ancient text to a modern situation. Readers of this commentary will have to judge for themselves whether I have persuasively charted the course through the potential pitfalls, but, as discussions in the specific chapters will underline, they can be sure that I am aware of the dangers both of neglecting this important aspect of the biblical text as well as blindly assuming that the ancient text provides normative role models and principles of living for us today.