I am SUPER excited for this book!
We all love Daniel. If you grew up in church, the stories from the book of Daniel were some of the first Bible stories you heard.
What Sunday School child doesn’t know about Shadrach, Meshach, & Abednego in the fiery furnace or Daniel in the Lion’s den?
I mean, who doesn’t think it’s incredibly cool to walk in fire or pet lions?
But there is much more to Daniel than these amazing miracles, vegan fasting, gold statues, an insane king, and handwriting on the wall. Indeed, Daniel is one of those books where it is easy to miss the forest for all of the fascinating trees.
Not this time. This time, we’re going to see the forest too.
A LITTLE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Daniel was taken to Babylon in the first wave of deportations in 605 BC. That group was the cream of the crop; the most intelligent, healthy, good-looking, poised people of noble birth. And young too, probably just in their teens and 20’s.
The book was likely compiled near the end of Daniel’s life based on journals he had kept and the various dreams and prophecies he had recorded. It covers the future of Israel from Daniel’s life to the time of Christ, and with such accurate detail that many modern “critical scholars” reject that it could’ve possibly been written before those events transpired. But Jesus Himself affirms Daniel as the writer in Matthew 24:15.
You should know that the book of Daniel is written in 2 original languages. Chapters 1 and 8-12 are in Hebrew. Chapters 2-7 were written in Aramaic which was the international trade language of the time. When you read those chapters, you might ask yourself why it would be important to have them accessible to people of many languages.
There is one key idea in Daniel: Kingdom.
We will see the rise and fall and rise and fall of many earthly kingdoms in this book. But the most important one is the “everlasting kingdom” of Yahweh.
Another helpful thing is that Daniel is divided into 2 neat halves:
- Stories about Daniel (ch.1-6)
- The 4 Visions of Daniel (ch.7-12)
Right above chapter 1, verse 1 in my Bible I have written the following reminder. You may want to write it in your Bible too.
“Daniel wrote for captive Jews, not 20th or 21st century Christians.”
It helps me remember to not try to shoehorn my modern thinking into the text.
DANIEL 1 – Getting Started in Babylon
When Daniel and the other elite young people of Judah were rounded up to be taken to Babylon, the Babylonians also plundered the Temple and took the most valuable vessels of silver and gold. They put the vessels in the temple of their god. This was pretty standard practice in the ancient world. Remember how the Philistines put the captured Ark in the temple of Dagon? It was a way of showing that the people of one god had conquered another.
Ancient people:
👳🏽♂️ MY god is more powerful than your god.
🧔🏾 Oh yeah?
👳🏽♂️ Yeah!
🧔🏾 You wanna try to prove it, Punk?
👳🏽♂️ It’s on!
Remember the vessels. They’re gonna come up later.
I find it curious that we call Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah by their Babylonian names, but we call Daniel by his Hebrew name instead of the Babylonian name given to him.
- Hananiah (Yahweh has favored) > Shadrach (possible meanings: little friend of the king, command of Aku, rejoicing in the way, illumined by the sun-god)
- Mishael (Who is like God) > Meshach – they kept the first syllable but swapped out El for the name of their goddess Shak/Sheshach [Gaia, Mother Earth, Venus] to get the name Meshach which means “Who is like Shak?”
- Azariah (Yahweh has helped) > Abednego (servant of Nego). Nego was the Babylonian god of fire. In the Chaldean version of Isaiah 14:12, the name Lucifer [the shining one] is translated as Nogea, which is the same as Nego [see Jamison, Fausset, and Brown commentary on Daniel 1].
- Daniel (God is my judge) > Belteshazzar (Bel’s prince). Bel was the Babylonian chief god.
The Babylonians attempted to rewrite reality by renaming these young men. They removed Yahweh from their names and put the names of their 4 most important deities in His place:
- Aku, the sun-god ☀️
- Shak, the earth-god 🌍
- Nego, the fire-god 🔥
- Bel, the chief god 👑
These weren’t name changes just because the Babylonians found Hebrew hard to pronounce. Azariah is literally being called “the servant of Lucifer.” This is basically name-calling as spiritual warfare. Every name is an intentional insult directed at Yahweh and his servants. It’s a very real attempt to change their identities. And that is an area where the kingdom of darkness STILL makes its opening attacks.
Every name change is like the Serpent in Eden saying, “Did God really say?” Each one is meant to make the name-bearer question which deity is more powerful; the gods of Babylon whose magnificent temples stand proudly, or the God of Israel whose temple has been pillaged and whose people have been captured? What do the facts suggest?The names are meant to make the young men get their eyes off the promises of God given by the prophets (of restoration and peace after the judgement on Jerusalem). The goal is to make them doubt the LORD and come into agreement with what the current circumstances suggest is the truth.
But they don’t conform.
And in the margin of my Bible next to verse 14 I have this quote, “Any dead fish can float downstream. It takes a live one to swim against the flow.” 🐟
Daniel and his friends do not “go along to get along,” but neither do they raise a big public fuss and demand to have their dietary preferences honored and a Kosher kitchen set up for them. They respectfully push back and choose to become vegetarians rather than accidentally consume meat that would defile them.
DANIEL 2 – Nebuchadnezzar Has A Dream
Imagine working for a boss who expects the impossible. Some of you may not have to imagine too hard. Nebuchadnezzar either can’t remember the dream he just had, or he refuses to tell as a test of the power of his soothsayers and magi. He calls together his advisors and asks them to tell him what it was and what it meant.
“The king’s demand is impossible! No one except the gods can tell you your dream, and they do not live here among people.”
Daniel 2:11 NLT
And in a fit of arrogant rage, ‘Nezzar is about to have them all executed. Daniel and his friends are on the royal advisory committee and so sentenced to death.
“When Arioch, the commander of the king’s guard, came to kill them, Daniel handled the situation with wisdom and discretion. He asked Arioch, “Why has the king issued such a harsh decree?” So Arioch told him all that had happened. Daniel went at once to see the king and requested more time to tell the king what the dream meant.”
Daniel 2:14-16 NLT
They’re likely getting either tied up or may even be facing soldiers who have drawn their swords, about to strike. And Daniel is as cool as a cucumber. Completely focused and level-headed. He doesn’t seem to be thinking about himself and his impending death at all. He is thinking about Nebuchadnezzar and genuinely wants to help him.
Think about this for a second. This is THE Nebuchadnezzar. The man who laid siege to Jerusalem, killed the king, looted the temple of Yahweh, deported the best and brightest in Judah – ripping Daniel away from his home, and possibly even had Daniel emasculated (he was under the charge of the chief of the eunuchs, after all). Nebuchadnezzar is a wicked man. He worships pagan gods. He is arrogant and violent and as demanding as a petulant child. By all the usual metrics, he is the enemy of the Jews.
Daniel was living out “love thy enemy” before the Gospels were written.
Daniel and his friends did something that none of the other magicians and sorcerers did. They prayed to Yahweh. And when the dream and its interpretation was revealed to Daniel, he stopped to praise and thank the LORD.
The dream foretells the next 650 (ish) years of history, from that moment to the establishment of the Kingdom of God at the time of Christ; and also hints at the future beyond that.
It’s important that we be VERY careful about reading an interpretation into this dream that isn’t there. Daniel explains some things very clearly.
- Head of gold = Babylon
- Chest & Arms of silver = the kingdom that follows Babylon (Persia)
- Abs & Thighs of bronze = the kingdom that follows next (Greece)
- Legs of iron with feet of iron and clay = the 4th kingdom (Rome)
I have been a student of the book of Daniel since I was about 14. I’ve heard a LOT of interpretations of the feet and toes. And I think some of the interpreters may be making the mistake of putting themselves in the middle of the interpretation. Remember what I wrote at the beginning of Daniel:
“Daniel wrote for captive Jews, not 20th or 21st century Christians.”
Let’s look VERY closely at the text about the 4th kingdom.
The “it” is the 4th kingdom. The toes of iron and clay are “it”- the 4th kingdom. The text only ever speaks of a 4th kingdom, not a 5th one. “Those kings” in verse 44 are the kings of the 4th kingdom. They cannot be kings of any other kingdom because no other kingdom has been introduced in the text.
Many readers want this dream to be about us in America the 21st century SO BAD that we project ourselves right into the text. And that leads to interpretations that separate the feet from the legs and stretch them into our future.
This is not a complicated interpretation.
The 4th kingdom was Rome. Rome was a divided kingdom. I asked Google to list the ways in which the Roman Empire was divided.
Division was the key characteristic of the Roman Empire. And we know from history that the emperors and generals did attempt to consolidate power through politically advantageous marriages. Julias Caesar notably gave his daughter Julia in marriage to his political rival Pompey the Great in order to cement an alliance. Mark Antony married Octavia, sister of Augustus, before Augustus became Caesar to resolve a power struggle.
That’s the Caesar Augustus in Luke chapter 2 who sent out a decree that all the world should be taxed when the stone that was cut out without hands was born into the world.
In the days of those kings… Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero… that’s when the God of Heaven set up a Kingdom that will never be destroyed. The Church was born.
And it’s interesting that Rome was a Republic and didn’t even have kings until Augustus. The timing is exact.
The Babylonian Empire is gone.
Persia, Greece and Rome too.
The only things left of them are ruins for tourists to visit and whatever documents and artifacts the archaeologists can find to fill museums.
🏛️🏺📜🪔⚱️
In the dream, the stone didn’t hit the statue, then go away til a new statue assembled then come back and hit it again. The usual interpretation I hear of the stone striking the statue in the feet is that it is about Jesus returning to topple the kingdoms of this world; probably 10 of them.
And Jesus is 100% coming back. And He will 100% topple the kingdoms of the world. And, perhaps there will even be exactly 10 kingdoms at that point. But I don’t 100% think this dream is about that.
The destruction of the 4 empires in the image is in the past. It has already happened. It’s not something we are still waiting for– ten toes not excepted.
Not so for Daniel and his audience. This was all future to them. They weren’t looking for a second-coming of Christ when He hadn’t even come the first time yet.
The more I consider it, I think this dream ends with the first coming of Christ.
Modern person: Ugh. Well, why is it even in the Bible if it isn’t about ME and MY perspective?
The first coming of Christ was to the exiles what the second coming is to us:
RESCUE.
🪑
The 4 kingdoms in the image are gone. The Kingdom of Christ is still here. Jesus, the stone cut out without hands, is still growing into a mountain that fills the whole earth as more nations hear the Gospel.
To The Reader 