Today, I am reading and commenting on Daniel 11-12.

The bulk of chapter 11 seems to be a prophecy of Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian Empire and then of the wars between the successor states which arose after his death.  Some claim that it was written after the events of those wars.  Those latter persons say that it does not accurately reflect the events, but looks like what the people living in the area around Judea would have perceived to have happened and thus reflects that it was written by someone living around the time of the Maccabees.  I have not studied what we know to have historically happened between the Ptolemaic successors to Alexander in Egypt and the Seleucid successors based near what is now Syria enough to compare this prophecy to those events.  As I read it, it does not seem to intend to be a detailed account of the events of the war.  Rather, it seems to be intended to relate the chaos of such dynastic battles, and their pointlessness.  Then at the end of chapter 11 it talks about the last, or one of the last, of the Seleucid kings, who tried to completely wipe out the worship of Yahweh (or, perhaps, “just” merge it into the official “cult” of his empire).  It tells us that he will use flattery to turn to his side those who had already violated God’s covenant, but those who know God will resist him.  Indeed those who are wise will instruct others in the knowledge of God, despite being persecuted for their faith.  It seems to me that this part of the prophecy is the centerpiece of the prophecy, with what comes before serving the explain how so many became distracted from God’s truth.  The passage even tells us that some of the wise, who should have known better, will stumble, but that God will refine them and bring them back to Himself.  In many ways, I think this prophecy is meant to be a warning for us today just as much as it was for the people who first heard it.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

I have created a Patreon page for those who would like to support me in writing these blog posts every day: https://patreon.com/AttilaSoldus

Today, I am reading and commenting on Daniel 9-10.

Central to my thinking about today’s passage is verse twelve in chapter ten.  There the messenger who came to Daniel in the second of his two visions in today’s passage (I am unsure as to whether this is Gabriel, who had spoken to him in his earlier visions) said to Daniel, “Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. ” The first part of this is that Daniel, in both his prayer in chapter nine, and again in chapter ten, sought to do two things.  He sought to gain understanding, and he humbled himself.  The first is only possible if we do the second.  When we go before God with prayers and supplications, we must humble ourselves.  That means acknowledging out sins, and turning from them.  It means acknowledging that God will not answer our prayers because we deserve it, but solely because He is merciful.  We do not deserve the good things God gives to us.  There is another thing for us in that quote above.  God will set His answer in motion from the moment we begin to humble ourselves and to seek His face.  That answer may be delayed for many reasons, but God sets His answer in motion immediately.  We need to patiently remain in a state of supplication until we receive His answer.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

I have created a Patreon page for those who would like to support me in writing these blog posts every day: https://patreon.com/AttilaSoldus

Today, I am reading and commenting on Daniel 7-8.

Almost always when I read this passage I get caught up in the imagery and meaning of the beasts in the visions.  However, today my attention was caught by the finale of the first vision and the explanation of that finale.  The first part of that finale is the “Ancient of Days” taking His seat on His throne.  Daniel is explaining what he asked of the angel who offered to interpret the vision said that the Ancient of Days came and pronounced judgement.  Clearly, the Ancient of Days is God the Creator of the Universe.  Now, back to the vision.  At the end of the vision Daniel said that “one like a son of man” came with the clouds of heaven and was lead into the presence of the Ancient of Days.  Then He was given authority and sovereign power, all peoples and nations worshiped Him.  Further it says that His is everlasting and will not pass away.  So, this one who was brought into the presence of the Ancient of Days is also God.  This is perhaps the strongest Old Testament passage supporting the concept of the Trinity.  The “one like a son of man” in this passage was God.  I believe that He was, and is, Jesus Christ.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

I have created a Patreon page for those who would like to support me in writing these blog posts every day: https://patreon.com/AttilaSoldus

Today, I am reading and commenting on Daniel 5-6.

I usually write something about the account of the writing on the wall because there are so many lessons for us there.  However, today I want to focus more on the account of Daniel being thrown into the lion’s den.  What I am going to write is not new or novel.  When Darius decided to make Daniel chief administrator over his kingdom, the existing bureaucrats tried to find something which would give them leverage over him.  When they could not find anything, they came up with a new law making his prayers to God illegal.  This wasn’t just because they knew he would not stop praying to God.  It was also because they knew that praying to God was part of the basis for why he did nothing which they could hold over him.  In fact, the reason they felt threatened by Daniel was because he refused to do anything which they could hold against him.  The important lesson is that Daniel did not behave in a manner that gave them nothing to hold against him because he was following the laws of the land.  He did nothing they could hold against him because he was following God’s laws.  We should follow Daniel’s example and live so that the only thing people can hold against us is our obedience to, and worship of, God.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Daniel 3-4.

I want to take note of what Daniel says at the end of interpreting Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in today’s passage.  He tells Nebuchadnezzar that he hopes Nebuchadnezzar will renounce his sins and wickedness by being kind to the oppressed so that his prosperity might continue.  So, Nebuchadnezzar’s dream was a prophetic dream, it was a message from God about what God was going to do.  God was going to bring judgement against Nebuchadnezzar.  Daniel tells Nebuchadnezzar that if he repents, God will choose not to execute the judgement He predicted with this dream.  This reinforces what other prophets have said when they said that if the wicked turn from their sins when they hear a prophecy that God will bring judgement against them, God will withhold that judgement.  This should also remind us that if the righteous turn to wickedness after God has prophesied good things for them, God will withhold those good things and bring judgement.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Daniel 1-2.

There are two stories in today’s passage.  The first is about how Daniel and his friends sought to honor God by not eating foods which violated the laws He had given them.  The second is about Nebuchadnezzar’s dream.  In the first story, Daniel and his friends chose to eat only vegetables and drink only water because there was no meat available to them which did not violate God’s laws (the meat available to them had probably also been part of an idolatrous sacrifice, but that isn’t spelled out in the passage).  Daniel and his friends were not healthier because they ate only vegetables, nor because they did not overindulge (in food and wine), as the other young men probably did.  They were healthier because they chose to honor God.

In the second story, Nebuchadnezzar chose not to reveal what he dreamed to his “mystics” because he realized that they would use the way he described the dream to make up a “meaning” for the dream which was whatever they thought he wanted to hear.  However, the “mystics” were not wrong to tell Nebuchadnezzar that what he was asking was impossible.  There is no way for someone to interpret a dream if they do not know what the dream was.  I find it interesting that Daniel and his friends were included in the execution order, but had not been included in the initial request to interpret the dream (I may speculate about what that tells us about the way Nebuchadnezzar’s court worked another time).  In any case, when Daniel learned of Nebuchadnezzar’s edict, his response was to pray, and to request his friends pray as well.  When God revealed Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, and its interpretation, to Daniel, he refused to take credit for it.

From the first example, we may not see how following God’s instructions will have good consequences for us, but doing so will lead to our greatest joy.  From the second example, as Jesus said in Matthew, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”  God may have placed something in front of us which we are incapable of accomplishing.  Remember that with Him, all things are possible.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Daniel 11-12.

This is a difficult passage to read and understand.  It begins by describing the rise of Alexander the Great and the division of the empire he built into four parts.  Part of what makes it hard to follow is that it glosses over historical events in ways which make it hard to know where in the historical timeline the parts of this vision are.  For example: at the beginning it talks about a king arising in Persia who will “stir up everyone against the kingdom of Greece.”  Now there are two issues here.  The Persian king who first invaded Greece was Darius, but the passage appears to be referencing his son Xerxes.  The second issue is that Greece was not a single kingdom at that time, but rather an amalgam of city-states.  I will discuss why that is not the problem some would make it out to be in a moment.  It follows talking about the Persian king who stirred people up against Greece by mentioning a king who will arise and do as he pleases.  The fact that it then tells us that after the death of this king his kingdom would be split among four kings suggests that it is referring to Alexander the Great.  Now if you read this passage and did not know history, you might think that king was instead a Persian king.  I use the above as an example of how the writer glosses over details of history in a way which those who know the history in detail will find problematic, but which convey the flow of that history.  As we read this passage we get a feel for the way in which the land of Israel, and the people who lived there, got caught in the battles between the Seleucid Dynasty in Persia and the Ptolemaic Dynasty in Egypt.  This vision was not intended to give a detailed account of the future.  It was intended to remind those who lived through those troubling times that God had a plan for that future and that events would turn out according to what He had ordained.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Daniel 9-10.

When Daniel realized that Jeremiah had prophesied that the Exile would last seventy years, and that seventy years had almost passed, he began to pray.  I was struck today by the part of Daniel’s prayer where he said, “We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy. ”  We do not pray and expect God to answer our prayers because of our righteousness.  In fact, as Daniel’s prayer makes clear, we are sinful and deserving of God’s judgement.  We expect God to answer because He has said that He will and because we know that He is merciful.  And even though Daniel expected God to answer his prayer, before he made his request of God he acknowledged that he and the Israelites had sinned and deserved God’s judgement.  We need to follow Daniel’s example and both confess and repent of our sins before we put our petitions before God.  I realized something else as I wrote this.  The phrasing I used about us expecting God to answer us suggests that I think we have the right to expect an answer.  That is not the case.  God is under no obligation to answer our prayers.  God answers our prayers out of His great mercy, not because we deserve those answers.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Daniel 7-8.

When I was younger these two visions were among my favorite passages in the Bible.  I felt that as the events described came to pass we would see how they predicted the future.  I still believe that they describe a time in Daniel’s future, but now I think their meaning for us is more complicated than demonstrating God’s ability to reveal the future.  Which means I find them challenging to write about.  Today I want to write about the first vision.  There are four beasts mentioned and their descriptions seem bizarre.  The first one is described as a winged lion, which has its wings torn off, is stood up like a human and given a human mind.  The second looks like a bear, but is raised up on one side.  Then we are told it has three ribs between its teeth.  I have always assumed that to mean that it has the ribs of some animal in its mouth that it is chewing on, but it struck me today that perhaps they were supposed to be thought of like baleen in the mouth of a baleen whale (if you don’t know what I mean, go look up baleen whales).  Even without the ribs part I have trouble forming a picture of this beast in my mind (what does it mean by “raised up on one of its sides”).  The third beast looks like a leopard with four bird wings and four heads.  That is a strange look, but at least one that I can fully imagine in my head.  The final beast I always imagine as looking something like a tunnel boring machine.  Although, I struggle with the ten horns.  I wonder if we were intended to be able to visualize these beasts, or if it was more to just metaphorically compare them? (kind of a lion, kind of a bear, kind of a leopard, and some kind of monstrous mechanical beast).

Now, I have typically seen these four beasts compared to empires which existed sequentially.  The winged lion was seen as the Babylonian empire, the bear as the Persian empire, the leopard as the Hellenistic empires (Alexander the Great and the four empires built by his successors), the fourth beast as the Roman empire.  The problem is that when the fourth beast is destroyed the other three are allowed to live for a time after that, although stripped of their power.  The only part of the understanding of this vision which I grew up with which fits my understanding today is that Jesus’ kingdom represents the end of the rule of these four beasts.  I was hoping that as I wrote the above I would develop some further insight into the meanings of these four beasts, but that did not happen.  The only thing which I have to add at this point is that each of these beasts are supposed to give us insight into living in this world and our tendency to focus solely on the fourth beast interferes with us fully comprehending the meaning of this vision.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Daniel 5-6.

Reading the account about the writing on the wall, I was again struck by something which I had never thought about before.  It’s not that I never noticed, just that I never thought it noteworthy.  When the fingers appeared and began writing on the wall, the ruler of Babylon, Belshazzar, was terrified.  I had never really thought about it because fingers appearing and starting to write would be somewhat frightening in any case.  Today, it struck me, the writer thought it necessary to point out that Belshazzar was terrified.  That suggests that there was more going on than just the fingers appearing.  Which led me to think about the fact that the writers tell us that he was deliberately committing sacrilege against the God of the Israelites by using goblets taken from the temple in Jerusalem to drink from while praising other gods.  To me this suggests that Belshazzar understood that the writing represented judgement against him, despite the fact that he could not read it.  This is confirmed for me when he became even more frightened when his “wise men” could not read the writing.  Those “wise men” would have been well trained in the lore surrounding the gods whom Belshazzar acknowledged so that, if the writing was from one of those gods, they should have been able to read it.  So, Belshazzar knew the message even though he was unable to read what was written.  The message of Belshazzar’s fear is the same as what Paul writes in the first chapter of Romans, God’s qualities have been known such that people are without excuse.  Later in the passage, Daniel even tells Belshazzar that he knew about God, and still refused to be humble before Him.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.