God sends Isaiah to Judah before Israel’s fall to Assyria (740 B.C.).
God sends Jeremiah to Judah before and during Judah’s fall to Babylon (627 B.C.).
God sends Ezekiel to Judah in exile in Babylon (593 B.C.).
God sends Daniel to Judah in exile in Persia (553 B.C.).
The Book of Daniel clearly belongs to that period among God's covenant people known as the Babylonian Captivity. Nebuchadnezzar took captives from Judah on three separate occasions, beginning in 605 B.C. Among this first group taken were Daniel and his companions.
Daniel had his first vision forty years after Ezekiel became a prophet. Ezekiel referred to Daniel three times as an example of righteousness and wisdom.
Babylon rebelled against the Assyrian Empire in 626 B.C., and then overthrew the Assyrian capital of Nineveh in 612 BC. Babylon became master of the world when it defeated Egypt at the battle of Carchemish in 605 B.C. Later that year, the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar took control of Jerusalem and took many of its citizens as hostages to Babylon, a group that included the young Daniel.
Daniel served for the entire Babylonian captivity as a prophet and government official. He continued on after the Medes and Persians overcame Babylon in 539 B.C. Zerubbabel led a return of the Jews to Jerusalem in the first year of Cyrus, and Daniel lived and ministered at least until the third year of Cyrus (536 B.C.).
Sharing:
- This was the last straw. They were facing the full penalty for how awful they had been towards the poor, the foreigners, and even their own children. But more than that, they had ignored and mocked the God who loves them.
- So what happened? Did He leave them? Were they forsaken in their exile?
- In whatever situation, no matter how bad God is there. He’s there in our sin, in our failure, in our success, in this time of uncertainty. We CAN trust God, He IS and will always be with us and lead us where HE wants us to go. We can trust Him and have our doubts lead us to His strength and to prayer.
Kings of Judah
- Jehoiakim (Eliakim), for eleven years.
- Jehoiachin (Jeconiah, Coniah), for three months.
- Zedekiah (Mattaniah), for eleven years.
Prophets
The contemporary prophets of Daniel are:
- Jeremiah, in Jerusalem, and finally in Egypt.
- Ezekiel, living about fifty miles from Babylon on the River Chebar.
When you think of the prophet Isaiah, think of the Messianic prophet. When you think of the prophet Jeremiah, think of the prophet of judgment. When you think of the prophet Ezekiel, think of the prophet of restoration. While the prophet Ezekiel wrote as a priest, Daniel served as the political prophet of the exile. Ezekiel referred to Daniel three times as an example of righteousness and wisdom. Even before he became a writer, his life reflected faith, prayer, courage, and consistency and never did he compromise.
Sharing:
- Daniel was a man of God. How do we know? He prayed, even when there was a risk to do so. He was good looking and intelligent (chapter 1). He was humble. If he was asked, he probably would say he wasn’t great, but rather God was. He was fearless, committed to God and to his friends, and untouchable because of God.
- In Daniel 6:5 the king admits that Daniel is above reproach. This is a challenge to us: will our lives bring the same reaction from the world?
Empires
· Babylon
Under King Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel, along with his three friends, were given a place of service in the king’s court. The king ended up having a dream that his magicians could not give or interpret, so all the wise men, including Daniel and his friends, were to be destroyed. But God enabled Daniel to tell the king his dream, and also to interpret it. Before he revealed it to the king in his presence, Daniel gave all the glory to God.
The image the king had in his dream stood for four world empires: Babylon, Medo-Persian, Greek, and Roman. At the time Nebuchadnezzar dreamed his dream, the Persian Empire did not exist. It was just a Babylonian province. Only wandering tribes inhabited the Grecian states. The city of Rome was only a little town on the banks of the Tiber River.
Babylon fell to the Persian Empire twenty-three years after the death of Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel was in his eighties when Cyrus was king of Persia. Darius was ‘sub-king’ of the Babylonian region now under Persia.
· Medo-Persian
Daniel was in his eighties when Cyrus was king of Persia. The confusion between King Cyrus and Darius is usually settled by understanding that Darius was a ‘sub-king’ under Cyrus. He is described as king over the realm of the Chaldeans (Daniel 9:1), whereas Cyrus is referred to as king of Persia (Daniel 10:1).
Daniel still had enemies, but they still could not fault him. The king’s one hundred governors probably knew that he would not stop praying to his God, so they had the king sign a decree that no one would be permitted to request anything from any god, or from any man, except the king for thirty days. Daniel continued to pray with thanksgiving, as was his custom (Daniel 6:10). Without checking the reason behind the request of his officials, the king made a bad promise. Daniel was thrown into a den of lions, but he fell into the hands of the living God! He was as safe as his friends had been in the furnace. The king, who had fasted and mourned all night for Daniel, found him unhurt in the morning, because he believed in his God (Daniel 6:23). This experience brought King Darius into the light of the knowledge of Daniel’s God.
Sharing:
Under Cyrus the Persian, the elderly Daniel continued in his high office as one of three presidents, with one hundred and twenty princes under them. He was most likely one of the king’s counselors responsible for sending the Jews and their temple treasures back to Jerusalem.
Ezra 1:1-4 indicates that when Cyrus the Persian captured Babylon in 539 B.C., the way was opened for the Jews to return to their homeland. This was sixty-seven years after Jeremiah had prophesied the return.
The book of Daniel was originally written in two languages. Chapters 1:1-2:4 and chapters 8-12 were written in Hebrew, the language of God’s covenant people, Israel. The message largely shows God’s future plan for His people. Chapters 2:4 (end of verse)-7:28 were written in Aramaic, the language of the Gentile world in Daniel’s day. The message of these chapters is largely historical, showing God’s dealing with the Gentile empires.
The content of Daniel’s historical narratives is not a connected historical discourse, but is separate units placed together for a specific purpose. The narratives do not give a history of Israel under Babylonian or Persian rule, nor do they give a biographical history of Daniel and his friends.
God’s Story through Daniel is an Old Testament book that emphasizes the truth that God is in control of world history. The book falls naturally into three main sections:
- Introductory information about Daniel (chapter 1).
- Narratives about Daniel and his friends during their days of captivity among the Babylonians and the Persians (chapters 2-7).
- Daniel's dreams and visions concerning the future of Israel and the end of time (chapters 8-12).
The common thread is an emphasis on the way the absolute sovereignty of God operates in the affairs of all nations. This is demonstrated in the promotion of Daniel and his friends in the court of King Nebuchadnezzar; how they are saved in the fiery furnace; in Nebuchadnezzar’s humiliation; in Belshazzar’s feast and fall; and Daniel in the lion’s den.
Jerusalem may be destroyed with its temple in ruins. God’s people may be in exile, and wicked rulers may seem victorious, but God remains supreme. God is greater than all circumstances, and His people should be true to Him in whatever situation they find themselves.
History is not under the control of other gods, nor can its mystery be discovered by human manipulation. God is totally free to direct and reveal history as He pleases. According to His sovereign pleasure He will intervene among the kingdoms of this world and establish a universal kingdom that will endure forever.
Daniel chapter 1 sets the stage for the rest of the book by introducing Daniel and his three friends, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. These four young Hebrew men were taken captive in one of the Babylonian raids against Judah in 605 B.C. Intelligent and promising, they were placed in special training as servants in the court of King Nebuchadnezzar. Then their names and diets were changed to reflect Babylonian culture in an attempt to take away their Jewish identity. But Daniel and his friends rose to the challenge, proving their Jewish food was superior to the diet of the Babylonians. The young men increased in wisdom and knowledge, gaining favour in the king's court.
Sharing:
- Daniel’s friends were given pagan names and lived in a pagan culture. Can we honor God like them? We live in a very pagan culture with many ‘gods’ like them. It is easier to live according to the cultural patterns.
- The friends faced death and still said, “God is able.” They still trusted Him even if the results were not as desired. It takes a huge amount of faith to trust in God’s control and the bigger picture in those circumstances.
- Nebuchadnezzar was a secular humanist: “Look at the city that I built!”
In Daniel chapters 2-7 Daniel and his friends met several additional tests to prove that although they were being held by a foreign empire, the God whom they worshiped was still in control. Daniel's three friends refused to worship the pagan Babylonian gods. Cast into the fiery furnace, they emerged unharmed through God's miraculous protection. Daniel , refusing to bow down and worship Darius, the king of Persia
This second section also establishes Daniel as a skilled interpreter of dreams through God’s intervention. He interpreted several visions and dreams for King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, and his successor Belshazzar. As he revealed the meaning of the mysterious “handwriting on the wall”, he made it plain that the Medes and the Persians would defeat the Babylonian Empire. This happened exactly as Daniel predicted (Daniel 5:13-31). He continued as a servant in the court of the conquering Persian king.
Daniel chapters 8-12 contain predictions of times in the future that will be of particular importance for God’s people. Although the Jews were persecuted during the time of their subjection to Babylonian and Persian rulers, there was no widespread and systematic attempt to abolish their faith. This did not happen until the time of Antiochus IV, who named himself “Epiphanes”, and ruled in the Greek (Seleucid) Empire from 175-164 B.C. Antiochus tried to force the Jews to accept the Greek culture and to abandon their religious practices. Many Jews submitted, but others refused and suffered severe persecution. One of the major reasons for writing the Book of Daniel was to prepare God’s people for the time of Antiochus Epiphanes and to give them encouragement for this period of persecution. At the same time the book looks to the coming of the “Anointed One” (Daniel 9:25) – sometimes translated “Messiah”. It is this King who will destroy all human kingdoms and establish His eternal kingdom of righteousness and peace.
Sharing:
- All the prophecies of Daniel are meant to show the power of God over nations and time.
- Some of the more specific prophecies are to the Israelites during the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. He was an emperor who hated the Jews and destroyed the temple after he drove a pig into the Holy of Holies. God spoke through time to warn and comfort His people.
- He is the God of all ages and Ruler over events in this world. All things meant for evil will be turned to God’s purposes for His glory.
- God is with us. He gave us His Word to reveal Himself to us.
- And the God of Daniel is strong and loving, all-knowing and kind. He warns and loves His children, and even in punishment, He reaches out to them.
A major contribution of Daniel’s message arises from its nature as ‘apocalyptic’ prophecy. Highly symbolic in language, the prophecy was related to the events of Daniel's near future. An ‘apocalypse’ is a form of literature. It has a particular written structure and form. The prophets were told to speak what they were told or had seen. Apocalyptic literature is presented in the form of visions and dreams and its language has hidden meanings and is symbolic. The images of apocalyptic literature are often in the form of fantasy, rather than of reality. Most of the apocalypses are in written form, so they were very formal. There was a strong tendency to divide time and events into neat packages. There was also a great fondness for the symbolic use of numbers. There are different views regarding the use of these numbers, so we should be careful when thinking through the symbolic use. Any reference to numbers, like “Seventy sevens [weeks]” in Daniel 9:24, may or may not be a continuous sequence or as having time intervals between them.
In apocalyptic prophecy, these close-at-hand and further-removed dimensions of the future, often blend into each other. An example of this is the figure of Antiochus Epiphanes, prominent in chapters 8 and 11 of Daniel’s message. In these passages the prophet Daniel moves from the nearer figure, who was to desecrate the Jewish temple in 168 B.C., to his appearance at a remote time in the future as a stubborn, vicious, and deceitful king (Daniel 8:23, GNT). This interplay between the near future and the distant future makes it difficult to interpret the book accurately.
In addition to its prophetic contribution, the Book of Daniel portrays a time in biblical history when miracles were abundant. Other periods when miracles were commonplace included the times of Moses, Elijah, and Elisha. In each of these periods, God was working in a spectacular manner to show His power and bring about a new era in His saving relationship to mankind.
Although I heard, I did not understand. Then I said, “My lord, what shall be the end of these things?”
And he said, “Go your way, Daniel, for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end. Many shall be purified, made white, and refined, but the wicked shall do wickedly; and none of the wicked shall understand, but the wise shall understand” (Daniel 12:8-9).
When the time is right, the righteous shall understand what is going on! Until then, let us avoid speculating and be encouraged with the closing words in Daniel 12:13 (GNT): “And you, Daniel, be faithful to the end. Then you will die, but you will rise to receive your reward at the end of time.”
Our next two sessions takes us into God’s messages through the twelve Minor Prophets. Prepare to share about the first three: Hosea, Joel, and Amos.
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