Daniel, Volume 30 (30) (Word Biblical Commentary) [Revised] 9780310526155, 9780310526162, 0310526159

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WORD BIBLICAL COMMENTARY

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Editorial Board Old Testament Editor: Nancy L. deClaissé-­Walford (2011–) New Testament Editor: Peter H. Davids (2013–)

Past Editors

General Editors Ralph P. Martin (2012–2013) Bruce M. Metzger (1997–2007)

David A. Hubbard (1977–1996) Glenn W. Barker (1977–1984)

Old Testament Editors John D. W. Watts (1977–2011)

James W. Watts (1997–2011)

New Testament Editors Ralph P. Martin (1977–2012)

Lynn Allan Losie (1997–2013)

Volumes 1 Genesis 1–15. . . . . . . . . . . . Gordon J. Wenham 2 Genesis (16–50) . . . . . . . . . Gordon J. Wenham 3 Exodus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John I. Durham 4 Leviticus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John E. Hartley 5 Numbers** . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Philip J. Budd 6a Deuteronomy 1:1–21:9, Second Edition. . . . . . . Duane L. Christensen 6b Deuteronomy 21:10–34:12. . . . . . . . . . Duane L. Christensen 7a Joshua, Second Edition . . . . . . . Trent C. Butler 7b Joshua, Second Edition . . . . . . . Trent C. Butler 8 Judges. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Trent C. Butler 9 Ruth–­Esther . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Frederic W. Bush 10 1 Samuel, Second Edition. . . . . Ralph W. Klein 11 2 Samuel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .A. A. Anderson 12 1 Kings, Second Edition. . . . . .Simon J. Devries 13 2 Kings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .T. R. Hobbs 14 1 Chronicles** . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Roddy Braun 15 2 Chronicles** . . . . . . . . . .Raymond B. Dillard 16 Ezra–­Nehemiah** . . . . . . H. G. M. Williamson 17 Job 1–20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . David J. A. Clines 18a Job 21–37. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . David J. A. Clines 18b Job 38–42. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . David J. A. Clines 19 Psalms 1–50, Second Edition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Peter C. Craigie, with Marvin E. Tate 20 Psalms 51–100. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Marvin E. Tate 21 Psalms 101–150, Revised Edition . . . . . . . . . . . . Leslie C. Allen 22 Proverbs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Roland Murphy 23a Ecclesiastes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Roland Murphy 23b Song of Songs/Lamentations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Duane Garrett and Paul House 24 Isaiah 1–33, Revised Edition. John D. W. Watts 25 Isaiah 34–66, Revised Edition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John D. W. Watts 26 Jeremiah 1–25. . . . . . . . . . . . . .Peter C. Craigie, Page H. Kelley, and Joel F. Drinkard, Jr. 27 Jeremiah 26–52. . . . . . . . . . . .Gerald L. Keown, Pamela J. Scalise, and Thomas G. Smothers 28 Ezekiel 1–19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Leslie C. Allen

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29 30 31 32 33a 33b 34a 34b 35a 35b 35c 36

Ezekiel 20–48. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Leslie C. Allen Daniel, Revised Edition. . . . . . John Goldingay Hosea– ­Jonah**. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Douglas Stuart Micah–­Malachi**. . . . . . . . . . . .Ralph L. Smith Matthew 1–13** . . . . . . . . . . Donald A. Hagner Matthew 14–28** . . . . . . . . . Donald A. Hagner Mark 1–8:26**. . . . . . . . . . . . Robert A. Guelich Mark 8:27–16:20**. . . . . . . . . . . Craig A. Evans Luke 1–9:20**. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John Nolland Luke 9:21–18:34** . . . . . . . . . . . . John Nolland Luke 18:35–24:53** . . . . . . . . . . . John Nolland John, Second Edition**. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . George R. Beasley-­Murray 37a Acts 1–14* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stephen Walton 37b Acts 15–28*. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stephen Walton 38a Romans 1–8**. . . . . . . . . . . . James D. G. Dunn 38b Romans 9–16**. . . . . . . . . . . James D. G. Dunn 39 1 Corinthians* . . . . . . . . Carla Swafford Works 40 2 Corinthians, Second Edition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ralph P. Martin 41 Galatians**. . . . . . . . .Richard N. Longenecker 42 Ephesians**. . . . . . . . . . . . . .Andrew T. Lincoln 43 Philippians . . . . . . . . . . . . Ralph P. Martin and Gerald F. Hawthorne 44 Colossians, Philemon*. . . . . Clinton E. Arnold 45 1 & 2 Thessalonians**. . . . . . . . . . . . F. F. Bruce 46 Pastoral Epistles. . . . . . . . . William D. Mounce 47a Hebrews 1–8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . William L. Lane 47b Hebrews 9–13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . William L. Lane 48 James. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ralph P. Martin 49 1 Peter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J. Ramsey Michaels 50 Jude, 2 Peter** . . . . . . . . .Richard J. Bauckham 51 1, 2, 3, John, Revised . . . . . .Stephen S. Smalley 52a Revelation 1–5**. . . . . . . . . . . . . David E. Aune 52b Revelation 6–16**. . . . . . . . . . . . David E. Aune 52c Revelation 17–22**. . . . . . . . . . . David E. Aune

*Forthcoming as of 2019 **In Revisions as of 2019

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WORD BIBLICAL COMMENTARY Daniel Revised Edition

JOHN GOLDINGAY Old Testament Editor: Nancy L. deClaissé-­Walford New Testament Editor: Peter H. Davids

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ZONDERVAN ACADEMIC Daniel, Volume 30 Copyright © 1996, 2019 by John Goldingay ISBN 978-0-310-52615-5 (hardcover) ISBN 978-0-310-52616-2 (ebook) Requests for information should be addressed to: Zondervan, 3900 Sparks Dr. SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546 Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture translations are those of the author. Any internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers in this book are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement by Zondervan, nor does Zondervan vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—­electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—­except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Quotations from S. Pace, Daniel, appear by permission of the publishers, Smith and Helwys, Macon, GA. Printed in the United States of America 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 /LSC/ 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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Contents Editorial Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Author’s Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Commentary Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Text and Commentary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 I. Four Young Exiles Gain Insight and Prestige without Losing Holiness (1:1–21). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 II. The God of the Heavens Reveals the King’s Dream to Daniel and the Empire’s Destiny to Nebuchadnezzar (2:1–49). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 III. God Vindicates His Power When Three Judahites Choose Burning Rather Than Compromise (3:1–30). . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222 IV. Nebuchadnezzar Testifies to Kingship and Sanity Threatened, Lost, and Restored (4:1–37 [3:31–4:34]). . . . . . . 244 V. Belshazzar Fails to Learn from His Father’s Experience and Is Put Down (5:1–31 [5:1–6:1]). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275 VI. God Vindicates His Power When Daniel Chooses the Lion Pit Rather Than Compromise (6:1–28 [2–29]). . . . . . . .303 VII. God on High Reveals the World’s Destiny to Daniel (7:1–28). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329 VIII. Gabriel Explains Daniel’s Vision of the Breaking of the Greek Empire (8:1–27). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401 IX. Daniel Prays for the End of His People’s Desolation and His Prayer Is Heard (9:1–27). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .440 X. A Celestial Figure Reveals to Daniel What Will Happen to His People at the End of the Era (10:1–12:13). . . . . . . . . . .500

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567 Scripture and Extrabiblical Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 587 Subject Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .603 Author Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 611

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Editorial Preface The launching of the Word Biblical Commentary in 1977 brought to fulfillment the dream of a new commentary series on the books of the Bible. The founding editorial board determined to include a number of features in the commentary series that were distinctive at the time and remain essential features of a trustworthy commentary in the twenty-­f irst century. The original editorial board sought authors from around the world who, while broadly identified as evangelical in its positive, historic sense, represented a rich diversity of denominational allegiances, and who could offer the best in biblical scholarship. It was important for the editors that while these authors were scholars actively engaged in teaching in university and seminary settings, they were also involved in church ministry. That commitment continues today as revisions and updates are undertaken on various volumes in the series. The board determined that the layout of the commentary series would follow a format consciously designed to assist readers at different levels. First, authors were to use their own Translations of the texts as the basis of their comments and exegesis, examining carefully the textual, linguistic, and structural evidence and providing ample explanatory Notes. Thus, in the words of the original editorial board, while the series is based on the biblical languages, “it seeks to make the technical and scholarly approach to a theological understanding of Scripture understandable by—­and useful to—­the fledging student, the working minister, and colleagues in the guild of professional scholars and teachers as well.” As revisions and updates are produced, the same careful attention to translation has been maintained. Second, an extensive Bibliography at the beginning of each section provided the reader with ample information on the then state of scholarship and an opportunity to dig deeper. That continues in the revisions and updates with only slight changes to the format of the bibliographies. Third, the section titled Form/Structure/Setting discussed the redaction, genre, sources, and tradition. They concern the origin of the text, its canonical form, and its relation to the biblical and extrabiblical contexts in order to illuminate the structure and character of the text. And finally, the Comment and Explanation sections first offered a verse-­by-­verse interpretation of the text and dialogue with interpreters, engaging with current opinion and scholarly research and then discuss its relevance to the ongoing life of faith communities today. These two important sections are maintained in the revised and updated volumes, and to aid in reading, footnotes are now employed in place of in-­text citations. The on-­going revisions and updates also incorporate extensively

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8

Daniel

new scholarship and provide insights into the relevance of the biblical texts for faith communities in the twenty-­f irst century. The current editorial board, in the spirit of the founding editorial board, pray that “If these aims come anywhere near realization, the intention of the editors will have been met, and labor of our team of contributors rewarded.” Old Testament Editor: Nancy L. deClaissé-­Walford New Testament Editor: Peter H. Davids

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Author’s Preface One bright and cold January day in about 1981, a year or two after inviting me to write the Word Biblical Commentary on Daniel, David Allan Hubbard asked me for lunch at the Waldorf Hotel in London to discuss the possibility of my joining the faculty at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. I had eventually accepted the first invitation, but I didn’t think seriously about the possibility of moving to Fuller until nearly twenty years later, when I was honored to be invited to occupy a chair endowed in David Hubbard’s name. As I prepare to give up this chair another twenty years later, I dedicate this second edition of the commentary to his memory. But not to him alone. I dedicated the first edition to my teenage sons, Steven and Mark, expressing the hope that they might stand with Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. I now have two teenage grandchildren, and I am delighted to reflect on the fact that one is called Daniel, while the other is called Emma, which on one understanding is an abbreviation of a name whose significance all four heroes of this book would affirm, “God is with us.” It was in writing on Daniel that I learned the craft of commentary writing, which I then sought to hone in writing on Isaiah, Psalms, and Hosea to Micah. I looked forward to coming back to Daniel, partly to see what I would now do differently. I first worked through the original edition of this commentary as if it were a draft that I was reworking and tidying up. Then I read as much as I could of the voluminous scholarship on Daniel published over the past thirty years, which you will find reflected in the text. It didn’t make me change my mind about big things, but it did give me new things to say. I am grateful to John Camden for producing the indexes for this commentary, fresh from his honeymoon. John Goldingay

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10

Daniel If sometime you write something It should go down into the ears of Maecius And those of your father, and ours, and it should be suppressed until the ninth year. It will be able to be destroyed, What you have not published; a voice sent out does not know how to return. Si quid tamen olim scripseris, in Maeci descendat iudicis aures, et patris, et nostras; nonumque prematur in annum. Membranis intus positis, delere licebit quod non edideris: nescit vox missa reverti.1 I am aware of the plausible nature of allegories, but . . . I am not captivated by these enticements myself, and wish all my hearers to be persuaded of this,—­nothing can be better than a sober treatment of Scripture.2 We have now given the views that seem to us clear or probable. Let us now ask God to pardon any slips or errors; for what we have given is not any positive opinion, but merely a probability. The Almighty himself has said that the words are shut up and sealed till the time of the end. At that time it shall be revealed at the hand of the wise; the wise shall understand. God Almighty, in His mercy and loving-­k indness, bring near their realisation. Amen.3

1

Quoted from Horace’s The Art of Poetry 386–90 by Cowe, The Armenian V ersion of Daniel, ix. Maecius Tarpa was a drama critic. 2 Calvin, Daniel 2:242. 3 Yephet, Daniel, 87.

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Abbreviations General Abbreviations Akk. Akkadian Apoc. Apocalypse of Aram. Aramaic BA Biblical Aramaic BH Biblical Hebrew c. circa (about) diss. dissertation dittog. dittography EA Eastern Aramaic ed(s). editor(s), edited by, edition esp. especially ET English translation et al. et alii (and others) EVV English Versions f. feminine Gk. Greek

haplog. haplography HB Hebrew Bible Heb. Hebrew inf. infinitive K ketiv or written (consonantal) text lit. literally m. masculine mg. margin MS(S) manuscript(s) n(n). note(s) n.s. new series OP Old Persian pl. plural Q qere or vocalized text s. singular

Biblical Texts and Versions A Aq.

BHK BHS C CD G

GNB JB

Aleppo Codex of MT, as reported in BHS Aquila’s Greek translation of the Old Testament, as reported in F. Field, Origenis Hexaplorum quae supersunt. Oxford: Clarendon, 1867 Biblia Hebraica. Edited by Rudolph Kittel. Liepzig: Hinrichs, 1905–1906 Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Edited by Karl Elliger and Wilhelm Rudolph. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1983 The Cairo Genizah manuscript of Daniel, as reported in BHS The Cairo Genizah copy of the Damascus Document Greek translation of the Old Testament (both OG and Th.), following J. Ziegler and O. Munnich, eds., Sussana, Daniel, Bel et Draco. Göttingen Septuagint 16/2. 2nd edition. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999 Good News Bible Jerusalem Bible

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12 NJPS KJV L MT NAB NIV NETS

NRSV OG

RV RSV Syh. Sym.

Syr.

Th.

Vulg.

Daniel Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures: The New JPS Translation according to the Traditional Hebrew Text King James Version Leningrad Codex of MT, as reported in BHS Masoretic Text of the Old Testament, following BHS New American Bible New International Version A New English Translation of the Septuagint. Edited by Albert Pietersma and Benjamin G. Wright. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007 New Revised Standard Version The Old Greek translation of the Old Testament, following J. Ziegler and O. Munnich, eds., Sussana, Daniel, Bel et Draco. Göttingen Septuagint 16/2. 2nd edition. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999 Revised Version Revised Standard Version Syriac translation of Origen’s Hexapla Symmachus’s Greek translation of the Old Testament, as reported in F. Field, Origenis Hexaplorum quae supersunt. Oxford: Clarendon, 1867 Syriac translation of the Old Testament, following Peshitta Institute Leiden, ed., Dodekapropheton— ­Daniel-­Bel- ­Draco. Leiden: Brill, 1980 Theodotion’s Greek translation of the Old Testament, following J. Ziegler and O. Munnich, eds., Sussana, Daniel, Bel et Draco. Göttingen Septuagint 16/2. 2nd edition. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999 Vulgate, Latin translation of the Old Testament, following Biblia sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem. Edited by R. Weber. 3rd ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1983

Primary Literature Old Testament Gen Genesis Exod Exodus Lev Leviticus Num Numbers Deut Deuteronomy Josh Joshua Judg Judges Ruth Ruth

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1–2 Sam 1–2 Samuel 1–2 Kgs 1–2 Kings 1–2 Chr 1–2 Chronicles Ezra Ezra Neh Nehemiah Esth Esther Job Job Ps/Pss Psalms

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Abbreviations

Prov Proverbs Ecc Ecclesiastes Song Song of Songs Isa Isaiah Jer Jeremiah Lam Lamentations Ezek Ezekiel Dan Daniel Hos Hosea Joel Joel

13

Amos Amos Obad Obadiah Jonah Jonah Mic Micah Nah Nahum Hab Habakkuk Zeph Zephaniah Hag Haggai Zech Zechariah Mal Malachi

Where the chapter and verse numbers in English translations and in printed Hebrew/Aramaic Bibles differ, the English reference is provided first. For example, in 4:1–3 [3:31–33] the first reference is the one in English Bibles, the second is the one in printed Hebrew/Aramaic Bibles.

New Testament Matt Matthew Mark Mark Luke Luke John John Acts Acts Rom Romans 1–2 Cor 1–2 Corinthians Gal Galatians Eph Ephesians Phil Philippians Col Colossians

1–2 Thess 1–2 Thessalonians 1–2 Tim 1–2 Timothy Titus Titus Phlm Philemon Heb Hebrews Jas James 1–2 Pet 1–2 Peter 1–2–3 John 1–2–3 John Jude Jude Rev Revelation

Deuterocanonical Works Tob Tobit Jdt Judith Wis Wisdom of Solomon Sir Sirach/Ecclesiasticus

Bar Baruch Macc Maccabees Esd Esdras

Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Bar. Baruch En. Enoch Jub Jubilees Sib. Or. Sibylline Oracles T. Dan. Testament of Dan T. Jos. Testament of Joseph T. Jud. Testament of Judah

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T. Levi T. Reu. T. Ab. T. Mos.

Testament of Levi Testament of Reuben Testament of Abraham Testament of Moses

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Mishnah, Talmud, and Rabbinic Works m. ’Abot m. Ber. m. Sanh. b. Ber. b. Sanh.

Mishnah Avot Mishnah Berakhot Mishnah Sanhedrin Babylonian Talmud Berakhot Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin

b. Yoma

Babylonina Talmud Yoma Pesiq Rab. Pesiqta Rabbati Lev. Rab. Leviticus Rabbah

Dead Sea Scrolls 1Q, 2Q, etc. Scrolls from Qumran Cave 1, Cave 2, etc. (followed by name of work or biblical book) 1QapGen Genesis Apocryphon 1QHa Hodayot a or Thanksgiving Hymnsa 1QM Milh· amah or War Scroll 1QpHab Pesher Habakkuk 1QS Serek Hayah· ad or Rule of the Community 1QSa Serek Hayah· ad appendix or Rule of the Congregation 4QPrNab Prayer of Nabonidus 4QDibHama Words of the Luminariesa

Josephus Ag. Ap. Ant. J.W.

Against Apion Jewish Antiquities Jewish War

Secondary Literature AB ABR AfO AHw AJSL ANEP

ANET

ANRW

Anchor Bible Australian Bible Review Archiv für Orientforschung Akkadisches Handwörterbuch. Wolfram von Soden. 3 vols. Wiesbaden, 1965–1981. American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literature The Ancient Near East in Pictures Relating to the Old Testament. Edited by James B. Pritchard. 2nd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. Edited by James B. Pritchard. 3rd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969 Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung. Part 2, Principat. Edited by

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Abbreviations

15

Hildegard Temporini and Wolfgang Haase. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1972– APB Acta patristica et byzantina ArOr Archív orientální AUSS Andrews University Seminary Studies BASOR Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research BBR Bulletin for Biblical Research BDB Brown, Francis, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs. A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament BetM Bet Miqra Bib Biblica BIOSCS Bulletin of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies BJRL Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester BL Bauer, Hans and Pontus Leander. Grammatik des Biblisch-­ Aramdischen. Halle: Niemeyer, 1927 BN Biblische Notizen BO Bibliotheca Orientalis BSac Bibliotheca sacra BR Biblical Research BZ Biblische Zeitschrift CAD The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 1956–2006 CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly CurBR Currents in Biblical Research CSCO Corpus Scriptorium Christianorum Orientalium. Edited by Jean Baptiste Chabot et al. Paris, 1903 DCH Dictionary of Classical Hebrew. Edited by David J. A. Clines. 9 vols. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 1993–2014 DG Gibson, John C. L. Davidson’s Introductory Hebrew Grammar—­ Syntax. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994 DJD Discoveries in the Judaean Desert DOTT Documents from Old Testament Times. Edited by D. Winton Thomas, London: Nelson, 1958 DSS The Dead Sea Scrolls. Edited by F. García Martínez and E. J. C. Tigchelaar. Leiden: Brill, 2000 DTT Jastrow, Marcus. A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature. New York: Choreb, 1926 ETL Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses EvQ Evangelical Quarterly EvT Evangelische Theologie Exp Expositor

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ExpTim GBA

Expository Times Rosenthal, Franz. A Grammar of Biblical Aramaic. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1961 GKC Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar. Edited by Emil Kautzsch. Translated by Arthur E. Cowley. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 1910 HALOT The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Ludwig Koehler, Walter Baumgartner, and Johann J. Stramm. Translated and edited under the supervision of Mervyn E. J. Richardson. 4 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1994–1999 HTS Harvard Theological Studies HBT Horizons in Biblical Theology HS Williams, R. J. Hebrew Syntax. 3rd ed. Revised and expanded by J. C. Beckman. Toronto: University of Toronto, 1976 HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual HvTSt Hervormde teologiese studies HW Hebräische Wortforschung. Leiden: Brill, 1967 IBD The Illustrated Bible Dictionary. Edited by J. D. Douglas et al. Leicester, UK: Inter-­Varsity Press, 1980 IBHS An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax. Bruce K. Waltke and Mivhael O’Connor. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990 IDB The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. Edited by George A. Buttrick. 4 vols. plus Supplementary Volume. Nashville: Abingdon, 1962–76 IEJ Israel Exploration Journal Int Interpretation JANESCU Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society JATS Journal of the Adventist Theological Society JBL Journal of Biblical Literature JBQ Jewish Biblical Quarterly JCS Journal of Cuneiform Studies JETS Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society JHebS Journal of Hebrew Scriptures JJS Journal of Jewish Studies JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies JQR Jewish Quarterly Review JSJ Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Periods JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament JSP Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha JSS Journal of Semitic Studies JTS Journal of Theological Studies KD Kerygma und Dogma

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Abbreviations

17

LumVie LW MSJ NERT

Lumière et vie Luther’s Works The Master’s Seminary Journal Near Eastern Religious Texts relating to the Old Testament. Edited by Beyerlin, W. Transated by J. Bowden. London: SCM, 1978 NKZ Neue kirkliche Zeitschrift NovT Novum Testamentum NPNF Nicene and Post-­Nicene Fathers NTS New Testament Studies OTE Old Testament Essays OTL Old Testament Library OTP The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Edited by James H. Charlesworth. 2 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1983, 1985 OtSt Oudtestamentische Studiën PG Patrologia Graeca [=Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Graeca]. Edited by Jacques-­Paul Migne. 162 vols. Paris, 1857–1886 PL Patrologia Latina [=Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Latina]. Edited by Jacques-­Paul Migne. 217 vols. Paris, 1844–1864 PRSt Perspectives in Religious Studies PS A Compendious Syriac Dictionary. Edited by J. Payne Smith. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1902 PTR Princeton Theological Review RB Revue biblique ResQ Restoration Quarterly RevExp Review and Expositor RevQ Revue de Qumran RivB Rivista biblica italiana SCO Studia Classica et Orientalia. A. Pagliaro Festschrift. 3 vols. Rome,1969 SEÅ Svensk exegetisk årsbok Sem Semitica SJOT Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament ST Studia Theologica TDNT Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Edited by Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich. Translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley. 8 vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964–1976 TDOT Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament. Edited by G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren. Translated by John T. Willis et al. 8 vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974–2006 TGUOS Transactions of the Glasgow University Oriental Society Them Themelios

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18 TLZ TQ TRev TTH

TTP TTZ ThWAT

TWNT

TynBul TZ UF USQR VD VT WA WTJ ZA ZAW ZNW ZTK

Daniel Theologische Literaturzeitung Theologische Quartalschrift Theologische Revue Driver, S. R. A Treatise on the Use of the Tenses in Hebrew and Some Other Syntactical Questions. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1892 Thesaurus theologico-­philologicus. Edited by G. Menthen. Vol. 1. Amsterdam: Excudunt Henricus, 1701 Trierer theologische Zeitschrift Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Alten Testament. Edited by G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1970– Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament. Edited by Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich. Stuttgart, 1932–1979. Translated by G. W. Bromiley, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT). Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964–1976 Tyndale Bulletin Theologische Zeitschrift Ugarit-­Forschungen Union Seminary Quarterly Review Verbum Domini Vetus Testamentum Luther, Martin. Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Weimar: Böhlaus Westminster Theological Journal Zeitschrift für Assyriologie Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft Zeitschrift fur die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche

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Commentary Bibliography Abadie, P. “Du temps prophétique au temps apocalyptique dans le livre de Daniel.” Pages 183–207 in Les prophètes de la Bible et la fin des temps. Edited by J. Vermeylen. Paris: Cerf, 2010. Abbott, E. A. “The Son of Man.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910. Abel, F.-­M. “Antiochus Épiphane.” RB 50 (1941): 231–41. Ackroyd, P. R. “The Temple Vessels—­a Continuity Theme.” Pages 166–81 in Studies in the Religion of Ancient Israel. Leiden: Brill, 1972. Repr., pages 46–60 in Studies in the Religious Tradition of the Old Testament. London: SCM, 1987. [Adams, R. N.] The Jewish Missionary: A New and Literal Interpretation of the Visions of Daniel. London: Nisbet, 1849. Adeyemo, T. “Daniel.” Pages 989–1012 in Africa Bible Commentary. Edited by Adeyemo et al. Nairobi: WordAlive, 2006. Adler, W. “Introduction” and “The Apocalyptic Survey of History Adapted by Christians: Daniel’s Prophecy of 70 Weeks.” Pages 1–31 and 201–38 in The Jewish Apocalyptic Heritage in Early Christianity. Edited by VanderKam/Adler. Aejmelaeus, A. “Function and Interpretation of ‫ כי‬in Biblical Hebrew.” JBL 105 (1986): 193–209. Albertz, R. Israel in Exile. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2003. Translation of Die Exilszeit by D. Green. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2001. —­—­—­. Der Gott des Daniel. Stuttgart: KBW, 1988. —­—­—­. “The Social Setting of the Aramaic and Hebrew Book of Daniel.” Pages 171–204 in The Book of Daniel. Vol. 1. Edited by Collins/Flint. Albo, J. Book of Principles. 4 vols. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1929–30. Translation of ‫ ספר העקרים‬by I. Husik. Albrecht, O. “Luthers Arbeiten an der Übersetzung und Auslegung des Propheten Daniel in den Jahren 1530 und 1541.” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 23 (1926): 1–50. Alexander, J. B. “New Light on the Fiery Furnace.” JBL 69 (1950): 375–76. Alexander, P. S. “Remarks on Aramaic Epistolography in the Persian Period.” JSS 23 (1978): 155–70. Alfrink, B. “Darius Medus.” Bib 9 (1928): 316–40. —­—­—­. “Die Gaddsche Chronik und die Heilige Schrift.” Bib 8 (1927): 385–417. —­—­—­. “L’idée de résurrection d’après Dan xii, 1–2.” Bib 40 (1959): 355–71. Repr., Studia Biblica et Orientalia, 221–37. Rome: Pontifico Istituto Biblico, 1959. —­—­—­. “Der letzte König von Babylon.” Bib 9 (1928): 187–208. Allen, S. “On Schedl’s Attempt to Count the Days of Daniel.” AUSS 4 (1966): 105–6. Allen, L. C. “Isaiah 1iii. 11 and Its Echoes.” Vox Evangelica 1 (1962): 24–28. Alomía, M. Daniel. 2 vols. 2nd ed. Lima: Ediciones Theológika, 2009 and 2008. —­—­—­. “Lesser Gods of the Ancient Near East.” PhD diss., Seventh Day Adventist Theological Seminary, 1987. Alon, A. The Natural History of the Land of the Bible. London: Hamlyn, 1969. Alonso Díaz, J. “La conversión de Nabucodonosor en bestia.” Cultura biblica 20 (1963): 67–74. Alonso Schökel, L., et al. Daniel, Baruc, Carta de Jeremias, Lamentaciones. Madrid: Cristiandad, 1976. Alt, A. “Die Deutung der Weltgeschichte im Alten Testament.” ZTK 56 (1959): 129–37.

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—­—­—­. “Zur Menetekel-­Inschrift.” VT 4 (1954): 303–5. Altheim, F., and Stiehl, R. Die aramäische Sprache unter den Achaimeniden. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1962. Altpeter, G. Textlinguistische Exegese alttestamentlicher Literatur. Bern: Lang, 1978. Anderson, G. A. Sin: A History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. Anderson, J. G. “Double and Triple Stories, the Implied Reader, and Redundancy in Matthew.” Pages 71–89 in Reader Response Approaches to Biblical and Secular Texts. Semeia 31. Edited by R. Detweiler. Atlanta: SBL Press, 1985. Anderson, R. The Coming Prince. London: Hodder, 1881. 13th ed., London: Pickering, 1939. —­—­—­. Daniel in the Critics’ Den. Edinburgh: Blackwell, 1885. 4th ed., Glasgow: Pickering, 1922. —­—­—­. Unfulfilled Prophecy and “The Hope of the Church.” London: Prophecy Investigation Society, 1917. 2nd ed., London: Thynne, 1917. Anderson, R. A. Signs and Wonders: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984. Anderson, R. B. “A Touch of the Holy.” RevExp 109 (2012): 593–98. Anderson, S. D. “Darius the Mede.” PhD diss., Dallas Theological Seminary, 2014. Andreasen, N.-­E . A. “The Role of the Queen Mother in Israelite Society.” CBQ 45 (1983): 179–94. Andrews, D. K. “Yahweh the God of the Heavens.” Pages 45–57 in The Seed of Wisdom: Essays in Honour of T. J. Meek. Edited by W. S. McCullough. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964. Angel, A. R. Chaos and the Son of Man. London: Bloomsbury, 2006. —­—­—­. “The Sea in 4Q541 7.3 and in Daniel 7:2.” VT 60 (2010): 274–78. Anklesaria, B. T. Zand-­î Vohûman Yasn. Bombay: privately published, 1957. Repr., Bombay: Cama Oriental Institute, 1967. Anon. A New Interpretation of Daniel xi. Liverpool: Barker, 1866. —­—­—­. Remarks on the Book of Daniel and on the Revelations. New York: Greenleaf, 1794. Ap-­Thomas, D. R. “Notes on Some Terms Relating to Prayer.” VT 6 (1956): 225–41. Aphrahat. “Select Demonstrations.” Pages in 345–412 in Gregogy the Great, Ephraim Syrus, Aphrahat. NPNF 2/13. Translated by J. Gwynn. Repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989. Appler, D. “Digging in the Claws.” Pages 121–36 in Focusing Biblical Studies. Edited by J. L. Berquist and A. Hunt. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. Archer, G. L. “The Aramaic of the Genesis Apocryphon Compared with the Aramaic of Daniel.” Pages 160–69 in New Perspectives on the Old Testament. Edited by J. Barton Payne. Waco, TX: Word, 1970. —­—­—­. “Daniel.” Pages 1–157 in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary. Vol. 7 Edited by F. E. Gaebelein et al. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1985. —­—­—­. “The Hebrew of Daniel Compared with the Qumran Sectarian Documents.” Pages 470–81 in The Law and the Prophets: Old Testament Studies Prepared in Honor of Oswald Thompson Allis. Edited by John H. Skilton. [Nutley, NJ]: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1974. —­—­—­. “Modern Rationalism and the Book of Daniel.” BSac 136 (1979): 129–47. Armerding, C. “Dan 12, 1–3.” BSac 121 (1964): 153–58. —­—­—­. “Russia and the King of the North.” BSac 120 (1963): 50–55. Armistead, D. B. “The Images of Daniel 2 and 7.” Stulos Theological Journal 6 (1998): 63–66. Arnold, B. T. “The Use of Aramaic in the Hebrew Bible.” JNSL 22/2 (1996): 1–16. —­—­—­. “Word Play and Characterization in Daniel 1.” Pages 231–48 in Puns and Pundits: Word Play in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Literature. Edited by S. B. Noegel. Bethesda, MD: CDL, 2000.

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Commentary Bibliography

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—­—­—­. “Wordplay and Narrative Techniques in Daniel 5 and 6.” JBL 112 (1993): 479–85. Ashby, G. W. Theodoret of Cyrrhus as Exegete of the Old Testament. Grahamstown: Rhodes University Press, 1972. Ashley, T. R. “The Book of Daniel Chapters 1–6.” PhD diss., St. Andrews, 1975. Aspinwall, W. A Brief Description of the Fifth Monarchy. London: Livewell Chapman, 1653. —­—­—­. An Explication and Application of the Seventh Chapter of Daniel. London: Livewell Chapman, 1654. —­—­—­. The Work of the Age: or, The Sealed Prophecies of Daniel Opened and Applied. London: Livewell Chapman, 1655. Astour, M. C. “Greek Names in the Semitic World and Semitic Names in the Greek World.” JNES 23 (1964): 193–201. Asurmendi, J. “El libro de Daniel en la investigación reciente.” Estudios Bíblicos 55 (1997): 509–40. Athas, G. “In Search of the Seventy ‘Weeks’ of Daniel 9.” JHebS 9/2 (2009). Atzerodt, I. “Weltgeschichte und Reich Gottes im Buch Daniel.” Christentum und Wissenschaft 10 (1934): 241–59. Auberlen, C. A. The Prophecies of Daniel and the Revelations of St John. 2nd ed. Basel: Bahnmeier, 1854. Translated by A. Saphir. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1856. Auchincloss, W. S. “Darius the Median.” BSac 66 (1909): 536–38. Audet, J.-­P. “A Hebrew-­A ramaic List of Books of the Old Testament in Greek Transcription.” JTS n.s. 1 (1950): 135–54. Augustine of Hippo. The City of God. Translated by H. Bettenson. Repr., London: Penguin, 1984. —­—­—­. Letters. Vol. II. Translated by W. Parsons. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1953. —­—­—­. Expositions on the Book of Psalms. NPNF 1/8. Translated by A. C. Coxe. Repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989. Aukerman, D. Darkening Valley. New York: Seabury, 1981. Auscher, D. “Les relations entre la Grèce et la Palestine avant la conquête d’Alexandre.” VT 17 (1967): 8–30. Avalos, H. I. “The Comedic Function of the Enumerations of the Officials and Instruments in Daniel 3.” CBQ 53 (1991): 580–88. —­—­—­. “Daniel 9:24–25 and Mesopotamian Temple Rededications.” JBL 117 (1998): 507–11. —­—­—­. “Nebuchadnezzar’s Affliction.” JBL 133 (2014): 497–507. Avravanel, I. ‫מעיני הישועה‬. Stettin: Grassmann, 1860. Backus, I. “The Beast.” Reformation and Renaissance Review 3 (2000): 59–77. Baeck, L. “Der ‘Menschensohn.’ ” Pages 313–24 in Aus drei Jahrtausenden. Berlin: Schocken, 1938. Translated by W. Kaufmann, Judaism and Christianity, 23–38. New York: Leo Baeck Institute, 1958. Bailey, D. P. “The Intertextual Relationship of Daniel 12:2 and Isaiah 26:19.” TynBul 51 (2000): 305–8. Baillet, M. Qumrân grotte 4.III (4Q482–4Q520). DJD 7. Oxford: Clarendon, 1982. —­—­—­. “Un recueil liturgique de Qumrân, grotte 4: ‘Les paroles des luminaires.’ ” RB 68 (1961): 195–250. —­—­—­. et al. Les ‘petites grottes’ de Qumrân. DJD 3. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1962. Baker, D. W. “Further Examples of the waw explicativum.” VT 30 (1970): 129–36. Balcer, J. M. “The Athenian Episkopos and the Achaemenid ‘King’s Eye.’ ” American Journal of Philology 98 (1977): 252–63. Baldwin, D. D. “Free Will and Conditionality in Daniel.” Pages 163–72 in To Understand the Scriptures. Edited by D. Merling. Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University, 1997.

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Baldwin, J. G. Daniel. Leicester: Inter-­Varsity Press, 1978. —­—­—­. “Is There Pseudonymity in the Old Testament?” Them 4 (1978–79): 6–12. —­—­—­. “Some Literary Affinities of the Book of Daniel.” TynBul 30 (1979): 77–99. Ball, C. J. “Daniel and Babylon.” Exp viii, 19 (1920): 235–40. Baltzer, K. Das Bundesformular. Neukirchen: Neukirchener, 1960. Rev. ed., 1964. Translated by D. E. Green, The Covenant Formulary. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971. Balz, H. R. Methodische Probleme der neutestamentlichen Christologie. Neukirchen: Neukirchener, 1967, esp. 48–112. Bampfylde, G. “The Prince of the Host in the Book of Daniel and the Dead Sea Scrolls.” JSJ 14 (1983): 129–34. Bardenhewer O. Des heiligen Hippolytus von Rom Commentar zum Buche Daniel. Freiburg: Herder, 1877. Bardy, G. “ ‘Introduction’ to Hippolyte.” Pages 7–66 in Commentaire sur Daniel. Translated by M. Lefèvre. Paris: Cerf, 1947. Bar-­Hebraeus, G. [= A. al-­F. Grighor]. ‫רזי אוצר‬. 13th century. Edited and trans. by J. Freimann as Scholien zum Buche Daniel. Brünn: Epstein, 1892. Baris, S. D. “The American Daniel as Seen in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.” Pages 173–85 in Biblical Patterns in Modern Literature. Edited by D. H. Hirsch and N. Aschkenasy. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1984. Barker, K. L. “Premillennialism in the Book of Daniel.” MSJ 4 (1993): 25–43. Barker, M. “Apocalyptic.” ExpTim 89 (1977–78): 324–29. Barkhuizen, J. H. “Romanos Melodos: Kontakion 8 ‘On the Three Children.’ ” APB 16 (2005): 1–28. Barnes, A. Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Book of Daniel. Rev. ed., London: Routledge, 1853. Barnes, R. B. Prophecy and Gnosis. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988. Barr, D. L. “The Apocalypse as a Symbolic Transformation of the World.” Int 38 (1984): 39–50. Barr, J. Biblical Words for Time. London: SCM, 1962. Rev. ed., 1969. —­—­—­. “Daniel.” Pages 591–602 in Peake’s Commentary on the Bible. Edited by M. Black and H. H. Rowley. New York: Nelson, 1962. Barrett, C. K. “The Background of Mark 10:45.” Pages 1–18 in New Testament Essays: Studies in Memory of Thomas Walter Manson 1893–1958. Edited by A. J. B. Higgins. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959. Barrett, D. S. “Patterns of Jewish Submission in the Hellenistic-­Roman World.” Prudentia 5 (1973): 99–115. Bartelmus, R. ‫היה‬. St, Ottilien: Eos, 1982. Barth, C. Diesseits und Jenseits im Glauben des späten Israel. Stuttgart: KBW, 1974. Barth, K. Die kirchliche Dogmatik. Zürich: Evangelischer, 1932–67. Translated by G. W. Bromiley et al., Church Dogmatics. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1936–69. Barthélemy, D. Critique textuelle de l’Ancien Testament 3: Ézéchiel, Daniel, et les 12 Prophètes. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1992. —­—­—­. Les devanciers d’Aquila. Leiden: Brill, 1963. —­—­— ­and Milik, J. T. Qumran Cave 1. DJD 1. Oxford: Clarendon, 1955. Barton, G. A. “The Composition of the Book of Daniel.” JBL 17 (1898): 62–86. —­—­—­. “The Story of Ah·ik·ar and the Book of Daniel.” AJSL 16 (1899–1900): 242–47. Barton, J. Oracles of God. London: DLT, 1986. —­—­—­. “Theological Ethics in Daniel.” Pages 661–70 in The Book of Daniel. Vol. 2. Edited by Collins/Flint. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Basson, A. “ ‘A King in the Grass.’ ” Journal for Semitics 18 (2009): 1–14.

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Commentary Bibliography

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Bauckham, R. J. “Daniel with an Introduction to Apocalyptic Literature . . . by John J. Collins.” EvQ 59 (1987): 164–65. —­—­—­. “The Delay of the Parousia.” TynBul 31 (1980): 3–36. —­—­—­. “The Rise of Apocalyptic.” Them 3, 2 (1977–78): 10–23. —­—­—­. “Theology after Hiroshima.” Scottish Journal of Theology 38 (1985): 583–601. —­—­—­. Tudor Apocalypse. Abingdon: Sutton Courtenay, 1978. Bauer, H. “Menetekel.” Vierter deutscher Münzforschertag zu Halle. 27–30. Halle: Gebauer-­ Schwetschke, 1925. Baumgarten, J. M. “The Heavenly Tribunal and the Personification of Ṣedeq in Jewish Apocalyptic.” ANRW ii 19, 1 (1979): 219–39. Baumgartner, W. “Das Aramäische im Buche Daniel.” ZAW 45 (1927): 81–133. Repr. with additions in Baumgartner, Zum Alten Testament und seiner Umwelt, 68–123. Leiden: Brill, 1959. —­—­—­. “Ein Vierteljahrhundert Danielforschung.” Theologische Rundschau 11 (1939): 59–83, 125–44, 201–28. —­—­—­. “Neues keilschriftliches Material zum Buche Daniel?” ZAW 44 (1926): 38–56. —­—­—­. “Zum Traumerraten in Daniel 2.” AfO 4 (1927): 17–19. —­—­—­. “Zu den vier Reichen von Daniel 2.” TZ 85 (1960): 17–22. Bayer, E. Danielstudien. Münster: Aschendorff, 1912. Beale, G. K. The Use of Daniel in Jewish Apocalyptic Literature and in the Revelation of St. John. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984. Incorporating material from TynBul 31 (1980): 163–70; NovT 25 (1982): 182–88; JETS 27 (1984): 413–23; NTS 31 (1985): 618–20. —­—­—­. “The Old Testament Background of the ‘Last Hour’ in 1 John 2,18.” Bib 92 (2011): 232–54. —­—­—­. “The Use of Daniel in the Synoptic Eschatological Discourse and in the Book of Revelation.” Pages 129–53 in The Jesus Tradition outside the Gospels. Edited by D. Wenham. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1985. —­—­—­. “A Reconsideration of the Text of Daniel in the Apocalypse.” Bib 67 (1986): 539–43. Beasley-­Murray, G. R. Jesus and the Kingdom of God. Exeter: Paternoster, 1986. —­—­—­. “The Interpretation of Daniel 7.” CBQ 45 (1983): 44–58. Beaulieu, P.-­A . “The Babylonian Background of the Motif of the Fiery Furnace.” JBL 128 (2009): 273–90. —­—­—­. The Reign of Nabonidus. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. Becker, J. Israel deutet seine Psalmen. Stuttgart: KBW, 1966. Becking, B. “A Divine Spirit is in You.” Pages 515–19 in The Book of Daniel. Edited by A. S. van der Woude. Beckwith, C. L., ed. Ezekiel, Daniel. Reformation Commentary on Scripture: Old Testament 12. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2012. Beckwith, R. T. “Daniel 9 and the Date of Messiah’s Coming in Essene, Hellenistic, Pharisaic, Zealot, and Early Christian Computation.” RevQ 10 (1979–81): 521–42. —­—­—­. “The Earliest Enoch Literature and Its Calendar.” RevQ 10 (1979–81): 365–403. —­—­—­. “Early Traces of the Book of Daniel.” TynBul 53 (2002): 75–82. —­—­—­. “Formation of the Hebrew Bible.” Pages 39–86 in Mikra 2/1. Edited by M. J. Mulder. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988. Repr., Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004. —­—­—­. The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985. —­—­—­. “The Significance of the Calendar for Interpreting Essene Chronology and Eschatology.” RevQ 10 (1979–81): 167–202.

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Bedenbender, A. “Seers as Mantic Sages in Jewish Apocalyptic (Daniel and Enoch).” Pages 258–70 in Scribes, Sages, and Seers. Edited by L. G. Perdue. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 2008. Beegle, D. M. Prophecy and Prediction. Ann Arbor, MI: Pryor Pettengill, 1978. Beek, M. A. Das Danielbuch. Leiden: Ginsberg, 1935. —­—­—­. “Zeit, Zeiten und eine halbe Zeit.” Pages 19–24 in Studia Biblica et Semitica. T. C. Vriezen Festchrift. Edited by W. C. van Unnik and A. S. van der Woude. Wageningen: Veenman, 1966. Begg, C. T. “Daniel and Josephus.” Pages 539–45 in The Book of Daniel. Edited by A. S. van der Woude. Behrmann, G. Das Buch Daniel. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1894. Belardi, W. “Greco μανιάκης tra celtico e iranico.” Pages 189–211 in Studia Classica et Orientalia 1. A. Pagliaro Festschrift. Rome: Bardi, 1969. Bellamy, J. The Book of Daniel. London: Simpkin, 1863. Benedictine Monks of St. Jerome’s Pontifical Abbey, eds. Biblia Sacra iuxta latinam vulgatam versionem, xvi. Liber Danihelis. Rome: Vatican, 1981. Ben-­Ezra. See Lacunza. Bentzen, A. Daniel. Tübingen: Mohr, 1937. 2nd ed., 1952. —­—­—­. “Daniel 6.” Pages 58–64 in Festschrift Alfred Bertholet. Edited by W. Baumgartner et al. Tübingen: Mohr, 1950. —­—­—­. Messias— ­Moses redivivus— ­Menschensohn. Zürich: TVZ, 1948. Translated by G. W. Anderson, King and Messiah. London: Lutterworth, 1955. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1970. —­—­—­. “King Ideology—­‘Urmensch’—­‘Troonbestijgingsfeest.’  ” ST 3 (1949): 143–57. Berger, K. Die griechische Daniel-­Diegese. Leiden: Brill, 1976. —­—­—­. “Hellenistische Gattungen im Neuen Testament.” ANRW ii 25, 2 (1984): 1031–432. Berger, P.-­R . “Der Kyros-­Zylinder mit dem Zusatzfragment BIN II Nr. 32 und die akkadischen Personennamen im Danielbuch.” ZA 64 (1975): 192–234. Bergman, B. Z. “Han’el in Daniel 2:25 and 6:19.” JNES 27 (1968): 69–70. Bergsma, J. S. “Cultic Kingdoms in Conflict.” Letter and Spirit 5 (2009): 47–83. —­—­—­. “The Persian Period as Penitential Era.” Pages 50–64 in Exile and Restoration Revisited. Edited by G. N. Knoppers et al. London: T&T Clark, 2009. Berner, C. Jahre, Jahrwochen und Jubiläen. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2006. Bernstein, M. J., and Koller, A. “The Aramaic Texts and the Hebrew and Aramaic Languages at Qumran: the North American Contribution.” Pages 155–95 in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Scholarly Perspective. Edited by D. Dimant. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Berquist, J. “Resistance and Accommodation in the Persian Empire.” Pages 41–58 in In the Shadow of Empire. Edited by R. A. Horsley. Berrigan, D. Daniel. Repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2009. Bertholet, A. “Der Schutzengel Persiens.” Pages 34–40 in Oriental Studies. Cursetji Erachji Pavry Festschrift. Edited by J. D. C. Pavry. London: Oxford University Press, 1933. Bertholdt, L. Daniel. Erlangen: Palm, 1806. Betz, H. D. “Zum Problem des religionsgeschichtlichen Verständnisses der Apokalyptik.” ZTK 63 (1966): 391–409. Translated by J. W. Leitch, “On the Problem of the Religio-­h istorical Understanding of Apocalypticism.” Pages 134–56 in Apocalypticism. Edited by R. W. Funk. Journal for Theology and Church 6. New York: Herder & Herder, 1969. Betz, O. “Past Events and Last Events in the Qumran Interpretation of History.” Pages 27–34 in Proceedings of the Sixth World Congress of Jewish Studies 1. Edited by Shinan.

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—­—­—­ and Grimm, W. Jesus und das Danielbuch. 2 vols. Frankfurt/New York: Lang, 1984–1985. Bevan, A. A. A Short Commentary on the Book of Daniel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1892. Bevan, E. R. The House of Seleucus. 2 vols. London: Arnold, 1902. Beyerle, S. “The Book of Daniel and Its Social Setting.” Pages 205–28 in The Book of Daniel. Vol. 1. Edited by Collins/Flint. Leiden: Brill, 2001. —­—­—­. “ ‘Der mit den Wolken des Himmels kommt.’ ” Pages 1–52 in Gottessohn und Menschensohn. Edited by D. Sänger. Neukirchen: Neukirchener, 2004. —­—­—­. Die Gottesvorstellungen in der antik-­jüdischen Apokalyptik. Leiden: Brill, 2005. —­—­—­. “The ‘God of Heaven’ in Persian and Hellenistic Times.” Pages 17–36 in Other Worlds and Their Relation to This World. Edited by N. Tobias. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Bhabha, H. K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Bickerman[n], E. “Bénédiction et prière.” RB 69 (1962): 524–32. Repr., Bickerman, Studies in Jewish and Christian History 2:313–23. —­—­—­. “The Babylonian Captivity.” Pages 341–58 in Cambridge History of Judaism. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. —­—­—­. Four Strange Books of the Bible. New York: Schocken, 1967. —­—­—­. Der Gott der Makkabäer. Berlin: Schocken, 1937. Translated by H. R. Moering, The God of the Maccabees. Leiden: Brill, 1979. —­—­—­. Studies in Jewish and Christian History. 3 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1976, 1980, 1986. Bietenhard, H. “ ‘Der Menschensohn.’ ” ANRW ii 25, 1 (1982): 265–350. Biggs, R. D. “More Babylonian Prophecies.” Iraq 29 (1967): 117–32. Birkeland, H. “The Belief in the Resurrection of the Dead in the Old Testament.” ST 3 (1949–50): 60–78. Birks, T. R. The Four Prophetic Empires. London: Seeley, 1844. —­—­—­. The Two Later Visions of Daniel Historically Explained. London: Seeley, 1846. Black, M. “Die Apotheose Israels: Eine neue Interpretation des danielischen ‘Menschensohns.’ ” Pages 92–99 in Jesus und der Menschensohn. Translated by A. Berz. Edited by Pesch/Schnackenburg. Freiberg: Herder, 1975. —­—­—­. “Aramaic barna¯ sha¯ and the ‘Son of Man.’ ” ExpTim 95 (1983–84): 200–6. —­—­—­. “The Eschatology of the Similitudes of Enoch.” JTS n.s. 3 (1952): 1–10. —­—­—­. “The ‘Parables’ of Enoch (1 En 37–71) and the ‘Son of Man.’ ” ExpTim 88 (1976–77): 5–8. —­—­—­. “The ‘Son of Man’ in the Old Biblical Literature.” ExpTim 60 (1948–49): 11–15. —­—­—­. “The Throne-­T heophany Prophetic Commission and the ‘Son of Man.’ ” Pages 57–73 in Jews, Greeks, and Christians: Religious Cultures in Late Antiquity. W. D. Davies Festschrift. Edited by R. G. Hamerton Kelly and R. Scroggs. Leiden: Brill, 1976. Black, M. Models and Metaphors. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1962. Blaising, C. A. “The Day of the Lord and the Seventieth Week of Daniel.” BSac 169 (2012): 131–42. Blasius, A. “Antiochus IV Epiphanes and the Ptolemaic Triad.” JSJ 37 (2006): 521–47. Blau, J. “Zum angeblichen Gebrauch von ‫ את‬vor dem Nominativ.” VT 4 (1954): 7–19. Blayney, B. A Dissertation by Way of Inquiry into the True Import and Application of the Vision Related Dan. ix. ver. 20. to the End. Oxford: Clarendon, 1775. Bledsoe, A. D. “The Relationship of the Different Editions of Daniel.” CurBR 13 (2015): 175–90. Bleek, F. “Die messianische Weissagungen im Buche Daniel.” Jahrbücher für deutsche Theologie 5 (1860): 45–101. —­—­—­. “Über Verfasser und Zweck des Buches Daniel.” TZ 3 (1822): 171–294.

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Blenkinsopp, J. “Interpretation and the Tendency to Sectarianism.” Pages 1–26 in Jewish and Christian Self-­Definition. Vol. 2. Edited by E. P. Sanders et al. London: SCM, 1981. Bludau, A. “Die Apokalypse und Theodotions Danielübersetzung.” Theologische Quartalschrift 79 (1897): 1–26. —­—­—­. “Die alexandrische Übersetzung des Buches Daniel und ihr Verhältnis zum massoretischen Text.” Biblische Studien 2. Freiburg: Herder (1897): 1–218. Bobzin, H. “Bemerkungen zu Daniel in der islamischen Tradition.” Pages 167–78 in Die Geschichte der Daniel-­Auslegung. Edited by Bracht/duToit. Boccaccini, G. Middle Judaism. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991. Bock, D. L. “Did Jesus Connect Son of Man to Daniel 7?” BBR 22 (2012): 399–402. —­—­—­. Proclamation from Prophecy and Pattern. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987. Boda, M. J. Praying the Tradition. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012. Bodenmann, R. Naissance d’une exégèse: Daniel dans l’Eglise ancienne des trois premiers siècles. Tübingen: Mohr, 1986. Boehmer, J. Reich Gottes und Menschensohn im Buch Daniel. Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1899. Boer, P. A. H. de. “ ‘Vive le roi!’ ” VT 5 (1955): 225–31. Bogaert, P.-­M. “Daniel 3 LXX et son supplément grec.” Pages 13–37 in The Book of Daniel. Edited by A. S. van der Woulde. —­—­—­. “Le témoinage de la Vetus Latina dans l’étude de la tradition des Septante: Ézéchiel et Daniel dans le Papyrus 967.” Bib 59 (1978): 384–95. Bohnet, A. “Kultbezüge in Danielbuch.” BN 160 (2014): 37–49. Bonora, A. “Il linguaggio di risurrezione in Dan. 12,1–3.” RivB 30 (1982): 111–25. Bonwetsch, G. N. Studien zu den Kommentaren Hippolyts zum Buche Daniel und Hohen Liede. Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1897. Boogaart, T. A. “Daniel 6.” The Reformed Review 39 (1985–86): 106–12. Borger, R. “Gott Marduk und Gott-­König Šulgi als Propheten.” BO 28 (1971): 3–24. Borsch, F. H. The Son of Man in Myth and History. London: SCM, 1967. Bosanquet, J. W. Chronology of the Times of Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah. London: Longmans, 1848. —­—­—­. Messiah the Prince. London: Longmans, 1866; 2nd ed. 1869. [Bosanquet, J. W.] Daniel’s Prophecy of the Seventy Weeks. London: Rivington, 1836. Botha, P. J. “The Interpretation of Daniel 3 in the Syriac Commentary Ascribed to Ephrem the Syrian.” APB 16 (2005): 29–53. —­—­—­. “The Relevance of the Book of Daniel for Fourth-­C entury Christianity According to the Commentary Ascribed to Ephrem the Syrian.” Pages 99–122 in Die Geschichte der Daniel-­Auslegung. Edited by Bracht/duToit. Botterweck, G. J. “Marginalien zum atl. Auferstehungsglauben.” Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 54 (1957): 1–8. Bousset, W. Die Religion des Judentums. 3rd ed. Tübingen: Mohr, 1926. Boutflower, C. “ ‘Belshazzar the King’ (Dan. v. 1).” ExpTim 36 (1924–25): 526–27. —­—­—­. “The Historical Value of Daniel v and vi.” JTS 17 (1915–16): 43–60. —­—­—­. In and Around the Book of Daniel. London: SPCK, 1923. Bowker, J. W. “Intercession in the Qur’an and the Jewish Tradition.” JSS 11 (1966): 69–82. Bowker, J. “The Son of Man.” JTS n.s. 28 (1977): 19–48. Bowman, J. “The Background of the Term ‘Son of Man.’ ” ExpTim 59 (1947–48): 283–88. Boyarin, D. “Beyond Judaisms.” JSJ 41 (2010): 323–65. —­—­—­. “Daniel 7, Intertextuality, and the History of Israel’s Cult.” Harvard Theological Review 105 (2012): 139–62.

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Boyce, M. Zoroastrians. London/Boston: Routledge, 1979. Boyer, P. S. When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1992. Boyle, W. R. A. The Inspiration of the Book of Daniel. London: Rivingtons, 1863. Braaten, C. E. “The Significance of Apocalypticism for Systematic Theology.” Int 25 (1971): 480–503. Bracht, K. Hippolyts Schrift In Danielem. Tübingen: Mohr, 2014. —­—­—­ “Logos parainetikos: Der Danielkommentar des Hippolyt.” Pages 79–97 in Die Geschichte der Daniel-­Auslegung. Edited by Bracht/duToit. —­—­—­and du Toit, D. S., eds. Die Geschichte der Daniel-­Auslegung in Judentum, Christentum und Islam. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007. Brant, J.-­A . A., et al., eds. Ancient Fiction. Atlanta: SBL, 2005. Braverman, J. Jerome’s Commentary on Daniel. Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1978. Breed, B. W. “History of Reception” and “History of Daniel’s Reception.” Passim in Newsom, Daniel. Brekelmans, C. H. W. “The Saints of the Most High and Their Kingdom.” OtSt 14 (1965): 305–29. Brenner, A. Colour Terms in the Old Testament. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1982. —­—­—­. “ ‘‫­–’מ ְר ֶאה‬ ַ ‫’מ ְר ָאה‘ ו‬.” ַ BetM 25 (1980): 373–74. —­—­—­ ed. A Feminist Companion to Prophets and Daniel. London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001. Brensinger, T. L. “Compliance, Dissonance and Amazement in Daniel 3.” Evangelical Journal 20 (2002): 7–19. Briant, P. Histoire de l’Empire perse. Paris: Fayard, 1996. Translated by P. T. Daniels, From Cyrus to Alexander. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002. Briggs, C. A. Messianic Prophecy. New York: Scribner’s, 1886. Briggs, R. S. “ ‘I Perceived in the Books.’ ” Pages 111–27 in The Bible and Spirituality. Edited by A. T. Lincoln et al. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2013. —­—­—­. “Reading Daniel as Children’s Literature.” Biblical Reception 1 (2012): 235–46. Bright, J. The Kingdom of God. New York: Pierce and Washabough, 1953. Repr., Nashville: Washabaugh, 1981. Brightman, T. A Most Comfortable Exposition of the Last and Most Difficult Part of the Prophecy of Daniel. [Amsterdam, Thorp] 1635. Bringmann, K. Hellenistische Reform und Religionsverfolgung in Judäa. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1983. Brock, S. P. “ ‘The Young Daniel.’ ” Pages 267–85 in Revealed Wisdom. Christopher Rowland Festschrift. Edited by J. Ashton. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Brockington, L. H. The Hebrew Text of the Old Testament: The Readings Adopted by the Translators of the New English Bible. London: Oxford University Press, 1973. Broida, M. “Textualizing Divination.” VT 62 (2012): 1–13. Brongers, H. A. “Die Zehnzahl in der Bibel und ihrer Umwelt.” Pages 30–45 in Studia Biblica et Semitica. T. C. Vriezen Festscrift. Wageningen: Veenman, 1966. Brooke, G. J. “Qumran Pesher.” RevQ 10 (1981): 483–503. Broughton, H. Daniel his Chaldie Visions and his Ebrew. London: Field, 1596. Brown, J. P. “Proverb-­Book, Gold-­Economy, Alphabet.” JBL 100 (1981): 169–91. Brown, R. E. “The Pre-­Christian Semitic Concept of ‘Mystery.’ ” CBQ 20 (1958): 417–43. = Brown. Pages 1–30 in The Semitic Background of the Term “Mystery.” Philadelphia: Fortress, 1968. Brownlee, W. H. “The Servant of the Lord in the Qumran Scrolls.” BASOR 132 (1952): 8–15; 135 (1954): 33–38.

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Brox, N., ed. Pseudepigraphie in der heidnischen und jüdisch-­christlichen Antike. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche, 1977. Bruce, F. F. “The Background to the Son of Man Sayings.” Pages 50–70 in Christ the Lord. D. Guthrie Festschrift. Edited by H. H. Rowdon. Leicester: Inter-­Varsity Press, 1982. —­—­—­. Biblical Exegesis in the Qumran Texts. Rev. ed., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959. —­—­—­. “The Chronology of Daniel 1:1.” Pages 229–36 in Climax of the Ages. Tatford. London: Oliphants, 1953. —­—­—­. This Is That: The New Testament Development of Some Old Testament Themes. Exeter: Paternoster, 1968. = The New Testament Development of Some Old Testament Themes. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968. —­—­—­. “Josephus and Daniel.” Annual of the Swedish Theological Institute 6 (1965): 148–62. —­—­—­. “The Book of Daniel and the Qumran Community.” Pages 221–35 in Neotestamentica et Semitica. M. Black Festschrift. Edited by E. E. Ellis and M. Wilcox. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1969. —­—­—­. “The Earliest Old Testament Interpretation.” OtSt 17 (1972): 37–52. —­—­—­. “The Oldest Greek Version of Daniel.” OtSt 20 (1977): 22–40. —­—­—­. “Prophetic Interpretation in the Septuagint.” BIOSCS 12 (1979): 17–26. Bruce, L. P. “Discourse Theme and the Narratives of Daniel.” BSac 160 (2003): 174–86. Brueggemann, W. “At the Mercy of Babylon.” JBL 110 (1991): 3–22. —­—­—­. “From Dust to Kingship.” ZAW 84 (1972): 1–18. —­—­—­. Genesis. Atlanta: Knox, 1982. —­—­—­. “The Non-­negotiable Price of Sanity.” Journal for Preachers 28/1 (2004): 28–36. Bruston, C. Etudes sur Daniel et l’Apocalypse. Paris: Fischbacher, 1896. De Bruyn, J. “A Clash of Gods.” HvTSt 70 (2014) #1956. —­—­—­. “Daniel 5, Elohim and Marduk.” OTE 26 (2013): 623–41. Buber, M. “The Gods of the Nations and God.” Pages 194–213 in Israel and the World. Translated by O. Marx. Repr., New York: Schocken, 1963. —­—­—­. “Prophetie und Apokalyptik.” Pages 925–42 in Werke. Vol. 2. Munich: Kösel, 1964. Translated by M. Friedman, “Prophecy, Apocalyptic, and the Historical Hour.” Pages 192–207 in Pointing the Way. London: Routledge, 1957. Buchanan, G. W. The Book of Daniel. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1999. —­—­—­. “Eschatology and the ‘End of Days.’ ” JNES 20 (1961): 188–93. —­—­—­. To the Hebrews. AB 36. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1972. Buchanan, H. “Luther and the Turks 1519–1529.” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 47 (1956): 145–59. Bucheim, J. G. Dissertatio de μεταμορφώσει regis Nabuchodonosoris. = TTP, 876–82. Buis, P. “Notification de jugement et confession nationale.” BZ 11 (1967): 193–205. Bullinger, E. W. Number in Scripture. London: Eyre, 1894. 6th ed., London: Lamp, 1952. Bullinger, H. Daniel sapientissimus Dei propheta. Zürich: Froschouerus, 1565. Bulman, J. M. “The Identification of Darius the Mede.” WTJ 35 (1972–73): 247–67. Bultmann, R. History and Eschatology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University, 1957. = The Presence of Eternity. New York: Harper, 1957. Bunge, J. G. “Der ‘Gott der Festungen’ und der ‘Liebling der Frauen.’ ” JSJ 4 (1973): 169–82. —­—­—­. “Die sogenannte Religionsverfolgung Antiochus IV. Epiphanes und die griechischen Städte.” JSJ 10 (1979): 155–65. —­—­—­. “  ‘Theos Epiphanes.’  ” Historia 23 (1974): 57–85. Bunta, S. N. “The Me¯su-­t ree and the Animal Inside.” Scrinium 3 (2007): 364–84. Burgmann, H. “Die vier Endzeittermine im Danielbuch.” ZAW 86 (1974): 543–50. —­—­—­. “Die interkalation in den sieben Jahrwochen des Sonnenkalendars.” RevQ 10 (1979–81): 67–81. Repr., Zwei lösbare Qumrânprobleme, 283–97. Frankfurt: Lang, 1986.

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Burkholder, B. “Literary Patterns and God’s Sovereignty in Daniel 4.” Direction 16/2 (1987): 45–54. Burnier-­G enton, J. Le rêve subversif d’un sage. Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1993. Burridge, K. O. L. “Reflections on Prophecy and Prophetic Groups.” Pages 99–102 in Anthropological Perspectives on Old Testament Prophecy. Semeia 21. Edited by R. C. Culley and T. W. Overholt. Atlanta: SBL Press, 1981. Burrows, E. The Gospel of the Infancy and Other Biblical Essays. London: Burns and Oates, 1940. Burton, A. H. Hints on the Book of Daniel. London: Carter, 1903. Busto Saiz, J. R. “El texto teodociónico de Daniel y la traducción de Símaco.” Sefarad 40 (1980): 41–55. Buth, R. “Word Order in the Aramaic of Daniel.” Occasional Papers in Translation and Textlinguistics 1 (1987): 3–12. Butler, S. A. L. Mesopotamian Conceptions of Dreams and Dream Rituals. Münster: Ugarit, 1998. Butterworth, C. C., and Chester, A. G. George Joye. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1962. Buzy, D. “Les symboles de Daniel.” RB 27 [n.s. 15] (1918): 403–31. Buschhaus, M. “Anunnakku¯ und Igigu¯ im Buch Daniel.” BN 36 (1987): 17–21. Bush, G. The Prophecies of Daniel: Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream. 2 parts. New York: Harper, 1844. Byington, S. T. “Hebrew Marginalia iii.” JBL 64 (1945): 339–55. Calvin, J. Commentaries on the Book of the Prophet Daniel. 2 vols. Translated by T. Myers. Edinburgh: CTS, 1852–53. —­—­—­. Institutes of the Christian Religion. 2 vols. Translated by F. L. Battles. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961. —­—­—­. Quarante sept Sermons sur les huiet derniers chapitres des propheties de Daniel. La Rochelle: Berton, 1565. = Corpus reformatorum 69 (Calvin Vol. 41; 1889): 305–688; 70 (Calvin Vol. 42; 1890): 1–174. Campbell, J. An Exposition of Daniel xii. 5, 6, 7. Glasgow: privately published, 1817. Campbell, J. Y. “The Origin and Meaning of the Term ‘Son of Man.’ ” JTS 48 (1947): 145–55. Campi, E. “Über das Ende des Weltzeitalters.” Pages 225–38 in Europa, Tausendjähriges Reich und Neue Welt. Edited by Delgado/Koch/Marsch. Camping, H. 1994? New York: Vantage, 1992. Capp, B. S. “The Fifth Monarchists and Popular Millenarianism.” Pages 165–89 in Radical Religion in the English Revolution. Edited by B. Reay and J. F. McGregor. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. —­—­—­. The Fifth-­Monarchy Men. London: Faber, 1972. Caquot, A. “Matthias Delcor, Le livre de Daniel.” VT 23 (1973): 113–17. —­—­—­. “Les quatre bêtes et le ‘Fils d’homme’ (Daniel 7).” Semitica 17 (1967): 37–71. —­—­—­. “Sur les quatre bêtes de Daniel vii.” Semitica 5 (1955): 5–13. —­—­—­and Leibovici, M., ed. La divination. 2 vols. Paris: PUF, 1968. Caragounis, C. C. “Greek Culture and Jewish Piety: The Clash and the Fourth Beast of Daniel 7.” ETL 65 (1989): 280–308. —­—­—­. “History and Supra-­History.” Pages 387–97 in The Book of Daniel. Edited by A. S. van der Woude. —­—­—­. “The Interpretation of the Ten Horns of Daniel 7.” ETL 63 (1987): 106–13. —­—­—­. The Son of Man. Tübingen: Mohr, 1986. Carey, J. S. E. W. Bullinger. Privately published, 1988. Carmignac, J. “Les citations de l’Ancien Testament dans ‘La Guerre des Fils de Lumière contre les Fils de Ténèbres.’ ” RB 63 (1956): 234–60, 375–90.

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—­—­—­. Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979. Chrysostomus, J. Εις τον Δανιηλ προφητην. PG 56: 193–246. Ciraolo, L. J., and Lee, J., eds. Magic and Divination in the Ancient World. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Clay, A. T. “Gobryas.” JAOS 41 (1921): 466–67. Clerget, J. “L’énigme et son interprétation.” LumVie 31 [160] (1982): 36–47. Clerice, J. de. Dissertatio de epulo Belschasar. Wittenberg: Haken, 1662. = TTP 883–86. Clermont-­G anneau, C. “Mané, thécel, pharés et le festin de Balthasar.” Journal Asiatique viii, 8 (1886): 36–67. Repr., Recueil d’archéologie orientale 1:136–59. Paris: Leroux, 1888. Translated by R. W. Rogers, “Mene, Tekel, Peres, and the Feast of Belshazzar.” Hebraica 3 (1887): 87–102. Clifford, R. J. “History and Myth in Daniel 10–12.” BASOR 220 (1975): 23–26. Cocceius, J. Observationes ad Danielem. Repr., Opera 3. Amsterdam: Johannis à Someren, 1673. Coats, G. W., ed. Saga Legend Tale Novella Fable. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1985. Cohen, D. R. “Subject and Object in Biblical Aramaic.” Afroasiatic Linguistics 2, 1(1975): 1–23. Cohen, G. D., A Critical Ediiton with a Translation and Notes of The Book of Tradition (Sefer ha-­Qabbalah) by Abraham Ibn Daud. Philadelphia: JPS, 1967. Cohn, N. Cosmos, Chaos and the World to Come. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. —­—­—­. The Pursuit of the Millennium. Rev. ed., New York: Oxford University Press, 1970. Colless, B. E. “Cyrus the Persian as Darius the Mede in the Book of Daniel.” JSOT 56 (1992): 113–26. [Collins, A.] The Scheme of Literal Prophecy Considered. London: no publisher stated, 1727. Collins, J. J. “Apocalypse and Empire.” SEÅ 76 (2011): 1–19. Repr., Apocalypse, Prophecy, and Pseudepigraphy, 289–307. —­—­—­. Apocalypse, Prophecy, and Pseudepigraphy. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015. —­—­—­. “Apocalyptic Genre and Mythic Allusions in Daniel.” JSOT 21 (1981): 83–100. —­—­—­. “Apocalyptic Eschatology as the Transcendence of Death.” CBQ 36 (1974): 21–43. Repr., Visionaries and Their Apocalypses, 61–84. Edited by P. D. Hanson. London: SPCK, 1983. Repr., Seers, Sybils and Sages in Hellenistic-­R oman Judaism, 75–97. —­—­—­. “The Apocalyptic Technique.” CBQ 44 (1982): 91–111. —­—­—­. The Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel. Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1977. —­—­—­. “The Book of Daniel and the Dead Sea Scrolls.” Pages 102–15 in Scriptures and Sectarianism. Tübingen: Mohr, 2014. —­—­—­. “Cosmos and Salvation.” HR 17 (1977): 121–42. Repr., Seers, Sybils and Sages in Hellenistic-­Roman Judaism, 317–38. —­—­—­. “The Court-­Tales in Daniel and the Development of Apocalyptic.” JBL 94 (1975): 218–34. —­—­—­. “Current Issues in the Study of Daniel.” Pages 1–15 in The Book of Daniel. Vol. 1. Edited by Collins/Flint. —­—­—­. Daniel: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993. —­—­—­. “Daniel.” Pages 77–88 in The Oxford Handbook of the Reception History of the Bible. Part 1. Edited by M. Lieb et al. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. —­—­—­. “Daniel and His Social World.” Int 39 (1985): 131–43. Repr., Interpreting the Prophets, 249–60. Edited by Mays/Achtemeier. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987. —­—­—­. Daniel with an Introduction to Apocalyptic Literature. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984. —­—­—­. “The Danielic Son of Man.” Pages 191–214 in The Scepter and the Star. Rev. ed., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010.

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—­—­—­. “Dualism and Eschatology in 1QM.” VT 29 (1979): 212–16. —­—­—­. “Inspiration or Illusion.” Ex auditu 6 (1990): 29–38. —­—­—­. “Jewish Apocalyptic against Its Hellenistic Near Eastern Environment.” BASOR 220 (1975): 27–36. Repr., Seers, Sybils and Sages in Hellenistic-­Roman Judaism, 59–74. —­—­—­. Jewish Cult and Hellenistic Culture. Leiden: Brill, 2005. —­—­—­. “The Meaning of ‘The End’ in the Book of Daniel.” Pages 91–98 in Of Scribes and Scrolls. Edited by H. W. Attridge et al. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1990. Repr., Seers, Sybils and Sages, 157–65. —­—­—­. “The Mythology of Holy War in Daniel and the Qumran War Scroll.” VT 25 (1975): 596–612. —­—­—­. “New Light on the Book of Daniel from the Dead Sea Scrolls.” Pages 180–96 in Perspectives in the Study of the Old Testament and Early Judaism. A. S. van der Woude Festschrift. Edited by F. García Martínez and E. Noort. Leiden: Brill, 1998. —­—­—­. “Pseudonymity, Historical Reviews, and the Genre of the Revelation of John.” CBQ 39 (1977): 329–43. —­—­—­. The Scepter and the Star. Rev. ed., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010. —­—­—­. Seers, Sybils and Sages in Hellenistic-­Roman Judaism. Leiden: Brill 1997. —­—­—­. “The Son of Man and the Saints of the Most High in the Book of Daniel.” JBL 93 (1974): 50–66. Cf. Collins, The Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel, 123–52. —­—­—­. “Stirring up the Great Sea.” Pages 121–136 in The Book of Daniel. Edited by A. S. van der Woude. Repr., Seers, Sybils and Sages, 139–55. —­—­—­. “The Sybil and the Apocalypses.” Pages 185–202 in Greco-­Roman Culture and the New Testament. Edited by D. E. Braun and F. E. Brenk. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Repr., Apocalypse, Prophecy, and Pseudepigraphy, 108–26. —­—­—­. “The Symbolism of Transcendence in Jewish Apocalyptic.” BR 19 (1974): 5–22. —­—­—­, ed. Apocalypse: The Morphology of a Genre. Semeia 14 (1979). Incorporating material from SBL 1977 Seminar Papers. —­—­—­, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. —­—­—­and Flint, P. W., eds. The Book of Daniel. 2 vols. Leiden: Brill, 2001. —­—­—­and Manning, J. G., eds. Revolt and Resistance in the Ancient Classical World and the Near East. Leiden: Brill, 2016. —­—­—­and Sterling, G. E., eds. Hellenism and the Land of Israel. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2001. Colpe, C. “ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου.” TWNT 8 (1969): 403–81. ET TDNT 8 (1972): 400–77. —­—­—­. “Der Begriff ‘Menschensohn.’  ” Kairos 11 (1969): 241–63; 12 (1970): 81–112; 13 (1971): 1–17; 14 (1972): 241–57. —­—­—­. “Neue Untersuchungen zum Menschensohn- ­P roblem.” TRev 77 (1981): 353–72. —­—­—­. “Kearns, Rollin: Vorfragen zur Christologie. I.” TRev 77 (1981): 373–78. Conrad, D. “On ‫רֹוע‬ ַ ְ‫‘ = ז‬Forces, Troops, Army’ in Biblical Hebrew.” Tel Aviv 3 (1976): 111–19. Cook, A. Light from the Book of Daniel. London: Banks, 1916. Cook, E. M. “In the Plain of the Wall.” JBL 108 (1989): 115–16. —­—­—­. “Word Order in the Aramaic of Daniel.” Afroasiatic Linguistics 9, 3 (1986): 1–16. Cook, J. M. The Persian Empire. London: Dent, 1983. Cook, S. A. “The Articles of Dress in Dan. iii, 21.” Journal of Philology 26 (1898–99): 306–13. Cook, S. L. “Mythological Discourse in Ezekiel and Daniel and the Rise of Apocalypticism in Israel.” Pages 85–106 in Knowing the End from the Beginning. Edited by L. L. Grabbe and R. D. Haak. London: Bloomsbury, 2004.

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Cooper, D. L. The 70 Weeks of Daniel. Los Angeles: Biblical Research Society, 1941. Coppens, J. “Le chapitre vii de Daniel.” ETL 39 (1963): 87–94. —­—­—­. “La composition du livre de Daniel.” ETL 52 (1976): 346–49. —­—­—­. “Dan., vii, 1–18—note additionnelle.” ETL 55 (1979): 384. —­—­—­. “Daniel vii, un rituel d’intronisation?” ETL 46 (1970): 112–16. —­—­—­. “Le Fils d’homme daniélique et les relectures de Dan., vii, 13.” ETL 37 (1961): 5–51. Repr., Coppens and L. Dequeker, Le Fils de l’homme et les Saints du Très-­Haut en Daniel, vii, 55–101. —­—­—­. “Le Fils d’homme daniélique, vizir céleste?” ETL 40 (1964): 72–80. —­—­—­. “L’interprétation collective du Fils d’homme daniélique.” ETL 53 (1977): 189–91. —­—­—­. “Le livre de Daniel et ses problèmes.” ETL 56 (1980): 1–9. Repr., La relève apocalyptique du messianisme royal 2: 19–27. —­—­—­. Le messianisme royal. Paris: Cerf, 1968. —­—­—­. Le messianisme et sa relève prophétique. Louvain: Peeters, 1974. —­—­—­. “Le messianisme sapiential et les origines littéraires du Fils de l’homme daniélique.” Pages 33–41 in Wisdom in Israel and in the Ancient Near East. H. H. Rowley Festchrift. Edited by M. Noth and D. W. Thomas. Leiden: Brill, 1955. —­—­—­. “Un nouvel essai d’interpréter Dan., vii.” ETL 45 (1969): 122–25. —­—­—­. “L’origine du symbole du ‘Fils d’homme.’ ” ETL 39 (1963): 100–4. —­—­—­. “Les origines du symbole du Fils d’homme en Dan., vii.” ETL 44 (1968): 497–502. —­—­— ­. La relève apocalyptique du messianisme royal 2: Le Fils d’homme vétéro-­ et intertestamentaire. Louvain: Peeters, 1983. —­—­—­. “Les Saints du Très-­Haut sont-­ils à identifier avec les milices célestes?” ETL 39 (1963): 94–100. —­—­—­. “Le Serviteur de Yahvé et le Fils d’homme daniélique sont ils des figures messianiques?” ETL 39 (1963): 104–14. —­—­—­. “La vision daniélique du Fils d’homme.” VT 19 (1969): 171–82. —­—­—­. “La vision du Très-­Haut en Dan., vii et Hén. éthiop, xiv.” ETL 53 (1977): 187–89. —­—­—­ and Dequeker, L. Le Fils de l’homme et les Saints du Très-­Haut en Daniel, vii. Louvain: Publications Universitaires de Louvain, 1961. Cornill, C. H. “Die siebzig Jahrwochen Daniels.” Theologische Studien und Skizzen aus Ostpreussen 2 (1889): 1–32. Couroyer, B. “Lh·n: chantre?” VT 5 (1955): 83–88. Courtray, R. “Der Danielkommentar des Hieronymus.” Pages 123–50 in Die Geschichte der Daniel-­Auslegung. Edited by Bracht/duToit. —­—­—­. Prophète des temps derniers: Jérôme commente Daniel. Paris: Beauchesne, 2009. Cowe, S. P. The Armenian Version of Daniel. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992. —­—­—­. “The Reception of the Book of Daniel Late Ancient and Medieval Armenian Society.” Pages 81–125 The Armenian Apocalyptic Tradition. Robert W. Thomson Festschrift. Edited by in K. B. Bardakjian and S. La Porta Leiden: Brill, 2014. Coxon, P. W. “Another Look at Nebuchadnezzar’s Madness.” Pages 211–22 in The Book of Daniel. Edited by A. S. van der Woude. —­—­—­. “Daniel iii 17: A Linguistic and Theological Problem.” VT 26 (1976): 400–9. —­—­—­. “The Distribution of Synonyms in Biblical Aramaic.” RevQ 9 (1977–78): 497–512. —­—­—­. “The Great Tree of Daniel 4. “ Pages 91–111 in A Word in Season. W. McKane Festschrift. Edited by J. D. Martin and P. R. Davies. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1986. —­—­—­. “Greek Loan-­words and Alleged Greek Loan Translations in the Book of Daniel.” TGUOS 25 (1973–74): 24–40. —­—­—­. “The ‘List’ Genre and Narrative Style in the Court Tales of Daniel.” JSOT 35 (1986): 95–121.

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—­—­—­. “Da‘at ‘Humiliation.’ ” VT 30 (1980): 97–103. —­—­—­. “TheˉDaniel of Ugarit and Ezekiel and the Hero of the Book of Daniel.” VT 30 (1980): 174–84. —­—­—­. God’s Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. —­—­—­. “Resurrection Imagery from Baal to the Book of Daniel.” Pages 125–33 in Congress Volume: Cambridge 1995. Edited by J. A. Emerton. Leiden: Brill, 1997. Debel, H. “Retracing Authoritative Traditions behind the Scriptural Texts: The Book of Daniel as a Case in Point.” Pages 117–38 in The Process of Authority. Edited by J. Dušek. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016. Deines, R. “How Long? God’s Revealed Schedule for Salvation and the Outbreak of the Bar Kokhba Revolt.” Pages 211–34 in Judaism and Crisis. Edited by A Lange et al. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 2011. Deissler, A. “Der ‘Menschensohn’ und ‘das Volk der Heiligen des Höchsten’ in Dan 7.” Pages 81–91 in Jesus und der Menschensohn. Edited by Pesch/Schnackenburg. Freiburg: Herder, 1975. Delcor, M. “Un cas de traduction ‘targoumique’ de la LXX.” Textus 7 (1969): 30–35. —­—­—­. “Le Dieu des apocalypticiens.” Pages 211–28 in La notion biblique de Dieu. Leuven: Peeters, 1976. Repr., Études bibliques et orientales de religions comparées, 210–27. —­—­—­. Études bibliques et orientales de religions comparées. Leiden: Brill, 1979. —­—­—­. “L’histoire selon le livre de Daniel.” Pages 365–86 in The Book of Daniel. Edited by A. S. van der Woude. —­—­—­. “L’hymne à Sion.” RevQ 6 (1967–69): 71–88. —­—­—­. Le livre de Daniel. Paris: Gabalda, 1971. —­—­—­. “Le livre des Paraboles d’Hénoch Ethiopien.” Estudios Biblicos 38 (1979–80): 5–33. —­—­—­. “Le milieu d’origine et le développement de l’apocalyptique juive.” Recherches bibliques 9 (1974): 101–17. Repr., Etudes bibliques et orientales de religions comparées, 193–209. —­—­—­. “Mythologie et apocalyptique.” Pages 143–77 in Apocalypses et théologie de l’espérance: Congres de Toulouse 1975. Paris: Cerf, 1977. Repr., Etudes bibliques et orientales de religions comparées, 228–62. —­—­—­. “Les sources du chapitre vii de Daniel.” VT 18 (1968): 290–312. Repr., Etudes bibliques et orientales de religions comparées, 154–76. Delgado, M. “Der Traum von der Universalmonarchie: Zur Danielrezeption in den iberischen Kulturen nach 1492.” Pages 252–305 in Europa, Tausendjähriges Reich und Neue Welt. Edited by Delgado/Koch/Marsch. —­—­—­. and Koch, K., and Marsch, E., eds. Europa, Tausendjähriges Reich und Neue Welt. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2003. Del Medico, H. E. “L’identification des Kittim avec les Romains.” VT 10 (1960): 448–53. De Long, K. P. “Daniel and the Narrative Integrity of His Prayer in Daniel 9.” Pages 219–49 in A Teacher for All Generations. Vol 1. Edited by E. F. Mason et al. James C. VanderKam Festschrift. 2 vols. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Denis, A. M. Introduction aux Pseudépigraphes grecs d’Ancien Testament. Leiden: Brill, 1970. Dequeker, L. “Daniel vii et les Saints du Très-­Haut.” ETL 36 (1960): 353–92. Repr., Coppens/Dequeker, Le Fils de l’homme et les Saints du Très-­Haut en Daniel, vii., 15–54. —­—­—­. “Les qedôšîm du Ps. lxxxix à la lumière des croyances sèmitiques.” ETL 39 (1963): 469–84. —­—­—­. “The ‘Saints of the Most High’ in Qumran and Daniel.” OtSt 18 (1973): 108–87. Derrett, J. D. M. “Daniel and Salvation-­History.” Downside Review 100 (1982): 62–67. Repr., Studies in the New Testament 4:132–38. Leiden: Brill, 1986.

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—­—­—­. “Problems in Aramaic and Hebrew Texts.” Pages 46–70 in Miscellanea orientalia. A. Deimel Festschrift. Rome: PBI, 1935. —­—­—­. Review of CAD 16. JSS 9 (1964): 346–50. —­—­—­. “Sacred Numbers and Round Figures.” Pages 62–90 in Promise and Fulfilment. S. H. Hooke Festschrift. Edited by F. F. Bruce. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1963. Driver, S. R. The Book of Daniel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900. 5th ed., 1922. —­—­—­. An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1891. 6th ed., 1897. Dubarle, A.-­M. “Belief in Immortality in the Old Testament and Judaism.” Translated by R. Ockenden. Concilium 10/6 (1970): 34–45. Duckworth, H. T. F. “The Origin of the Book of Daniel.” Exp vii, 2 (1906): 224–33. Düsterwald, F. Die Weltreiche und das Gottesreich nach den Weissagungen des Propheten Daniel. Freiburg: Herder, 1890. Dulaey, M. “Daniel dans la fosse aux lions.” Revue des sciences religieuses 72 (1998): 38–50. —­—­—­. “Les trois Hébreux dans la fournaise.” Revue des sciences religieuses 71 (1997): 33–59. Dumbrell, W. J. “Daniel 7 and the Function of Old Testament Apocalyptic.” Reformed Theological Review 34 (1975): 16–23. Dunbar, D. G. “Hippolytus of Rome and the Eschatological Exegesis of the Early Church.” WTJ 45 (1983): 322–39. Dunn, J. D. G. “The Danielic Son of Man in the NT.” Pages 528–49 in The Book of Daniel. Vol. 2. Edited by Collins/Flint. Dunn, G. D. “Probabimus venisse eum iam.” Zeitschrift Antikes Christentum 7 (2003): 140–55. —­—­—­. “Tertullian and Daniel 9:24–27.” Zeitschrift Antikes Christentum 6 (2002): 330–44. Dupont-­Sommer, A. “Exorcismes et guérisons dans les écrits de Qoumrân.” Pages 246–61 in Congress Volume: Oxford 1959. Leiden: Brill, 1960. Du Toit, D. S. “Die Danielrezeption in Markus 13.” Pages 55–76 in Die Geschichte der Daniel-­Auslegung. Edited by Bracht/du Toit. Dyer, C. H. “The Musical Instruments in Daniel 3.” BSac 147 (1990): 426–36. Eaton, J. H. Kingship and the Psalms. London: SCM, 1976. Eddy, S. K. The King Is Dead. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961. Edlin, J. Daniel. Kansas City: Beacon Hill, 2009. Eerdmans, B. D. “Origin and Meaning of the Aramaic Part of Daniel.” Pages 198–202 in Actes du xviiie congrès international des orientalists. Leiden: Brill, 1932. Efird, J. M. Daniel and Revelation. Valley Forge, PA: Judson, 1978. Eggler, J. Influences and Traditions Underlying the Vision of Daniel 7:2–14. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 2000. Ego, B. “Daniel und die Rabbinen.” Judaica 51 (1995): 18–32. Ehrlich, A. B. Randglossen zur hebräischen Bibel 7:126–55. Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1914. Ehrlich, E. L. Der Traum im Alten Testament. Berlin: Töpelmann, 1953. Eichhorn, D. E. “Sanhedrin 93a and the Third Chapter of Daniel.” Central Conference of American Rabbis Journal 16, 2 (1969): 24–25. Eichhorn, J. G. Einleitung in das Alte Testament 3:382–445. 3rd ed. Leipzig: Weidmann, 1803. —­—­—­. Die hebräischen Propheten 3:428–515. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1819. Eichrodt, W. Theologie des Alten Testaments. Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1933–39. Rev. ed., Stuttgart: Klotz, 1957–61. Translated by J. A. Baker, Theology of the Old Testament. London: SCM, 1957–61. Eisenbeis, W. Die Wurzel ‫ שלם‬im Alten Testament. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1969.

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Eising, H. “Die Gottesoffenbarungen bei Daniel im Rahmen der alt. Theophanien.” Pages 62–73 in Alttestamentliche Studien Friedrich Nötscher. Edited by H. Junker and J. Botterweck. Bonn: Hanstein, 1950. Eiss, W. “Der Kalender des nachexilischen Judentums.” Die Welt des Orients 3 (1964): 44–47. Eissfeldt, O. “Baalšame¯ m und Jahwe.” ZAW 57 (1939): 1–31 Repr., Kleine Schriften 2:171–98. —­—­—­. Baal Zaphon, Zeus Kasios und der Durchzug der Israeliten durchs Meer. Halle: Niemeyer, 1932. —­—­—­. “Daniels und seiner drei Gefärten Laufbahn im babylonischen, medischen und persischen Dienst.” ZAW 72 (1960): 134–48. Repr., Kleine Schriften 3:512–25. —­—­—­. Kleine Schriften. 6 vols. Tübingen: Mohr, 1962–79. —­—­—­. “Die Menetekel-­Inschrift und ihre Deutung.” ZAW 63 (1951): 105–14. Repr., Kleine Schriften 3:210–17. —­—­—­. “Renaming in the Old Testament.” Pages 73–79 in Words and Meanings. D. W. Thomas Festschrift. Edited by P. R. Ackroyd and B. Lindars. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968. Eitan, I. “Some Philological Observations in Daniel.” HUCA 14 (1939): 13–22. Eliade, M. Traité d’histoire des religions. Paris: Payot, 1949. Translated by R. Sheed, Patterns in Comparative Religion. London: Sheed and Ward, 1958. Ellis, M. de J. “Observations on Mesopotamian Oracles and Prophetic Texts.” JCS 41 (1989): 127–86. Emerton, J. A. “A Consideration of Some Alleged Meanings of ‫ ידע‬in Hebrew.” JSS 15 (1970): 145–80. —­—­—­. “The Meaning of še¯na¯ ’ in Psalm cxxvii 2.” VT 24 (1974): 25–30. —­—­—­. “The Origin of the Son of Man Imagery.” JTS n.s. 9 (1958): 225–42. Repr., The Communication of the Gospel in New Testament Times, 35–56. London: SPCK, 1961. —­—­—­. “The Participles in Daniel v. 12.” ZAW 72 (1960): 262–63. Emery, D. L. Daniel: Who Wrote the Book? Ilfracombe: Stockwell, 1978. Endresz R. J. “Daniel: A Survey of Patristic Exegesis.” Phronema 31 (2016): 123–52. Engnell, I. “E. Sjöberg, Der Menschensohn im äthiopischen Henochbuch.” BO 8 (1951): 187–92. —­—­—­. “Die Urmenschvorstellung und das Alte Testament.” SEÅ 22–23 (1957–58): 265–89. —­—­—­. “Människosonen.” Pages 229–32 in Svenskt Bibliskt Uppslagsverk. Vol. 2. 2nd ed. Edited by I. Engnell. Stockholm: Nordiska, 1962. Translated by J. T. Willis, “The Son of Man.” Pages 237–41 in A Rigid Scrutiny. Nashville: Vanderbilt University, 1969. = Critical Essays on the Old Testament, 237–41. London: SPCK, 1970. —­—­—­. Studies in Divine Kingship. Uppsala: Almqvist, 1943. Repr., Oxford: Blackwell, 1967. Ephrem Syrus. Opera omnia quae exstant 5:214–32. Edited by J. S. Assemanus et al. Rome: Vatican, 1740. Erlandsson, S. “Na˙gra exempel pa˙ waw explicativum.” SEÅ 41–42 (1976–77): 69–76. Erling, B. “Ezekiel 38–39 and the Origins of Jewish Apocalyptic.” Pages 104–14 in Ex orbe religionum. G. Widengren Festschrift. Edited by J. Bergman et al. Vol. 1. Leiden: Brill, 1972. Eshel, E. “Possible Sources of the Book of Daniel.” Pages 387–94 in The Book of Daniel. Vol. 2. Edited by. Eusebius of Caesarea. Εὐαγγελικης ἀποδειξεως βιβλια δεκα. PG 22: 13–794. Translated by W. J. Ferrar, The Proof of the Gospel. London: SPCK, 1920. Evans, C. A. “Daniel in the NT.” Pages 490–527 in The Book of Daniel. Vol. 2. Edited by Collins/Flint.

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—­—­—­. and S. Talmon, eds. The Quest for Context and Meaning. J. A. Sanders Festschrift. Leiden: Brill, 1997. Ewald, H. Die Propheten des Alten Bundes 3:298–491. 2nd ed., Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1868. Translated by J. F. Smith, Commentary on the Prophets of the Old Testament 5:152–325. London: Williams and Norgate, 1881. Fabre d’Envieu, J. Le livre du prophète Daniel. 4 vols. Paris: Thorin, 1888–91. Farrar, F. W. The Book of Daniel. London: Hodder, 1895. Farrell, R. T. Daniel and Azarias. London: Methuen, 1974. Farrer, A. M. A Study in St. Mark. London: Black, 1951. Feigin, S. “Word Studies.” AJSL 43 (1926–27): 44–52. Feinberg, C. L. Daniel. Repr., Winona Lake, IN: BMH, 1981. Feldman, L. H. “Josephus’ Portrait of Daniel.” Henoch 14 (1992): 37–96. Ferch, A. J. “The Apocalyptic ‘Son of Man’ in Daniel 7.” PhD diss., Andrews University, 1979. —­—­—­. “The Book of Daniel and the ‘Maccabean Thesis.’ ” AUSS 21 (1982): 129–41. —­—­—­. “Porphyry: an Heir to Christian Exegesis?” ZNW 73 (1982): 141–47. —­—­—­. The Son of Man in Daniel 7. Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University, 1983. Incorporating material from JBL 99 (1980): 75–86. Ferguson, P. “Nebuchadnezzar, Gilgamesh, and the ‘Babylonian Job.’ ” JETS 37 (1994): 321–31. Festinger, L., et. al. When Prophecy Fails. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1956. Repr., New York: Harper, 1964. Feuillet, A. “Le Fils de l’homme de Daniel et la tradition biblique.” RB 60 (1953): 170–202, 321–46. Repr., Études d’exégèse et de théologie biblique: Ancien Testament, 435–93. Paris: Gabalda, 1975. Fewell, N. D. [see under Nolan Fewell] Fiebig, P. Der Menschensohn. Tübingen: Mohr, 1901. Filmer, W. E. Daniel’s Predictions. London: Regency, 1979. Finegan, J. Handbook of Biblical Chronology. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964. Finesinger, S. B. “Musical Instruments in the Old Testament.” HUCA 3 (1926): 21–75. Finkel, A. “The Pesher of Dreams and Scriptures.” RevQ 4 (1963–64): 357–70. Finkelstein, J. J. “ ‘Mesopotamia.’ ” JNES 21 (1962): 73–92. Finley, T. J. “The Book of Daniel in the Canon of Scripture.” BSac 165 (2008): 195–208. Firth, K. R. The Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain 1530–1645. Oxford: Oxford Univeristy Press, 1979. Fischer, T. Seleukiden und Makkabäer. Bochum: Brockmeyer, 1980. Fischer, U. Eschatologie und Jenseitserwartung im hellenistischen Diasporajudentum. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1978. Fishbane, M. Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel. Oxford: Clarendon, 1985. Incorporating material from Shinan, ed., Proceedings of the Sixth World Congress of Jewish Studies 1:97–114. Fisher, H. A. L. A History of Europe. London: Arnold, 1910. Fitzmyer, J. A. “Another View of the ‘Son of Man’ Debate.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 4 (1979): 58–65. —­—­—­. Essays on the Semitic Background of the New Testament. London: Chapman, 1971. —­—­—­. “Further Light on Melchizedek from Qumran Cave 11.” JBL 86 (1967): 25–41. Repr., Essays on the Semitic Background of the NT, 245–67. —­—­—­. “The New Testament Title ‘Son of Man’ Philologically Considered.” Pages 143–60 in A Wandering Aramaean. —­—­—­. “[Some Notes on] Aramaic Epistolography.” JBL 93 (1974): 201–25 Repr., A Wandering Aramaean, 183–204. Repr., Semeia 22 (1981): 25–57.

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—­—­—­. A Wandering Aramaean. Missoula: Scholars Press, 1979. Flesher, L. S. “Daniel 9:24–27 and the Tribulation.” RevExp 109 (2012): 583–91. —­—­—­. “Tricksters and Martyrs.” Pages 132–56 in Why? . . . How Long? Edited by Flesher et al. New York: Bloomsbury, 2014. Fletcher-­Louis, C. H. T. “The High Priest as Divine Mediator in the Hebrew Bible: Dan 7 13 as a Test Case.” Pages 161–75 in Society of Biblical Literature 1997 Seminar Papers. Atlanta: SBL Press, 1997. Flint, P. W., “The Daniel Tradition at Qumran.” Pages 41–60 in Eschatology and Messianism in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Edited by C. A. Evans and P. W. Flint. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997. —­—­—­ et al., eds. Studies in the Hebew Bible, Qumran, and the Septuagint. Eugene Ulrich Festschrift. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Flusser, D. “The Four Empires in the Fourth Sibyl and in the Book of Daniel.” Israel Oriental Studies 2 (1972): 148–75. Folmer, M. L. The Aramaic Language in the Achaemenid Period. Louvain: Peeters, 1995. Ford, D. The Abomination of Desolation in Biblical Eschatology. Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1979. Form of Prayers for the Day of Atonement. Rev. ed., New York: Rosenbaum, 1890. Fox, D. E. “Ben Sira on OT Canon Again: The Date of Daniel.” WTJ 49 (1987): 335–50. Fraidl, F. Die Exegese der siebzig Wochen Daniels in der alten und mittleren Zeit. Graz: Leuschner, 1883. Frank, R. M. “The Description of the ‘Bear’ in Dn 7,5.” CBQ 21 (1959): 505–7. Freedman, D. N. “The Prayer of Nabonidus.” BASOR 145 (1957): 31–32. Frei, H. The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974. Frerichs, W. W. “How Many Weeks until the End?” Word and World 15 (1995): 166–74. Frischmuthus, J. Evidens demonstratio Messiam secundum computum Danielis pridem apparuisse. = TTP 902–37. Frisch, A. The Danielic Discourse on Empire in Second Temple Literature. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Fritz, V. “Weltalter und Lebenszeit.” ZTK 87 (1990): 145–62. Fröhlich, I. “Daniel 2 and Deutero-­Isaiah.” Pages 266–70 in The Book of Daniel. Edited by A. S. van der Woude. —­—­—­. “Time and Times and Half a Time.” Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996. Froom, L. E. The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers. 4 vols. Washington: Review and Herald, 1950–54. Frost, S. B. Old Testament Apocalyptic. London: Epworth, 1952. —­—­—­. “Apocalyptic and History.” Pages 98–113 in The Bible in Modern Scholarship. Edited by J. P. Hyatt. Nashville: Abingdon, 1965. Repr., V. L. Toilers and J. R. Maier, eds., The Bible in Its Literary Milieu, 134–47. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979. Fruchan, P. “Sur l’interprétation des apocalypses.” Pages 385–440 in Apocalypses et théologie de l’espérance: Congres de Toulouse 1975. Paris: Cerf, 1977. Fruchtman, J. The Apocalyptic Politics of Richard Price and Joseph Priestley. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1983. Frye, R. N. The Heritage of Persia. London: Weidenfeld, 1962. Füller, J. L. Der Profet Daniel. Basel: Bahnmaier, 1868. Gadd, C. J. “The Harran Inscriptions of Nabonidus.” Anatolian Studies 8 (1958): 35–92. —­—­— ­. “The Kingdom of Nabu-­n a’id in Arabia.” Pages 132–34 in Akten des vierundzwanzigsten internationalen Orientalisten-­Kongresses. Edited by H. Franke. Wiesbaden: Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft, 1959. Gaebelein, A. C. The Prophet Daniel. New York: Our Hope, 1911. Gall, A. G. von. Βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ. Heidelberg: Winter, 1926. —­—­—­. “Die Einheitlichkeit des Buches Daniel.” PhD diss., Giessen, 1895.

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—­—­—­. Der Menschensohn. Leiden: Brill, 1983. —­—­—­. “Die sperrende Grenze: die Wurzel ‘lm im Hebräischen.” ZAW 91 (1979): 338–49. German, H. S. “The Armenian Version of the Book of Daniel and Its Affinities.” ZAW 48 (1930): 82–99. —­—­—­. “The Hesychian Influence in the Versions of Daniel.” JBL 48 (1929): 329–32. —­—­—­. “The ‘Polyglott’ Arabic Text of Daniel and Its Affinities.” JBL 44 (1925): 327–52. —­—­—­. “The Sahidic and the Bohairic Versions of the Book of Daniel.” JBL 46 (1927): 279–330. Gershevitch, I. “Amber at Persepolis.” Pages 167–251 in Studia Classica et Orientalia. Vol. 2. A. Pagliaro Festschrift. Rome: Bardi, 1969. Gese, H. “Die Bedeutung der Krise unter Antiochus IV. Epiphanes für die Apokalyptik des Danielbuches.” ZTK 80 (1982): 373–88. Repr., Alttestamentliche Studien, 202–17. Tübingen: Mohr, 1991. —­—­—­. “Das Geschichtsbild des Danielsbuches und Ägypten.” Pages 139–54 in Fontes atque pontes. H. Brunner Festschrift. Edited by M. Görg. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1983. Repr., Alttestamentliche Studien, 189–201. Tübingen: Mohr, 1991. —­—­—­. “Der Messias.” Pages 128–51 in Zur biblischen Theologie. Munich: Kaiser, 1977. Translated by K. Crim, “The Messiah.” Pages 141–66 in Essays on Biblical Theology. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1981. —­—­—­. “Der Tod im Alten Testament.” Pages 31–54 in Zur biblischen Theologie. Munich: Kaiser, 1977. Translated by K. Crim in Essays on Biblical Theology, 34–59. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1981. —­—­—­. “Die Weisheit, der Menschensohn und die Ursprünge der Christologie.” SEÅ 44 (1979): 77–114. Translated by U. Mauser, “Wisdom, Son of Man, and the Origins of Christology.” HBT 3 (1981): 23–57. Gevaryahu, H. M. Y. “‫עיונים בספר דניאל‬.” BetM 7, 4 [16] (1963): 139–46. Gianto, A. “Notes from a Reading of Daniel 2.” Pages 59–68 in Sôfer Mahîr. A. Schenker Festschrift. Edited by Y. A. P. Goldman et al. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Gibbs, G. L. Daniel’s Last Vision. London: Hatchard, 1883. Gibson, M. D. “Belshazzar’s Feast.” ExpTim 23 (1911–12): 181. Gilbert, M. “La prière de Daniel.” Revue theologique de Louvain 3 (1972): 284–310. Gillingham, S. “Psalmody and Apocalyptic in the Hebrew Bible.” Pages 147–69 in After the Exile. R. Mason Festschrift. Edited by J. Barton and D. J. Reimer. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1996. Ginsberg, H. L. “Biblical Aramaic.” Pages 1:17–39; 2:16–41 in An Aramaic Handbook. Edited by F. Rosenthal. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1967. —­—­—­. “The Composition of the Book of Daniel.” VT 4 (1954): 246–75. —­—­—­. “In Re My Studies in Daniel.” JBL 68 (1949): 402–7. —­—­—­. “ ‘King of Kings’ and ‘Lord of Kingdoms.’ ” AJSL 57 (1960): 71–74. —­—­—­. “Lexicographical Notes.” HW, 71–82. —­—­—­. “The Oldest Interpretation of the Suffering Servant.” VT 3 (1953): 400–4. —­—­—­. Studies in Daniel. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1948. Ginzberg, L. The Legends of the Jews. Translated by H. Szold and P. Radin. 7 vols. Philadelphia: JPS, 1909–38. Repr., Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1998–99. Gladd, B. L. Revealing the Mysterion. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008. Glasson, T. F. Greek Influence on Jewish Eschatology. London: SPCK, 1961. —­—­—­. “Mark xiii. and the Greek Old Testament.” ExpTim 69 (1957–58): 213–15. —­—­—­. The Second Advent. London: Epworth, 1943. 3rd ed., 1963. —­—­—­. “The Son of Man Imagery.” NTS 23 (1976–77): 82–90. —­—­—­. “Visions of Thy Head” (Daniel 228).” ExpTim 81 (1969–70): 247–48.

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Glessmer, U. “Die ‘Vier Reiche’ aus Daniel in der targumische Literatur.” Pages 468–89 in The Book of Daniel. Vol. 2. Edited by Collins/Flint. Glueck, N. H · esed in the Bible. Translated by A. Gottschalk. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College, 1967. Gnuse, R. The Dream Theophany of Samuel. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984. —­—­—­. Dreams and Dream Reports in the Writings of Josephus. Leiden: Brill, 1996. —­—­—­. “Dreams and Their Theological Significance in the Biblical Tradition.” Currents in Theology and Mission 8 (1981): 166–71. —­—­—­. “From Prison to Prestige.” CBQ 72 (2010): 31–45. —­—­—­. “The Jewish Dream Interpreter in a Foreign Court.” JSP 7 (1990): 29–53. Goard, W. P. The Documents of Daniel. London: Covenant, 1930. Goettsberger, J. Das Buch Daniel. Bonn: Hanstein, 1928. Goeing, A.-­S. Storing, Archiving, Organizing. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Goez, W. “Die Danielrezeption im Abendland.” Pages 176–96 in Europa, Tausendjähriges Reich und Neue Welt. Edited by Delgado/Koch/Marsch. Goldingay, J. “The Book of Daniel: Three Issues.” Them 2 (1976–77): 45–49. —­—­—­. “Daniel Compares Notes with Jeremiah.” Forthcoming in a Festschrift for T. J. Meadowcroft. —­—­—­. “Daniel in the Context of Old Testament Theology.” Pages 639–60 in The Book of Daniel. Vol. 2. Edited by Collins/Flint. Leiden: Brill, 2001. —­—­—­. “ ‘Holy Ones on High’ in Daniel 7:18.” JBL 107 (1988): 495–97. —­—­—­. “kayyôm hazzeh ‘On This Very Day,’ ” VT 43 (1993): 112–15. —­—­—­. “Nebuchadnezzar = Antiochus Epiphanes?” ZAW 98 (1986): 439. —­—­—­. “Story, Vision, Interpretation.” Pages 295–313 in The Book of Daniel. Edited by A. S. van der Woude. Louvain: Peeters, 1978. Goldstein, J. A. I Maccabees. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976. —­—­—­.  II Maccabees. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983. —­—­—­. “The Persecution of the Jews by Antiochus IV.” Pages 135–47 in Proceedings of the Sixth World Congress of Jewish Studies. Vol. 1. Edited by Shinan. Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1977. Goldwurm, H. Daniel. Rev. ed., New York: Mesorah, 1980. Good, E. M. “Apocalyptic as Comedy: The Book of Daniel.” Pages 41–70 in Tragedy and Comedy in the Bible. Edited by J. C. Exum. Semeia 32. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1984. Goodenough, E. R. Jewish Symbols in the Greco-­R oman Period. Vols. 1–2. New York: Pantheon, 1953. Gooding, D. W. “The Literary Structure of the Book of Daniel and Its Implications.” TynBul 32 (1981): 43–79. Gordis, R. “Studies in Hebrew Roots of Contrasted Meanings.” JQR 27 (1936): 33–48. Repr., The Word and the Book, 185–210. New York: Ktav, 1976. Gosling, F. A. “Is It Wise to Believe Daniel?” SJOT 13 (1999): 142–53. Goswell, G., “The Divisions of the Book of Daniel.” Pages 89–114 in The Impact of Unit Delimitation on Exegesis. Edited by R. de Hoop et al. Leiden: Brill, 2009. —­—­—­. “The Ethics of the Book of Daniel.” ResQ 57 (2015): 129–42 —­—­—­. “Resurrection in the Book of Daniel.” ResQ 55 (2013): 139–51. —­—­—­. “The Temple Theme in the Book of Daniel.” JETS 55 (2012): 509–20. —­—­— ­. “The Visions of Daniel and Their Historical Specificity.” ResQ 58 (2016): 129–52. —­—­—­. “Where is David in the Book of Daniel?” ResQ 56 (2014): 209–21. Gottwald, N. K. The Tribes of Yahweh. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1979. Gowan, D. E. Daniel. Nashville: Abingdon, 2001.

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—­—­—­. “The Exile in Jewish Apocalyptic.” Pages 205–23 in Scripture in History and Theology. J. C. Rylaarsdam Festschrift. Edited by A. L. Merrill and T. W. Overholt. Pittsburgh: Pickwick, 1977. —­—­—­. When Man Becomes God. Pittsburgh: Pickwick, 1975. Grabbe, L. L. “Another Look at the Gestalt of ‘Darius the Mede.’ ” CBQ 50 (1988): 198–213. —­—­—­. “The Belshazzar of Daniel and the Belshazzar of History.” AUSS 26 (1988): 59–66. —­—­—­. “Chronography in Hellenistic Jewish Historiography.” Society of Biblical Literature 1979 Seminar Papers 2: 43–68. Atlanta: SBL Press, 1979. —­—­—­. “Dan(iel) for All Seasons.” Pages 229–46 in The Book of Daniel. Vol. 1. Edited by Collins/Flint. —­—­—­. “Daniel: Sage, Seer . . . and Prophet?” Pages 87–94 in Constructs of Prophecy in the Former and Latter Prophets and Other Texts. Edited by L. L. Grabbe and M. Nissinen. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2011. —­—­—­. “ ‘The End of the Desolations of Jerusalem.’ ” Pages 67–72 in Early Jewish and Christian Exegesis. W. H. Brownlee Memorial. Edited by C. A. Evans and W. F. Stinespring. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987. —­—­—­. “The Hellenistic City of Jerusalem.” Pages 6–21 in Jews in the Hellenistic and Roman Cities. Edited by J. R. Bartlett. London: Routledge, 2002. —­—­—­. “Fundamentalism and Scholarship: The Case of Daniel.” Pages 133–52 in Scripture: Meaning and Method. A. T. Hanson Festschrift. Edited by B. P. Thompson. Hull: Hull University, 1987. —­—­—­. “The Seventy Weeks Prophecy (Daniel 9:24–27) in Early Jewish Interpretation.” Pages 595–611 in The Quest for Context and Meaning. J. A. Sanders Festschrift. Edited by C. A. Evans and S. Talmon. Leiden: Brill, 1997. Gradon, P., and Hudson, A., eds. English Wycliffite Sermons. 5 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983–1996. Graetz, H. “Beiträge zur Sach-­und Wortererklärung des Buches Daniel.” Monatschrift zür Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 20 (1871): 337–52, 385–406, 433–49. Graham, D. “Early Christian Understandings of the ‘Abomination that Causes Desolation.’ ” Reformed Theological Review 74 (2015): 162–75. Graham, E. A. “The Heavenly Man.” Church Quarterly Review 113 [226] (1931–32): 224–39. Grainger, J. D. The Syrian Wars. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Granot, M. “‫ ”ותעמד לגרלך לקץ הימין‬BetM 21/2 (1975–76): 217–26, 317. [Graves, R. H.] Daniel’s Great Period of “Two Thousand and Three Hundred Days.” London: Nisbet, 1854. Gray, J. The Biblical Doctrine of the Reign of God. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1979. Grayson, A. K. Babylonian Historical-­Literary Texts. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975. —­—­—­. Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles. Locust Valley, NY: Augustin, 1975. —­—­—­and Lambert, W. G. “Akkadian Prophecies.” JCS 18 (1964): 7–30. Greenberg, N. The Play of Daniel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1959. Greenspoon, L. J. “The Origin of the Idea of Resurrection.” Pages 247–321 in Traditions in Transformation. F. M. Cross Festschrift. Edited by B. Halpern and J. D. Levenson. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1981. Gregor, P. Z. “Daniel’s Message to a Modern Man.” JATS 21 (2010): 99–113. Gregory Thaumaturgus. “Address of Thanksgiving to Origen.” Pages 91–126 in Gregory, Life and Works. Translated by M. Slusser. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1998.

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Greidanus, S. Preaching Christ from Daniel. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012. Grelot, P. “Ariok.” VT 25 (1975): 711–19. —­—­—­. “Le chapitre v de Daniel dans la Septante.” Sem 24 (1974): 45–66. —­—­—­. “Daniel vii, 9–10 et le livre d’Hénoch.” Sem 28 (1978): 59–83. —­—­—­. “L’écriture sur le mur.” Pages 199–207 in Mélanges bibliques et orientaux. M. Delcor Festchrift. Edited by A. Caquot et al. Neukirchen: Neukirchener, 1985. —­—­—­. “Histoire et eschatologie dans le livre de Daniel.” Pages 63–109 in Apocalypses et théologie de l’espérance: Congres de Toulouse 1975. Paris: Cerf, 1977. —­—­—­. “L’orchestre de Daniel iii, 5, 7, 10, 15.” VT 29 (1979): 23–38. —­—­—­. “La prière de Nabonide.” RevQ 9 (1977–78): 483–95. —­—­—­. “Nabuchodonosor changé en bête.” VT 44 (1994): 10–17. —­—­—­. “La promise de la résurrection et de la vie éternelle, Dn 12 1–3.” Assemblées du Seigneur 64 (1969): 36–40. Repr., De la mort d la vie éternelle, 181–86. Paris: Cerf, 1971. —­—­—­. “Rudolph Meyer, Das Gebet des Nabonid.” RevQ 4 (1963–64): 115–21. —­—­—­. “La Septante de Daniel iv et son substrat sémitique.” RB 81 (1974): 5–23. —­—­—­. “Soixante-­dix semaines d’années.” Bib 50 (1969): 169–86. —­—­—­. “Les versions grecques de Daniel.” Bib 47 (1966): 381–402. Gressmann, H. Der Messias. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1929. —­—­—­. Der Ursprung der israelitisch-­jüdischen Eschatologie. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1905. Gribben, C. The Puritan Milllennium. Rev. ed., Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2008. Griffiths, J. G. “Apocalyptic in the Hellenistic Era.” Pages 273–93 in Apocalypticism. Edited by D. Hellholm. Grimm, W. [See under Betz.] Gross, E. “Weltreich und Gottesvolk.” EvT 16 (1956): 241–51. Gross, H. “Der Messias im Alten Testament.” TTZ 71 (1962): 154–70. Grotius, H. Annotationes in Vetus Testamentum 1:453–85. Repr., Halle: Curt, 1775–76. Gruen, E. S. “Hellenism and Persecution.” Pages 238–74 in Hellenistic History and Culture. Edited by P. Green. Berkeley: University of California, 1993. Gruenwald, I. Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism. Leiden: Brill,1980. —­—­—­. “Jewish Apocalyptic Literature.” ANRW ii 19, 1 (1979): 89–118. —­—­—­. “Knowledge and Vision.” Israel Oriental Studies 3 (1972): 63–107. Gruenthaner, M. J. “The Four Empires of Daniel.” CBQ 8 (1946): 72–82, 201–12. —­—­—­. “The Last King of Babylon.” CBQ 11 (1949): 406–27. —­—­—­. “The Seventy Weeks.” CBQ 1 (1939): 44–54. Grynaeus, J. J. Explanatio Danielis Prophetae quinque primorum capitum. Basel: Henricipetri, 1587. Guenther, D. A. “A Diachronic Study of Biblical Prose Syntax.” PhD diss., University of Toronto, 1978. Guglielmo, A. de. “Dan. 5:25.” CBQ 11 (1949): 202–6. Guinness, H. G. The Approaching End of the Age. London: Hodder, 1878. Rev. by E. H. Horne, London: Marshall, 1918. Gulley, N. R. “Why the Danielic Little Horn Is Not Antiochus IV Epiphanes.” Pages 191–97 in To Understand the Scriptures. Edited by D. Merling. Gundry, R. H. The Use of the Old Testament in St. Matthew’s Gospel. Leiden: Brill, 1967. Gunkel, H. Einleitung in die Psalmen. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1933. Translated by J. D. Nogalski, Introduction to Psalms. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1998. —­—­—­. Das Märchen im Alten Testament. Tübingen: Mohr, 1921. Translated by M. D. Rutter, The Folktale in the Old Testament. Sheffield: Almond, 1987. —­—­—­. Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1895. Translated by K. W. Whitney, Creation and Chaos in the Primeval Era and the Eschaton. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006.

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Gunn, D. M., and Nolan Fewell, D. “Nebuchadnezzar and Three Jews.” Pages 174–88 in Narrative in the Hebrew Bible. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. Gurney, O. R. “The Cuthaean Legend of Naram-­Sin.” Anatolian Studies 5 (1955): 93–113. Gurney, R. J. M. God in Control: An Exposition of the Prophecies of Daniel. Worthing: Walter, 1980. Incorporating material from TSF Bulletin 47 (1967): 10–12; Them 2 (1976–77): 39–45; EvQ 53 (1981): 29–36. Güterbock, H. D. “Sargon of Akkad Mentioned by Hattušili I of Hatti.” JCS 18 (1964): ˘ ˘ 1–6. Gzella, H. Cosmic Battle and Political Conflict. Rome: PBI, 2003. —­—­—­. A Cultural History of Aramaic. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Haag, E. Daniel. Würzburg: Echter, 1993. —­—­—­. “Die drei Männer im Feuer nach Dan 3, 1–30.” TTZ 96 (1987) 21–50. Repr., J. W. van Henten, ed., Die Entstehung der jüdischen Martyrtheologie, 20–50. Leiden: Brill, 1989. —­—­—­. Die Errettung Daniels aus der Löwengrube. Stuttgart: KBW, 1983. —­—­—­. “Israels Exil im Lande Schinar.” Pages 41–53 in Christlicher Glaube und säkulares Denken. Edited by Theologischen Fakultät Trier. Trier: Paulinus, 2000. —­—­—­. “Der Kampf der Engelmächte in Daniel 10–12.” Pages 245–53 in Textarbeit. P. Weimar Festschrift. Edited by K. Kiesow and T. Meurer. Münster: Ugarit, 2003. —­—­—­. “Psalm 80 und der Menschensohn.” TTZ 117 (2008):15–38. —­—­—­. “Der Traum des Nebukadnezzar in Dan 4.” TTZ 88 (1979): 194–220. —­—­— ­. “Weisheit und Heilsgeschichte.” Pages 221–232 in Auf den Spuren der schriftgelehrten Weisen. J. Marböck Festschrift. Edited by I. Fischer et al. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2003. Haas, P. J. “The Book of Daniel.” Pages 249–62 in Jewish Biblical Theology. Edited by I. Kalimi. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2012. Hävernick, H. A. C. Commentar über das Buch Daniel. Hamburg: Perthes, 1832. Halévy, J. “Balthasar et Darius le Mède.” Revue sémitique 2 (1894): 186–91. Hall, R. A. “Post-­exilic Theological Streams and the Book of Daniel.” PhD diss., Yale University, 1974. Hall, R. G. Revealed Histories. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1991. Haller, M. “Das Alter von Daniel 7.” TSK 93 (1920–21): 83–87. Hallo, W. W. “Akkadian Apocalypses.” IEJ 16 (1966): 231–42. Hamerton-­K elly, R. “The Temple and the Origins of Jewish Apocalyptic.” VT 20 (1970): 1–15. Hamilton Jr., J. H. With the Clouds of Heaven. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2014. Hamm, W. [see under Geissen] Hammer, R. The Book of Daniel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Hanhart, K. “The Four Beasts of Daniel’s Vision in the Night in the Light of Rev. 13.2.” NTS 27 (1980–81): 576–83. Hanhart, R. “Die Heiligen des Höchsten.” HW, 90–101. —­—­—­. “Kriterien Geschichtlicher Wahrheit in der Makkabäerzeit.” Pages 81–85 in Fourth World Congress of Jewish Studies Papers. Vol. 1. Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1967. Repr., Drei Studien zum Judentum, 7–22. Munich: Kaiser, 1967. —­—­—­. “Die Übersetzungstechnik der Septuaginta als Interpretation (Daniel 11, 29 und die Aegyptenzüge des Antiochus Epiphanes).” Pages 136–57 in Mélanges Dominique Barthélemy. Edited by P. Casetti et al. Freiburg: Editions Universitaires, 1981. Hanson, J. S. “Dreams and Visions in the Graeco-­Roman World and Early Christianity.” ANRW ii 23, 2 (1980): 1395–1427. Hanson, P. D. The Dawn of Apocalyptic. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975. 2nd ed., 1979.

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—­—­—­. “Apocalypse, Genre,” “Apocalypticism.” IDBSup 27–34. —­—­—­. “Old Testament Apocalyptic Reexamined.” Int 25 (1971): 454–79. Repr., Hanson, ed., Visionaries and Their Apocalypses, 37–60. —­—­—­. “Biblical Apocalypticism: The Theological Dimension.” HBT 7 (1985): 1–20. —­—­—­, ed. Visionaries and Their Apocalypses. London: SPCK, 1983. Happ, H. “Zu ἀσγάνδης, ἀσκανδής, ἀστάνδης = ‘Bote.’ ” Glotta 40 (1962): 198–201. [see also under Schmid, W. P.] Hardt, H. von der. Danielis quatuor animalia. Helmstadt: Literis Hammianis, [? 1710]. Harlow, D. C. et al., eds. The “Other” in Second Temple Judaism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011. Harrington, D. J. “Daniel: God’s Kingdom.” Pages 17–35 in The Maccabean Revolt. Repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2009. —­—­—­. “The Ideology of Rule in Daniel 7–12.” Pages 540–51 in Society of Biblical Literature 1999 Seminar Papers. Atlanta: SBL Press, 1999. Hartman, L. F. Prophecy Interpreted. Translated by N. Tomkinson. Lund: Gleerup, 1966. —­—­—­. “The Functions of Some So-­called Apocalyptic Timetables.” NTS 22 (1976): 1–14. —­—­—­. “The Great Tree and Nabuchodonosor’s Madness.” Pages 75–82 in The Bible in Current Catholic Thought. Edited by J. L. McKenzie. New York: Herder, 1962. —­—­—­. and A. A. Di Lella. The Book of Daniel. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978. Hartman, S. “Fra˙ gan om eventuellt iranskt inflytande pa˙ kristendomens och judendomens apokalyptik och djävulsföreställning.” Svensk teologjtft tkvartalskrift 52 (1976): 1–8. Cf. Hartman, “Datierung der jungavestischen Apokalyptik.” Pages 61–75 in Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World and the Near East. Edited by D. Hellholm. Harton, G. M. “An Interpretation of Daniel 11:36–45.” Grace Theological Journal 4 (1983): 205–31. Harvey, J. Le plaidoyer prophétique contre Israël après la rupture de l’alliance. Bruges: Desclée, 1967. Hasel, G. F. “The Book of Daniel.” AUSS 19 (1981): 37–49, 211–25. —­—­—­. “The Book of Daniel Confirmed by the Dead Sea Scrolls.” JATS 1/2 (1990): 37–49. —­—­—­. “The First and Third Years of Belshazzar (Dan 7:1; 8:1).” AUSS 15 (1977): 153–68. —­—­—­. “The Four World Empires of Daniel 2 against Its Near Eastern Environment.” JSOT 12 (1979): 17–30. —­—­—­. “The Identity of ‘the Saints of the Most High’ in Daniel 7.” Bib 56 (1975): 173–92. —­—­—­. “New Light on the Book of Daniel from the Dead Sea Scrolls.” Archaeology and Biblical Research 5/2 (1992): 45–53. —­—­—­. “Resurrection in the Theology of Old Testament Apocalyptic.” ZAW 92 (1980): 267–84. Hasslberger, B. Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis: Eine formkritische Untersuchung zu Daniel 8 und 10–12. St. Ottilien: Eos, 1977. Haupt, P. “Hidalgo and filius hominis.” JBL 40 (1921): 167–70. —­—­—­. “The Son of Man.” The Monist 29 (1919): 125–33. Hawkins, J. A Treatise on the Second Chapter of the Prophet Daniel. 2nd ed. London: privately published, 1833. Haydon, R. “ ‘The Law and the Prophets’ in MT Daniel 9:3–19.” BBR 24 (2014): 15–26. —­—­—­. “The ‘Seventy Sevens’ (Daniel 9:24) in Light of Heptadic Themes in Qumran.” Journal for the Evangelical Study of the Old Testament 3 (2014): 203–14. Hays, C. B. “Chirps from the Dust.” JBL 126 (2007): 305–325. —­—­—­. Hidden Riches: A Sourcebook for the Comparative Study of the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2014.

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Heard, W. J. “The Maccabean Martyrs’ Contribution to Holy War.” EvQ 58 (1986): 291–318. Heaton, E. W. The Book of Daniel. London: SCM, 1956. Hebbard, A. B. Reading Daniel as a Text in Theological Hermeneutics. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2009. Helberg, J. L., “The Determination of History according to the Book Daniel.” ZAW 107 (1995): 273–287. Heller, B. “Das Traumerraten im Buche Daniel.” ZAW 43 (1925): 243–46. Heller, R. L. “ ‘But if not . . .’ What?” Pages 244–55 in Thus Says the Lord. R. R. Wilson Festschrift. Edited by S. L. Cook and J. J. Ahn. New York: T&T Clark, 2009. Hellholm, D., ed. Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World and the Near East. Tübingen: Mohr, 1983. Helms, D. Konfliktfelder der Diaspora und die Löwengrube. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014. Hendel, R. Steps to a New Edition of the Hebrew Bible. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016. Hengel, M. Judentum und Hellenismus. Tübingen: Mohr, 1969. 2nd ed., 1973. Translated by J. Bowden, Judaism and Hellenism. 2 vols. London: SCM, 1974. —­—­—­. “Anonymität, Pseudepigraphie und ‘literarische Fälschung’ in der jüdisch-­ hellenistischen Literatur.” Pages 132–29 in Pseudepigrapha. Vol. 1. Edited by K. von Fritz. Geneva: Hardt, 1972. Hengstenberg, E. W. Die Authentie des Daniel und die Integrität des Sacharjah. Berlin: Oehmigke, 1831. Translated by B. P. Patten, Dissertations on the Genuineness of Daniel and the Integrity of Zechariah. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1848. —­—­—­. Christologie des Alten Testaments. 3 vols. Berlin: Oehmigke, 1829–35. 2nd ed., 1854–57. Translated by T. Mayer and J. Martin, Christology of the Old Testament. 4 vols. London: Rivington, 1856–58. Hennecke, E., ed. Neutestamentliche Apokryphen. 2 vols. 3rd ed. Revised by W. Schneemelcher. Tübingen: Mohr, 1959–64. Translated by R. McL. Wilson, New Testament Apocrypha. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963–65. Henze, M. “Daniel and Jubilees.” Pages 52–66 in Enoch and the Mosaic Torah. Edited by G. Boccaccini and G. Ibba. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009. —­—­—­. “The Ideology of Rule in the Narrative Frame of Daniel.” Pages 527–39 in Society of Biblical Literature 1999 Seminar Papers. Atlanta: SBL Press, 1999. Revised and expanded, “The Narrative Frame of Daniel.” JSJ 33 (2001): 5–24. —­—­—­. The Madness of King Nebuchadnezzar. Leiden: Brill, 1999. —­—­—­. “Nebuchadnezzar’s Madness in Syriac Literature.” Pages 550–71 in The Book of Daniel. Vol. 2. Edited by Collins/Flint. —­—­—­. The Syriac Apocalypse of Daniel. Tübingen: Mohr, 2001. —­—­—­. “The Use of Scripture in the Book of Daniel.” Pages 279–307 in A Companion to Biblical Interpretation in Early Judaism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011. Herrmann, J. “Das zehnte Gebot.” Pages 69–82 in Sellin-­Festschrift. Edited by A. Jirku. Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1927. Herrmann, W. “Das Buch des Lebens.” Das Altertum 20 (1974): 3–10. Hertlein, E. Die Menschensohnfrage im letzten Stadium. Berlin: Kohlhammer, 1911. —­—­—­. “Die Wolken des ‘Menschensohns’ (Dan 7 13).” ZAW 37 (1917–18): 134–36. Herzfeld, E. Zoroaster and His World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947. Hess, R. S. “The Seventy Sevens of Daniel 9.” BBR 21 (2011): 315–30. Hieke, T. “The Reception of Daniel 7 in the Revelation to John.” Pages 47–67 in Revelation and the Politics of Apocalyptic Interpretation. Edited by R. B. Hays and S. Alkier. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2012. Hieronymus of Stridon [Jerome]. Commentariorum in Danielem prophetam liber unus. PL 25: 491–584. Translated by G. L. Archer, Jerome’s Commentary on Daniel. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1958.

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—­—­—­. “Praefatio in Danielam prophetam.” PL 28: 1357–60. Translated by W. H. Fremantle, The Principle Works of St. Jerome. NPNF 2/6: 492–93. Higgins, A. J. B. “Son of Man-­Forschung since ‘The Teaching of Jesus.’ ” Pages 119–35 in New Testament Essays. T. W. Manson Festschrift. Edited by Higgins. Manchester: Manchester University, 1959. Hilgenfeld, A. Die jüdische Apokalyptik. Jena: Mauke, 1857. Hill, A. E. “Daniel.” Pages 19–212 in Expositor’s Bible Commentary. Rev. ed. Vol. 8. Edited by T. Longman III and D. Garland. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008. Hill, B. V. “Apocalyptic Lollards?” Church History and Religious Culture 90 (2010): 1–23. Hill, C. Antichrist in Seventeenth-­Century England. London: Oxford University Press, 1971. Hill, D. “ ‘Son of Man’ in Psalm 80 v. 17.” NovT 15 (1973): 261–69. Hill, R. C. “The Commentary on Daniel by Theodoret of Cyrus.” Pages 151–63 in Die Geschichte der Daniel-­Auslegung. Edited by Bracht/duToit. —­—­—­. Reading the Old Testament in Antioch. Leiden: Brill 2005. Hillers, D. R. Treaty Curses and the Old Testament Prophets. Rome: PBI, 1964. Hilton, M. “Babel Reversed.” JSOT 66 (1995): 99–112. Hippolytus. Εἰς τον Δανιηλ. Introduction by G. Brady. Translated by by M. Lefèvre, Commentaire sur Daniel. Paris: Cerf, 1947. Hitzig, F. Das Buch Daniel. Leipzig: Weidmann, 1850. Hobbins, J. F. “Resurrection in the Daniel Tradition and Other Writings at Qumran.” Pages 395–420 in The Book of Daniel. Vol. 2. Edited by Collins/Flint. Hobbs, T. R. 2 Kings. Waco, TX: Word, 1985. Höffken, P. “Eine Reichsteilung bei Josephus Flavius: Beobachtungen zu seiner Auffassung Von Daniel 5.” JSJ 36 (2005): 197–205. Hoehner, H. W. “Daniel’s Seventy Weeks and New Testament Chronology.” BSac 132 (1975): 47–65. Hölscher, G. “Die Entstehung des Buches Daniel.” TSK 92 (1919): 113–38. Hoffmann, G. “Mene, mene tekel upharsin.” ZA 2 (1887): 45–48. Hoffmann, Y. “ ‘‫אחרית הימים‘ ו ’ביום ההוא‬.’ ” BetM 22 (1976–77): 435–44, 529. Hofius, O. “Der Septuaginta-­Text von Daniel 7, 13–14.” ZAW 117 (2005): 73–90. Hoftijzer, J. “David and the Tekoite Woman.” VT 20 (1970): 419–44. Hogeterp, A. L. A. “Daniel and the Qumran Daniel Cycle.” Pages 173–91 in Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient Judaism. Edited by M. Popovic´. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Holm, T. L. Of Courtiers and Kings. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013. —­—­—­. “The Fiery Furnace in the Book of Daniel and the Ancient Near East.” JAOS 128 (2008): 85–104. Hommel, F. “Die Abfassungszeit des Buches Daniel und die Wahrsinn Nabonids.” Theologische Literaturblatt 23 (1902): 145–50. —­—­—­. “The Apocalyptic Origin of the Expression ‘Son of Man.’ ” ExpTim 11 (1899– 1900): 341–45. Hooker, M. D. The Son of Man in Mark. London: SPCK, 1967. Horbury, W. “The Messianic Associations of ‘the Son of Man.’ ” JTS n.s. 36 (1985): 34–55. Horgan, M. P. Pesharim. Washington: Catholic Biblical Association, 1979. Horne, E. H. Divine Clues to Sacred Prophecy. London: Partridge, 1901. Horner, J. Daniel, Darius the Median, Cyrus the Great. Pittsburgh: Horner, 1901. Horsley, R. A. Scribes, Visionaries, and the Politics of Second Temple Judea. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2007. —­—­—­, ed. In the Shadow of Empire. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008. Howie, C. G. The Book of Ezekiel, the Book of Daniel. Richmond: Knox, 1961. Hüffken, P. “Heilszeitherrschererwartung im babylonischen Raum.” Die Welt des Orients 9 (1977): 57–71.

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Huffmon, H. B. “The Treaty Background of Hebrew yada‘.” BASOR 181 (1966): 31–37. Huit, E. The Whole Prophecie of Daniel Explained. [London]: Overton, 1644. Hultgård, A. “Das Judentum in der hellenistischrömischen Zeit und die iranische Religion.” ANRW ii 19, 1 (1979): 512–90. Humphreys, W. L. “A Life-­Style for Diaspora.” JBL 92 (1972): 211–23. Hunger, H., and S. A. Kaufman. “A New Akkadian Prophecy Text.” JAOS 95 (1975): 371–75. Hunt, B. “A Short Note on Daniel 12:11–12.” Scripture 9 (1957): 84–85. Hunter, E. C. D. “Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream in Daniel 2.” Pages 227–35 in Leshon Limmudim. A. A. Macintosh Festschrift. Edited by D. A. Baer and R. P. Gordon. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. Hunter, P. H. The Story of Daniel. 2nd ed. Edinburgh: Gemmell, 1885. Hurtado, L. W., and P. Owen, eds. Who Is This Son of Man? London: T&T Clark, 2011. Hurvitz, A. “The History of a Legal Formula.” VT 32 (1982): 257–67. Husser, J.-­M. Dreams and Dream Narratives in the Biblical World. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999. —­—­—­. “La fin et l’origine.” Pages 243–64 in Ce Dieu qui vient. B. Renaud Festschrift. Edited by R. Kuntzmann. Paris: Cerf, 1995. —­—­—­. Le songe et la parole. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1994. Ibn Daud [see under Cohen.] Ibn Ezra. ‫דניאל‬. Repr., ‫מקראות גדולות‬. [See also Gallé.] Ibn Yachya, J. Paraphrasis in Danielem. 1528. Translated by C. L’Empereur. Amsterdam: Ioannem Ianssenium, 1633. Irmscher, J. “Die hellenistische Weltreichsidee.” Klio 60 (1978): 177–82. Ironside, H. A. Lectures on Daniel the Prophet. New York: Loizeaux, 1911. Irving, E. A Discourse on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse. 2nd ed. Glasgow: Collins, 1828. Isenberg, S. R. “Millenarism in Jewish Palestine.” Religion 4 (1974): 26–46. Ishodad of Merv. nwhr’ ddny’yl nby’. CSCO 328/Syr. 146:101–37; 329/Syr. 147:116–58. 1972. Ito¯, G. “Old Persian a pa da a na.” Orient 8 (1972): 46–51. Izre’el, S. “‫את = אל בעברית המקראית‬.” Shnaton 3 (1978–79): 204–12, xxii. Jacob, E. “Aux sources bibliques de l’apocalyptique.” Pages 43–61 in Apocalypses et théologie de l’espérance: Congres de Toulouse 1975. Paris: Cerf, 1977. Jahn, G. Das Buch Daniel nach der Septuaginta. Leipzig: Pfeiffer, 1904. Janowski, B. Söhne als Heilsgeschehen. Neukirchen: Neukirchener, 1982. Janssen, E. Das Gottesvolk und seine Geschichte. Neukirchen: Neukirchener, 1971. Jaubert, A. “Fiches de calendrier.” Pages 305–11 in Qumrân. Edited by M. Delcor. Louvain: Peeters, 1978. —­—­—­. La notion d’Alliance dans le Judaïsme aux abords de l’ère chrétienne. Paris: Seuil, 1963. Jeffers, A. Magic and Divination in Ancient Palestine and Syria. Leiden: Brill, 1996. Jeffery, A., and G. Kennedy. “The Book of Daniel.” Pages 339–549 in The Interpreter’s Bible. Vol. 6. Edited by G. A. Buttrick et al. Nashville: Abingdon, 1956. Jellicoe, S. “Some Reflections on the καιγε Recension.” VT 23 (1973): 15–24. Jenner, K. “Syriac Daniel.” Pages 608–37 in The Book of Daniel. Vol. 2. Edited by Collins/ Flint. Jenni, E. “Zur Verwendung von ‘atta¯ ‘ jetzt’ im Alten Testament.” TZ 28 (1972): 1–12. —­—­—­. “Das Wort ‘o¯la¯ m im Alten Testament.” ZAW 64 (1952): 197–248; 65 (1953): 1–35. Jephet ibn Ali [see Yephet].

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Jepsen, A. “Bemerkungen zum Danielbuch.” VT 11 (1961): 386–91. —­—­—­. “Gnade und Barmherzigkeit im Alten Testament.” Kerygma und Dogma 7 (1961): 261–71. Jeremias, C. Die Nachtgesichte des Sacharja. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1977. Jerome [see Hieronymus]. Jerusalmi, I. The Aramaic Sections of Ezra and Daniel. 2nd ed. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1970. Jindo, J. Y. “On Myth and History in Prophetic and Apocalyptic Eschatology.” VT 55 (2005): 412–15. Jobes, K. H. “A Comparative Syntactic Analysis of the Greek Versions of Daniel.” BIOSCS 28 (1995): 19–41. —­—­—­. “Karen Jobes Responds to Tim McLay.” BIOSCS 30 (1997): 32–35. Jones, B. A. “Resisting the Power of Empire.” RevExp 109 (2012): 541–56. Jones, B. W. “Antiochus Epiphanes and the Persecution of the Jews.” Pages 263–90 in Scripture in Context. Edited by C. D. Evans et al. Pittsburgh: Pickwick, 1980. —­—­—­. “Ideas of History in the Book of Daniel.” PhD diss., Graduate Theological Union, 1972. —­—­—­. “The Prayer in Daniel ix.” VT 18 (1968): 488–93. Jones, D. R. “Commentaries on Daniel.” Theology 66 (1962): 276–80. Jonge, M. de, and A. S. van der Woude. “11Q Melchizedek and the New Testament.” NTS 12 (1965–66): 301–26. Joubert, W. H. “Power and Responsibility in the Book of Daniel.” PhD diss., University of South Africa, 1980. Joüon, P. “Notes sur quelques versets araméens de Daniel et d’Esdras.” Bib 8 (1927): 182–87. —­—­—­. “Cinq imperfaits (yiqtul) remarquables dans l’araméen de Daniel.” Bib 22 (1941): 21–24. —­—­—­. “Notes de grammaire et de lexicographie araméenne.” Bib 22 (1941): 263–68. Joye, G., et al., eds. The Exposycion of Daniel the Prophete gathered out of Philip Melanchthon, Johan Ecolapadius, Chonrade Pellicane, + out of Iohan Draconite, +c. Geneva [no publisher stated], 1545. Junker, H. Untersuchungen über literarische und exegetische Probleme des Buches Daniel. Bonn: Hanstein, 1932. Käsemann, E. “Die Anfänge christlicher Theologie.” ZTK 57 (1960): 162–85. Translated by J. W. Leitch, “The Beginnings of Christian Theology.” Pages 17–46 in Journal for Theology and Church 6 (1969). Translated by W. J. Montague in Käsemann, New Testament Questions of Today, 82–107. London: SCM, 1969. Käser, W. “Die Monarchie im Spiegel von Calvins Daniel-­K ommentar.” EvT 11 (1951–52): 112–37. Kaiser, O., and E. Lohse. Tod und Leben. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1977. Translated by J. Steely, Death and Life. Nashville: Abingdon, 1981. Kalafian, M. The Prophecy of the Seventy Weeks of the Book of Daniel. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1991. Kallarakkal A. G. “The Peshitto Version of Daniel.” PhD diss., Universität Hamburg, 1973. Kamphausen, A. The Book of Daniel. Translated by B. W. Bacon and D. B. Macdonald. Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1896. Kaufmann, Y. History of the Religion of Israel. Vol. 4. New York: Ktav, 1977. Translated by C. W. Efroymson, ‫ תולדות האמונה הישראלית‬4, 1. Tel Aviv: Bialik, 1956. Kearns, R. Vorfragen zur Christologie. 3 vols. Tübingen: Mohr, 1978–82. Kee, H. C. “ ‘The Man’ in Fourth Ezra.” Pages 199–208 in Society of Biblical Literature 1981 Seminar Papers. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981.

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Keel, O. “Die Tiere und die Mensch in Daniel 7.” Pages 37–65 in Europa, Tausendjähriges Reich und Neue Welt. Edited by Delgado/Koch/Marsch. —­—­—­. and Staub, U. Hellenismus und Judentum. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 2000. Keil, C. F. Biblischer Kommentar über den Propheten Daniel. Leipzig: Dörffling, 1869. Translated by M. G. Easton, The Book of Daniel. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1872. Keil, V. “Onias III.” ZAW 97 (1985): 221–33. Kellenberger, E. “Textvarianten in den Daniel-­Legenden als zeugnisse mündlicher Tradierung? Pages 207–23 in XIII Congress of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies, Ljubljana, 2007. Edited by M. K. H. Peters. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2008. Kellermann, U. “Das Danielbuch und die Märtyrertheologie der Auferstehung.” Pages 51–75 in Die Entstehung der jüdischen Martyrtheologie. Edited by J. W. Van Henten. Leiden: Brill, 1989. —­—­—­. “Überwindung des Todesgeschicks in der alttestamentlichen Frömmigkeit.” ZTK 73 (1976): 259–82. Kelley, W. Lectures on the Book of Daniel. 2nd ed. London: Morrish, 1881. Repr., The Great Prophecies of Daniel. London: Pickering, 1897. Kelly, W. Notes on the Book of Daniel. New York: Loizeaux, 1943. Kennedy, G. [see under Jeffery]. Kennedy, J. The Book of Daniel. London: Eyre, 1898. Kepler, T. S. Dreams of the Future: Daniel and Revelation. Nashville: Abingdon, 1963. Kessler, W. Zwischen Gott und Weltmacht: Der Prophet Daniel. Stuttgart: Calwer, 1950. Kim, D. “Biblical Interpretation in the Book of Daniel.” PhD diss., Rice University, 2013. Kim, S. “The ‘Son of Man’ ”as the Son of God. Tübingen: Mohr, 1983. Kim, S. I. “Proclamation in Cross-­Cultural Context: Missiological Implications of the Book of Daniel.” PhD diss., Andrews University, 2005. King, G. R. Daniel. London: Walter, 1966. Kirchmayr, K. P. “Mene-­tekel-­uparsin.” VT 60 (2010): 483–86. Kirkpatrick, S. Competing for Honor. Leiden: Brill, 2005. Kitchen, K. A. “The Aramaic of Daniel.” Pages 31–79 in Notes on Some Problems in the Book of Daniel. London: Tyndale, 1965. Klausner, J. ‫הרעיון המשיחי בישראל‬. 3rd ed. Tel Aviv: Masada, 1950. Translated by W. F. Stinespring, The Messianic Idea in Israel. London: George Allen, 1956. Cf. pages 200–14 in Messianism in the Talmudic Era. Edited by L. Landman. New York: Ktav, 1979. Klein, G. “Über das Buch Daniel.” Pages 239–41 in Verhandlungen des xiii. Internationalen Orientalisten-­Kongresses. Leiden: Brill, 1904. Kleinknecht, K. T. “Der leidende Gerechtfertigte.” PhD diss., Tübingen, 1981. Tübingen: Mohr, 1984. Kliefoth, T. Das Buch Daniel. Schwerin: Sandmeyer, 1868. Kline, M. G. “The Covenant of the Seventieth Week.” Pages 452–69 in The Law and the Prophets. Edited by J. H. Skilton. [Nutley, NJ]: PRPC, 1974. Knierim, R. Die Hauptbegriffe für Sünde im Alten Testament. Gütersloh: Mohn, 1965. Knibb, M. A. “The Book of Daniel in Its Context.” Pages 16–35 in The Book of Daniel. Vol. 1. Edited by Collins/Flint. —­—­—­. “The Exile in the Literature of the Intertestamental Period.” Heythrop Journal 17 (1976): 253–72. —­—­—­. “ ‘ You are indeed Wiser than Daniel.’ ” Pages 399–411 in The Book of Daniel. Edited by A. S. van der Woude. Knowles, L. E. “The Interpretation of the Seventy Weeks of Daniel in the Early Fathers.” WTJ 7 (1945): 136–60.

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Knox, J. History of the Reformation in Scotland. 2 vols. Edited by W. C. Dickinson. New York: Philosophical Library, 1950. Knox, Z. “The Watch Tower Society and the End of the Cold War.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 79 (2011): 1018–49. Kobelski, P. J. Melchizedek and Melchireša‘. Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1981. Koch, K. “Das aramäisch-­hebräische Danielbuch.” Pages 3–27 in Die Geschichte der Daniel-­Auslegung. Edited by Bracht/du Toit. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007. —­—­—­. Daniel 1–4. Neukirchen: Neukirchener, 2005. —­—­—­. “Daniel in der Ikonografie des Reformationszeitalters.” Pages 269–91 in Die Geschichte der Daniel-­Auslegung. Edited by Bracht/duToit. —­—­—­. “Dareios, der Meder.” Pages 287–99 in The Word of the Lord Shall Go Forth. D. N. Freedman Festschrift. Edited by C. L. Meyers and M. O’Connor. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1983. Repr., Die Reiche der Welt, 125–39. —­—­—­. “Europabewusstsein und Danielrezeption zwischen 1648 und 1848.” Pages 326–84 in Europa, Tausendjähriges Reich und Neue Welt. Edited by Delgado/Koch/ Marsch. —­—­—­. Europa, Rom und der Kaiser vor dem Hintergrund von zwei Jahrtausenden Rezeption des Buches Daniel. Hamburg: Joachim Jungius-­G esellschaft der Wissenschaften, 1997. —­—­—­. “Gibt es ein Vergeltungsdogma im Alten Testament?” ZTK 52 (1955): 1–42. Repr., Um das Prinzip der Vergeltung in Religion und Recht des Alten Testaments, 130–80. Edited by K. Koch. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche, 1972. Translated by T. H. Trapp, “Is There a Doctrine of Retribution in the Old Testament?” Pages 57–87 in Theodicy in the Old Testament. Edited by J. L. Crenshaw. London: SPCK, 1983. —­—­—­. “Gottes Herrschaft über das Reich des Menschen.” Pages 77–119 in The Book of Daniel. Edited by A. S. van der Woude. Repr., Die Reiche der Welt, 83–124. —­—­—­. “Die Herkunft der Proto-­Theodotion-­Übersetzung des Danielbuches.” VT 23 (1973): 362–65. —­—­—­. “Is Daniel Also among the Prophets?” Int 39 (1985): 117–30. Repr., Interpreting the Prophets, 237–48. Edited by Mays/Achtemeier. —­—­—­. “Die jüdische und christliche Kanonisierung des Danielbuchs als Rezeption unter verändertem geschichtlichen Horizont.” Pages 1–25 in Biblischer Text und theologische Theoriebildung. Edited by S. Chapman et al. Neukirchen: Neukirchener, 2001. —­—­—­. “Der ‘Menschensohn’ in Daniel.” ZAW 119 (2007): 369–85. —­—­—­. “Messias und Menschensohn.” Jahrbuch für Biblische Theologie 8 (1993): 73–102. —­—­—­. “Die mysteriösen Zahlen der judäischen Könige und die apokalyptischen Jahrwochen.” VT 28 (1978): 433–41. —­—­—­. The Rediscovery of Apocalyptic. London: SCM, 1971. Translated by M. Kohl from Ratlos vor der Apokalyptik. Gütersloh: Mohn, 1970. —­—­—­. “Das Reich der Heiligen und des Menschensohns.” Pages 140–72 in Die Reiche der Welt. —­—­—­. Die Reiche der Welt und der kommende Menschensohn. Neukirchen: Neukirchener, 1995. —­—­—­. “Spätisraelitische Geschichtsdenken am Beispiel des Buches Daniel.” Historische Zeitschrift 193 (1961): 1–32. Repr., Apokalyptik, 276–310. Edited by Koch/Schmidt. —­—­—­. “Spätisraelitisch-­jüdische und urchristliche Danielrezeption vor und nach der Zerstörung des zweiten Tempels.” Pages 93–123 in Rezeption und Auslegung im Alten Testament und in seinem Umfeld. O. H. Steck Festschrift. Edited by R. G. Kratz and T. Krüger. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1997.

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—­—­—­. “Stages in the Canonization of the Book of Daniel.” Pages 421–46 in The Book of Daniel. Vol. 2. Edited by Collins/Flint. —­—­—­. “Vom profetischen zum apokalyptischen Visionsbericht.” Pages 413–46 in Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World and the Near East. Edited by D. Hellholm. —­—­—­. Was ist Formgeschichte? Neukirchen: Neukirchener, 1964. Rev. ed., 1967. Translated by S. M. Cupitt, The Growth of the Biblical Tradition. London: Black, 1969. —­—­— ­. “Weltgeschichte und Gottesreich im Danielbuch und die iranischen Parallelen.” Pages 189–205 in Prophetie und geschichtliche Wirklichkeit im alten Israel. S. Herrmann Festchrift. Edited by R. Liwak and S. Wagner. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1991. Repr., Die Reiche der Welt, 46–65. —­—­—­. “Die Weltreiche im Danielbuche.” TLZ 85 (1960): 829–32. —­—­—­ and Rösel, M. Polyglottensynopse zum Buch Daniel. Neukirchen: Neukirchener, 2000. —­—­—­ et al., eds. Das Buch Daniel. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche, 1980. —­—­—­and Schmidt, J. M., eds. Apokalyptik. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche, 1982. Köbert, R. “Eine alte Erklärung von ‘palmoni’ (Dan. 8, 13).” Bib 35 (1954): 270–72. Köbert, R. “Zur Daniel-­Abhandlung des Simeon von Edessa.” Bib 63 (1982): 63–78. König, E. “Die chronologisch-­christologische Hauptstelle im Danielbuche.” NKZ 15 (1904): 974–87. —­—­—­. “Mené, mené, tek·él upharsin.” NKZ 12 (1901): 949–57. —­—­—­“Der Menschensohn im Danielbuche.” NKZ 16 (1905): 904–28. —­—­—­“Die siebzig Jahrwochen in Dan. 9, 24–27.” NKZ 11 (1900): 1003–13. König, F. W. “Naboned und Kuraš.” AfO 7 (1931–32): 178–82. Koep, L. Das himmlische Buch im Antike und Christentum. Bonn: Hanstein, 1952. Kohler, K. “Die chaldäischen Namen Daniel’s und seiner drei Freunde.” ZA 4 (1889): 46–51. Koldewey, R. Das wieder erstehende Babylon. Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1913. Translated by A. S. Johns, The Excavations at Babylon. London: Macmillan, 1914. Kopf, L. “Arabische Etymologien und Parallelen zum Bibelwörterbuch.” VT 9 (1959): 247–87. Korner, R. J. “The ‘Exilic’ Prophecy of Daniel 7.” Pages 333–53 in Prophets, Prophecy, and Ancient Israelite Historiography. Edited by M. J. Boda and L. M. Wray Beal. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013. Kosmala, H. “At the End of the Days.” Annual of the Swedish Theological Institute 2 (1963): 27–37. Repr., Studies, Essays, and Reviews 1:73–83. —­—­—­. Hebräer-­Essener- ­Christen. Leiden: Brill, 1959. —­—­—­. “Mas´kîl.” JANESCU 5 (1973): 235–41. Repr., Studies, Essays, and Reviews, 1:149–55. —­—­—­. Studies, Essays, and Reviews. Vol. 1. Leiden: Brill, 1978. —­—­—­. “The Term geber in the Old Testament and in the Scrolls.” Pages 159–69 in Congress Volume: Rome 1968. Leiden: Brill, 1969. Kossen, H. B. “De oorsprong van de Voorstelling der opstanding uit de doden in Dan. 12:2.” Nederlands theologisch tijdschrift 10 (1955–56): 296–301. Kraeling, C. H. Anthropos and Son of Man. New York: Columbia University Press, 1927. Kraeling, E. G. [H.] Commentary on the Prophets. Camden, NJ: Nelson, 1966. —­—­—­. “The Handwriting on the Wall.” JBL 63 (1944): 11–18. —­—­—­. “Some Babylonian and Iranian Mythology in the Seventh Chapter of Daniel.” Pages 228–31 in Oriental Studies in Honour of Cursetji Erachji Pavry. Edited by J. D. C. Pavry. London: Oxford University Press, 1933. Kraft, R. A. “Daniel outside the Traditional Jewish Canon.” Pages 121–33 in Studies in the Hebrew Bible, Qumran, and the Septuagint. E. Ulrich Festschrift. Edited by P. W. Flint et al. Leiden: Brill, 2006.

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Krappe, A. H. “Is the Story of Ah·ikar the Wise of Indian Origin?” AJSL 61 (1941): 280–84. —­—­—­. “La vision de Balthassar.” Revue de l’histoire des religions 98 (1928): 78–86. Kratz, R. G. “Reich Gottes und Gesetz im Danielbuch und im werdenden Judentum.” Pages 435–79 in The Book of Daniel. Edited by A. S. van der Woude. —­—­—­. Translatio Imperii. Neukirchen: Neukirchener, 1991. —­—­—­. “Die Visionen des Daniel.” Pages 219–36 in Schriftauslegung in der Schrift. O. H. Steck Festschrift. Edited by Kratz et al. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2000. —­—­—­. “The Visions of Daniel.” Pages 91–113 in The Book of Daniel. Vol. 1. Edited by Collins/Flint. Krauss, S. “Some Remarks on Daniel 8. 5ff.” HUCA 15 (1940): 305–11. Kreuzer, S. “Zur Bedeutung und Etymologie von hištah· awa¯ h/yšth· wy.” VT 35 (1985): 39–60. Kreuziger, F. A. Apocalypse and Science Fiction. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982. Krey, P. D. W. “Nicholas of Lyra’s Commentary on Daniel.” Pages 199–215 in Die Geschichte der Daniel-­Auslegung. Edited by Bracht/duToit. Kristensen, W. B. “De term ‘Zoon des Menschen.’ ” Theologisch Tijdschrift 45 (1911): 1–38. Kritzinger, J. P. K. “St Jerome’s Commentary on Daniel 3.” APB 16 (2005): 54–69. Kronasser, H. “Heth. mannin(n)i-­‘Halsschmuck’.” Pages 61–66 in Studia Classica et Orientalia. A. Pagliaro Festschrift. Vol. 3. Rome: Bardy, 1969. Krüger, T. “Heinrich Bullinger als Ausleger des Alten Testaments am Beispiel seiner Predigten Daniel 1 und 2.” Pages 91–104 in Heinrich Bullinger und seine Zeit. Edited by E. Campi. Zürich: TVZ, 2004. Kruschwitz, R. B., and P. L. Redditt. “Nebuchadnezzar as the Head of Gold.” PRSt 24 (1997): 399–416. Kruse, H. “Compositio Libri Danielis et idea Filii Hominis.” VD 37 (1959): 147–61, 193–211. Kuhl, C. Die drei Männer im Feuer. Giessen: Töpelmann, 1930. Kuhn, K. A. “The ‘One Like a Son of Man’ Becomes the ‘Son of God.’ ” CBQ 69 (2007): 22–42. Kuhrt, A. The Ancient Near East. 2 vols. London: Routledge, 1995. Kutscher, E. Y. “Aramaic.” Pages 347–412 in Linguistics in South West Asia and North Africa. Edited by T. A. Sebeok. The Hague: Mouton, 1970. Kvanvig, H. S. “An Akkadian Vision as Background for Dan 7.” ST 35 (1981): 85–89. —­—­—­. “Henoch und der Menschensohn.” ST 38 (1984): 101–33. —­—­—­. “The Relevance of the Biblical Visions of the End Time.” HBT 11 (1989): 35–58. —­—­—­. Roots of Apocalyptic. Neukirchen: Neukirchener, 1988. —­—­—­. “Struktur und Geschichte in Dan 7,1–14.” ST 32 (1978): 95–117. —­—­—­. “Throne Visions and Monsters: The Encounter between Danielic and Enochic Traditions.” ZAW 117 (2005): 249–272. Laato, A. “The Seventy Yearweeks in the Book of Daniel.” ZAW 102 (1990): 212–25. Labonté, G. G. “Genèse 41 et Daniel 2.” Pages 271–84 in The Book of Daniel. Edited by A. S. van der Woude. Lacocque, A. “Apocalyptic Symbolism.” BR 26 (1981): 6–15. —­—­—­. The Book of Daniel. Translated by D. Pellauer. London: SPCK, 1979. —­—­—­. Daniel et son temps. Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1983. Rev. ed. Translated by L. Cochrane, Daniel in His Time. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1988. —­—­—­. “The Liturgical Prayer in Daniel 9.” HUCA 47 (1976): 119–42. —­—­—­. “Naissance de l’apocalyptique.” LumVie 31 [160] (1982): 4–12.

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—­—­—­. “The Socio-­spiritual Formative Milieu of the Daniel Apocalypse.” Pages 315–343 in The Book of Daniel. Edited by A. S. van der Woude. —­—­—­. “The Vision of the Eagle in 4 Esdras, a Rereading of Daniel 7 in the First Century C.E.” Pages 237–58 in Society of Biblical Literature 1981 Seminar Papers. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981. [Lacunza, M. =] Ben-­Ezra, J. J. Venida del Mesías en gloria y majestad. 4 vols. Repr., London: Wood, 1816. Translated by E. Irving, The Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty. 2 vols. London: Seeley, 1827. Lagrange, M. J. “La prophétie des soixante-­dix semaines de Daniel.” RB 39 (1930): 179–98. —­—­—­. “Les prophéties messianiques de Daniel.” RB n.s. 1 [13] (1904): 494–520. Lamberights, S. “Le sens de ‫ קדושים‬dans les textes de Qumrân.” ETL 46 (1970): 24–39. Lambert, G. “Une exégèse arithmétique du chapitre ix de Daniel.” Nouvelle Revue Théologique 74 (1952): 409–17. Lambert, W. G. The Background of Jewish Apocalyptic. London: Athlone, 1975. 2nd ed., 1979. —­—­—­. “Dingir.šà.dib.ba. Incantations.” JNES 23 (1964): 267–327. —­—­—­. “Nabonidus in Arabia.” Pages 53–64 in Proceedings of the Fifth Seminar for Arabian Studies. London: Seminar for Arabian Studies, 1972. —­—­—­. “A New Source for the Reign of Nabonidus.” AfO 22 (1968–69): 1–8. Lampe, P. “Die Apokalyptiker.” Pages 61–125 in Eschatologie und Frieden. Vol. 2. Edited by G. Liedke et al. Heidelberg: Forschungsstätte der Evangelischen Studiengemeinschaft, 1978. Repr., Eschatologie und Friedenshandeln, 59–114. Edited by U. Luz. Stuttgart: KBW, 1981. Lamy, T.-­J. “L’exégèse en orient au ive siècle.” RB 2 (1892): 5–25, 161–81, 465–86. Landsberger, B. “Akkadische-­hebräische Wortgleichungen.” HW, 176–204. Lang, G. H. The Histories and Prophecies of Daniel. London: Oliphants, 1942. Langdon, S. Building Inscriptions of the Neo-­Babylonian Empire. Paris: Leroux, 1905. Langlois, M. “Loin des yeux, non du coeur.” Pages 242–58 in Le jeune héros. Edited by J.-­M. Durand et al. Fribourg: Academic, 2011. Larriba, T. “Comentario de San Jerónimo al libro de Daniel.” Scripta theologica 7 (1975): 7–50. Larssen, G. “When Did the Babylonian Captivity Begin?” JTS n.s. 18 (1967): 417–23. Lash, N. Theology on the Way to Emmaus. London: SCM, 1986. Lattey, C. The Book of Daniel. Dublin: Browne and Nolan, 1948. —­—­—­. “Sovereignty and Realm in Dan. 2, 44.” Bib 4 (1923): 91–94. Laurentin, R. Structure et théologie de Luc i–­ii. Paris: Gabalda, 1957. —­—­—­. “We‘attah-­Kai nun.” Bib 45 (1964): 168–97. Lawee, E. “On the Threshold of the Renaissance: New Methods and Sensibilties in the Biblical Commentaries of Isaac Abarbanel.” Viator 26 (1995): 283–319. Lawson, J. N. “ ‘The God Who Reveals Secrets.’ ” JSOT 74 (1997): 61–76. Layton, S. “Biblical Hebrew ‘To Set the Face.’ ” UF 17 (1986): 169–81. Leatherman, D. W. “Adventist Interpretation of Daniel 10—12.” JATS 7/1 (1996): 120–40. Lebram, J. C. H. “Apokalyptiek als keerpunt in het joodse denken.” Nederlands theologisch tijdschrift 30 (1976): 271–81. —­—­—­. “Apokalyptik und Hellenismus im Buche Daniel.” VT 20 (1970): 503–24. —­—­—­. Das Buch Daniel. Zürich: TVZ, 1984. —­—­—­. “König Antiochus im Buch Daniel.” VT 25 (1975): 737–72. —­—­—­. “Nachbiblische Weisheitstraditionen.” VT 15 (1965): 167–237. —­—­—­. “Perspektiven der gegenwärtigen Danielforschung.” JSJ 5 (1974): 1–33. —­—­—­. “The Piety of the Jewish Apocalyptists.” Pages 171–210 in Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World and the Near East. Edited by D. Hellholm.

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fournaise.” Dunbar, D. G. “Hippolytus of Rome and the Eschatological Exegesis of the Early Church.” Dunn, G. D. “Probabimus venisse eum iam.” —­—­—­. “Tertullian and Daniel 9:24–27.” Dunn, J. D. G. “The Danielic Son of Man in the NT,” in Collins/Flint (eds.), The Book of Daniel 2:528–49. Ego, B. “Daniel und die Rabbinen.” Eshel, E. “Possible Sources of the Book of Daniel,” in Collins/Flint (eds.), The Book of Daniel 2:387–94. Evans, C. A. “Daniel in the NT,” in Collins Flint (eds.), The Book of Daniel 2:490–527. Farrell, R. T. Daniel and Azarias. Farrer, A. M. A Study in St. Mark, 247–89. Feldman, L. H. “Josephus’ Portrait of Daniel.” Ferch, A. J. The Son of Man in Daniel 7. —­—­—­. “Porphyry: An Heir to Christian Exegesis?” Firth, K. R. The Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain. Fischer, U. Eschatologie und Jenseitserwartung im hellenistischen Diasporajudentum, 157–83. Fishbane, M. Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, 441–543. Fitzmyer, J. A. “Further Light on Melchizedek from Qumran Cave 11.” Flint, P. W. “The Daniel Tradiiton at Qumran,” in Collins/Flint (eds.), The Book of Daniel 2:329–67. Fraidl, F. Die Exegese der siebzig Wochen Daniels. Frisch, A. The Danielic Discourse on Empire in Second Temple Literature. Froom, L. E. The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers. Fruchtman, J. The Apocalyptic Politics of Richard Price and Joseph Priestley. Gammie, J. G. “A Journey through Danielic Spaces.” García Martínez, F. “Parabiblical Literature from Qumran and the Canonical Process.” —­—­—­. Qumran and Apocalyptic. García Martínez, F., and E. J. C. Tigchelaar, eds. The Dead Sea Scrolls. Gaston, L. “The Son of Man.” Geissen, A., and W. Hamm, Der Septuaginta-­Text des Buches Daniel nach dem Kölner Teil des Papyrus 967. Gellinek, C. “Daniel’s Vision of Four Beasts in Twelfth-­ Century German Literature.” German, H. S. “The Armenian Version of the Book of Daniel and Its Affinities.” —­—­—­. “The Hesychian Influence in the Versions of Daniel.” —­—­—­. “The ‘Polyglott’ Arabic Text of Daniel and Its Affinities.” —­—­—­. “The Sahidic and the Bohairic Versions of the Book of Daniel.” Ginzberg, L. The Legends of the Jews 4:326–50; 6:413–37. Glasson, T. F. “Mark xiii. and the Greek OT.” Glessmer, U. “Die ‘Vier Reiche’ aus Daniel in der targumische Literatur,” in Collins/Flint (eds.), The Book of Daniel 2:468–89. Gnuse, R. “The Jewish Dream Interpreter in a Foreign Court.” Goeing,  A.- ­S . Storing, Archiving, Organizing. Goez, W. “Die Danielrezeption im Abendland,” in Delgado et al. (eds.), Europa, Tausendjähriges Reich und Neue Welt, 176–96. Goldingay, J. “Daniel in the Context of OT Theology,” in Collins/Flint (eds.), The Book of Daniel, 2:639–60. —­—­—­. “Story, Vision, Interpretation,” in van der Woude (ed.), The Book of Daniel, 295–313. Goldstein, J. A. I Maccabees. Goodenough, E. R. Jewish Symbols in the Greco-­Roman Period. Grabbe, L. L. “Chronography in Hellenistic Jewish Historiography.” —­—­—­. “The Seventy-­Weeks Prophecy in Early Jewish Interpretation,” in Evans and Talmon (eds.), The Quest for Context and Meaning, 595– 611. Gradon, P., and A. Hudson, eds. English Wycliffite Sermons. Graham, D. “Early Christian Understandings of the ‘Abomination that Causes Desolation.’  ” Greenberg, N. The Play of Daniel. Greidanus, S. Preaching Christ from Daniel. Grelot, P. “Le chapitre v de Daniel dans la Septante.” —­—­—­. “Rudolph Meyer, Das Gebet des Nabonid.” —­—­—­. “Les versions grecques de Daniel.” Gribben, C. The Puritan Milllennium. Grimm, W. [See under Betz.] Gundry, R. H. The Use of the OT in St. Matthew’s Gospel. Hanhart, R. “Die Übersetzungstechnik der Septuaginta als Interpretation (Daniel 11, 29 und die Aegyptenzüge des Antiochus Epiphanes).” Hartman, L. Prophecy Interpreted. —­—­—­. “The Functions of Some So-­called Apocalyptic Timetables.” Hebbard, A. B. Reading Daniel as a Text in Theological Hermeneutics. Hendel, R. Steps to a New Edition of the Hebrew Bible. Henze, M. The Madness of King Nebuchadnezzzar. —­—­—­. “Nebuchadnezzar’s Madness in Syriac Literature,” in Collins/ Flint (eds.), The Book of Daniel 2:550–71. —­—­—­. The Syriac Apocalypse of Daniel. —­—­—­. “The Use of Scripture in the Book of Daniel.” Hieke, T. “The Reception of Daniel 7 in the Revelation to John.” Hill, B. V. “Apocalyptic Lollards?” Hill, C. Antichrist in

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94 Introduction Seventeenth- ­Century England. Hill, R. C. “The Commentary on Daniel by Theodoret of Cyrus,” in Bracht/duToit (eds.), Die Geschichte der Daniel-­Auslegung, 151–63. —­—­—­. Reading the OT in Antioch. Hobbins, J. F. “Resurrection in the Daniel Tradition and Other Writings at Qumran,” in Collins/Flint (eds.), The Book of Daniel 2:395–420. Höffken, P. “Eine Reichsteilung bei Josephus Flavius: Beobachtungen zu seiner Auffassung von Daniel 5.” Hofius, O. “Der Septuaginta-­Text von Daniel 7, 13–14.” Hogeterp, A. L. A. “Daniel and the Qumran Daniel Cycle.” Horbury, W. “The Messianic Associations of ‘the Son of Man.’ ” Hurtado, L. W., and P. Owen., eds. Who Is This Son of Man? Jahn, G. Das Buch Daniel nach der Septuaginta. Jellicoe, S. “Reflections on the καιγε Recension.” Jenner, K. “Syriac Daniel,” in Collins/Flint (eds.), The Book of Daniel 2:608–37. Jobes, K. H. “Comparative Syntactic Analysis.” —­—­—­. “Karen Jobes Responds to Tim McLay.” Jones, B. A. “Resisting the Power of Empire.” Jones, D. R. “Commentaries on Daniel.” Kallarakkal A. G. “The Peshitto Version of Daniel.” Käser, W. “Die Monarchie im Spiegel von Calvins Daniel-­K ommentar.” Kee, H. C. “ ‘The Man’ in Fourth Ezra.” Kim, D. “Biblical Interpretation in the Book of Daniel.” Kim, S. “The ‘Son of Man’ ” as the Son of God. Kirkpatrick, S. Competing for Honor. Knibb, M. A. “The Book of Daniel in Its Context,” in Collins/Flint (eds.), The Book of Daniel 1:16–35. Knowles, L. E. “The Interpretation of the Seventy Weeks of Daniel in the Early Fathers.” Knox, Z. “The Watch Tower Society and the End of the Cold War.” Koch, K . Daniel. —­—­—­. “Daniel in der Ikonograf ie des Reformationszeitalters,” in Bracht/duToit (eds.), Die Geschichte der Daniel-­Auslegung, 269–91. —­—­—­. Europa, Rom und der Kaiser vor dem Hintergrund von zwei Jahrtausenden Rezeption des Buches Daniel. —­—­—­. “Europabewusstsein und Danielrezeption zwischen 1648 und 1848,” in Delgado et al. (eds.), Europa, Tausendjähriges Reich und Neue Welt, 326–84. —­—­—­. “Die Herkunft der Proto-­Theodotion-­Übersetzung des Danielbuches.” —­—­—­. “Is Daniel Also among the Prophets?” —­—­—­. “Die jüdische und christliche Kanonisierung des Danielbuchs als Rezeption unter verändertem geschichtlichen Horizont.” —­—­—­. “Der ‘Menschensohn’ in Daniel.” —­—­—­. “Messias und Menschensohn.”—­—­—­. “Spätisraelitische Geschichtsdenken am Beispiel des Buches Daniel.” —­—­—­. “Spätisraelitisch-­jüdische und urchristliche Danielrezeption.” Koch, K. and J. M. Schmidt., eds., Apokalyptik. Koch, K. et al., eds., Das Buch Daniel. Köbert, R. “Zur Daniel-­Abhandlung des Simeon von Edessa.” Kraft, R. A. “Daniel outside the Traditional Jewish Canon,” in Flint et al. (eds.), Studies in the Hebrew Bible, 121–33. Krey, P. D. W. “Nicholas of Lyra’s Commentary on Daniel,” in Bracht/duToit (eds.), Die Geschichte der Daniel-­Auslegung, 199–215. Kritzinger, J. P. K. “St Jerome’s Commentary on Daniel 3.” Krüger, T. “Heinrich Bullinger als Ausleger des ATs am Beispiel seiner Predigten Daniel 1 und 2.” Kuhn, K. A. “The ‘One like a Son of Man’ Becomes the ‘Son of God.’ ” Kvanvig, H. S. “Throne Visions and Monsters: The Encounter between Danielic and Enochic Traditions.” Lacocque, A. “The Vision of the Eagle in 4 Esdras, a Rereading of Daniel 7 in the First Century C.E.” Lamy,  T.-­J. “L’exégèse en orient au ive siècle.” Larriba, T. “Comentario de San Jerónimo al libro de Daniel.” Laurentin, R. Structure et théologie de Luc i–­ii, 45–63. Lawee, E. “On the Threshold of the Renaissance: New Methods and Sensibilities in the Bibical Commentaries of Isaac Abarbanel.” Leatherman, D. W. “Adventist Interpretation of Daniel 10–12.” Lebram, J. C. H. “Perspektiven der gegenwärtigen Danielforschung.” Lester, G. B. Daniel Evokes Isaiah. Liptzin, S. “Belshazzar’s Folly.” Lloyd Jones, G. “The Influence of Mediaeval Jewish Exegetes on Biblical Scholarship in Sixteenth Century England.” Löhr, M. “Textkritische Vorarbeiten zu einer Erklärung des Buches Daniel.” Lust, J. “Daniel 7, 13 and the Septuagint.” McGinn, B. Apocalyptic Spirituality. —­—­—­. Visions of the End.” McHardy, W. D. “The Peshitta Text of Daniel xi, 4.” McLay, T. “Daniel: to the Reader.” —­—­—­. “It’s a Question of Influence.” —­—­—­. The OG and Th

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Versions of Daniel. —­—­—­. “The Relationship between the Greek Translations of Daniel 1–3.” —­—­—­. “Syntactic Profiles.” Macler, F. “Les apocalypses apocryphes de Daniel.” —­—­—­. “The Septuagint Version of Daniel 4–5,” in van der Woude (ed.), The Book of Daniel, 39–53. Magny, A. “Porphyre, Hipplyte, et Origène commentent sur Daniel.” —­—­—­. “Porphyry against the Christians.” Mainz, E. “Le Livre de Daniel en Judéo-­ Persan.” Mandelbrote, S. “Isaac Newton and the Exegesis of the Book of Daniel,” in Bracht/duToit (eds.), Die Geschichte der Daniel-­Auslegung, 351–75. Mann, J. “Early K· araite Bible Commentaries.” Markus, R. A. Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St Augustine. Marsch, E. Biblische Prophetie und chronographische Dichtung. —­—­—­. “Vom Visionbild zur Deutung,” in Delgado et al. (eds.), Europa, Tausendjähriges Reich und Neue Welt, 426–53. Mason, S. “Josephus, Daniel, and the Flavian House.” Meadowcroft, T. J. Aramaic Daniel and Greek Daniel. Méchoulan, H. “Révélation, rationalité et prophétie.” Mertens, A. Das Buch Daniel im Lichte der Texte vom Toten Meer. Meyer, R. Das Gebet des Nabonid. —­—­—­. “Das Qumrânfragment ‘Gebet des Nabonid.’ ” Miceli, V. P. The Antichrist. Miegge, M. “ ‘Regnum quartum ferreum’ und ‘lapis de monte,” in Delgado et al. (eds.), Europa, Tausendjähriges Reich und Neue Welt, 239–51. Milik, J. T. “ ‘Prière de Nabonide’ et autres écrits d’un cycle de Daniel.” Miller, W. Evidence from Scripture and History of the Second Coming of Christ, about the Year 1843. Montgomery, J. A. Daniel. —­—­—­.”A Survival of the Tetragrammaton in Daniel.” Morrison, C. E. “The Reception of the Book of Daniel in Aphrahat’s Fifth Demonstration.” Morrow, W. S., and E. G. Clarke. “The Ketib/Qere in the Aramaic Portions of Ezra and Daniel.” Moskowitz, N. “The Book of Daniel.” Müller, K. “Beobachtungen zur Entwicklung der Menschensohnvorstellung in den Bilderreden des Henoch und im Buche Daniel.” —­—­—­. “Menschensohn und Messias.” —­—­—­. “Der Menschensohn im Danielzyklus.” Müller, M. The Expression “Son of Man” and the Development of Christology. Müller, U. B. Messias und Menschensohn. Munnich, O. “Les versions grecques de Daniel et leurs substrats sémitiques.” Munoa III, P. B. Four Powers in Heaven. Murray, I. The Puritan Hope. Oegema, G. S. “Back to the Future in the Early Church: The Use of the Book of Daniel in Early Patristic Eschatology.” —­—­—­. “Die Danielrezeption in der Alten Kirche,” in Delgado et al. (eds.), Europa, Tausendjähriges Reich und Neue Welt, 84–104. Oliver, W. H. Prophets and Millennialists. Orchard, J. B. “St Paul and the Book of Daniel.” Pace, S. “The Old Greek Text of Daniel 7–12.” —­—­—­. “The Stratigraphy of the Text of Daniel and the Question of Theological Tendenz in the Old Greek.” Padley, J. “ ‘Declare the Interpretation.’ ” Paget, J. C. et al., eds. The New Cambridge History of the Bible. Parry, J. T. “Desolation of the Temple and Messianic Enthronement in Daniel 11:36—12:3.” Paulien, J. “The End of Historicism?” Perrin, N. “The Son of Man in Ancient Judaism and Primitive Christianity.” —­—­—­. “The Interpretation of a Biblical Symbol.” Pfandl, G. “Interpretations of the Kingdom of God in Daniel 2:44.” Pfann, S. “The Aramaic Text and Language of Daniel and Ezra in the Light of Some Manuscripts from Qumran.” Pitkin, B. “Prophecy and History in Calvin’s Lectures on Daniel,” in Bracht/duToit (eds.), Die Geschichte der Daniel-­Auslegung, 324–47. Polak, F. H. “The Daniel Tales in their Aramaic Literary Milieu,” in van der Woude (ed.), The Book of Daniel, 249–65. Portnoy, P. “Daniel and the Dew-­Laden Wind.” Prete, S. “Declino e corrompimento morale nella escatologia occidentale: Nota alle interpretazioni su Dan. 2, 31; 7, 3 di Ippolito e Girolamo.” Procksch, O. “Tetraplarische Studien.” Puech, É. Qumran Grotte 4.XXII. Pyper, H. S. “Looking into the Lions’ Den.” Reaburn, M. “St Jerome and Porphyry Interpret the Book of Daniel.” Reid, S. B. “The Theology of the Book of Daniel and the Political Theory of W. E. B. DuBois.” Reventlow, H. G. “The Saints of the Most High und die Rätsel der Chronologie,” in Delgado et al. (eds.), Europa, Tausendjähriges Reich und Neue Welt, 306–25. Reynolds III, B. H. “Adjusting the Apocalypse.” Riessler, P. “Zur

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96 Introduction Textgeschichte des Buches Daniel.” Rigaux, B. “Βδέλυγμα τῆς ἐρημώσεως.” Rinaldi, J. “Danielis prophetiae apud S. Augustinum” Roca-­P uig,  R. “Daniele: due semifogli del codice 967.” Röcke, W. “Die Danielprophetie als reflexionsmodus revolutionärer Phantasien im Spätmittelalter,” in Bracht/duToit (eds.), Die Geschichte der Daniel-­ Auslegung, 245–67. Rösel, M. “Der Herr des Daniel: Zur Übersetzung der Gottesnamen in der Daniel-­LXX.” —­—­—­. “Theology after the Crisis.” Rosenthal, F. Die aramäistische Forschung. Rosenthal, E. I. J. “Don Isaac Abravanel.” —­—­—­. “Edward Lively.” Rowland, C. “The Book of Daniel and the Radical Critique of Empire,” in Collins/Flint (eds.), The Book of Daniel 2:447–67. Royer, W. S. “The Ancient of Days.” Sänger, D., ed. Gottessohn und Menschensohn. Sarachek, J. The Doctrine of the Messiah in Medieval Jewish Literature. Satran, D. “Daniel.” Schaberg, J. “Daniel 7, 12 and the NT Passion-­ Resurrection Predictions.” Schäfer, P. The Jewish Jesus. Scheible, H. “Melanchthons Verständnis des Danielsbuchs,” in Bracht/duToit (eds.), Die Geschichte der Daniel-­ Auslegung, 293–321. Schmidt, J. M. Die jüdische Apokalyptik. Schmitt, A. “Die griechischen Danieltexte (‘θ’ und o´) und das Theodotionproblem.” —­—­—­. Stammt der sogenannte “θ”-­Text bei Daniel wirklich von Theodotion? Schmitz, B. “Die Juditerzählung.” Schmoldt, H. “Die Schrift ‘Vom jungen Daniel’ und ‘Daniels letzte Vision.’ ” Schorch, S. “Die Auslegung des Danielbuches in der Schrift ‘Die Quellen der Erlösung” des Don Isaak Abravanel,” in Bracht/duToit (eds.), Die Geschichte der Daniel-­ Auslegung, 179–97. Schreiner, P. “Peter, the Rock.” Segal, A. F. Two Powers in Heaven. Sel, M. “Daniel—­In Arabic Literature.” Shaked, S. “Fragments of Two Karaite Commentaries on Daniel in Judaeo-­Persian.” Shepherd, M. B. Daniel in the Context of the Hebrew Bible. —­—­—­. “Daniel 7:13 and the NT Son of Man.” Silver, A. H. History of Messianic Speculation in Israel. Sims, J. H. Comparative Literary Study of Daniel and Revelation. Smith-­C hristopher, D. L. “Daniel.” —­—­—­. “Gandhi on Daniel 6.” Smith-­ Christopher, D. L., et al. “Daniel (Book and Person).” Snobelen, S. D. “ ‘A Time and Times and the Dividing of Time’: Isaac Newton, the Apocalypse, and 2060 A.D.” Snow, R. “Daniel’s Son of Man in Mark.” Spangenberg, I. J. J. “The Septuagint Translation of Daniel 9.” Stander, H. F. “Chrysostom’s Interpretation of the Narrative of the Three Confessors.” Stauffer, E. “Eine Bemerkung zum griechischen Danieltext.” Stemberger, G. “Die jüdische Danielrezeption seit der Zerstörung des zweiten Tempels am Beispiel der Endzeitberechnung,” in Delgado et al. (eds.), Europa, Tausendjähriges Reich und Neue Welt, 139–58. Stevenson, K., and M. Glerup, Ezekiel, Daniel. Stokes, R. E. “The Throne Visions of Daniel 7, 1 Enoch 14, and the Qumran Book of Giants.” Strohm, S. “Luthers Vorrede zum Propheten Daniel,” in Bracht/duToit (eds.), Die Geschichte der Daniel-­Auslegung, 219–43. Stuckenbruck, L. T. “Daniel and Early Enoch Traditions in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Collins/Flint (eds.), The Book of Daniel 2:368–86. —­—­—­. “The Formation and Re-­Formation of Daniel in the Dead Sea Scrolls.” —­—­—­. “ ‘One Like a Son of Man as the Ancient of Days.’ ” Suh, D. K. Korean Minjung in Christ. Swart, G. J. “Divergences between the OG and Th Versions of Daniel 3.” Tamcke, M. “Die byzantisch-­r ussische Reichseschatologie,” in Delgado et al. (eds.), Europa, Tausendjähriges Reich und Neue Welt, 197–224. Tanner, J. P. “Daniel’s King of the North.” —­—­—­. Taylor,  R.  A. “The Book of Daniel in the Bible of Edessa.” —­—­—­. The Peshitta of Daniel. Theisohn, J. Der auserwählte Richter. Theophilos, M. The Abomination of Desolation in Matthew 24. Tilly, M. “Die Rezeption des Danielbuches im hellenistischen Judentum,” in Bracht/duToit (eds.), Die Geschichte der Daniel-­Auslegung, 31–54. Toon, P. Puritans, the Millennium, and the Future of Israel. Tov, E. The Text-­C ritical Use of the Septuagint in Biblical Research. —­—­—­. Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible. —­—­—­. “Three Strange Books of the LXX.” Towner, W. S. “Were the English Puritans ‘the Saints of the Most High’?” Trakatallis, D. “Λογος Αγωνιστικος: Hippolytus’ Commentary on Daniel.” Trever, J. C. “The Book of Daniel and the Origin of the Qumran Community.”

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—­—­—­. “Completion of the Publication of Some Fragments from Qumran Cave 1.” —­—­—­. “1QDana.” Trotter, J. R. “The Tradition of the Throne Vision in the Second Temple Period.” Tübach, J. “Die syrische Danielrezeption,” in Delgado et al. (eds.), Europa, Tausendjähriges Reich und Neue Welt, 105–38. Ulrich, D. R. “How Early Judaism Read Daniel 9:24–27.” Ulrich, E. The Biblical Qumran Scrolls, 755–75. —­—­—­. “Daniel Manuscripts from Qumran.” —­—­—­. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Developmental Composition of the Bible. —­—­—­. “Orthography and Text in 4QDana and 4QDanb and in the Received Masoretic Text.” —­—­—­. “The Parallel Editions of the OG and MT of Daniel 5.” —­—­—­. “The Text of Daniel in the Qumran Scrolls,” in Collins/Flint (eds.), The Book of Daniel 2:573–85. Ulrich, E., et al. Qumran Cave 4.XI. Valeta, D. M. “The Book of Daniel in Recent Research.” —­—­—­. VanderKam, J. C., et al. Qumran Cave 4.XVII. Van der Kooij, A. “A Case of Reinterpretation in the Old Greek of Daniel 11.” —­—­—­. “The Four Kingdoms in Peshitta Daniel 7.” Van Deventer, H. J. M. “Did Someone Say ‘History’?” Van Henten, J. W. “Daniel 3 and 6 in Early Christian Literature,” in Collins/Flint, eds., The Book of Daniel 1:149–69. —­—­—­. “The Reception of Daniel 3 and 6 and the Maccabean Martyrdoms in Hebrews 11:33–38.” Van Peursen, W. “Daniel’s Four Kingdoms in the Syriac Tradition.” Vaucher,  A.-­F. “Daniel 8:14 en occident jusqu’au Cardinal Nicolas de Cusa.” Vermes, G. The Dead Sea Scrolls in English. —­—­—­. “Josephus’ Treatment of the Book of Daniel.” Vetne, R. “A Definition and Short History of Historicism as a Method for Interpreting Daniel and Revelation.” Vogel, W. “The Eschatological Theology of Martin Luther.” Volp, U. “Hippolytus of Rome.” Volz, H. “Beiträge zu Melancthons und Calvins Auslegungen des Propheten Daniel.” Walter, D. M., et al., ed. and trans. The Syriac Peshitta Bible with English Translation: Daniel. Walters, S. D. “The World Will End in 1919.” Webb, J. R. “ ‘Knowledge Will Be Manifold.’  ” Wegner, M. “Das Nabuchodonosor-­ B ild.” Wengert, T. J. “The Biblical Commentaries of Philip Melanchthon.” Whitla, W. Sir Isaac Newton’s Daniel and the Apocalypse. Wieder, N. “The Dead Sea Scrolls Type of Biblical Exegesis among the Karaites.” Würffel, S. B. “Reichs-­Traum und Reichs-­ Trauma,” in Delgado et al. (eds.), Europa, Tausendjähriges Reich und Neue Welt, 405–25. Wyngarden, M. J. The Syriac Version of the Book of Daniel. Yamauchi, E. M. “Hermeneutical Issues in the Book of Daniel.” Yarbro Collins, A., “The Influence of Daniel on the NT.” Yarbro Collins, A., and J. J. Collins. “The Book of Truth,” in Delgado et al. (eds.), Europa, Tausendjähriges Reich und Neue Welt, 385–404. Ziegler, J. Der Bibeltext im Daniel-­Kommentar des Hippolyt von Rom. —­—­—­ and O. Munnich, eds. Susanna— ­Daniel— ­Bel et Draco. Zier, M. “Nicholas of Lyra on the Book of Daniel.” Zissu, B. “Daniel in the Lion’s Den (?) at Tel Lavnin.”

Daniel: The Arc Extending from the Sixth Century to the Second The book of Daniel that this commentary studies is one recension of the varied literature associated with Daniel’s name,1 the recension written partly in Hebrew and partly in Aramaic, which appears in the Jewish Scriptures among the Writings and in the Christian Scriptures among the Prophets. Its narrative is set in the time of the Neo-­Babylonian Empire and the first years of the Persian era, the 500s BC. After the scene is introduced in ch. 1, Daniel 1

See e.g., DiTommaso, The Book of Daniel and the Apocryphal Daniel Literature; ———, “Daniel, Apocalypses of”; ———, “4Q Pseudo-Daniel A-B (4Q243–4Q244) and the Book of Daniel”; Kraft, “Daniel outside the Traditional Jewish Canon.”

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98 Introduction takes center stage in ch. 2, outdoing the expertise of the Babylonian royal advisers by the power of God, and thereby being able to reveal how political events are to unfold until God sets up his own rule and brings an end to all others. Chapter 2 thus opens up the book’s two main subsequent themes, the exploits of Daniel and his friends as members of the royal court (chs. 3–6) and the revelations regarding the future that are given to him (chs. 7–12). The revelations are cryptically expressed, but when explicitly interpreted within the book they focus on events to take place in Jerusalem in the Persian and Hellenistic periods and in particular on the actions and fate of the Seleucid ruler of Judah in the 160s BC, Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Story and vision give the book as a whole a double focus: it traces an arc leading from the dispersion in the sixth century to the Jerusalem of the second century. It has thus been a matter of controversy whether the book was written in the sixth century and looked forward to events up to in the second, or written in the second century and looked back on events going back to the sixth. The book’s Aramaic in 2:4b–7:28 is a form of Imperial Aramaic, the international language of the Middle East through much of OT times (cf. 2 Kgs 18:26).2 It contains a fair number of Akkadian and Persian words, and in ch. 3 three Greek ones. Its use of Aramaic matches the stories’ setting in the eastern dispersion of the Jewish people. It is distinguishable from the later Aramaic of Qumran but it might be dated anywhere between the late sixth and early second centuries BC, though its spelling may have been updated later in light of the ongoing development of the living language.3 The Greek words hardly necessitate a date after the Greek conquest of the Middle East, given the earlier spread of Greek culture even in Judea.4 The Hebrew of 1:1–2:4a and 8:1–12:13 also includes some Persian words and a number of Aramaisms, and it is written in a distinctive style and idiom with a number of uncertainties about the meaning of individual words and phrases. It has been suggested that the Hebrew sections were translated from Aramaic,5 or at least written by author(s) more at home in Aramaic. The range of possible dates for the Hebrew would be similar to that for the Aramaic.6 Over the millennia since its composition, Daniel has been continuously studied and expounded. A consideration of this study and exposition is interesting in its own right and reveals a series of questions regarding the 2 3 4 5 6

On the relationship of Daniel’s Aramaic to other forms of Aramaic, see Stefanovic, The Aramaic of Daniel in the Light of Old Aramaic; also Polak, “The Daniel Tales in their Aramaic Literary Milieu.” See Rosenthal, Die aramäistische Forschung; Kitchen, “Aramaic”; Kutscher, “Aramaic”; Coxon (see Commentary Bibliography); against Baumgartner, “Das Aramäische im Buche Daniel”; Rowley (see Commentary Bibliography). See Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus, 108–95 (ET 1:58–106); also, e.g., Coxon, “Greek Loan-words.” Niskanen (The Human and the Divine in History) argues more generally for the influence of Herodotus’s historiography on Daniel. See Marti, Daniel, ix-x; Zimmermann, Biblical Books Translated from the Aramaic. See Polzin, Late Biblical Hebrew.

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Daniel at Qumran: Manuscripts of the Book

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book’s content, background, and meaning that provide part of the agenda for our own interaction with the book. We will return to some of them in the conclusion to the commentary, in light of the chapter-­by-­chapter study.

Daniel at Qumran: Manuscripts of the Book The visions in Daniel promise (among other things) a miraculous deliverance from the oppressive rule of Antiochus Epiphanes, and such a deliverance happened. It would hardly be surprising if this event dissolved any doubt regarding the divine origin of the visions and also encouraged study of the book to see what further insight might emerge from it. The incompleteness of the visions’ fulfillment would reinforce that encouragement.7 The Qumran scrolls are a key resource for our knowledge of the varied Daniel literature from late Second Temple times. It seems plausible that the Qumran community’s interest in Daniel links with the sense of a need for deliverance and of the prospect of the end of the age, which it shares with the visions. Among the scrolls there are eight fragmentary copies of the collection of stories and visions that appears in the version of Daniel in the Hebrew Scriptures, which were copied over a period beginning only two or three decades after the deliverance in the 160s. There are thus more copies of Daniel from Qumran than of any other book within the Hebrew Scriptures, which in itself suggests that this Daniel scroll had a special importance for the community. The manuscripts are as follows: 1QDana: 1:10–17; 2:2–6 1QDanb: 3:22–30 4QDana: 1:16–20; 2:9–11, 19–49; 3:1–2; 4:32–33 [29–30]; 5:5–7, 12–14, 16–19; 7:5–7, 25–28; 8:1–5; 10:16–20; 11:13–16 4QDanb: 5:10–12, 14–16, 19–22; 6:7–21, 26–28 [8–22, 27–29]; 7:1–6, 11(?), 26–28; 8:1–8, 13–16 4QDanc: 10:5–9, 11–16, 21; 11:1–2, 13–17, 25—29 4QDand: a few lines badly decayed 4QDane: a few tiny fragments from ch. 9, none more than one complete word 6QDan (a papyrus): 8:16–17 (?), 20–21 (?); 10:8–16; 11:33–36, 38.8 While ch. 12 does not feature among these manuscripts, it is referred to in 4QFlorilegium (4Q174), a commentary on a number of passages that were 7 8

Beckwith argues more broadly that the contents of the Jewish Scriptures were finalized soon after the Antiochene crisis (“Formation of the Hebrew Bible”; ———, The OT Canon of the NT Church). See Ulrich, Biblical Qumran Scrolls, 755–75; more detail in Baillet et al., Les ‘petites grottes’ de Qumrân; Barthélemy/Milik, Qumran Cave 1; Ulrich et al., Qumran Cave 4.XI.

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100 Introduction believed to relate to “the end of the days”; these passages include texts from Exodus, 2 Samuel, Psalms, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Amos—­and Daniel, specifically 11:32 and 12:10.9 Thus all twelve chapters of the book are represented one way or another among the Qumran scrolls. 4QFlorilegium (col. II) uses the expression “as is written in the scroll of Daniel the prophet,” paralleling its use of the phrase “as is written in the scroll of Isaiah the prophet,” which suggests that Daniel held similar status to Isaiah for the Qumran community. Geza Vermes makes the comment that “all the textual evidence relating to Daniel suggests that its inclusion in the Hebrew canon occurred in a hurry.”10 But if by canon we mean an officially recognized and circumscribed list of books,11 it may be anachronistic to argue whether the Qumran community had a canon that did or did not include Daniel. We know of no occasion when the Jewish community decided on a canon; as far as we can tell, it drifted into having the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings in particular as its Scriptures. But the prominence of Daniel at Qumran parallels its place in the canon, understood as a collection of core documents that were believed to be of divine origin, attracted rewriting, attracted interpretation, and mediate the voice of an authoritative teacher.12 The Qumran manuscripts of Daniel are a thousand years older than our oldest copies of the Masoretic Text, but their (unvocalized) texts almost entirely correspond to that of the MT.13 Most differences entail matters of spelling and grammar, which have sometimes been updated. A few significant variants may suggest an earlier version of the text than the MT’s (see e.g., the notes in this commentary at 2:24; 7:1; 8:4; 10:16; 11:17) or may indicate additions or changes in the Qumran versions (see e.g., the notes at 5:7, 12).14 Some differences imply agreement with OG (2:5; 10:16) or Th. (1:12; 3:23).15 But in general the Qumran manuscripts suggest that virtually no change of significance happened to the text of Daniel between the time of their copying and the form that appears in the MT.

Further Danielic Material at Qumran Among the Qumran scrolls are also a number of other Aramaic documents mentioning Daniel or related to the Hebrew-­A ramaic Daniel scroll in some 9 10 11 12 13

See e.g., DSS 2:352–55. Vermes, “Josephus’ Treatment of the Book of Daniel,” 149. See e.g., Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Developmental Composition of the Bible, 265–308. Cf. García Martínez, “Parabiblical Literature from Qumran and the Canonical Process.” Cf. Hasel, “The Book of Daniel Confirmed by the Dead Sea Scrolls”; “New Light on the Book of Daniel from the Dead Sea Scrolls.” 14 See E. Ulrich, “Orthography and Text in 4QDana and 4QDanb and in the Received Masoretic Text”; Pfann, “The Aramaic Text and Language of Daniel and Ezra in the Light of Some Manuscripts from Qumran.” 15 See e.g., Pace, “The Old Greek Text of Daniel 7–12.”

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Further Danielic Material at Qumran

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way.16 The latter include a Prayer of Nabonidus, who is healed from a seven-­ year illness through the ministry of a Jewish exorcist and whose focus thus overlaps with that of Daniel 4.17 Two fragmentary scrolls (4Q243 and 244) apparently come from a work relating how Daniel gives Belshazzar an account of history from creation to the end of the age, which overlaps with the focus of Daniel 11.18 Another (4Q245) comprises a list of priests and kings and a promise of judgment on wickedness and of restoration. Yet another (4Q246) may be taking up Daniel 7.19 As its title implies, 4QFour Kingdoms (4Q552–53) may also be related to the Daniel materials.20 It has been suggested that the Jeremiah Apocryphon, to which at least some of 4Q383–92 belongs, incorporates a reworking of material in Daniel and is dated within a few decades of the completion of the Hebrew-­A ramaic Daniel scroll.21 Given that the visions in Daniel had not been completely fulfilled in the downfall of Antiochus Epiphanes, the Qumran community believed they were to be fulfilled in their day, and they saw themselves as the embodiment of the discerning teachers (‫ )משכילים‬and the holy ones on high in Daniel.22 In keeping with their general expository method, they applied prophecies from Daniel to themselves; the Damascus Rule offers “the first of a long line of commentaries” on Dan 9:24–27.23 11Q13 (11QMelch) alludes to the tenth jubilee with apparent reference to Daniel and likely reference to this same passage;24 words from Dan 9 also underlie one of the psalms in 11QPsa and the 4Q liturgical text The Words of the Luminaries.25 Partly on the basis of Dan 9, the Essenes were expecting the messiah between 3 BC and AD 2.26 Daniel’s portrait of an embodiment of godless wickedness furnishes them with a portrait of their enemies, especially the wicked priest. The framework for the picture of the end in the War Scroll, 1QM, “draws its inspiration from Daniel xi. 40–xii. 3.”27 There already appears here a major theme of Danielic 16

See e.g., Knibb, Flint, Stuckenbruck, Eshel, Hobbins, and Ulrich in Collins/Flint, The Book of Daniel; Earlier, Flint, “The Daniel Tradition at Qumran,” in Evans/Flint, Eschatology, Messianism, and the Dea Sea Scrolls, 41–60; Collins, “New Light on the Book of Daniel from the Dead Sea Scrolls”; Stuckenbruck, “The Formation and Re-Formation of Daniel in the Dead Sea Scrolls”; Bernstein/Koller, “The Aramaic Texts and the Hebrew and Aramaic Languages at Qumran,” 169–77; García Martínez, Qumran and Apocalyptic; Debel, “Retracing Authoritative Traditions Behind the Scriptural Texts.” 17 See Meyer, Das Gebet des Nabonid; Milik, “‘Prière de Nabonide.’” 18 See Flint, “The Daniel Tradition at Qumran.” 19 So Kuhn, “The ‘One like a Son of Man’ Becomes the ‘Son of God.’” 20 See Hogeterp, “Daniel and the Qumran Daniel Cycle.” 21 So Reynolds, “Adjusting the Apocalypse.” 22 Cf. Bruce, Biblical Exegesis in the Qumran Texts, 27, 63–67, 70. 23 Mertens, Das Buch Daniel im Lichte der Texte vom Toten Meer, 87. 24 Fitzmyer, Essays on the Semitic Background of the NT, 251; Collins, “The Book of Daniel and the Dead Sea Scrolls,” 103. 25 See Delcor, “L’hymne à Sion,” 84–88; Baillet, “Un recueil liturgique de Qumrân,” 247. 26 Beckwith, “The Significance of the Calendar for Interpreting Essene Chronology and Eschatology,” 180. 27 Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, 122.

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102 Introduction study. While the conservative Jewish community had experienced a great deliverance that it could see as a fulfillment of promises in Dan 10–12, the end had not come; history has continued to unfold and wickedness has continued, inside and outside the Jewish community. Yet far from passing into disrepute, Daniel exercised a growing influence. What 1QM perceives in Daniel is not merely a falsifiable timetable of events but encouragement to people living in the midst of crisis.28 The Qumran documents also include copies of different sections of 1 Enoch. During the Persian and Greek eras a substantial literature connected with the name of Enoch had been developing, and this literature may be dependent on Daniel at a number of points. Current opinion dates much of 1 En. 1–36 and 72–108 earlier than Daniel or within the same period, so that in principle it is as likely that Daniel is dependent on 1 Enoch as vice versa,29 though many of the parallels (e.g., the use of animal imagery in 1 En. 90) need not require dependence either way. The situation is different with 1 En. 37–71, the Parables or Similitudes. The Parables are unattested at Qumran, and current opinion regards them as belonging to the Roman period. Their most interesting correspondence with Daniel is their reference to a humanlike figure and to one advanced in days (cf. Dan 7:13). “That son of man” (1 En. 46–48, alongside the “head of days” with hair white like wool; see also chs. 62; 69), God’s elect and righteous one, is apparently identified with the Messiah (48:10),30 though Enoch himself is later addressed as “son of man” (71:14). Thus Dan 7 is one of the texts used to interpret the significance of Enoch and his translation, reported with such tantalizing brevity in Gen 5:21–24; and the allusion leads to or justifies a belief in Enoch’s functioning as eschatological judge. As in Dan 7, however, “son of man” suggests an image, not a title.

The First Greek Translation of Daniel Early interest in Daniel appears further in the translation of a longer collection of Daniel material into Greek for Jews in the wider world, which then found its way into the collection of Jewish Scriptures accepted in the Greek-­ speaking churches and still appears in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Bibles and in the Protestant Apocrypha or second[ary] canon. The Old Greek 28 Hartman, “The Functions of Some So-called Apocalyptic Timetables,” 5–6. 29 For different views, see Stuckenbruck, “Daniel and Early Enoch Traditions in the Dead Sea Scrolls”; Beckwith, “Early Traces of the Book of Daniel”; Stokes, “The Throne Visions of Daniel 7, 1 Enoch 14, and the Qumran Book of Giants (4Q530)”; Trotter, “The Tradition of the Throne Vision”; Kvanvig, “Throne Visions and Monsters.” 30 This understanding parallels one which has been found in 4Q246 with its verbal links with Dan 7 and its reference to “the Son of God” (see DSS 2:492–95; Collins, The Scepter and the Star, 171–214). On Messiah and Son of Man in the apocalypses, see e.g., Koch, “Messias und Menschensohn”; Beyerle, “‘Der mit den Wolken des Himmels kommt.’”

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The First Greek Translation of Daniel

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translation was known to the translator of the later Greek version referred to as Theodotion, and both were known to NT writers, while the reference in 1 Macc 1:54 to a βδέλυγμα ἐρημώσεως, an “abomination of desolation,” follows the OG’s translation of the Hebrew expression in Dan 11:31. These considerations suggest that the OG comes from the same period as the oldest of the Qumran manuscripts, the second half of the second century BC. The translation thus dates from within decades of the book’s composition, as they do. It is therefore the more striking that the translation renders the expanded version of the book, augmented by a prayer and an act of praise incorporated into ch. 3 and by extra stories about Susanna and about Bel and the Snake. These extra elements in the book also seem likely to be translations of Hebrew or Aramaic originals, though they may be later additions to the OG.31 The OG is known only through the papyrus Manuscript 96732 from the second or third century AD (which has chs. 7–8 in their chronological place before 5–6), through Codex 88, the Chigi manuscript of Origen’s Hexapla from the ninth to eleventh centuries, and through a ninth-­century manuscript of the Syriac translation of the Hexapla (Syh.).33 The OG is mostly close to the MT but is further from it in chs. 4–6. Perhaps the OG has reworked the Aramaic text of those chapters (possibly it was the work of a different translator),34 or perhaps it follows a rewritten version,35 or perhaps it translates a different version36—­a s the OG as a whole translates the longer edition of the book. The OG differs from the MT in one or two subsequent key passages. Its version of 9:24–27 makes more explicit than the MT that the passage refers to events in the time of Antiochus: it dates the events of v. 26 after 7 + 70 + 62 years—­the 139th year of the Seleucid era being ca. 172. It also makes explicit—­w ith the benefit of hindsight—­that many sevens would elapse after the removal of the desolating abomination and before the End.37 In 7:13, according to the OG, the humanlike figure comes not ἕως παλαιοῦ ἡμερῶν (“to one old in days”), but ὡς παλαιὸς ἡμερῶν (“as one old in days”). This reading may be original, or it may be a slip, or it may reflect Christian claims for Jesus’s 31 So McLay, The OG and Th Versions of Daniel, 146–48. 32 Less incomplete than it used to be: see Cathcart, “Daniel and Chester Beatty-Cologne Papyrus 967.” 33 Cf. Geissen/Hamm, Der Septuaginta-Text des Buches Daniel; Roca-Puig, “Daniele: Due semifogli del codice 967”; Ziegler/Munnich, Susanna—Daniel—Bel et Draco; and for studies, see e.g., McLay, The OG and Th Versions of Daniel; Bogaert, “Daniel 3 LXX et son supplément grec.” 34 So e.g., McLay, The OG and Th versions of Daniel. 35 See Tov, “Three Strange Books of the LXX.” 36 See Lust, “The Septuagint Version of Daniel 4–5”; Albertz, Der Gott des Daniel; Charles, Daniel; Meadowcroft, Aramic Daniel and Greek Daniel; Ulrich, “The Parallel Editions of the OG and MT of Daniel 5”; Munnich, “Les versions grecques de Daniel et leurs substrats sémitiques.” 37 Cf. also Rösel, “Theology after the Crisis” and Spangenberg, “The Septuagint Translation of Daniel 9: Does It Reflect a Messianic Interpretation?” (his answer is “No”).

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104 Introduction divinity.38 Such differences from the MT may again indicate that the OG is in part paraphrastic/targumic/midrashic, the last element including both modifications based on other Scriptures and other embellishments, in the manner of the Genesis Apocryphon.39 But R. H. Charles saw the OG as often a better guide to the original Hebrew than the MT.40 Likewise Pace argues that at least in chs. 7–12 the OG is for the most part a literal rendering of a variant Hebrew tradition, such as the Qumran finds now prove to have existed for other books.41 Meanwhile, Grelot suggests that the OG is a translation of a second-­century BC Hebrew version of the original Aramaic.42

Daniel in the Greek-­Speaking World First and Second Maccabees (c. 100–63 BC) speak in terms similar to Daniel’s regarding some of the events of the Antiochene crisis: they assume that the original reference of the phrase “the abomination of desolation” in Dan 9:27 and 11:31 is to Antiochus’s cultic innovation. The stories in Dan 1–6 provide Maccabees with perspectives on the pressures of the Antiochene crisis (1 Macc 1:41–43; 2:59–60).43 But there are ideological differences between 1 Maccabees and Dan 7–12: the former strongly affirms the active measures of the Maccabees and omits reference to the idea of resurrection. The theology of 2 Maccabees is closer to Daniel’s; it is more inclined to tell a story that corresponds to Daniel. The suggestion has been made that Dan 3 (specifically the OG version) was part of the inspiration for the book of Judith.44 Although the Greek translation of the Scriptures was made for Jews, it became in particular the church’s Bible, but in the church the original Greek translation of Daniel was replaced by another, more literal version, closer to the MT. Jerome, in his preface to his Latin translation of Daniel, says that he has no idea why it happened,45 and we still have no idea. Having become the translation that appears in the Septuagint as a whole, this further Greek rendering of Daniel is much better attested than the OG. Rahlfs’s edition of the Septuagint as a whole, Ziegler and Munnich’s edition of Greek Daniel, and NETS include both versions. While the newer translation is credited to Theodotion (c AD 180), we have noted that its renderings are known before

38 See the discussion in Di Lella, “Textual History of Septuagint-Daniel and TheodotionDaniel,” 591; Lust, “Daniel 7, 13 and the Septuagint”; Hofius, “Der Septuaginta-Text von Daniel 7, 13–14.” 39 Ashley, “The Book of Daniel Chapters 1–6,” 289–93; cf. Bruce,”The Oldest Greek Version of Daniel”; “Prophetic Interpretation in the Septuagint.” 40 See his Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Daniel. 41 See The OG Text of Daniel 7–12. 42 Grelot, “Les versions grecques de Daniel.” 43 Goldstein, I Maccabees, 44–54, 119–20 44 So Schmitz, “Die Juditerzählung.” 45 See PL 28: 1357c (ET 492).

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his time; both the OG and Th. are reflected in the NT. Perhaps Th. is an alternative Greek version from some other part of the pre-­Christian Hellenistic/ Roman world, possibly a revision of the OG to render the translation more literal or an alternative translation that often follows the OG.46 “There is scholarly consensus on relatively few issues regarding the textual history of OG-­Dan and Th-­Dan.”47 The commentary on Daniel by Origen (185–254)48 has not survived, but Origen has abiding significance in connection with Daniel through his Hexapla, a six-­column collation of the Hebrew OT with various Greek versions. During the second century a number of further alternatives to the OG had come into existence, including a very literal version by Aquila and a freer one by Symmachus.49 Greek versions were also translated into Latin and later into Coptic (Sahidic/Bohairic, third century) and Ethiopic (fourth century). Origen himself was concerned for the church to get the OT text right, not least so it could argue with Jews on a common basis. Perhaps it was through his work in the Hexapla that the OG came to be supplanted by Th. in the LXX; it might have been preferred because it stuck closer to the Hebrew. At the same time, the Hexapla was long our sole source for the oldest complete manuscripts of the OG Daniel, 88 and Syh., as well as for fragments of Aquila and Symmachus. The origin of the Syriac translation of Daniel is also uncertain. There are no clear indications that it is of Christian background nor that it is dependent on the OG or Th.; it may be an independent translation from a Hebrew tradition related to but slightly different from the MT, perhaps deriving from Edessa in Turkey, the “literary capital” of the Syrian world in pre-­Christian and Christian times.50 The earliest Armenian translation was based on the Syriac.51 46 Cf. Barthélemy, Les devanciers d’Aquila; Schmitt, Stammt der sogenannte “θ”-Text bei Daniel wirklich von Theodotion?; Schmitt, “Die griechischen Danieltexte (‘θ’ und o´) und das Theodotionproblem”; Jellicoe, “Some Reflections on the καιγε Recension”; Hartman, Prophecy Interpreted, 76–83; McLay, “Daniel: To the Reader”; McLay, The OG and Th Versions of Daniel; ———, “It’s a Question of Influence: The Theodotion and OG Texts of Daniel”; Swart, “Divergences between the OG and Th Versions of Daniel 3”; Di Lella, “Textual History of Septuagint-Daniel and Theodotion-Daniel”; Bodenmann, Naissance d’une Exégèse, 10–106; Tilly, “Die Rezeption des Danielbuches”; Koch, “Die Herkunft der Proto-TheodotionÜbersetzung des Danielbuches”; Kellenberger, “Textvarianten in den Daniel-Legenden.” See the exchange between Jobes, “Comparative Syntactic Analysis,” McLay, “Syntactic Profiles,” and Jobes, “Karen Jobes Responds to Tim McLay”; McLay, “The Relationship between the Greek Translations of Daniel 1–3”; and the survey in Bledsoe, “The Relationship of the Different Editions of Daniel.” 47 Di Lella, “Textual History of Septuagint-Daniel and Theodotion-Daniel,” 604. 48 All dates up to the modern period are approximate even if they look precise. 49 See Busto Saiz, “El texto teodociónico de Daniel y la traducción de Símaco.” 50 Kallarakkal, “The Peshitto Version of Daniel”; Taylor, “The Book of Daniel in the Bible of Edessa”; ———, The Peshitta of Daniel; contrast Wyngarden, Syriac. See the survey in Jenner, “Syriac Daniel”; he also notes the significance of the liturgical use of Daniel. 51 See Cowe, The Armenian Version of Daniel; ———, “The Reception of the Book of Daniel in Late Ancient and Medieval Armenian Society.”

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106 Introduction

Daniel in the New Testament The motif of the “human figure” (conventionally, “son of man”) who appears in Dan 7 features prominently in the accounts of Jesus’s life and teaching that came to be included in the NT, though the historical and exegetical questions they raise are much controverted.52 The expression for “human figure” may have other backgrounds as well as Dan 7:13–14, but the NT asserts that Jesus is that “human figure” who “has authority on earth” (Mark 2:10; cf. Matt 28:18).53 It thus uses Dan 7 as 1 Enoch does, to express the conviction that its hero has ascended as the “human figure” and will return with the clouds. Further, it implicitly connects with Dan 7 its awareness that “the human figure must suffer” before he “comes in glory” (Mark 8:31, 38; cf. 14:62, “with the clouds of the heavens”); Dan 7:21, 25 also speaks of the suffering of the sacred ones, and the human figure motif may have corporate as well as individual connotations. Further, Jesus qualifies the statement that the human figure comes to be served by declaring that he comes first to serve (Mark 10:45; cf. Dan 7:14). A messianic interpretation of Dan 7 might not have been seen as a Christian innovation even within rabbinic Judaism. R. Akiba (c. AD 120) refers Dan 7 to David, though others fault this understanding because it plays into the hands of Christians (b. Sanh. 38; see also 96; 98 [Joshua ben Levy, c. AD 250]).54 If the OG identifies the humanlike figure with the one “old in days,” then Matthew’s quoting of the OG is significant.55 Conversely, this identification links with developing Jewish thinking in terms of “two powers in heaven”56—­or it may be a continuation of an older idea of the conflation of two such powers.57 Even if “the most conspicuous and important influence of Daniel on the New Testament lies in the role of Dan 7:13 in the development and transmission of the ‘Son of Man’ tradition,”58 that influence is much broader. It is the final fulfillment of that promise in Jeremiah taken up in Daniel that

52

53 54 55 56 57 58

See e.g., Black, “Aramaic barna¯ sha¯ and the ‘Son of Man’”; Yarbro Collins, “The Influence of Daniel on the NT”; Dunn, “The Danielic Son of Man in the NT”; Koch, “Der ‘Menschensohn’ in Daniel”; Shepherd, “Daniel 7:13 and the NT Son of Man”; Müller, The Expression “Son of Man” and the Development of Christology; Snow, “Daniel’s Son of Man in Mark”; Hurtado and Owen, Who Is This Son of Man?; Casey, Son of Man; ———, The Solution to the “Son of Man” Problem; Angel, Chaos and the Son of Man; Meadowcroft, “‘One Like a Son of Man’ in the Court of the Foreign King.” Cf. Farrer, Mark, 271–74. See Perrin, “The Son of Man in Ancient Judaism and Primitive Christianity”; ———, “The Interpretation of a Biblical Symbol”; Bock, “Did Jesus Connect Son of Man to Daniel 7?”; Horbury, “The Messianic Associations of ‘the Son of Man.’” See Stuckenbruck, “‘One Like a Son of Man’”; Zacharias, “Old Greek Daniel 7:13–14.” See Segal, Two Powers in Heaven; Schäfer, The Jewish Jesus; Boyarin, “Beyond Judaisms.” Cf. Boyarin, “Daniel 7, Intertextuality, and the History of Israel’s Cult.” Yarbro Collins, “The Influence of Daniel on the NT,” 90.

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Jesus brings.59 If apocalypticism is at all the mother of Christian theology,60 Daniel contributed to this mothering. Mark’s Jesus begins his ministry by proclaiming that the reign of God that Daniel promised is at hand: the time he spoke of is fulfilled (cf. Dan 2:44; 7:22). The motif of the reign of God has significant background in Daniel; indeed, “the Christian reception of the book of Daniel was perhaps most predominant in the thematic function of ‘kingdom’ ” throughout the book.61 Luke begins his gospel with Gabriel appearing once more at the time of the evening offering to announce the beginning of a chain of events that will lead to Jesus’s presentation in the temple, as periods amounting to 490 days are fulfilled (cf. Dan 9).62 Luke’s Jesus sees himself as the stone that crushes, the very embodiment of the rule of God (20:18; cf. Dan 2:44–45). John’s Jesus talks about resurrection in terms that follow Dan 12 (5:28–29; cf. Matt 13:43; 25:46). Perhaps Peter (Matt 16:37–39) is the embodiment of the rock in Dan 2.63 Jesus’s discourse concerning the End speaks in Danielic fashion of troubling rumors, the final affliction, many stumbling, the need to endure to the end, the deliverance of the elect, the desolating sacrilege, the need to understand, and the coming of the human figure in clouds with great power and glory: “the main part of the eschatological discourse is based on a coherent exposition of or meditation on these texts in Daniel [in chs. 2 and 7–12].”64 Elsewhere, however, Jesus may distance himself from apocalyptic esotericism built on passages such as 2:19–23 (Matt 11:25–27; Luke 17:20–21).65 Daniel’s influence on Paul may operate partly via the midrash underlying Mark 13. First Thessalonians 4–5 reflects Dan 7 and 12; the portrait of “the lawless one” in 2 Thess 2 reflects that of Antiochus in Dan 7–11; 1 Cor 15:23–28 is shaped by Dan 7.66 Daniel thus facilitates Paul’s formulation of his teaching about the End; and no biblical work has greater influence on the formulation of John, a work written for a community under a pressure analogous to that which affected conservative Jews in the second century BC.67 John’s visions of Jesus and of the heavens (Rev 1; 5; 20) are shaped significantly by Dan 7 and by the description of the angelic appearance in Dan 10, and the animals of 59 See Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, 75–196. 60 Käsemann, “Die Anfänge christlicher Theologie,” 180; Adler, “Introduction,” 1–7. 61 P. W. Flint in Smith-Christopher et al., “Daniel (Book and Person),” 99; cf. Wenham, “The Kingdom of God and Daniel”; Evans, “Daniel in the NT.” 62 Laurentin, Luc, 45–63, following Burrows, Gospel of the Infancy, 41–42. 63 Cf. Schreiner, “Peter the Rock.” 64 Hartman, Prophecy Interpreted, 158; see table, 172–74; cf. Gundry, OT in Matthew; du Toit, “Die Danielrezeption in Markus 13.” Theophilos (The Abomination of Desolation in Matthew 24) suggests that, ironically, the desolating sacrilege which originally referred to an Israelite abomination and then to the action of Antiochus now applies again to the action of the people of God. 65 See Grimm in Betz/Grimm, Jesus und das Danielbuch. 66 Betz in Betz/Grimm, Jesus und das Danielbuch, 121–43. 67 Cf. Beale, Use of Daniel, 154–305; Sims, Comparative Literary Study of Daniel and Revelation.

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108 Introduction Dan 7 are an important source for the vision of the animal in Rev 13; 17; the beast terrorizing the people of God is now Rome.68 Elsewhere in the NT, the list of people commended for their trust in Heb 11:33–38 reflects Dan 3 and 6,69 while the “last hour” in 1 John recalls Dan 8.70

Daniel in Judaism after AD 70 Within Judaism, the literature of Dan 7 also influenced 2 Apoc. Baruch (see ch. 39 for the four empires), T. Ab. (see chs. 11—13 for the influence of Dan 7),71 and Gk. Apoc. Ezra. Ezra’s vision of an eagle symbolizing Rome (2 Esd 11–12) is “a midrash on Daniel 7” or “a rereading of Daniel 7.”72 The interpreting angel notes that in seeing the fourth empire as Rome he is giving Daniel’s vision an interpretation different from that given to Daniel himself (12:11–12). The reinterpretation of the fourth empire as Rome would enhance Daniel’s importance and influence; the visions do not refer merely to some past event.73 While there is no Daniel targum, the assumption that the fourth kingdom is Rome appears elsewhere in targumic literature.74 Additionally, in a dream Ezra sees “something resembling a man” emerging from the sea and flying with the clouds of the heavens to act as judge (2 Esd 13). It is God’s son; here too Dan 7 is being used in connection with developing understandings of the Messiah, perhaps partly in response to the Christian interpretation of Dan 7:13 as applying to Jesus.75 It may also be dependent on Dan 2 as one of the sources of its allusions to a stone-­mountain.76 Josephus, too, believes that Daniel wrote of Rome (e.g., Ant. 10.11.7 [10.276]. His hesitancy over revealing the meaning of ch. 2 (10.10.4 [10.210]) suggests that he assumes Rome is the fourth empire. The 490-years prophecy is fulfilled in the events of AD 66–70; Vespasian is the “prince to come” of that prophecy (e.g., J.W. 6.5.4 [6.310–15]). But Josephus assumes that ch. 11 refers to Antiochus, and he uses Daniel broadly as a source for his retelling of the story of Israel from the exile onward (e.g., Ant 10.10.1–10.11.7 [10.186–281])—­ and uses Daniel, among others, as an anticipation, a type, of himself.77 “By the 68 See further Hieke, “The Reception of Daniel 7 in the Revelation to John.” 69 Van Henten, “The Reception of Daniel 3 and 6 and the Maccabean Martyrdoms in Hebrews 11:33–38”; more broadly, van Henten, “Daniel 3 and 6 in Early Christian Literature.” 70 Beale, “The OT Background of the ‘Last Hour’ in 1 John 2,18.” 71 See Munoa III, Four Powers in Heaven. 72 Kee, “‘The Man’ in Fourth Ezra,” 203; Lacocque, “The Vision of the Eagle in 4 Esdras,” 237. 73 See Koch, “Die jüdische und christliche Kanonisierung des Danielbuchs als Rezeption unter verändertem geschichtlichen Horizont.” 74 See Glessmer, “Die ‘Vier Reiche’ aus Daniel in der targumische Literatur.” 75 So Bietenhard, “Menschensohn.” 76 Beale, Use of Daniel, 131–39. On interpretations of the stone, see Pfandl, “Interpretations of the Kingdom of God in Dan 2:44.” 77 See Bruce, “Josephus and Daniel”; Daube, “Typology in Josephus,” 28–33; Satran, “Daniel,”

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time he wrote the Antiquities, . . . Josephus had decided to use Daniel as a basis for his interpretation of world history.”78 For Josephus, as for the Greek Bible, Qumran, Jesus, and the NT writers, Daniel is a prophet and has similar authority to the prophets within the Hebrew Scriptures. Associating Daniel with the prophets encourages an understanding of them as focusing on the End, and the match between Daniel’s prophecies and the abominations of the Romans may have made its place among the Scriptures secure. Yet Josephus saw this attitude toward Daniel as a partial cause of the revolt with its disastrous consequences.79 In the Hebrew Bible Daniel was finally located in its third section, the Writings, which suggests a more pedagogical reading of the book.80 But for the book itself, and the man, it is restrictive to have to choose between “prophet” and “wise man.”81 Beginning with the writings of the Roman period, one can distinguish two types of scriptural study, which might in a Jewish context be called expository midrash and situational midrash. In the former the biblical text sets the agenda, though the text is looked at in light of concerns and questions of the interpreter’s day. In the latter these concerns and questions set the agenda, and the biblical text is studied and appealed to selectively on the basis of whether it seems to deal with these concerns and questions. The study of Daniel in the period of the Talmud and among the church fathers can have either starting point (we have noted that there is no targum of Daniel and Midrash Daniel comes from a much later period).82 It has been suggested that Daniel had a significant influence on the development of the Passover Haggadah,83 and it was one of the books read to the high priest to keep him awake on the night before the Day of Atonement (m. Yona 1.6). In general, Jewish interpretation was wary of attempts to calculate when the End would come,84 and one could say that talmudic rabbis were more inclined to read 36–39; Vermes, “Josephus’ Treatment of the Book of Daniel”; Gnuse, “The Jewish Dream Interpreter in a Foreign Court”; Feldman, “Josephus’ Portrait of Daniel”; Begg, “Daniel and Josephus”; Höffken, “Eine Reichsteilung bei Josephus Flavius.” 78 Mason, “Josephus, Daniel, and the Flavian House,” 190. 79 On this aspect of Josephus, see Fischer, Eschatologie und Jenseitserwartung im hellenistischen Diasporajudentum, 180–83; Dexinger, “Ein ‘messianisches Szenarium’ als Gemeingut des Judentums in nachherodianischer Zeit?” 265. 80 Wilson, Studies in the Book of Daniel 2:9–64; Audet, “A Hebrew-Aramaic List of Books of the OT in Greek Transcription,” 145–46; Koch, “Is Daniel Also among the Prophets?”; Finley, “The Book of Daniel in the Canon of Scripture”; Warhurst, “The Associative Effects of Daniel in the Writings.” 81 Cf. Milán, “¿Un Daniel polifónico?” 82 It is the work of Samuel Masnuth, usually dated in the thirteenth century: see e.g., Ferch, “The Apocalyptic ‘Son of Man,’ ” 11. 83 See Moskowitz, N. “The Book of Daniel,” 175–82. The painting expressing the themes of Daniel, to which the article refers, is accessible at http://www.nahumhalevi.com/ BookofDaniel.html. 84 See Stemberger, “Die jüdische Daniel rezeption,” 140–49.

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110 Introduction Daniel ethically or parenetically.85 Christian interpreters, however, tended to read Daniel prophetically.86 This interpretive divergence led to contrasting convictions between Jewish and Christian readers over whether the decisive fulfillment of prophecies such as Dan 9:24–27 had happened.87

Daniel in the Church 100–500 While patristic writers have their own parenetic interest in Daniel,88 their works focus more on the eschatological.89 The small horn in Dan 7–12, the one who embodies lawlessness in 2 Thessalonians, and the anti-­messiah in 1 John become a composite anti-­messiah figure.90 Although the small horn receives many historical identifications as time goes by,91 Augustine comments that anyone who reads Dan 7–12 “even if half-­a sleep” will be able to see that “Daniel prophesies about the last judgement in such a way as to predict also the prior coming of the Antichrist.”92 Some patristic writers assume that the fourth empire in Daniel is Greece or the subsequent Hellenistic monarchies and that the small horn is Antiochus, with the humanlike figure and the holy ones on high representing the Jewish people.93 Theodoret opposes a view of this kind.94 The pagan philosopher Porphyry (233–304) likewise assumes that the latter two empires are Alexander and the Hellenistic monarchies and that Antiochus is the small horn, broken by the Maccabees. He assumes that the quasi-­predictive historical account of Antiochus’s career continues through Dan 11 (and 12), inferring an account of his death from 11:40–45.95 Porphyry is concerned to show that there are no grounds for claiming that prophecies in Daniel refer to Christ, or to the antichrist; the visions are quasi-­predictions written after the Antiochene crisis was over.96 But the interpretation of the empires as Babylon, Medo-­Persia, 85 For examples see G. Stemberger in Smith-Christopher et al., “Daniel (Book and Person),” 100–2. 86 Cf. Ego, “Daniel und die Rabbinen”; Breed, “History of Reception,” 53–54; Oegema, “Back to the Future in the Early Church.” 87 E.g., Chazan, “Daniel 9:24–27”; Dunn, “Probabimus venisse eum iam”; ———, “Tertullian and Daniel 9:24–27.” 88 See e.g., Dulaey, “Daniel dans la fosse aux lions”; ———, “Les trois Hébreux dans la fournaise.” 89 See Bodenmann, Naissance d’une exégèse; Endresz, “Daniel”; Graham, “Early Christian Understandings of the ‘Abomination that Causes Desolation’”; Oegema, “Danielrezeption in der Alten Kirche.” 90 See e.g., Dunbar, “Hippolytus of Rome and the Eschatological Exegesis of the Early Church.” 91 Cf. Bodenmann, Naissance d’une Exégèse, 273–307. 92 Augustine, City of God 20:23. 93 See, e.g., Demonstration 5 of Aphrahat (270–345). Cf. Casey, Son of Man, 55–59; van der Kooij, “The Four Kingdoms in Peshitta Daniel 7”; van Peursen, “Daniel’s Four Kingdoms in the Syriac Tradition.” 94 Daniel, 200–3. 95 See Jerome, Daniel, 139; cf. e.g., Mayer, Commentary upon All the Prophets, 579–82. 96 Cf. Casey, “Porphyry”; and on the relationship between Christian writers and Porphyry’s

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Patristic Commentators

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Greece, and Rome predominates among Christians and Jews, and writers often see themselves and their readers as near the End of which Daniel spoke (see e.g., Barnabas 4.4). The focus of attention on stories such as Daniel 3 changes after Constantine. Augustine (354–430) neatly notes that Nebuchadnezzar’s actions “foreshadowed” the early experience of the church and the experience of his own day—­f irst Constantine’s persecution, then his conversion.97 Whereas Rome had been identified with the fourth empire and then came close to being identified with the fifth,98 “in Augustine’s hands the Roman Empire has lost its religious significance”; it is neither the beast nor God’s chosen instrument for the world’s salvation.99 Eusebius (263–339) in Demonstration of the Gospel 8 passes on the calculation of Julius Africanus (160–240) that 490 years elapsed from the time of Nehemiah to Christ’s death and from 300 it became usual to see Dan 9 as pointing to Christ.100 This belief would discourage false expectations of fulfillment in contemporary history. Yet such an interpretation also compares with Jewish approaches, which saw the four empires and the 490 years coming to a climax with Rome and the events of 70 and 135, though the understanding could also be used in anti-­Jewish polemic to prove that the prophecies related to Jesus instead.

Patristic Commentators In the context of persecution and of expectation of the coming end of the world, “it is no accident that the earliest surviving complete Greek biblical commentary is that of Hippolytus on Daniel and the earliest surviving Latin one is that of Victorinus on the Apocalypse, the one from the beginning, the other from the end of the third century”;101 though admittedly Hippolytus (170–235) “struggled with a genre of theological scholarship which had yet to be invented.”102 His concerns are not just confined to questions about the End; they include the book’s historical reference, its parenetic value, and its theological significance, sometimes reached by recourse to allegory (e.g., on chs. 3 and 6).103 He and his successors assume that the revered figure and the

thinking, see Magny, “Porphyre, Hipplyte, et Origène commentent sur Daniel”; ———, “Porphyry against the Christians”; Reaburn, “St Jerome and Porphyry Interpret the Book of Daniel.” 97 Letter 93, to Vincent (Letters 2:56–106 [95]). 98 Cf. the survey in Koch, Europa, Rom und der Kaiser, 37–78; and Breed, “History of Reception,” 85–97. 99 Markus, Saeculum, 54–55. 100 Fraidl, Exegese, 30–98. 101 McGinn, Apocalyptic Spirituality, 100. 102 Volp, “Hippolytus of Rome,” 150. 103 Bardy, “Introduction”; Bracht, Hippolyts Schrift In Danielem.

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112 Introduction human-­like figure in Dan 7 are God the Father and Jesus, but in a reversal of the question whether Jesus as Son of Man is divine, other patristic writers see the older, revered figure as the second person of the Trinity, not the first.104 Hippolytus writes polemically, arguing with Jews, pagans, and heretics, and challenging believers in Jesus to stand firm against the arrogance of the state.105 He thus sets the tone for much exposition of Daniel over the millennia. Hippolytus’s parenetic interest in the stories’ significance for the life of the church is apparent (especially chs. 3 and 6), as is highlighted by featured elements in iconography and on tombstones and sarcophagi. Such symbols could be linked typologically with Jesus’s suffering, death, and resurrection, and with the death of Christian martyrs.106 The points made in Dan 3 about empire and martyrdom and political disloyalty and religious fidelity indeed suggest patterns of behavior for the community undergoing persecution.107 Origen, too, urges people in danger of martyrdom to recall the story of the three young men.108 The “epoch-­making” commentary of Jerome (331–420)109 is our source for knowledge of Porphyry’s work, which Jerome quotes extensively in order to refute it, and of writers such as Origen, since in explaining and clarifying the text he seeks to pass on the fruits of earlier commentators’ writings. Though he begins with a reference to Porphyry, Jerome notes that predecessors such as Eusebius have already responded to him, and Jerome himself wants to put the emphasis on the fact that “none of the prophets has so clearly spoken concerning Christ as has this prophet Daniel,” who not only said Jesus would come but “set forth the very time at which He would come” (in 9:24–27).110 Jerome also made a new Latin translation of Daniel, as of other OT books, to replace the Old Latin version made from the Greek. Jerome’s rendering, which came to be called the Vulgate or “common version,” was made from the Hebrew/Aramaic, though he referred to the Greek and it is thus not simply an independent witness to the Hebrew text of his day. Jerome’s involvement with the Hebrew/Aramaic text is also reflected in his utilization of Jewish exegesis in his commentary.111 The commentary of John Chrysostom (347–407) survives only in fragments, but the popularity and importance of Dan 3 is reflected in the way he 104 105 106 107

See Royer, “The Ancient of Days.” Cf. Trakatallis, “Λογος Αγωνιστικος: Hippolytus’ Commentary on Daniel.” See Valenti, “Similes”; Tucker, “Early Wirkungsgeschichte of Daniel 3.” Tucker, “Early Wirkungsgeschichte of Daniel 3,” 297; cf. Bracht, “Logos parainetikos: Der Danielkommentar des Hippolyt.” 108 Origen, Exhortatio ad martyrium 33 (PG 11:603–6); ET in Prayer; An Exhortation to Martyrdom. 109 Goez, “Die Danielrezeption im Abendland,” 185. See further Courtray, “Der Danielkommentar des Hieronymus”; ———, Prophète des temps derniers; Larriba, “Comentario de San Jerónimo al libro de Daniel.” 110 Daniel, 15. 111 See Braverman, Jerome’s Commentary on Daniel; Kritzinger, “St Jerome’s Commentary on Daniel 3.”

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(like other patristic writers) refers frequently to this story in other writings and draws theological and practical application from it.112 From the fourth century we also know of two Syriac writers on Daniel, Aphrahat (270–345) and Ephrem (306–73).113 They encourage their readers to trust in God in the context of subjection to the Persians. “The succession of kingdoms in Daniel enjoyed divine sanction and the fourth kingdom, Rome, would endure until Christ’s second coming,” so Aphrahat’s audience “had nothing to fear from their Persian rulers.”114 Aphrahat’s interpretation thus parallels that of Jerome, who encouraged his readers that the continuing Roman empire undergirded the world order.115 Syriac study of Dan 4 also contributed to the development of desert spirituality.116 From the fifth century we know of two Greek commentaries, a fragmentary work by Polychronius (who died in 430) and a commentary by Theodoret (393–457), which takes a historical and exegetical approach, though Theodoret emphasizes in his preface that Daniel belongs among the Prophets (of Jesus) rather than among the Writings.117 Like Jerome, Theodoret comments that Daniel predicts Jesus more clearly than any other prophet and even provides the date of his coming,118 though this understanding of the seventy weeks is but one of a variety of ways of understanding them.119

Daniel in the Medieval Period 500–1400 There are a number of early medieval works associated with the name Daniel.120 The sixth-­century Byzantine hymnwriter Romanos wrote a kontakion, a kind of poetic homily with musical accompaniment, about the story in Dan 3, which was the subject of something like a liturgical drama that took place during Advent.121 The Greek Last Vision of Daniel, the Syriac Young Daniel apocalypse, and the related Syriac Apocalypse of Daniel122 may all come from the seventh century; the ninth-­century Greek Apocalypse of Daniel123 112 See Stander, “Chrysostom’s Interpretation of the Narrative of the Three Confessors.” 113 See Botha, “The Interpretation of Daniel 3 in the Syriac Commentary Ascribed to Ephrem the Syrian”; ———, “The Relevance of the Book of Daniel for Fourth-Century Christianity According to the Commentary Ascribed to Ephrem the Syrian.” 114 Morrison, “The Reception of the Book of Daniel in Aphrahat’s Fifth Demonstration,” 79. See further Tübach, “Die syrische Danielrezeption,” with substantial bibliography. 115 Cf. Goez, “Die Danielrezeption im Abendland,” 190. 116 See Henze, “Nebuchadnezzar’s Madness (Daniel 4) in Syriac Literature.” 117 See Hill, “The Commentary on Daniel by Theodoret of Cyrus; ———, Reading the OT in Antioch. 118 Daniel, 6–7; see his commentary on 9:24–27 (Daniel, 238–61). 119 See K. Bracht in Smith-Christopher et al., “Daniel (Book and Person),” 112–13. 120 See Denis, Introduction aux Pseudépigraphes grecs d’AT, 309–14. 121 See Barkhuizen, “Romanos Melodos.” 122 See Schmoldt, “Die Schrift ‘Vom jungen Daniel’ und ‘Daniels letzte Vision’”; Brock, “‘The Young Daniel’”; Henze, Syriac Apocalypse of Daniel. 123 See OTP 1:755–70; Berger, Die griechische Daniel-Diegese.

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114 Introduction is a quasi-­prediction of eighth-­century wars followed by an actual prophecy of the antichrist and of Christ’s appearing at the end. The assumption that the fourth empire is Greece and the small horn Antiochus is still alive in the Syrian glosses to the Syriac translation of Daniel. The glosses perhaps belong to the sixth century.124 But the usual view in these works is that the empires extend into the time in which the works are being written. Daniel’s four-­empire scheme provides the framework for understanding world history throughout the medieval period and beyond. This approach held until the view that the empires belonged to the Second Temple came to predominate and a basis for structuring world history disappeared.125 The Syriac tradition thus updates Daniel’s four-­empire scheme to incorporate the Arab conquest.126 Daniel does not appear in the Qur’an, but he is featured in Islamic tradition as an Israelite prophet who preached in Babylon urging people to turn back to God and spoke of the coming of Mohammed. Muslim traditions also have versions of the story of Daniel in the lions den and of the vision of the statue—­and stories about his corpse and signet ring.127 The Old English poem Daniel is loosely based on the OT Daniel story (esp. on ch. 3), turning its emphasis to a warning about pride, and Daniel is an inspiration for other Old English works including the Canterbury Tales as well as European works in the period.128 “The stories and characters from the book of Daniel were commonplace in the medieval imagination as the book’s literary imagery permeated the medieval European religion, art, and literature that formed the context for the E[nglish]W[ycliffite]S[ermons].”129 The twelfth-­or thirteenth-­century Play of Daniel from France was revived and recorded in New York in the 1950s. In the thirteenth-­century stained glass of Chartres Cathedral, Daniel is one of the four prophets on whose shoulders the four authors of the Gospels stand. For scholars from Jerome and Gregory the Great to Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton, the promise that “knowledge will be manifold” was key to justifying the growth of theological and scientific knowledge and learning in the

124 See Casey, “Porphyry and the Origin of the Book of Daniel,” 25; Van der Kooij,”The Four Kingdoms in Peshitta Daniel 7”; Taylor, The Peshitta of Daniel, 200–1. 125 Koch, “Spätisraelitische Geschichtsdenken am Beispiel des Buches Daniel,” 1–2; cf. Marsch, Prophetie; ———, Gellinek, “Daniel’s Vision of Four Beasts in Twelfth-Century German Literature.” 126 See van Peursen, “Daniel’s Four Kingdoms in the Syriac Tradition.” 127 See M. Sel, “Daniel—In Arabic Literature,” The Jewish Encyclopedia 4:429; Bobzin, “Bemerkungen zu Daniel in der islamischen Tradition”; ———, “Die islamischen Danielrezeption”; Wheeler, Prophets in the Quran, 280–83; J. Hämeen-Anttila in Smith-Christopher et al., “Daniel (Book and Person),” 121–24. 128 See e.g., Farrell, Daniel and Azarias; Portnoy, “Daniel and the Dew-Laden Wind”; George, “Repentance and Retribution.” 129 Hill, “Apocalyptic Lollards?” 7, referring to Gradon/Hudson, English Wycliffite Sermons. On Daniel in the visual arts, see B. Kress in Smith-Christopher et al., “Daniel (Book and Person),” 128–31.

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Middle Ages and beyond.130 As the Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance, the commentary by the Franciscan teacher Nicholas of Lyre in Normandy (1270–1349) became the first printed Bible commentary, Postillae perpetuae in universam S. Scripturam. He learned Hebrew and read rabbinic commentators such as Rashi, whose work he also mediated to later Christian commentators. Nicholas of Lyre concerned himself both with a literal interpretation of the text’s meaning for people of its day and a christological interpretation. Other exegetes of his time had inferred from Dan 12 that the antichrist’s reign would begin around 1365; he opposed such views. He related the vision in ch. 2 to Christ’s first coming and the visions in chs. 7–12 to Christ’s second coming. The interpretation was based on two literal senses, one referring to Antiochus and one (which we might call typological) to the antichrist. Yet Nicholas of Lyre declines to connect the events with particular dates.131 Meanwhile, in 1096 an offshoot of the Crusades was the first pogroms against the Jewish communities of the Rhineland, and Jewish writers of the period took Daniel and his friends as models for a portrayal of Jewish martyrs.132 Daniel’s stories and visions thus continued to be important for Jews challenged to live faithfully in a hostile world.133

The Masoretes To the Jewish scholarship of the first millennium we owe the preservation and standardization of the Hebrew Bible—­the consonantal text over the first five centuries, the vowel pointing and accents over the succeeding five. Generally this scribal work was concerned to preserve one standard text of the Bible, but a distinctive feature with regard to Daniel is the number of alternative readings retained. These alternative readings appear in the margins of extant manuscripts as the masora (tradition), and they are reproduced in BHS: almost any verse, at least in the Aramaic chapters, provides examples. Some represent expansions or abbreviations of the text; most are matters of spelling, pronunciation, and morphology, though even they reflect an instinct to keep the text up-­to-­date and readable.134 This instinct may also have affected matters of more substance in the text, for example, in the incorporation of explanatory glosses. An independent manuscript of Daniel from about the seventh century was among those found in the genizah of a Cairo synagogue. The Masoretes’ activity came to a climax with the work of the ben Asher family. This tradition’s oldest manuscript containing Daniel is the Aleppo 130 See Webb, “Knowledge Will Be Manifold.” 131 See Krey, “Nicholas of Lyra’s Commentary on Daniel”; Zier, “Nicholas of Lyra on the Book of Daniel.” 132 See Chazan, God, Humanity, and History, 176–85. 133 See Smith-Christopher et al., “Daniel (Book and Person),” 104–7. 134 See Morrow/Clarke, “The Ketib/Qere in the Aramaic Portions of Ezra and Daniel.”

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116 Introduction Codex (A, long kept in the Aleppo synagogue), copied about 930. BHS is based on the oldest complete Hebrew Bible, the Leningrad Codex (L, located in the Leningrad Library and entitled B 19A), copied in 1008/9. This version of Daniel is the one translated in this commentary unless otherwise noted. As a result of the work of the Masoretes almost all other Hebrew manuscripts disappeared. The other manuscripts to which BHS refers are thus ultimately offsprings of the MT, and where they vary from the MT, such variants have likely come into the text at this later stage and I thus refer to them as “medieval mss”; they do not witness to a tradition older than the MT.135 The textual work of the medieval period was complemented by the systematic production of Hebrew grammars, dictionaries, and commentaries, designed to facilitate access to the text’s original meaning. A key figure is Saadia Gaon in Babylon (872–942), whose works included a translation of Daniel into Arabic, the everyday language there, and a commentary on the book. It was another period of eschatological expectation, which is one aspect of the background to the writing of a number of commentaries on Daniel. There were also apparently a number by Karaite authors, of whom the most famous is Yephet ibn Ali (c. 1000) in Arabic. The Karaites stressed the authority of the Scriptures alone, questioned the authority of midrashic traditions, and sought to be rigorously literal in their interpretation. Thus Yephet insisted against Saadia that “days” in Daniel means “days” and should not be taken to mean “years” so as to refer it to contemporary events in a way that tends to be proved wrong by events. This stance does not mean that Yephet in practice avoided following traditional interpretations or avoided what seems to us reapplication of the text, in referring Dan 8 and 11 to events of his own day such as the invasion of Mecca.136 But the pressure of Karaite interpretation drove mainstream rabbinic scholarship in a literal, historical direction. In France, Solomon bar Isaac, Rashi (1040–1105), wrote a substantial commentary on Daniel that combined a concern for the literal sense with a willingness to incorporate traditional midrashic material. Rashi dated the fulfillment of its “messianic” prophecies in the fourteenth century, which was his way of discouraging expectations for his own day. From Spanish Jewry, Abraham ben Meir ibn Ezra (1091–1167) produced a more rigorous literal exegesis, encouraging the reader to avoid attempting to calculate when Daniel’s prophecies would be fulfilled, on the grounds that we will not know until it happens (see his comment on 11:31). Ibn Ezra refers the prophecies to political events of the Roman period (ch. 9) and of his own day (ch. 7), as well as of the second century (ch. 8). The commentary attributed to Saadia (“Pseudo-­ Saadia”) in the rabbinic Bible (see next section) dates from the same period 135 See the comments in Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 18. 136 Mann, “Early K· araite Bible Commentaries”; Shaked, “Fragments of Two Karaite Commentaries on Daniel”; Wieder, “Dead Sea Scrolls Type of Biblical Exegesis among the Karaites.”

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as Ibn Ezra. The commentary of Levi ben Gershon, Gersonides (1288–1344) from Provence, was also included in some editions of the rabbinic Bible. The medieval Jewish commentaries handle most of the same exegetical problems as modern commentaries. Indeed, modern commentaries often cannot take discussion of such problems much further (see, e.g., 2:1, ‫ ;נהיתה‬6:18 [19] ‫;דחון‬ 7:4 ‫ ;נטילת‬9:21 ‫)ביעף מעף‬.

Toward the Rabbinic Bible The last great medieval exegete of Daniel, or its first Renaissance humanist exegete in his critical scholarly approach, was Isaak Avravanel (Abarbanel) (1437–1508).137 Yet his ‫( מעני הישועה‬Wells of Salvation, 1496), written after the Jews’ expulsion from Spain, seeks to enable his fellow Jews to learn from Daniel how to live in exile during the continuing rule of the fourth Roman empire as they await the messianic rule on earth; he is not merely a pious exegete trying to unravel the problems of the Scriptures but an exile seeking refuge and hope.138 Avravanel sharply argues that large-­scale Christian conversions to Islam belie the claim that Christendom was the rule that would never pass to another people (Dan 2:44). Christians, he argues, fix the historical facts to match their exegesis of Daniel.139 (Calvin counters that argument by urging that Christ’s reign is invisible and not external.)140 One stimulus for the rabbinic writers’ work, then, is the pressure placed on Judaism by the Christian church, with its claim that the Jewish Scriptures refer to Jesus. Like the patristic commentators, the Jewish exegetes want to understand Daniel in a way that relates it to their own day and is consistent with their theological views (e.g., that the Messiah has not yet come). They are less reticent than some of their predecessors about working out when God would fulfill his purpose.141 Daniel’s visions can be taken to come to their historical climax with the Muslim Arab empire or the Christendom of their day (see, e.g., Yephet’s extended treatment of ch. 11). The empires may then be Babylon, Medo-­Persia, Greece, and Rome/the Arabs (a view Ibn Ezra refers to), or Babylon, Medo-­Persia, Greece-­Rome, and the Arabs (Ibn Ezra himself), or Persia-­Babylon-­Media, Greece-­Rome, Persia-­Rome, and Islam (Ibn Daud, 1110–80),142 or Babylon, Medo-­Persia, Greece, and Rome divided into Christendom and Islam (Ibn Yachya, 1120–96), or Babylon, Medo-­Persia, Greece, and Rome/Christendom (Avravanel). The 1290 days/years could be 137 Rosenthal, “Don Isaac Abravanel.” 138 Silver, History of Messianic Speculation in Israel, 3. 139 See Lawee, “On the Threshold of the Renaissance,” 310–11; Schorch, “Die Auslegung des Danielbuches in der Schrift ‘Die Quellen der Erlösung’ des Don Isaak Abravanel,” 183–85. 140 Calvin, Daniel 1–6, 102. 141 See Stemberger, “Die jüdische Danielrezeption,” 150–56. 142 Cf. Cohen, The Book of Tradition, 235.

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118 Introduction expected to terminate in 968 (Saadia), in 1352 (Rashi), or in 1358 (Gersonides et al.), while Avravanel promises that the 3 1/2 periods, the 2300 days/years, and the 1335 days/years will all end in 1503. While Ibn Ezra takes the small horn of 8:9 to be Antiochus rather than Titus (Rashi) or “Ishmael,” the Arabs (Ps- ­Saadia),143 the interpretation of all the vision material as relating to Antiochus appears only in Galipapa (1310–80).144 We do not know how he came to this distinctive view. In the next century Albo (1380–1444), in his Book of Principles ch. 42, takes it up in order to deny that messianic hopes are essential to Jewish faith. The invention of printing led to the first editions of ‫מקראות גדולות‬, the “Great Scriptures,” usually known in English as the Rabbinic Bible, beginning in 1517. They comprise the Hebrew text with the targums and the commentaries of exegetes such as Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and Pseudo-­Saadia. They are utilized by that greatest of Christian exegetes John Calvin (1509–64), though the rabbis’ work was also mediated through the commentary of Nicholas of Lyre, and Calvin indulges additionally in controversy with the more recent work of Avravanel (see Calvin’s commentary on 2:44–45). Calvin’s own interpretation of Daniel’s visions is quite historical within the framework of the assumption that the fourth empire is Rome.145 Figures such as the 490 years of Dan 9 are not to be treated as if they were designed to give precise chronological information. The fifth regime arrived with Christ, but it is spiritual and invisible, “a spiritual return from exile”;146 Rome is not to be demonized.147 The point about the prophecies was to encourage the faithful in OT times,148 but the implication is not that they are irrelevant to later centuries, and Calvin finds Daniel speaking to contemporary questions: ch. 3 shows that kings are justified in punishing heretics (Calvin is following Augustine); 4:27 [24] and 6:22 [23] do not teach justification by works. The influence of the Rabbinic Bible can also be seen in commentators such as Hugh Broughton (1549–1612) and Andrew Willet (1562–1621), and in the KJV, which often follows the medieval commentaries rather than the ancient versions (e.g., 2:5 “dunghill”; 4:27 [24] “break off”; in both cases, compare Rashi).149

The Reformation The centuries of the medieval Jewish exegetes were the centuries of millennarian movements in Christian Europe. After the death of the German 143 Cf. Silver, History of Messianic Speculation in Israel. 144 See Casey, “Porphyry and the Origin of the Book of Daniel,” 25, 28. 145 See Miegge, “‘Regnum quartum ferreum’ und ‘lapis de monte”; Pitkin, “Prophecy and History in Calvin’s Lectures on Daniel.” 146 Parry, “Desolation of the Temple,” 526. 147 Cf. Backus, “The Beast.” 148 Cf. Pitkin, “Prophecy and History in Calvin’s Lectures on Daniel.” 149 See Lloyd Jones, “The Influence of Mediaeval Jewish Exegetes on Biblical Scholarship.”

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emperor Frederick I during the Crusades, prophets began to speak of a future Frederick as an emperor of the last days. While Revelation was their key biblical resource, there is a striking appeal to Daniel in the anonymous Book of a Hundred Chapters, written near the beginning of the sixteenth century.150 Frederick is one who will restore Germany to the position of supremacy God intended: Daniel’s four empires are France, England, Spain, and Italy, while Germany is the fifth and greatest empire, which will not pass away. The centuries of the millennarian movements were also preoccupied by the figure of the antichrist. Daniel’s “small horn” was one important source for such teaching, elaborated in the medieval “Antichrist legend” that tells how this pseudomessiah will come to Jerusalem and enforce worship of himself for three and a half years until put down by Michael. It was also possible, however, to see the antichrist as a principle of opposition to Christ already embodied in the papacy or in Islam, as it had been in Antiochus and in Rome.151 In the years that followed the posting of his theses at Wittenberg in 1517, Martin Luther (1483–1546) came to the conclusion that the pope was the antichrist of whom Dan 8 speaks. Thomas Müntzer (1489–1525) had been attracted first to Luther, then to millennarianism, but in 1524 he preached a sermon on Dan 2 to the Princes of Saxony in which he declared that the last of the world empires was coming to an end. The challenge to the princes was to take up the sword to slay God’s enemies. They were like Nebuchadnezzar and his court; Müntzer implicitly offered to be a modern Daniel to replace the useless sages—­Luther and his kind—­w ith whom the princes were currently encumbered.152 Within a year Müntzer had taken up the sword himself in the Peasants’ Revolt and lost his life.153 During the 1520s the advance of the Turks in Europe increased, and whereas Luther had earlier stressed that the antichrist was to be broken without hand, his Heerpredigt wider dem Türken (1529) not only identified the Turks with the fourth beast (specifically, with the small horn) but encouraged people to join in the eschatological battle against them.154 Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560) had published an exposition of Dan 7 in this context, and his focus on the Turks and on the pope also finds expression in his commentary on Daniel. Melanchthon saw Antiochus and the antichrist as referring to the Turks and the pope; Daniel thus offered comfort to the church in the face of such enemies.155 150 Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, 124 151 Bauckham, Apocalypse, 91–94 152 Müntzer, Collected Works, 230–52; cf. Rowland, “Daniel and the Radical Critique of Empire,” 448–53. 153 Cf. Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, 234–50; and see Röcke, “Die Danielprophetie als reflexionsmodus revoltionärer Phantasien im Spätmittelalter.” 154 See Luther, Heerpredigt wider dem Türken, 160–79; cf. Buchanan, “Luther and the Turks 1519–1529,” 157–59. 155 See Wengert, “The Biblical Commentaries of Philip Melanchthon,” 57–59; cf. Scheible, “Melanchthons Verständnis des Danielsbuch.”

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120 Introduction Luther hastened through his prefaces to the books of the OT so as to reach the one on Daniel, this work so relevant to the situation in which he and his people lived, and on which he then wrote particularly extensively. In his perception of the true church’s final conflict with the forces of evil, the latter are indeed embodied in both the Turks and the pope.156 While noting the encouragement and example offered by the stories, he gives most space to the visions. The four empires are Assyria-­Babylon, Medo-­Persia, Greece, and Rome, the last living on in the German empire, at the time threatened by the Turks—­Mohammed being the small horn—­but certain to survive until the final consummation of God’s reign. Though Antiochus appears in chs. 8 and 11, these prophecies also point to the antichrist. Daniel 11:36–45 refers directly to the antichrist, who is identified with the celibate papacy (cf. 11:36–37). “Lutheranism was the only major confession of the Reformation era to give a clear, virtually doctrinal sanction to a powerful sense of eschatological expectancy.”157 In 1543 Luther published a substantial diatribe “On the Jews and Their Lies,” which he described as a response to a Jewish diatribe and in which he argued vigorously and belligerently in the manner of John the Baptizer or Paul concerning the messianic significance of Gen 49, 2 Sam 7, Hag 2, and then of Dan 9.158 Jews and Christains were agreed that the seventy weeks of years looked forward to the decades leading up to the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, but is Jesus the anointed one who will then be killed, or is it King Herod Agrippa I, who died suddenly a decade later?159 While Daniel’s popularity had been encouraged by Luther,160 it was discouraged by Calvin’s more historical approach, which did not apply the visions beyond the Roman period. But Zwingli’s successor in Zurich, Heinrich Bullinger (1504–75), continued to maintain the views of Melanchthon and Luther in his sermons on Daniel.161

Daniel and the Millennium in England Luther’s exposition of Dan 8 as relating to the antichrist/the pope was published in England by John Frith (1503–33), writing under the pseudonym Richard Brightwell. Other aspects of continental influence reached the English reformers through their exile in Europe. George Joye (1495–1553), exiled for 156 See Strohm, “Luthers Vorrede zum Propheten Daniel”; Vogel, “The Eschatological Theology of Martin Luther.” 157 Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis, 3. 158 Cf. also his earlier treatment in “That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew,” 221–28. 159 See e.g., Rashi in ‫ מקראות גדולות‬on the passage. 160 See also Koch, “Daniel in der Ikonografie des Reformationszeitalters.” 161 See Bullinger, Daniel sapientissimus Dei propheta. On his writings on Daniel, see Goeing, Storing, Archiving, Organizing, 86; Krüger, “Heinrich Bullinger als Ausleger des ATs am Beispiel seiner Predigten Daniel 1 und 2”; Campi, “Über das Ende des Weltzeitalters.”

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his Protestant beliefs for a second time from 1540 to 1547, encouraged himself and others by producing a translation and exposition of Daniel based on the commentaries of continental reformers Melanchthon, Oecolampadius, Pellikan, and Draconites.162 “Apocalyptic in the early [English] Reformation was primarily a theology of persecution and a theology of history.”163 In Scotland, John Knox (1513–72) relates how in 1547 he preached his first ever public sermon in St. Andrews on Dan 7:24–25, which he applied to the papacy.164 The note on Dan 12:4 in the Geneva Study Bible of 1560 declared that the commission to Daniel to seal the book until the time of the end applied “until the time that God has appointed for the full revelation of these things: and then many will run to and fro to search for the knowledge of these mysteries, which things they obtain now by the light of the Gospel.” In England’s native apocalyptic tradition, too, the mass could be seen as the desolating sacrilege of Daniel: Wycliffe’s Wyckett, which speaks in these terms, was first published in 1546. In mid-­sixteenth-­century England the natural way to apply the passages about the small horn was to the papacy. In contrast, however, the next English commentary on Daniel by Broughton that was published in 1596 denied Daniel’s prophecies any historical reference beyond the Antiochene period. While the latter part of the century saw a lively general sense that the End was imminent and a sporadic interest in calculating its date, Daniel does not seem to have contributed to this computing, though Joye’s commentary had offered some calculations pointing to the end of the century. There was a spirited disagreement on the interpretation of 9:24–27 between Edward Lively (1545–1605), who accepted the MT punctuation of 9:25, and Broughton, who rejected it in favor of a punctuation open to seeing the passage as a prophecy of Christ.165 Thomas Brightman (1562–1607) developed a revisionist understanding of the chronology in Revelation and Daniel and also critiqued the Church of England as Laodicean (see Rev 3:14–22); his commentary on the last part of Daniel could be published only after his death in 1635.166 As ecclesiastical and political events developed, the antichrist came to be seen not only in the Roman church but in the Church of England and in the monarchy. William Aspinwall (1605–62) in the 1650s saw Charles I as the small horn in Dan 7; England, Scotland, and Wales as the three horns that were broken off; the Puritan parliament as the holy ones; and the Puritans’ rule as the rule Daniel speaks of: the fifth monarchy is now beginning.167 Thomas 162 Butterworth/Chester, Joye, 235–44. 163 Bauckham, Apocalypse, 13. 164 See Knox, History of the Reformation in Scotland 1:84–86. 165 See Rosenthal, “Edward Lively,” Studia Semitica 1:152–54. 166 On Brightman, see Gribben, The Puritan Milllennium. 167 Cf. Capp, “The Fifth Monarchists”; The Fifth Monarchy Men; Reventlow, “The Saints of the Most High und die Rätsel der Chronologie,” and on parallel developments in Germany

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122 Introduction Harrison (1616–60) justifies the fifth monarchists’ violence by noting that Dan 7:18 said that the saints would take the rule; in 1653 the fifth monarchist John Tillinghast (1604–55) redated the beginning of the 1290 years to 366, when the temple was actually destroyed, so that it would now end in 1656.168 In due course the fifth-­monarchy men themselves identified the Protector’s dominion as that of the beast, to be terminated after its due three and a half years in 1657.169 Like Müntzer, Gerrard Winstanley (1609–76) believed in taking action, but his action was something non-­v iolent; he belonged to the “Diggers,” who believed it was appropriate to dig up common land in order to farm it. In The Fire in the Bush, he outlined the revelation on which he acted: Daniel’s four beasts are kingly power, the power to imprison, the power to buy and sell the earth and its produce, and the power of the clergy.170 Among others, John More argued on an exegetical basis with Aspinwall in his A Trumpet Sounded (1654) by pointing out that Charles did not fit Daniel’s portrait. He killed no kings; it is Cromwell who is the small horn. But history was a more compelling judge of Danielic exegesis. After the end of the fifth monarchy movement, the eschatological hopes to whose shaping Daniel made a key contribution centered on less political events, such as the conversion of the Jews already emphasized by Brightman and Ephraim Huit (1591–1644).171 The historical approach to interpretation practiced by writers such as Calvin (his Institutes quotes Dan 2:34 in this connection) and Broughton did not prevent them from expecting a future fulfillment of OT prophecies of the world’s acknowledgment of God, an expectation taken up by the Puritans with the encouragement of passages such as Dan 2:34–35, 44; 7:26–27. This approach was to be one important stimulus for the development of the missionary movements of the next two centuries.172

On the Eve of Biblical Criticism The seventeenth century saw developing interest in the two related convictions that underlie the critical study of Daniel that is characteristic of academic study in the modern period. In addition to the belief that all the prophecies relate historically to the time of Antiochus, there is also the inference that this period was when the book was written. At both points critical study came to affirm what Porphyry declared in the second century. Thus Benedict de Spinoza (1632–77), the unapocalyptic and unobservant Jew in the tumultuous and France, extending into the nineteenth century, Koch, “Europabewusstsein und Danielrezeption.” 168 B. S. Capp, “Extreme Millenarianism,” in Toon, Puritans, 68, 69. 169 Hill, Antichrist, 123. 170 Cf. Rowland, “Daniel and the Radical Critique of Empire,” 453–59. 171 See his The Whole Prophecie of Daniel Explained. 172 Murray, The Puritan Hope, with the quotation from John Howe (1630–1705), 247.

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seventeenth-­century context from which he was apparently insulated, seems to have studied Daniel in a detached fashion within this framework in the course of thinking his way through questions about the origin of the Scriptures.173 In contrast, his fellow-­Portuguese contemporary the Jesuit preacher and writer António Viera (1608–97) wrote an extensive “History of the Future” or “Key to the Prophets” or “Fifth Empire” in which he took Daniel’s four-­ empire scheme as the basis for a promise that the tough aspects of Portugal’s current experience were but the preliminaries to the fulfillment of God’s final purpose, which would be good news for Portugal.174 In England, likewise, the work of Anthony Collins (1676–1729) presented the main features of the critical argument for the second-­century date of Daniel: the historical problems, the Greek words, the prophecies relating to the second century (Collins is taking up the work of Porphyry), the book’s location among the Writings, and the late Aramaic. Yet as the critical approach to Daniel was developing, “leading British churchmen and theologians” and “leading British radicals and socialists”—­ not a mere lunatic fringe—­continued to see events of their day as the fulfillment of Daniel’s visions and of other prophetic material in the Scriptures.175 Isaac Newton (1642–1727), the mathematician and physicist, also wrote on the prophecies in Daniel, which God gave “not to gratify men’s curiosities by enabling them to foreknow things, but that after they were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the event,” so that “the event of things predicted many ages before, will then be a convincing argument that the world is governed by providence.” The four empires are Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome, with the succeeding European nations being the ten horns; the seventy weeks extend from Ezra to the death of Christ.176 Newton mostly declined to infer future dates from the visions, though he did say that he expected the end to come in 2060. This calculation had the advantage of being a long way away from his own time and that of his rash contemporary interpreters (even the present writer will not live long enough to see whether the mathematician’s calculation was correct, but one or two of my readers may see it). Charles Wesley (1707–88), who appreciated Newton’s work on the prophecies, was less reticent. In a letter of 1754 he explains that in his own day God had shaken off the seals on the scroll and enabled him to generate the year 1794 as the 173 So Méchoulan, “Révélation, rationalité et prophétie”; cf. Spinoza, Theological-Poltical Treatise, chs. 2 and 10. 174 See Valdez, Historical Interpretations of the Fifth Empire; ———, “Rethinking the Fifth Empire”; and on Iberian interpretation of the four empires generally, Delgado, “Der Traum von der Universalmonarchie: zur Danielrezeption in den iberischen Kulturen nach 1492.” 175 Oliver, Prophets and Millennialists, 11. 176 See Newton, Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John; Mandelbrote, “Isaac Newton and the Exegesis of the Book of Daniel”; and for a more sympathetic account, Snobelen, “‘A Time and Times and the Dividing of Time’: Isaac Newton, the Apocalypse, and 2060 A.D.”

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124 Introduction date for the arrival of the fifth regime, given that 2300 years (8:14) would then have elapsed from 538 BC.177 In the nineteenth century, Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801–90) argued in the fifth volume of his Tracts for the Times that Rome has not yet divided into ten regimes; Antiochus in Daniel is a foreshadowing of the antichrist, and the fulfillment of this aspect of Daniel’s prophecy is also still to come.178 E. W. Bullinger (1837–1913), who had been made a Doctor of Divinity for his service of the church in the realm of biblical criticism,179 edited The Companion Bible, which identifies Islam as a fifth empire (Dan 2:41–43) to follow Rome before the coming of God’s final reign. Other writers found other insights on recent, contemporary, and coming events: Dan 4:19 [16] refers to the French Revolution;180 so does 11:36–39;181 8:14 refers to the events of 1814182 or to the year 1867, when the papacy will fall183 (the interpreters are usually Protestant and the interpretations match). The renowned Irish preacher and evangelist Henry Grattan Guinness calculated that the end would come in 1919–23; E. H. Horne (who had meanwhile published his own study of the interpretation of prophecy) produced a revised edition of his book in 1918, by which time some of Guinness’s predictions had been fulfilled.184 At the same time such writers found edification in the stories, and their exposition of the visions was designed not merely to satisfy curiosity but to encourage people to live in faithfulness and hope as they knew the End was coming. In the United States in the 1820s a Baptist layman in Vermont, William Miller, concluded from his study of Daniel that the second coming of Jesus would occur about 1843. The 2300 days of Dan 8:14 denoted 2300 years, which had begun in 457 with the decree of Artaxerxes mentioned in Ezra 7.185 A Millerite movement gained strength as the date approached and even continued after 1843.186 The failure of the expectation and the disappointment did not lead to a discrediting of the conviction that Jesus’s coming was imminent, and in 1897 the prominent Adventist writer Uriah Smith published expositions of Daniel that consciously follow Hippolytus, see the pope as the

177 See Newport, “Charles Wesley’s Interpretation of Some Biblical Prophecies”; ———, Apocalypse and Millennium, 119–49. 178 Newman, Discussions and Arguments, 46–108; cf. Miceli, The Antichrist, 102–24. 179 See Carey, Bullinger, 38. 180 Seeley in The Atlas of Prophecy (1849). 181 Smith, Daniel and the Revelation (1897). On Daniel and the French revolution, see further Koch, Europa, Rom und der Kaiser, 147–56. 182 Murphy, The Book of Daniel (1885). 183 Graves, Daniel’s Great Period of “Two Thousand and Three Hundred Days” (1854), 184 Guinness, The Approaching End of the Age (cf. Walters, “The World Will End in 1919”); Horne, Divine Clues to Sacred Prophecy. 185 Miller, Evidence from Scripture and History of the Second Coming of Christ, about the Year 1843; cf. Newport, Apocalypse and Millennium, 150–71. 186 Festinger, When Prophecy Fails, 13–23; cf. Froom, Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 4; Yarbro Collins, “The Book of Truth.”

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small horn, and continue to understand 1843–1844 as the end of the 2300 days/years and as the beginning of the end.187 Smith’s works are still being reprinted, and the same understanding appears in the writings of Adventist academic theologians in the twenty-­f irst century.188 Conversely, critical opinions were slower to develop in the United States, but a more subtle, more secular use of the Daniel figure appears in the work of American novelists such as James, Melville, and Hawthorne.189

Pre-­modern and Modern Coexisting The systematic working out of the critical approach to Daniel took place in Germany in the nineteenth century, beginning with the work of Leonhard Bertholdt, C. von Lengerke, and Heinrich Ewald. Johann Gottfried Eichhorn and Johannes Meinhold advanced the possibility that the narratives, which make no overt reference to the Antiochene crisis, are older than the visions. The critical view met resistance in Germany from conservative scholars such as E. W. Hengstenberg, H. A. C. Hävernick, and C. F. Keil, and in Britain from E. B. Pusey, who saw the debate as the test case in the conflict between criticism and faith. The commentaries of F. W. Farrar and S. R. Driver (following up his Introduction to the OT) were important in securing acceptance of the critical view in England. The approaches that characterized nineteenth-­century study continued in the twentieth. Karl Marti, R. H. Charles, and H. H. Rowley argued for the second-­century BC origin of the whole book, following A. F. von Gall, while Gustav Hölscher, M. Haller, James Montgomery, Martin Noth, and H. L. Ginsberg developed the view of Eichhorn. They came to varying conclusions regarding the precise date of the pre-­second-­century material, and beyond the two main stages of composition they see stages of development within the visions as material is edited and updated. R. Dick Wilson, Charles Boutflower, E. J. Young, Joyce Baldwin, D. J. Wiseman, and others developed the conservative response. Discoveries regarding Nabonidus and Belshazzar have been taken both to justify a conservative view of the narratives’ historicity and to undermine it. Research into Canaanite myth suggested some of the background to motifs in the visions, and the modern period has also seen an explosive growth in the study of apocalypticism. After the nineteenth-­century discovery of texts 187 See his Daniel and the Revelation; for a similar more recent exposition see Gregor, “Daniel’s Message to a Modern Man.” 188 See e.g., Alomía, Daniel 2:366, 377; survey in Leatherman, “Adventist Interpretation of Daniel 10–12.” 189 Baris, “The American Daniel,” 173–85. On Daniel in literature, see M. Brummitt in SmithChristopher et al., “Daniel (Book and Person),” 124–28. On themes from Daniel in German literature and thought, see Würffel, “Reichs-Traum und Reichs-Trauma.”

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126 Introduction such as 1 Enoch, many were edited and published at the beginning of the twentieth century, especially through the work of Charles. Apocalypticism seemed rather alien, and it came to be seen as reflecting Persian influence and thus as alien even to Israelite religion. In theology, the approaches of Karl Barth and Rudolph Bultmann encouraged the neglect of apocalypticism for some years, though a powerful twentieth-­century exposition of Daniel is that of Barth’s associate Walter Lüthi in German-­speaking Switzerland in the 1930s. Earlier in that same telling decade there appeared a more artistic utilization of Daniel, like those of the nineteenth century but in musical form. As Handel’s oratorio Belshazzar used Daniel to issue a warning to Britain in its ascendancy in the eighteenth century, William Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast takes up that theme in the 1930s.190 The work of Ernst Käsemann and Wolfhart Pannenberg brought an end to the period during which apocalypticism could be ignored or dismissed in theological discussion. Meanwhile, Otto Plöger’s Theokratie und Eschatologie began a new phase of critical study in which scholars sought to trace the development of different religious groups and their ideologies in the Second Temple period and to identify which of these lay behind Daniel.191 Scholarship in the United States attempted a more broadly sociological approach to apocalypticism and sought to clarify what precisely we mean by that term.192 At the same time, “Daniel was read for centuries as a guide to political history and messianic chronology,”193 and outside the world of Western critical scholarship this approach continued to be dominant, along with an interest in the stories’ significance as an encouragement to live a life of faithfulness to God. It was in such a connection that the scientist William Whitla took on the editing of Newton’s work on Daniel after the fall of the Turkish empire.194 Professors with earned doctorates have continued to write books on “preaching Christ from Daniel,”195 to identify the four empires with Babylon, Medo-­ Persia, Greece, and Rome, to see specific prophecies as relating to events long after Daniel’s day, and to take the death of Christ to signify the last of Daniel’s seventy weeks.196 Interpreters have continued to see prophecies fulfilled in events in their time: for instance, the 1967 Arab-­Israeli war fulfilled both 8:14, coming 2300 years after Alexander, and 12:12, coming 1335 years after the establishment of the Caliphate.197 As had happened in previous centuries, in 190 Liptzin, Biblical Themes in World Literature. On Daniel in music, see N. H. Petersen in SmithChristopher et al., “Daniel (Book and Person),” 131–34. 191 See Hall, “Post-exilic Theological Streams and the Book of Daniel.” 192 Hanson, Dawn of Apocalyptic, was esp. significant in this connection. 193 Collins, “Currents Issues,” 1. 194 See Mandelbrote, “Isaac Newton and the Exegesis of the Book of Daniel,” 353, referring to Whitla, Sir Isaac Newton’s Daniel and the Apocalypse. 195 Greidanus, Preaching Christ from Daniel. 196 E.g., Tanner, “Is Daniel’s Seventy Weeks Prophecy Messianic?” 197 E.g., Filmer, Daniel’s Predictions.

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due course interpretations based on current and expected events sometimes had to be reconsidered.198 Yet other interpreters continued to believe that many aspects of Daniel’s visions are still to be fulfilled.199 Such approaches to Daniel gained more attention with the approach of the end of the second millennium. On the basis of figures in Daniel and elsewhere, in 1992 Harold Camping declared that Jesus would return in 1994; when he did not do so, Camping inferred that God had changed his mind as he once did about the fall of Nineveh.200 More recently, the election of Donald Trump led to a number of innovative interpretations of the visions.201 On the other hand, within Seventh Day Adventism the traditional historicist approach is under pressure in some circles.202

The Impasse It has been said that “no serious commentator would now question Porphyry’s demonstration that the work belongs in the 160s under Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and that up to and including that point the prophecies in it are pseudo prophecies, relating and giving meaning to events which had already occurred.”203 The word “serious” in this declaration denotes someone who takes an approach with which the writer agrees. With hindsight, one can see that the study of Daniel reached an impasse in the twentieth century. While critical scholarly study worked with the conviction that the book came into being in the second century BC and spoke directly to that context, and took for granted that questions about the book’s historicity could be ignored,204 more than 99 percent of the book’s readers continued to work with the conviction that it came into being in the sixth century and also speaks directly to later contexts, including their own. The impasse applied to Jewish readers as well as to Christian readers.205 Effectively, nothing changed during the twentieth century. 198 See e.g., Tanner, “Daniel’s King of the North”; Knox, “The Watch Tower Society and the End of the Cold War.” The Russian Christian interpretation of Daniel was rather different: see Tamcke,”Die byzantinisch-russische Reichseschatologie.” And in the aftermath of the fall of the USSR, East German scholar Rainer Stahl (Von Weltengagement zu Weltüberwindung) relates Daniel to Russia in a quite different way. 199 See e.g., Payne, Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy; Nel, “The Second Coming of Christ as the Golden Key to Unlock the Book of Daniel”; Lightner, Last Days Handbook, “revised and updated” in light of the turn of the millennium; Barker, “Premillennialism in the Book of Daniel”; Walvoord,”Prophecy of The Ten-Nation Confederacy”; ———. “Revival of Rome.” 200 See Camping, 1994?; cf. Longman, Daniel, 211–13. 201 Goldingay, “Daniel Compares Notes with Jeremiah.” 202 See Vetne, “A Definition and Short History of Historicism as a Method for Interpreting Daniel and Revelation”; Paulien, “The End of Historicism?” 203 Millar, “Hellenistic History in a Near Eastern Perspective: The Book of Daniel,” 94–95. 204 Cf. Collins, “The Book of Truth,” 397–400; Gosling, “Is It Wise to Believe Daniel?” Van Deventer, “Did Someone Say ‘History’?” provides an interesting example from Africa. 205 Cf. J. Davis in Smith-Christopher et al., “Daniel (Book and Person),” 109.

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128 Introduction One factor contributing to the impasse is the nature of the critical approach as etic rather than emic—­that is, it focuses on questions about the historical development of the text and its place in the development of Jewish thought, out of interests and a framework of thinking that come from a different culture than those of the text itself. Further, during the twentieth century the study of the book largely took the form of a conversation between scholars that reached no clear results or consensus beyond the key convictions that had emerged in the nineteenth century, namely that the stories are legends and that the visions come from the second century. In contrast, other kinds of readers identified with the concern of the text to enable readers to see what God was doing and was going to do in their lives and on how they were to live. Ironically, the approach of such readers also demonstrated emic aspects, ones that were the converse of the critical approach, in that such readers largely ignored the way God was speaking to his people through the text in its original context. One can then see a twofold significance in the commissioning of the Word Commentary on Daniel and other books in the 1970s and an ironic relationship between the two aspects of its significance. On one hand it represented a new level of confidence on the part of broadly conservative or evangelical scholarship; the volumes were commissioned from scholars who were believed to be broadly orthodox but who broadly accepted critical approaches to the Scriptures, in something like the stance of scholars from a century previous, such as the authors of BDB, Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles Briggs.206 On the other hand, coincidentally, the commissioning of the commentaries came at the time of the “postmodern turn” in Western thinking, which itself linked with a broader impasse concerning the interpretation of texts and which also affected biblical studies. Over the past thirty years, biblical scholars have thus applied to Daniel a number of approaches to interpretation from the wider intellectual world—­as indeed had happened with the development of historical-­critical methods themselves.207 It was in half-­conscious awareness of the postmodern turn that the first edition of this commentary included a study of the interpretation of Daniel over the centuries in place of the traditional type of introduction, of which this present introduction is an expansion. While historical and critical commentaries have continued to appear over these thirty years,208 it is significant that a two-­volume collection of mostly English essays on Daniel published in 2002 was subtitled “Composition and Reception,”209 while three mostly German volumes on Daniel’s reception history and influence have 206 Cf. Collins, “The Book of Truth,” 400. 207 The analysis here compares with Kirkpatrick’s distinction between oracular, historical, and literary approaches (Competing for Honor, 5–6). 208 E.g., Koch, Daniel 1–4, Collins, Daniel, Redditt, Daniel. 209 Collins/Flint, The Book of Daniel: Composition and Reception, emphasis added.

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appeared.210 Other commentaries have reflected this broadening of focus.211 An interest in reception history is one feature of postmodern interpretation in the humanities.

Daniel in the Twenty-­First Century How then is Daniel read in a twenty-­f irst century context?212 The approaches I summarize here can both open up aspects of the text’s intrinsic meaning (they aid exegesis) and encourage interaction between the text and our context. 1. We have noted that reception history, the history of the way the text has been read over the centuries, can be significant in these connections. 2. The introduction to the first edition of this commentary suggested that developing interest in literary approaches to OT narrative were overdue for application to Daniel, and it included some such interpretation of “new critical” kind.213 It was soon followed by study through the lenses of structuralism,214 deconstruction215 and Menippean satire.216 Literary approaches provide different ways into the study of old questions, such as the significance of the book’s bilingual nature.217 3. Intertextuality has become a major aspect of OT study. Intertextuality has two main meanings. It can be an approach to discovering the direct interrelationships between texts—­in Daniel’s case, its internal relationships and its relationship with (e.g.) the Joseph story and Isa 40–66. Intertextuality is then another way of conceptualizing a traditional focus of interpretation. Or it can issue from an interpreter’s juxtaposition of texts that (as far as we know) were not directly related. In the first sense “the book of Daniel may well be the most intertextually determined and complex one among the books of the Hebrew Bible.”218 210 Koch, Europa, Rom und der Kaiser vor dem Hintergrund von zwei Jahrtausenden Rezeption des Buches Daniel; Delgado/Koch/Marsch, Europa, Tausendjähriges Reich und Neue Welt; Bracht/ du Toit, Die Geschichte der Daniel-Auslegung in Judentum, Christentum und Islam. See also Smith-Christopher et al., “Daniel (Book and Person),” in the monumental Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception. 211 E.g., Smith-Christopher, “Daniel,” Newsom, Daniel, which includes the most substantial systematic treatment of Daniel’s reception history in English by B. W. Breed. Study of reception history also provides a different way into the study of the development of the canon: see Koch, “Die jüdische und christliche Kanonisierung des Danielbuchs als Rezeption unter verändertem geschichtlichen Horizont.” 212 For the general context of this question, see Collins, The Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature. 213 See further Goldingay, “Story, Vision, Interpretation.” 214 See Nel, “A Literary-Historical Analysis of Daniel 2.” 215 Nolan Fewell, Circle of Sovereignty. In effect Merrill Willis, Dissonance and the Drama of Divine Sovereignty, is also a deconstructionist reading. 216 Valeta, “Court or Jester Tales?” ———, Lions and Ovens and Visions. 217 E.g., Arnold, “The Use of Aramaic in the Hebrew Bible.” 218 Van Deventer, “Literary Lions with Real Bite,” 844. See further Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation,

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130 Introduction 4. Postcolonial and other political, sociological, and cultural readings can be both ways of discerning the text’s meaning in its context219 and ways of generating an interaction between a modern context and an ancient text; these approaches, too, suggest another approach to Daniel’s bilingual nature.220 It has been argued that “it’s impossible to understand Daniel unless one understands the perspective of a colonized person.”221 And long before the word postcolonial existed, people in Korea during Japanese occupation particularly valued the book of Daniel and their overlords banned it.222 Daniel has attracted interpreters who appreciated its implied exhortation to resistance but not to violence.223 5. There are many children’s versions of the story of Daniel and the lions’ den, and children are urged to “Dare to be a Daniel,” though arguably “what Daniel represents is the possibility of being threatened with being devoured and yet safe.”224 6. Gender studies have looked at Daniel from a feminist perspective and then in terms of more recent study of masculinity,225 while psychological interpretation looks at Daniel as a person whose emotions are prominent in the book.226 Yet further, Daniel more than some books encourages readers to think beyond the human.227

441–543; Henze, “The Use of Scripture in the Book of Daniel”; Wesselius, “The Literary Nature of the Book of Daniel”; Scheetz, The Concept of Canonical Intertextuality; Shepherd, Daniel in the Context of the Hebrew Bible; Teeter, “Isaiah and the King of As/Syria in Daniel’s Final Vision”; Lester, Daniel Evokes Isaiah; Mason, “The Treatment of Earlier Biblical Themes in the Book of Daniel.” In his commentary Daniel, Buchanan systematically lists the books “intertexts.” Kim’s dissertation on “Biblical Interpretation in the Book of Daniel” focuses on Gen 10–11 and Ezek 1–3. 219 For a survey, see DiTommaso, “Apocalypses and Apocalypticism in Antiquity,” 250–63. 220 Chia, “Occupy Central: Scribal Resistance In Daniel”; ———, “On Naming the Subject”; Kirkpatrick, Competing for Honor; Valeta, “Polyglossia and Parody”; Sang Tin Uk, “Daniel: A Counter Paradigm to the Hellenistic Imperialism vis-à-vis Burmanization in Chin State”; Thomas, “The Book of Daniel: The Apocalypse with a Distinct Charter for Liberative Praxis and Theological Vision”; Smith-Christopher, “Gandhi on Daniel 6”; Smith-Christopher et al., “Daniel (Book and Person),” 92–94; Portier-Young, Apocalypse against Empire; Davies, “Reading Daniel Sociologically”; Frisch, The Danielic Discourse on Empire; Jones, “Resisting the Power of Empire”; Appler, “Digging in the Claws”; Sweeney, “The End of Eschatology in Daniel?” 221 Reid, “The Theology of the Book of Daniel and the Political Theory of W. E. B. DuBois,” 38. 222 Suh, Korean Minjung in Christ, 18. 223 See Lederach, Daniel, 23–27; Smith-Christopher, “Daniel”; Berrigan, Daniel. 224 Pyper, “Looking into the Lions’ Den,” 69. See also Padley, “‘Declare the Interpretation,’” for the interpretation of Daniel in earlier children’s Bibles; and Briggs, “Reading Daniel as Children’s Literature.” Nolan Fewell rather argues for “Resisting Daniel” (The Children of Israel, 117–30). 225 Van Deventer, “Another Wise Queen (Mother)”; Newsom, “Daniel”; Brenner, Feminist Companion to Prophets and Daniel; Todd, “Negotiating Daniel’s Masculinity.” 226 Leung Lai, “Aspirant Sage or Dysfunctional Seer?”; ———, “Word Becoming Flesh”; Sun, “Response [to Leung Lai]: Reflections on Self and Survival.” 227 Strømmen, “The Book of Daniel: from Biblical Archive to Posthuman Prophecy.”

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7. A major significance of theological interpretation of the OT is that it seeks to respond to the limitations of historical-­critical approaches, which see Daniel as “a collection of imaginative tales and visions that reflect the fears and hopes of beleaguered Jews in the Hellenistic period”;228 most readers of Daniel study it because it is part of the Scriptures of Judaism and of the church and think that it reflects more than such descriptions imply. The increase in our historical insight into Daniel in the modern period has not been accompanied by a proportionate increase in our theological insight into the book.229 Once again, then, theological interpretation can be a way into the text’s meaning.230 On the other hand, it can be a way of seeing significance in the text that the author would not have seen, if (for instance) the book’s center is identified as the ascension of Christ and Daniel is “read through this lens of an ascension Christology.”231

Back to the Future with the Qumran Community Alongside the burgeoning of postmodern approaches to interpretation, the other major development in the study of Daniel over the past thirty years looks quite different but is ideologically related. It concerns textual criticism. Ironically (given the nature of the book of Daniel), both developments might have been predicted but only with hindsight. In the modern period, the philosophy of textual criticism seemed self-­evident. Its aim was to get back to the original text of the Scriptures. But what we mean by the original text is less clear. For instance, in 4:35 [32] BHK and BHS declare that the second occurrence of the phrase “and the inhabitants of earth” is an addition, and the NEB translation omits it. On what basis can we say that the phrase is an addition to the original text? What is this original text? The Hebrew-­A ramaic book of Daniel is one of the few books in the Bible of which we can say with some precision and confidence when and where it came into being: in Jerusalem in the mid-160s BC in the midst of the persecution of Jewish people there in the time of Antiochus IV. One can therefore also attach some meaning to the idea of the original text of Daniel. Someone or a group of people put the book together at that point. It is possible to envisage there being an original copy. And because of the substantial (if partial) vindication of its promises when Antiochus was thrown out, it seems to have speedily gained the community’s recognition as deserving to belong to its collection of Scriptures along with the Torah, Isaiah, and so on. Yet this fact makes the 228 Collins, “Currents Issues in the Study of Daniel,” 1. 229 Childs, Introduction to the OT as Scripture, 613 230 Cf. Goldingay, “Daniel in the Context of OT Theology.” 231 Sumner, “Daniel,” 111. Hebbard, Reading Daniel as a Text in Theological Hermeneutics, is a more ingenious expression of such an approach.

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132 Introduction variety of Daniel material from Qumran and the existence of its several Greek translations all the more striking. The discovery of the Qumran scrolls in fact played a key role in raising new questions about the aims and principles of textual criticism, questions which have grown in sharpness as the Daniel scrolls in particular have been published. Biblia Hebraica is a presentation of the text of the MT whose first three editions, in the first half of the twentieth century, were edited by Rudolf Kittel and others; hence the abbreviation BHK. The fourth edition was developed and published in the second half of the twentieth century by the German Bible Society in Stuttgart—­hence Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia or BHS. In the early twenty-­f irst century, volumes in a fifth edition, Biblia Hebraica Quinta or BHQ began to appear; there is not yet any date for the Daniel volume. The margins of BHK offer very many suggestions for revision of the text to take it back to its hypothetical original form. The margins of BHS contain fewer such suggestions. Volumes of BHQ that have appeared are even more reticent with such suggestions, as are the volumes edited by Barthélemy, Critique textuelle de l’AT, and the volumes of the Hebrew University Bible project (HUB). At the same time, the Society of Biblical Literature is publishing the volumes in the Oxford Hebrew Bible Project, a series containing an eclectic, critically reconstructed text rather than the MT.232 Further, various scholars are engaged in producing editions and translations of versions such as G, Vulg., and Syr., and commentaries on these versions, which treat them in their own right and not merely as aids to the reconstruction of “the original Hebrew text.” Given that L was copied over a millennium later than the book came into being, it can be only a starting point for study of the text. Over the centuries the book was likely affected by both accidental and intentional changes. We may be able to identify some of these by comparing L with older copies of Daniel such as the Cairo manuscript and the Qumran manuscripts. We can also study copies of translations that are older than L, the most important for this purpose being the Greek, Syriac, and Latin, to see if we can infer the Hebrew version utilized by them. Yet some differences between these translations and the MT and between variant Hebrew manuscripts and the MT reflect interpretive activity. They may not indicate that the translations are mediating to us an earlier text. The trend of contemporary textual criticism is to recognize that biblical books were preserved in a number of textual traditions (e.g., in different geographical areas). A reading suggested by one of the ancient translations that seems to us preferable to the one provided by the MT may not actually be nearer to what the author of Daniel wrote. Where the MT is more pleonastic than G (e.g., 6:20 [21]; 8:1, 2, 3), or less elegant or syntactically uneven (e.g., 1:5, 20), or expansive in a way that could suggest glossing (e.g., 7:1, 11), or where it repeats phrases with variation rather than 232 On its philosophy, see Hendel, Steps to a New Edition of the Hebrew Bible.

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identically (e.g., 4:12 [9]), these features need not imply that the MT is not original. I am generally more inclined to trust the work of the Jewish community and the rabbis who preserved the text of the Scriptures than to trust my own capacity to get back behind their work to a more original text. While my eclectic text might sometimes be closer to the hypothetical original, at other points it would likely be further away. I have no confidence that on the whole the end result would be an improvement. Only rarely, then, do I assume a Hebrew/Aramaic text different from the MT.233

Further Questions that Emerge The history of the interpretation of Daniel thus raises issues that will underlie the chapter by chapter study in this commentary; the Conclusion will return to some of them. The history of the interpretation of Daniel suggests that it is hazardous to claim that the book directly refers to events of one’s own day or to the key events on which one’s own faith is based. Interpreters who refer Daniel’s visions directly to Jesus or to events in the twentieth or twenty-­f irst century may be right, but earlier centuries of interpreters of various faiths have related these visions to events of their own faith and their own day by the same interpretive techniques that Christian interpreters in the twentieth or twenty-­f irst century use, and it seems wise to allow for the possibility that the interpretations of the latter will also be falsified in due course. The presupposition of this commentary is that the divinely inspired forward projections in Daniel were designed to bring a message that was meaningful to people in the Second Temple period, and the commentary will seek to interpret the seer’s visions in light of material in the book itself and in light of the history of the period as we know it. The implication is not that interpreters who have related these visions to their own day were simply wrong.234 Their sense that these visions were significant for a time long after Daniel’s was quite valid. How they speak to days long after their own and what theological insight they offer will be considered in the Explanation sections of the commentary. Further, what assumptions should readers bring to their study regarding the nature of the stories and the origin of the visions? Critical scholarship has sometimes overtly and sometimes covertly approached the visions with the a priori conviction that they cannot be prophecies of events to take place long after the seer’s day because prophecy of that kind is impossible.235 Conversely,

233 On the issues raised here, see further Tov, The Text-Critical Use of the Septuagint; ———, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible. 234 See Towner, “Were the English Puritans ‘the Saints of the Most High’?” 235 So, e.g., Towner, Daniel, 115.

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134 Introduction conservative scholarship has sometimes overtly and sometimes covertly approached the visions with the a priori conviction that they must be actual prophecies because quasi-­predictions issued pseudonymously could not have been inspired by God. Both these sets of convictions seem mistaken. This commentary assumes that the God of Israel is capable of knowing future events and thus of revealing them, capable of inspiring both actual prophecy and quasi-­prediction, and capable of inspiring his servants to speak in their own name, or anonymously, or—­in certain circumstances—­pseudonymously. It was excusable for Pusey236 to think that pseudonymity makes the author a liar and must be incompatible with being divinely inspired. It is less excusable now that we know that in the ancient world, and in the Hellenistic age in particular, pseudonymity was a common practice used for a variety of reasons—­some unethical, some unobjectionable—­for poetry, letters, testaments, philosophy, and prophecies.237 That pseudonymity is a rarer literary device in modern Western culture, especially in religious contexts, should not allow us to infer that God could not use it in another culture. Whether he actually chose to do so is to be determined not a priori but from study of the text. The Form sections of the commentary will consider these questions. Critical scholarship has also been inclined to presuppose that rescuing people from lions and fiery furnaces doesn’t happen, while conservative scholarship has approached the stories with the a priori conviction that they must be pure history because fiction or a mixture of fact and fiction could not have been inspired by God. Again, both types of conviction seem mistaken. God has the capacity to engage in such acts of rescue, and God is capable of inspiring people to write both history and fiction. Actually, it makes surprisingly little difference to the book’s exegesis whether the stories are history or fiction, whether the visions are actual prophecy or quasi-­prediction, whether they were written by Daniel or by someone else, and whether in the sixth century BC, the second, or somewhere in between. One understands the book on the basis of what it says; there are points where its meaning is unclear but not because of uncertainty over the alternatives just listed. Whether or not we can divide the actual seer and his visionary namesake, the wise approach is for readers to take him on his own terms and immerse themselves in the visionary experience as he describes it.238

236 Daniel, the Prophet, 1–4. 237 Metzger, “Literary Forgeries and Canonical Pseudepigrapha”; Collins, Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel, 67–74; Meade, “Pseudonymity and Canon”; against Baldwin, “Is There Pseudonymity in the OT?” 238 Cf. Niditch, “The Visionary,” 158.

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I. Four Young Exiles Gain Insight and Prestige without Losing Holiness (1:1–21) Pericope Bibliography Ackroyd, P. R. “The Temple Vessels—­a Continuity Theme.” Alfrink, B. “Die Gaddsche Chronik und die Heilige Schrift.” Arnold, B. T. “Word Play and Characterization in Daniel 1.” Berger,  P.-­R . “Der Kyros-­Zylinder mit dem Zusatzfragment BIN II Nr. 32 und die akkadischen Personennamen im Danielbuch.” Berquist, J. “Resistance and Accommodation in the Persian Empire,” in Horsley (ed.), In the Shadow of Empire, 41–58. Bruce, F. F. “The Chronology of Daniel 1:1.” Chia, P. P. “On Naming the Subject.” De Bruyn, J. “A Clash of Gods.” Day, J. “The Daniel of Ugarit and Ezekiel and the Hero of the Book of Daniel.” Dressier, H. H. P. “The Identification of the Ugaritic Dnil with the Daniel of Ezekiel.” Goldingay, J. “Nebuchadnezzar = Antiochus Epiphanes?” Haag, E. “Israels Exil im Lande Schinar.” Kohler, K. “Die chaldäischen Namen Daniel’s und seiner drei Freunde.” Larssen, G. “When Did the Babylonian Captivity Begin?” Mercer, M. K. “Daniel 1:1 and Jehoiakim’s Three Years of Servitude.” Mitchell, G. C. “The Chaldaeans.” Nel, M. “Function of Space in Daniel 1.” Nolan Fewell, D. The Children of Israel, 117–30. Noth, M. “Noah, Daniel, und Hiob in Ezechiel xiv.” Rowley, H. H. “The Chaldaeans in the Book of Daniel.” —­—­—­. “The Chaldaeans.” Sang Tin Uk. “Daniel: A Counter Paradigm.” Selms, A. van. “The Name Nebuchadnezzar.” Soesilo, D. H. “Why Did Daniel Reject the King’s Delicacies?” Stone, M. “A Note on Daniel i. 3.” Towner, W. S. “Daniel 1 in the Context of the Canon.” Van Deventer, H. J. M. “Testing-­Testing, Do We Have a Translated Text in Daniel 1 and Daniel 7?” Venter, P. M. “A Study of Space in Daniel 1.” Wilson, R. D. Studies in the Book of Daniel 1:43–95, 319–89. Winckler, H. “Daniel und seine Freunde,” in Altorientalische Forschungen II, 1:237–38. Wiseman, D. J., et al. Notes on Some Problems in the Book of Daniel, 16–18. Zadok, R. “The Origin of the Name Shinar.”

Translation In the third year of the reign of Yehoyaqim king of Yehudah, Nebukadne’s· s· ar  a king of Babel came b to Yerušalaim and blockaded it, 2and the Lord a gave Yehoyaqim king of Yehudah into his hand.b Some ofc the articlesd from the house of God he brought e to the land of Šin’ar to the house of his god;f the articlesg he brought to his god’s treasury. 3 The king said to Ašpenaz,a his chief of staff,b to bringc some of the Yisra’elites,d e some of the royal family and some of the people of rank,e 4young men a without any shortcoming,b good in appearance, discerning in all aspects of expertise, knowledge, and insight, and capable of taking a place c in the king’s palace, and to teach them d ethe language and literature of the Kasdites.e 5The king assigned them a daily allowance a from the king’s supplies b and from the wine which he drank. They were to be trained c 1

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for three years, and some of them d would take their place before the king. 6Among them 7 were a some Yehudites, Daniyye’l, H · ananyah, Miša’el and ‘Azaryah. But the head of staff determined on names for them. He determined a on bBelt·eša’s· s· ar for Daniyye’l, b Šadrak for H · ananyah, Mešak for Miša’el, and ‘Abed Nego for ‘Azaryah.  a 8 But Daniyye’l determined in his mind that he would not contaminate himself with the king’s supplies or with the wine which he drank. He asked the head of staff that he might not have to contaminate himself, 9and God gave a the head of staff b commitment and compassionb towards Daniyye’l. 10But the head of staff said to Daniyye’l, “I’m afraid of my lord the king, who assigned your food and your drink, in case a he sees your faces looking grim b compared with the other young men of your group,c and you forfeit d my head to the king.” 11 So Daniyye’l said to the guardian a whom the head of the palace staff had assigned 12 to Daniyye’l, H · ananyah, Miša’el, and ‘Azaryah, “Please test your servants over ten  a days. They should give us vegetarian food to eat and water to drink, 13and our appearance and that of the young men who eat the king’s supplies will be visible to you: deal with your servants in accordance with what you see.” a 14He heard them on this point and tested them over ten days. 15At the end of ten days their appearance looked better and their bodies better-­built than all a the young men who had been eating the king’s supplies. 16So the guardian continued to take off a their supplies and the wine they were to drink and to give a them vegetarian food. 17 To these same four young men God gave knowledge and discernment a in all kinds of literature and expertise, while Daniyye’l in particular gained insight into all kinds of visions and dreams. 18At the end of the period which the king had said to bring them in, the head of staff brought them before Nebukadne’s· s· ar. 19The king spoke with them, and there proved to be a not one of them like Daniyye’l, H · ananyah, Miša’el, and ‘Azaryah. So they took their place before the king,b 20and on every matter requiring insightful expertise  a that the king asked them about, he found them ten times superior to all the diviners (the chanters) b in all his realm.c 21 Daniyye’l was there a until the first year of King Koreš.b

Notes 1.a. The name is spelled in various ways in Daniel and elsewhere in the OT (see BDB). The most significant variant is ‫( נבוכדראצר‬Nebukadre’s·s·ar), which predominates in Jeremiah and Ezekiel and is closer to Akk. nabu-­kudurru-­us·ur (with its own variants), a prayer or confession “Nabu protect(s) the eldest son.” Kudurru also refers to the boundary stone which marks land grants (see Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia, 206– 87; Saggs, The Greatness that Was Babylon, plate 21A), a possible alternative meaning here. The switch in the name’s Heb. spelling can be explained philologically (Berger, “Der Kyros-­Zylinder,” 227–30), but van Selms (“The Name Nebuchadnezzar,” 223–27) suggests that Nebukadne’s· s·ar corresponds to Nabu-­ku˙danu-­us·ur, “Nabu protect(s) the mule,” a corruption devised among opposition groups in Babylon that would naturally appeal to foreigners such as Judahites (cf. the malicious corruption of names in v. 7). The suggestion that the name is spelled thus to give it the same numerical value as ‫( אנטיוכוס אפיפנס‬Antiochus Epiphanes) (Cornill, “Die siebzig Jahrwochen Daniels,”

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31) depends on ‫ = פ‬70, whereas ‫ = פ‬80 (see Goldingay, “Nebuchadnezzar = Antiochus Epiphanes?”). 1.b. ‫בא‬: at this point the story adopts a Jerusalem perspective, but the verb recurs in v. 2 with Babylon as the destination. 2.a. ‫( אדני‬except in some medieval mss), not ‫“ יהוה‬Yahweh”: see Comment. If the expression could be understood as “my lord” as an alternative to “the Lord of all” (see e.g., DCH; contrast IBHS 7.4.3ef; O. Eissfeldt in ThWAT), then here the contrast with “his god” might suggest “my Lord.” 2.b. The strong expression ‫ בידו‬. . . ‫“ ויתן‬he gave . . . into his hand” suggests a defeat rather than a submission (Driver); so in 2 Chr 36:17, whence it comes. 2.c. ‫“( מקצת‬part of the extremity”; BDB, 892b, 500b, GKC 20m; G, Vulg., Syr.). “The costliest of” (Ehrlich) is difficult to parallel with ‫ קצת‬or ‫קצה‬, though “all of” (Meek, “Translation Problems in the OT,” 45–47; Haag, Daniel, 23) is possible (BDB, 892a). Pillaging of the temple was not completed until 587 BC, as the OT narrative which Daniel is following recognizes, but perhaps Daniel is conflating the accounts. 2.d. ‫ כלים‬can cover furniture, utensils, and equipment generally (cf. the account in Jer 52:17–23) as well as “vessels” (EVV). 2.e. Taking ‫ ויביאם‬as waw apodosis following its extraposed object (Charles, cf. GKC 111h, 143d, so also the Mosul ed. of Syr. according to Kallarakkal, 156–57); the construction recurs in the Heb. of Daniel (1:10, 20). EVV imply that Nebuchadnezzar put both articles and king in his temple, which is odd. In 2 Chr 36:6–7, which Dan is following, ‫“ הביא‬he brought” refers only to the temple articles; G, Vulg., make that explicit here by using a neuter pronoun. 2.f. ‫בית אלהיו‬, without preposition. Thus Jeffery has “to Shinar, the house of his god.” Hos 8:1; 9:3–4, 15 might parallel the idea of the country as the god’s house, but that idea is unnatural here, given the allusions to temples. OG lacks the phrase, but for ‫“ בית אוצר אלהיו‬his god’s treasury” it has ἐν τῷ εἰδωλείῳ αὐτοῦ, which may cover both phrases; it hardly implies that OG’s original lacked the first (against BHS). Syr. has both expressions but makes a similar theological judgment to OG’s by referring to the “god” as an “idol” (cf. Taylor, Peshitt·a, 41). On Daniel’s combining syntactical inelegance (Driver) with careful choice of expressions, see Structure. Words such as ‫ אלהיו‬are often ambiguous in number; JB renders “gods.” See n. 3:25.b, n. 4:8.c. 2.g. In emphatic position before the verb (cf. n. 2.e). The clause explains more specifically where the vessels were put; the waw is explicative (see n. 6:28.a). 3.a. ‫אשפנז‬: apparently in origin a Persian word that could suggest “guest-­master” or the like (cf. Koch, Daniel 1–4, 2–3 ). But it is followed by another word that denotes a member of the king’s staff (though it might be an explanatory addition) and it lacks an article or suffix (contrast the other loan word in v. 11 as well as the other words for members of the king’s staff in the chapter), which suggests that G, Th., Vulg., Syr. are right to take it as a term that has been turned into a proper name (see Lacocque); it is known as a name elsewhere (cf. Collins, Daniel, 134). On OG Αbιεσδρι see Montgomery. 3.b. ‫ סריס‬comes from Akk. ša-­reši “he who is the head.” It can mean “eunuch” (cf. G, Vulg.; many eastern palace staff were eunuchs), but it need not, and as a term for royal officials it can apply to members of the Israelite/Judahite court, though it is esp. used for foreign officials. 3.c. ‫להביא‬, as in v. 2. Verse 2 describes the bringing of the vessels, v. 3 that of the young men (Keil); cf. the reference in 5:13. EVV give ‫ הביא‬here a different meaning, referring to taking within Babylon, not taking to Babylon. 3.d. ‫בני ישראל‬. NEB “Israelite exiles” apparently follows Th. τῆς αἰχμαλωσίας Ισραηλ—­ surely a gloss from the similar expression in, e.g., 2:25 (Young).

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3.e–­e. The sense suggests this phrase qualifies ‫ בני ישראל‬rather than adding extra groups (against Stone, “A Note on Daniel i. 3”). Some medieval mss omit waw —­ explicative (see n. 6:28.a); hardly “both” (against GKC 154a). Sym. and Syr. took the unusual OP word ‫“ פרתמים‬people of rank”) to denote the Parthians (Th. simply transliterates it). 4.a. ‫ ילדים‬covers males from birth to marriage. 4.b. ‫מאום‬, as in Job 31:7. In both places it is surely equivalent to ‫( מום‬so Q and many medieval mss), not ‫“ מאום‬something [against them]” (against Ehrlich). Each word can denote a moral, not just a physical defect; both connotations may be allowed here (with Ehrlich). Torrey (“Stray Notes,” 229) takes it as a mixed form. 4.c. Lit. “standing” (i.e., as servants). 4.d. Taking ‫ וללמדם‬as dependent on ‫“ ויאמר‬said” (v. 3), in parallel to ‫“ להביא‬to bring”; though one might ignore the MT accents and see ‫ וללמדם‬as dependent on ‫“ כח‬capability,” in parallel to ‫“ לעמד‬of taking a place”—­hence “and of being taught” (cf. GKC 115e and note). But see n. 5.c. 4.e–­e. Two constructs dependent on one absolute, perhaps as a stereotyped phrase (DG 36, remark 2) and/or as constituting a unit (JM 129a, note 5); against MT, OG, and GKC 120a. 5.a. ‫דבר יום ביומו‬, “the thing of a day in its day.” 5.b. Whereas a Cairo Geniza ms has ‫פתבג‬, L hyphenates the word, suggesting a link between the Persian word and BH ‫“ פת‬morsel.” Syriac ptbg came to suggest rich food, but this is misleading here (against RSV). 5.c. ‫“( ולגדלם‬educate,” with OG, rather than “nurture,” with Th., Vulg., Syr.), apparently another verb implicitly dependent on ‫ ויאמר‬in v. 3. Segal (Dreams, Riddles, and Visions) makes the syntactical breakdown in v. 5 his starting point for an analysis of the chapter’s redaction (cf. Redditt, Daniel, 42–48). 5.d. Giving ‫ מקצת‬the same sense as in v. 2 and referring its suffix to that of ‫לגדלם‬ “to train them”; cf. OG, Ps-­Saadia, NEB (though NEB takes it to mean “all of them” both times: see n. 2.d.). Th., Vulg., Syr. take it to mean “at the end of them” (the three years), giving ‫ מקצת‬the meaning it has in vv. 15, 18; but the suffix is m, whereas ‫שנים‬ “years” is f (though see GKC 135o). 6.a. ‫ ויהי‬followed by pl. subject (GKC 145o). A sebir (marginal note) has ‫ויהיו‬ (cf. OG, Vulg.). 7.a. Whereas MT repeats ‫וישם‬, Syr. has qrʾ rather than repeating šmy, and G, Vulg. omit the verb to make the sentence smoother; but see Structure. 7.b–­b. The names are difficult. ‫( בלטשאצר‬with variants), Akk. ?balat·su- ­u s·ur, “protect his life,” presupposes a divine name, presumably Bel (cf. MT’s vocalization; see Comment on v. 2). ‘Abed Nego is a corruption of ‘abed nabu, “servant of Nabu.” For suggestions regarding Shadrak and Meshak, see Barr; Lacocque; Montgomery; Berger, “Der Kyros-­Zylinder,” 224–25; Zadok, “On Five Iranian Names in the OT.” The difficulties suggest deliberate corruption to heighten the paganism of foreign theophoric names that replace the Israelite theophoric ones. 8.a. ‫ על לבו‬. . . ‫וישם‬: ‫ לב‬denotes the heart anatomically, but the mind psychologically (as the seat of mental activity and decision making) more often than the emotions (cf. NJPS “resolved”). 9.a. ‫ וישם‬could have been used again (cf. vv. 7, 8), but instead the language follows 1 Kgs 8:50; Ps 106:46. 9.b–­b. On these words, see 9:3–23 Comment (b). ‫חסד‬, here without the notion of moral obligation common in both secular and religious contexts in the OT, is effectively a synonym for ‫“ חן‬grace” (cf. Vulg.), though ‫ חסד‬is more a friendship/community/ political word, ‫ חן‬more a family word (Sakenfeld, Hesed, 163–64; Glueck, H · esed, 66;

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Stoebe, “Die Bedeutung des Wortes h· äsäd im AT,” 247). Mercy (EVV; cf. Th., Vulg.) is too narrow a translation of ‫רחמים‬, which suggests the feelings appropriate to brothers or sisters from the same womb or to a mother in relation to the children of her womb (‫)רחם‬. 10.a. ‫( למה‬usually “why”), see BDB, 554a, and cf. G. 10.b. ‫ זעף‬commonly suggests anger (2 Chr 26:19), sometimes worry (Gen 40:6); here presumably Ashpenaz refers to their looking “out of sorts” (NJPS). On the basis of a posited Arabic cognate, Kopf (“Arabische Etymologien,” 254) suggests “emaciated.” 10.c. ‫( גיל‬only here in BH) lit. means “circle”; it may refer to the circuits of the planets and thus to people born “under the same stars” and consequently of the same “age” (EVV): cf. DTT on ‫ גיל‬and ‫גלגל‬. 10.d. Cf. Bevan; ‫( חוב‬only here in BH) means “be guilty, answerable, indebted” and thus in the piel, as here, “convict, sentence” (DTT). Cf. Th., Vulg.; OG “endanger” renders loosely. 11.a. ‫מלצר‬, perhaps ultimately Akk., from a root ns·r equivalent to BH ‫ ;נצר‬cf. Syr. mns·r. OG Αβιεσδρι (cf. v. 3) assumes Daniel is still speaking to the same person; Th., Vulg. also take the word as a name. 12.a. ‫“( זרעים‬seeds”) would cover vegetables, grain, and non-­meat products generally. Verse 16 has ‫זרענים‬, as in some medieval mss here; 1QDana has ‫ זרעים‬in v. 16. 13.a. ‫ ;תראה‬OG θέλῃς (cf. NEB mg. “as you see fit”) is a possible nuance of ‫ ראה‬in later Hebrew (DTT), but here the context suggests the more usual meaning. 15.a. Some medieval mss, Th., and perhaps OG omit ‫כל‬, but this hardly outweighs MT, Syr., Vulg. 16.a. For the frequentative translation, cf. Judg 16:21; Neh 1:4 (Bentzen; TTH 135); it seems less likely to be an isolated example of the periphrastic verb construction with regular past meaning (against DG113[f], remark 2). ‫נשא‬, the ordinary word for “lift” or “carry” hints at the plausible idea that he was happily appropriating the unwanted food supplies so as to do with them as he wished (Newsom); cf. G’s use of the middle verb ἀναιρούμενος and Saadia’s “would take for himself.” 17.a. Taking inf. absolute ‫ השכל‬to function as a noun parallel to ‫( מדע‬IBHS 35.3.3b; cf. G, Vulg., Syr; Jer 3:15; Job 34:35) rather than as a replacement for a finite verb (against Lacocque). 19.a. ‫נמצא‬: EVV “was found,” but niphal is commonly used for “be present/appear/ prove to be” (cf. 11:19; 12:1). ‫ מצא‬recurs in v. 20. 19.b. Verses 19b–20 are consequent/subsequent to vv. 18–19a, not a restatement of them. 20.a. ‫ חכמת בינה‬is too unusual to be a corruption—­against BHS. G, Vulg., Syr. (cf. 4QDana) are surely translating loosely, like EVV. 20.b. On the two terms, see on 2:2. The two asyndetic foreign words interpret each other (Plöger), as happens in 5:15. 20.c. OG (as printed in Rahlf’s ed.) has an extra sentence: “And the king honored them and appointed them as rulers and showed them as wise beyond all his people in matters in his entire country and in his reign.” Pap. 967 has a shorter version (cf. NETS). Hamm (Der Septuaginta-­Text des Buches Daniel) sees it as a gloss, though such a sentence might have been lost by homoioteleuton (Collins, Daniel) and there is room for a short sentence in a space in 4QDana where part of the scroll is lost. 21.a. ‫ ;ויהי‬the absolute use of the verb ‫ היה‬reads oddly in Heb. as in English, though ‫“ היה‬be” can mean “live” (cf. ‫חיה‬: see 1 Sam 1:28 [Charles]) or “exist” (see Lev 25:29 [Bartelmus, ‫היה‬, 188]). Here it picks up the wording of 2 Chr 36:20b and probably refers back to v. 19b (Plöger). Cf. Jer 1:3, where ‫ אליו‬is presupposed from v. 2. There is no need to add ‫“ שם‬there” (NEB; cf. Brockington) (cf. Ruth 1:3). 21.b. ‫ כורש המלך‬is the more usual Aram. order (e.g., 3:1–5), but it recurs in the Heb. in 8:1. See n. 2:28.a.

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Form/Structure/Setting Form Daniel 1 is a short story about Daniel and his friends, the first of a series of short stories that dominate Dan 1–6. It’s been said that a short story is one that can be read in an hour but remembered for a lifetime; this description especially fits chs. 3, 5, and 6. The stories about Daniel and his friends overlap formally with more substantial short stories such as Ruth, Jonah, Esther, Tobit, and Judith, and the Joseph story within Genesis. A short story characteristically tells of just an incident or a series of related incidents in the life of one person or a group. While it has a simple plot and one central theme, it may tell of extraordinary and not just everyday events; short stories raise eyebrows. The short stories in Daniel use hyperbole to portray both imperial court and Judahite piety. Daniel is satirical; and satire is (among other things) comic, inventive, fantastic, both crude and lofty, oxymoronic, socially utopian—­and concerned for ultimate questions.1 A “training manual view of the social setting of Daniel alone does not justify the book’s vast popularity,” which is reflected in the plural forms of the Daniel tradition.2 The stories use humor in order to critique, on the basis of convictions that are deeply serious. And they do so in order to bolster boldness of trust in Yahweh. Such stories portray an alternative world before their listeners’ ears and ask whether they are prepared to risk living in their alternative world. “The imaginative use of humor and satire reflects a creative manipulation of the social reality of life in the royal court to resist king and empire” by ridiculing them,3 though in this first story the humor is understated and the satire is gentle. Much of the humor in Daniel involves irony.4 “This colorful collection of miracle stories about Daniel conveys a sharply ambivalent picture of the exilic period.”5 The stories suggest a vision for the possibility of Judahites not only surviving but being successful in the royal court, which suggests the phenomenon analyzed in postcolonial discourse as hybridity.6 On one hand, Judahites resist the power of the empire and dismiss the claims of its learning; on the other, they also aspire to share in its power and engage with its learning. The empire itself is caught in a converse tension. It has defeated Judah, but it is involved in compromise with its prey (as also emerges in Ezra in a different way).7 Classically, stories are said to follow a structure comprising introduction, 1 Valeta, Lions and Ovens and Visions, 63–64. 2 Valeta, Lions and Ovens and Visions, 19. 3 Valeta, “Court or Jester Tales,” 309. 4 See Woodard, “Literary Strategies and Authorship in the Book of Daniel.” 5 Albertz, Israel in Exile, 19. 6 See e.g., Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 159–74. 7 See Newsom, Daniel, 16–17; Collins, Apocalypse, Prophecy, and Pseudepigraphy, 291–96.

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complication, rising action, crisis, climax, and resolution. In another classical sense, the stories in Daniel are comedies. The expression “apocalyptic as comedy”8 applied to Daniel is a little paradoxical in that the visions are less comedic than the stories; the upturn at the end is more muted. Apocalypse as tragedy might be more appropriate.9 But the stories are indeed comedies in the sense of being tales in which everything threatens to collapse into the absurd, but the powerful are put in their place and things come out right in the end. In a traditional culture, stories are told out loud, and repetition is a characteristic feature in them; it appears in a subtle way in Dan 1 and a less subtle way in chs. 3 and 6. There is some overlap between short stories and novellas or novels, but Daniel as a whole or Dan 1–6 is not long enough or cohesive enough to be designated as a novella or novel, and viewing Dan 1–6 as a series of linked short stories is more illuminating. But like a novel, a short story seeks to be entertaining, and even if it is a story about an actual person, it may not worry about true-­to-­life plausibility or about getting its historical references right. Like a novel, the stories in Daniel are “prose writings that involve a new sort of reading experience, the creation of invented worlds that are nevertheless like our own.”10 They parallel other serious short stories or novellas or novels in aiming to get people to think in a certain way about God and people, and the reception of the book of Daniel into the Scriptures reflects a positive response to this invitation. In traditional form-­critical terms, the stories in Dan 1–6 combine features of midrash, court tale, and legend. To oversimplify, ch. 1 constitutes a legend (vv. 8–16) in the context of a court tale (vv. 3–7, 17–20) set in a framework of midrash (vv. 1–2, 21). The legend, the story of a holy man, exists to exalt its hero and its hero’s God in its hearers’ thinking; it thus encourages them to take heed of subsequent stories of Daniel and to emulate the hero’s faithfulness, confident of his God’s power and support. The story of “the Jew in the court of the foreign king”11 entertains by its romantic story of the flourishing of young exiles at a foreign court (cf. Joseph, Esther, Tobit, Ahiqar); it, too, offers encouragement as it invites the hearer to identify with these exiles. It contains hints of the two forms of court tale to be exemplified in chs. 2, 4–5 and chs. 3, 6 respectively, the court contest tale/interpretation story and the court conflict tale/deliverance story.12 In keeping with the nature of the stories, they do not seek to allow their heroes’ characters to emerge in their 8 See Good, “Apocalyptic as Comedy.” 9 Cf. Mills, Biblical Morality, 194, 210. 10 Wills, The Jewish Novel, 1. Wills himself sees Daniel as a novel; cf. Talmon, “Daniel,” 535–55. 11 See Wills, The Jew in the Court of the Foreign King. The “wisdom court legend” is “a legend of a revered figure set in the royal court which has the wisdom of the protagonist as a principle motif” (37). 12 Humphreys, “A Life-Style for Diaspora”; Davies, Daniel, 51; Wahl, “Das Motiv des ‘Aufstiegs’ in der Hofgeschichte.”

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own right; we discover only those facts that relate to the concerns of court tale/legend. In stressing God’s involvement in their triumph (v. 17), ch. 1 also manifests the characteristic feature of an aretalogy, a story about someone devout or supernatural.13 While the chapter does not start from the desire to clarify or actualize specific Scriptures, it may be seen as situational midrash in that it reuses earlier scriptural material in order to establish links between the Scriptures themselves and both the extra-­scriptural content of the story and the post-­scriptural setting of its hearers; these hearers are thus invited to link their story onto the Scriptures’ story and to look at their experience in its context. Midrash, court tale, and legend are not three separate units. Neither midrash nor court tale stands on its own; even the legend, which might most likely contain pre-­existent traditional material, now appears inextricably set in its courtly context. Indeed, the formal distinction between the three is not a sharp one. Both court tale and legend manifest the hyperbole of romance: they describe young men of exemplary appearance and wisdom (vv. 4, 17), though of unstated genealogy (v. 6), who manifest unparalleled health on an ascetic diet (v. 15), unparalleled success in their education (v. 19), and unparalleled usefulness in their service in the palace (v. 20). The court tale is midrashic or intertextual in the sense that it is shaped by earlier scriptural material, especially the story of Joseph, another young man transported to an alien land who proved the superiority of Israelite insight over that of pagans, not least as a dreamer and as a dream interpreter. In language vv. 4, 15, and 17 parallel Gen 41 (see Comment).14 The “romantic themes”15 of beating pagans at their own game and, in the legend, of the friendliness of the court official already appear in earlier scriptural “romance” (e.g., Gen 39:21; 41; see also Ezra, Nehemiah, Zerubbabel in 1 Esd 3–4, Judith). A Daniel appears in Ezek 14:12–23, 28:316 in the exilic period, held before people as a model of a lone insistence on righteousness and of the wisdom to understand secrets—­a model such as the stories will describe Daniel to be. The names of all four men appear elsewhere in the Scriptures, especially in the Second Temple community (e.g., among its leadership in Neh 8; 10). There are less clear links between Daniel and the Ugaritic Dan’el17 and the angel Daniel in 1 Enoch. The description of the four young men takes up the royal ideal of 1 and 2 Samuel, Isaiah’s prophecy of the exile (Isa 39:7), and aspects of the account in Jer 39 of the fall of Jerusalem. The legend’s 13 On which see Berger, “Hellenistische Gattungen im NT,” 1218–31. 14 Mitchell (“Shared Vocabulary in the Pentateuch and the Book of Daniel”) notes further links. 15 Heaton, Daniel, on the passage. 16 See e.g., Wahl, “Noah, Daniel und Hiob”; though there the name is spelled ‫ דנאל‬K, ‫יאל‬ ֵ ִ‫ָּד נ‬ Q (also the form here in a Cairo Genizah ms) not ‫ ָד נִ ּיֵ אל‬as here. 17 ANET 149–55; DOTT 124–28.

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concern, defilement, is also a scriptural theme. The treatment here has close resemblances of motif to Ezek 4:9–17, though the passages lack verbal parallels: there, too, in a similar context at the beginning of the exile in Babylon, Ezekiel adopts as his diet a loaf of grains and vegetables, and water. He, too, is under pressure to eat food that is ritually defiling—­in his case, through the way he is to cook it. He, too, declares his determination to maintain the purity he has always sought. He, too, discovers that the God who put him into a situation where defilement was hard to avoid provides a way of maintaining purity for people who seek one rather than give in to the pressures that come (ultimately or immediately) from God himself. Ezekiel’s loaf of grain and vegetables seems a closer parallel to Dan 1 than the refugees’ diet of wild plants in 2 Macc 5:27. In modern usage a short story is commonly a work of fiction, or it may be based on fact. With stories from traditional cultures it may be impossible to know whether they are pure fiction. My working assumption is that they are more likely to be based on fact, but if so, it is then impossible to know where fact ends and fiction starts. The word legend can be used to denote fictional or semi-­f ictional stories about a historical person (or such stories about someone else that have become attached to a better-­k nown historical person), and on this definition one could call the Daniel stories legends. Like moviegoers who watch movies based on fact, people listening to stories about Daniel and his friends will not have focused on the question of where fact ends and fiction begins. Like Jesus telling parables, the storyteller will have wanted people to listen to the story in the conviction that it has truth about God and them to convey, whatever its relationship to historical happenings. Likewise, terms such as midrash, court tale, and legend need not imply that the story is unhistorical. Forms can be used in ways that do not correspond to their origin, and a historical account could use forms that are more characteristic of less factual narrative. Yet the form of this story hardly suggests one that “purports to be serious history.”18 It contrasts with that of Kings or Ezra-­Nehemiah or 1 Maccabees, whose form is closer to what one might call historiography. Chapters such as 2 Kgs 24–25 more obviously narrate hard facts that are open to being related to other known historical facts, they refer to sources, they focus on events rather than on conversations, they are shaped more like chronicles by a sequence of incidents rather than by a plot, and they lack allusion to the miraculous. Daniel 1 and the subsequent stories are harder to relate to known history, make no reference to sources, let conversations carry the burden of the story, are emplotted tales rather than chronicle, and emphasize the miraculous. The exile of young members of the nobility, their provision from the palace, their serving there, and their renaming are historical enough. That exiles 18 Young, The Prophecy of Daniel, 25.

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were under pressure to assimilate and that some resisted this pressure at particular points is plausible enough. That some successfully took remarkable risks in order to remain faithful to their religion and that some proved far more discerning advisers than Babylonian scholars is not implausible. The form of the story, however, suggests that it would not insist on confining itself to historical material, if less factual material helped to achieve its concern to hold attention in an entertaining way and to edify. The distinctive and original elements in the story come in vv. 8–16, which may then constitute traditional material that has become the core of an introduction to the book as a whole, to the stories in particular, and specifically to the Nebuchadnezzar chapters.19 It has been suggested that the chapter was translated from Aramaic,20 but possible Aramaisms such as the words for “knowledge” (‫ )מדע‬and for “in case” (‫ )למה‬occur in other Hebrew documents.

Structure Daniel 1 forms a chiastically-­shaped narrative composed of three double panels, the central pair being themselves subdivided chiastically. The story’s plot tension builds through the first three panels, which occupy the opening two-­thirds of the chapter (vv. 1–14). It is (largely) resolved by the latter three panels in the closing third (vv. 15–21). Diagrammatically: Panels

Verses

1A 2A 3(i)A 3(ii)A 3(ii)B 3(i)B 2B 1B

1–2 tension Babylonians defeat Israel. 3–7 Young men are taken for training. 8 Daniel wants to avoid defilement 9–14 and takes on a test. 15 resolution Daniel is triumphant in the test 16 and avoids defilement. 17–20 Young men are triumphant in the training. 21 Daniel sees out the Babylonians.

The story is dominated by the decision making and activity of its human participants, but each double panel refers once to God’s activity, each time using the verb ‫“ נתן‬give/make.” Like statements about human feelings and motivation in stories (as here in v. 8), such allusions take the hearer behind the action, declining for a moment to leave it to speak for itself. They affirm that God’s giving lies behind three events that are surprising, for different reasons: Nebuchadnezzar’s success in his siege of Jerusalem, Daniel’s success in his negotiation with the palace, and the young men’s success in their training. 19 Cf. Newsom, Daniel, 38. 20 So recently Koch, Daniel 1–4, 16–18; contrast Van Deventer, “Testing-Testing.”

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(It is noteworthy that no such affirmation is made regarding their remarkable success in the dietary test.) Thus, near the center of panel 1A, the phrase ‫“( ויתן אדני בידו‬the Lord gave into his power,” v. 2) stands out from the otherwise movement-­dominated context and from its this-­worldly tone, encouraging the reader to bring another framework of interpretation to the events the scene relates. The phrase plays an important role in setting up the tension that will be (partially) resolved by panel 1B (v. 21). It differs from the subsequent allusions to God’s activity in that it constitutes a statement about events in its own right: there is no non-­ theological description of the fall of Jerusalem, only this theological one. In contrast, the other two such allusions (vv. 9, 17) are parenthetic background statements interpreting phenomena that are also described in non-­theological terms (vv. 10–16, 4/18–20); the story would be quite complete as a story without these comments. The allusion to God’s activity in panel 2 differs from the other two in its occurring in the “resolution” part of the story, panel 2B; the other allusions occur in the “tension” part of the story, in panels 1A and 3A, and they thus constitute anticipations or hints of eventual resolution. Panel 2A contains no hint of this kind, though v. 4 gives hints in its own way. The phrase ‫“( נתן להם האלהים‬God gave them,” v. 17) thus overtly expresses in panel 2B the possible implication of the verse in panel 2A. In panel 3A ‫ויתן האלהים‬ (“God gave/made,” v. 9) indicates that the possibility of Daniel’s remaining undefiled is based on God’s grace as well as on Daniel’s determination (v. 8), though it does not indicate how either may come to fruition (indeed v. 10 all but undoes the hope encouraged by v. 9). It differs from the other two occurrences of the phrase because ‫ נתן‬here has a slightly different meaning, closer to those of ‫ שים‬or ‫“( שית‬put,” “set”) than to those of ‫ יהב‬or ‫“( חלק‬give,” “allocate”). The three references to God’s activity contribute to a series of developments and reversals of movement in Dan 1 as a whole, as the agents and subjects of the verbs change: Nebuchadnezzar . . . (v. 1), the Lord . . . (v. 2); so the king and the head of staff . . . (vv. 2–7), but Daniel . . . (v. 8), and God . . . (v. 9) (relating to what precedes and to what follows); again, the head of staff . . . (v. 10), so Daniel and the guardian . . . (vv. 11–16), and God . . . (v. 17). . . . God’s giving thus plays a key role in the story’s unfolding, and “what started off as an invasion of Yahweh’s god-­space actually became a clever strategy to invade Marduk’s own territory.”21 Panel 1A begins by setting alongside each other the autonomous rulers of two independent realms, Yehoyaqim king of Yehudah and Nebukadne’s· s· ar king of Babel. Really, Jehoiakim was the puppet king of a puppet state, and that historical fact coheres with the way the kings are no sooner named than the subordination of Jehoiakim to Nebuchadnezzar, to God, and to the narrator 21 De Bruyn, “A Clash of Gods,” 5.

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becomes clear. The two verses reflect the straightforward Hebrew narrative style of books such as Kings and Chronicles. Their fulsome repetitiveness (Yehoyaqim king of Yehudah . . . Nebukadne’s· s· ar king of Babel . . . Yehoyaqim king of Yehudah) derives from that style, but in this context its effect is to underline the momentous implications of the clash between imperial power and people of God. Two kings and their reigns, widely separated by their geography and by their location in God’s purpose, are brought into harsh juxtaposition, Nebuchadnezzar moving aggressively west and then returning triumphantly east with his plunder. Fifteen times he is referred to as king.22 The movement and violence of the action is conveyed by also making Nebuchadnezzar the subject of the four verbs ‫בוא‬, ‫צור‬, and ‫( הביא‬twice) (he came, he blockaded, he brought); ‫ בוא‬and ‫ הביא‬stand at the center of each of the verses and hold the unit together. Jehoiakim, Judah, Jerusalem, and the temple articles appear only in the opening dating phrase and then as the direct or indirect object of the five verbs in the two verses. They are passive objects in the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, of the narrator—­and of God, for he is the subject of the middle of the five verbs. The tension introduced by the reference to the Lord’s giving up Jehoiakim is heightened by the further references to deity in v. 2. The scandal of what is happening is conveyed by juxtaposing the phrase ‫“ בית האלהים‬the house of God” both with the preceding reference to the Lord’s giving over and with the following fulsome descriptions of the destiny of the temple articles, ‫“ שנער‬Shinar,” ‫“ בית אלהיו‬his god’s house,” and ‫“ בית אוצר אלהיו‬his god’s treasure house.” In making its points, Daniel is characteristically careful in its choice of words and phrases, which often involves fulsomeness and repetition rather than syntactical elegance. Panel 2A (vv. 3–7) takes up from panel 1A by reusing the verb ‫הביא‬ (“he brought”) once more: there is one further geographical movement to record. With the transition to the court tale the style becomes simpler (e.g., “the king” or “Nebuchadnezzar,” not both). It turns out that the repetition of the ponderous “Jehoiakim, king of Judah” in v. 2 constituted a curtain call. Now only one king appears, and panel 2A can assume it’s clear who “the king” is (vv. 3, 4, 5 three times). The portrait of the Israelites as the helpless victims of enemy power is again underlined by the syntax. Nebuchadnezzar and his lieutenant are the subject of a further series of forceful verbs, with the Israelites as their object: ‫( הביא‬v. 3), ‫( למד‬v. 4), ‫( מנה‬v. 5—indirect object), ‫( גדל‬v. 5), ‫( שים‬v. 7—indirect object): bring them, teach them, allocate them, train them, name them. Some of the inelegance in the verses’ syntax (v. 4b and the loose relationship of the two clauses in v. 5b to their sentences) issues because, though formally reported speech, vv. 3–5 come alive in such a way that we almost hear the king’s actual words, catching the irony that he is heard prescribing 22 Cf. Koch, Daniel 1–4, 12. MT pointedly omits the term in v. 18; OG, Syr, and Vg provide it.

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qualities from the exiles’ own Scriptures for the young men he plans to reeducate. The pressure of their being swept into an alien environment is also suggested by the appearance of a series of Akkadian and Persian terms and names: Ashpenaz (OP), chief of staff (ultimately Akkadian), people of rank (OP), Kasdite, supplies (OP), and the four men’s own new names. In the context of these foreign-­sounding expressions, v. 4a stands out for its accumulation of phraseology from OT tradition, especially the string of terms relating to learning as the Scriptures speak of it. Their significance lies not so much in their individual meaning (otherwise the root ‫“ ידע‬know” would hardly appear three times) as in their cumulative effect set against the foreign terms; heaping up words of related meaning in this way is a further device in Daniel (cf. 2:2). The pen-­portrait of the Israelites (vv. 3b–4a) set in the context of clauses that put great pressure on them (vv. 3a, 4b–7) heightens the tension of the story suggested by panel 1A, yet also hints that things will turn out all right. The dual theme of panel 3A is stated by the repeated key verbs ‫“ גאל‬defile” (twice in v. 8, at the beginning of panel 3[i]A) and ‫“ נסה‬test” (twice nearer the close of panel 3[ii]A, at the beginning and end of the speech in vv. 12–13). But first, panel 3A, like panel 2A, links with the preceding panel by repeating a verb, ‫“ וישם‬he determined.” It is not the custom of Hebrew narrative to mark an important transition by means of a clearly adversative conjunction; waw generally does both for “and” and for “but.” So no disjunction is advertised by the waw. Then the verb to which it is linked simply repeats the one that had appeared twice in the previous verse; again, no disjunction is overtly indicated. It transpires, however, that the subject of the verb has changed and so has its meaning. The reappearance of the verb with a different nuance is the more effective after its repetition within v. 7 itself (cf. the three appearances of ‫“ הביא‬bring” in vv. 2–3; also subsequent pointed repetitions of words, often in different contexts or with different nuances, in 2:13, 16, 18 [‫בעא‬, “seek/ask”]; 2:16, 24 [‫“ עלל‬go”]; 2:17, 24 [‫אזל‬, “go”]). With v. 8, for the first time in the book an Israelite becomes the subject of a main verb. Daniel seizes the initiative from the Babylonians, and the story begins the reversal of movement that characterizes ch. 1 and the book as a whole. “Determined on names” (v. 7) was not the usual way to refer to naming, but the repeated use of this expression has prepared the way for a third use of the verb with a rather different sense, by antanaclasis.23 Daniel is still the object of the verb ‫נתן‬, God being the subject and the Babylonians the indirect object (v. 9, cf. v. 2), but there is nothing aggressive or threatening about this giving/making. The initiative of God has Daniel as the grammatical object, but it is Ashpenaz who is now the object of manipulation by Daniel, by the narrator, and by God. The earlier scenes have been all action and have moved quickly. The central 23 Cf. Arnold, “Word Play,” 236–41.

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scene slows the action down and builds up the suspense, reporting on motivation, reflection, and feelings as well as action (vv. 8, 9, 10), and relating conversations rather than reporting speech indirectly (vv. 10–13). The test and the associated move from Ashpenaz to the guardian also slow the action down. Whereas the rest of Dan 1 gives priority to plot rather than to characterization, here it suits the plot to allow Daniel and Ashpenaz to come alive, as we hear of their conflicting inner feelings expressed in their outward exchange. The story becomes not merely a lead-­in to chs. 2–7 but a story in its own right.24 Although the story slows down, much is happening in these few verses. Daniel’s determined action contrasts with that of Ashpenaz (v. 8), and God’s involvement (v. 9) suggests that the story is on the way to a quick resolution. Yet the development it relates turns out to have been a false dawn, and the story now threatens to collapse; suspense is heightened (v. 10). In turn, the threat dissolves as Daniel survives the test of v. 10 by offering the test described in vv. 11–14. The official’s goodwill has hinted that a resolution should be possible, and Daniel’s proposal of a test period takes up this hint. Daniel’s accepting the risk involved in such a test is impressively (under)stated in v. 13b. Brave words modestly expressed are a feature of the trial stories in Daniel (cf. 3:17–18; also 6:10 [11] and the total absence of words on Daniel’s part in 6:10–17 [11–18]); they contrast with the generally explicit and expansive style of dialogue and prayers. The shorter closing panels of the denouement, vv. 15–21, substantially resolve the tension set up by the longer opening ones. Each takes up motifs from the corresponding opening panel; little that is formally new is introduced. Thus vv. 15–16 naturally follow on from vv. 8–14: v. 15 takes up the language of vv. 13–14 (at the end of the ten days, their appearance, look, the young men who eat the king’s supplies), or reverses it (good for grim), or goes beyond it (their bodies look better built), while v. 16 follows on from v. 15 but takes up the language of vv. 8–12 (the guardian, their supplies and the wine they were to drink, give them vegetarian food) or goes beyond it (continued to take off). We were prepared for the test to be successful, but panel 3ii comes to a climax in v. 15 with the test achieving more than we expected. Perhaps panel 3i has the same implication: v. 16 may refer to the guardian’s imposing the vegetarian diet on the other young men (but see n. 16.a). The resolution in panel 3B (vv. 15–16) is thus simpler and shorter than the statement in panel 3A (vv. 8–14); the heart of the story lies in Daniel’s determination to avoid defilement and his bold handling of his masters. The resolution in panel 2B (vv. 17–20), in contrast, is almost as long as the statement in panel 2A (vv. 3–7); it dominates vv. 15–21 as a whole. It doesn’t follow directly from vv. 15–16 but begins resumptively (v. 17) by recalling us to vv. 3–7 in an asyndetic noun phrase (“Now those four young men: God gave 24 Plöger, Daniel, on the passage.

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them”). This reference to God’s involvement, held back from its “natural” place in v. 4, emphasizes the importance of panel 2B. Verse 17 is not explicit on whether it refers to God’s original gift of insight, which lay behind v. 4, to his gift evidenced in the result of their training, or to both; its concern is to clarify a different point, namely that God (not Nebuchadnezzar or Babylon) is the source of insight, whenever it comes. After this opening, vv. 18–19a work, like vv. 15–16, by taking phrases from corresponding earlier verses (at the end, the king said, bring, the chief/head of the palace staff, before the king/Nebuchadnezzar) (v. 18), and by using terms that go beyond these expressions to show that the four did not merely survive their training but triumphed in it (v. 19a). In turn vv. 19b–20, like v. 16, go on from immediate event to further consequences. Once more these consequences are stated first in terms taking up words from panel 2A (v. 19b), then in terms utilizing new expressions which indicate that results again exceeded expectations (v. 20). Yet again, careful choice of expression is combined with syntactical inelegance: ‫“ חכמת בינה‬insightful learning” is an odd construct phrase, ‫“ החרטמים האשפים‬the diviners, the chanters” is asyndetic. Panel 3D (v. 21) in turn briefly closes off (in part) the questions raised in panel 3A by alluding to the moment when people and temple articles would be able to return to Jerusalem (see 2 Chr 36:20–23; Ezra 1:7–11). Thus the chapter opens with Nebuchadnezzar but closes with Cyrus, opens with the beginning of the exile but closes with the beginning of the return, and shows how Daniel links the two.

Setting The story brackets the tough realities of the fall of Jerusalem and the life of exile.25 Its motifs and concerns point toward a setting when exile has become dispersion, where Judahite and foreigner could live together, and where the question of service in a foreign court could be significant (cf. Nehemiah). “Emotionally, Ezekiel never left Palestine,” but this story is told by and for people who have had to do so.26 Admittedly, one cannot read the positive aspect to its portrayal too unequivocally. It is also a setting where the tension between that possibility and the demands of Judahite faith would be a pressing religious question.27 The story would speak to the aspirations and concerns of people in the eastern dispersion with ability and drive who would have been leaders back in Judah, those who might hope to succeed in their foreign environment but were aware of their calling to remain faithful to their Judahite identity.28 25 Cf. Nolan Fewell, The Children of Israel, 117–30. 26 Walters, “Daniel: Book for All Seasons,” 39. 27 Barr, “Daniel,” and Porteous, Daniel, on the chapter. 28 Collins, Daniel with an Introduction to Apocalyptic Literature, 34–36; against Steck, “Weltgeschehen und Gottesvolk im Buche Daniel.”

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For the most part the Judahites who were exiled to Babylon were not ordinary people; “the peasants had been left behind in Judah.”29 They were members of the royal family and the palace staff, priests, and prophets, even though in this foreign environment “these are the dreams of ‘little people’ about how they can win back some power and influence their own and others’ destinies.”30 So the challenges in the book concern the prospects and pressures of people who belong to leadership groups rather than ordinary people.31 Nevertheless, the fact that the stories are about life at court need not mean they were simply composed by or for people at court, and their non-­realistic and hyperbolic form may make it less likely. The stories have often been enjoyed by ordinary people from a distance and have functioned to bolster their trust in their God, their faithfulness to God, and their hope in God. It’s easy to imagine that they were also designed to that end.32 The closing verse presupposes the Persian period, and the chapter makes key use of Persian words. It was evidently composed not before the Persian period. There are no specific pointers to the Greek period, but neither can this be excluded;33 Persian culture continued to be significant then, and the period saw a revival of cuneiform learning in Babylon.34 While the acceptance of pagan names does not clash with a second-­century date, as this practice was not controversial even then, and the concern with assimilation to pagan practices and with dietary defilement could fit that period,35 it does so no better than other times from the exile onward, and there are no concrete pointers to a second-­century date. The openness to serving in the pagan court, to learning from pagan culture, to finding favor with the imperial authorities, and the lack of reference to persecution do not suggest a story written with second-­century Jerusalem in mind. “The issue is not persecution but the search for a viable life-­style amid competing political and religious claims”; further, the stories in Daniel concern themselves with the problems of the individual, whereas the visions focus on the corporate experience and crisis.36 The story has a setting in the actual book of Daniel; indeed, it provides the setting for it, almost constituting an anticipatory midrash on it.37 It introduces the three characters who will appear through the stories, Daniel and his friends, the king, and God. It is hardly necessary to determine who is the central character. It may be useful to see them as fulfilling the roles of protagonist, antagonist, and helper. While each of the stories is self-­contained 29 Gowan, Daniel, on the passage. 30 Mills, “Household and Table,” 409. 31 Cf. Berquist, “Resistance and Accommodation in the Persian Empire.” 32 Cf. Henze, “The Narrative Frame of Daniel.” 33 But see Patterson, “Holding onto Daniel’s Court Tales.” 34 Wacholder, Dawn of Qumran, 212–15; Frye, Heritage of Persia, 143. 35 Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews, 346–47, 460. 36 Hall, “Post-exilic Theological Streams and the Book of Daniel,” 159, 154–56. 37 Plöger, Daniel, and Hartman/Di Lella, Daniel, on the chapter.

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and can be read on its own, unlike the Joseph story whose episodes belong more integrally in the context of the whole, the stories link in various ways.38 There is some forward movement in chs. 1–4 and in chs. 1–6, and some spiral movement in chs. 2–7. Panel 1 sets the book in the context of the seventy years of exile covered by the sequence of stories and visions, from the Babylonian kings via Darius the Mede to Cyrus the Persian.39 Throughout the period of the empires, the people of God live in a tricky threeway relationship with God and with the imperial power. That relationship works harmoniously in Dan 1, but succeeding chapters will portray it involving tension and conflict but also reconciliation. The chapter introduces Shinar, the home of idolatry (Zech 5; cf. ch. 3) and the location of the proud owner of Babel (Gen 11; cf. ch. 4), explains how articles from the Jerusalem temple came to be available for Belshazzar’s idolatrous revelry (ch. 5), and lays the foundation for considering when Jeremiah’s promise of Jerusalem’s restoration would be fulfilled (ch. 9). For the self-­ understanding of what is often called the postexilic period, the experience of exile continued to shape the questions that faith had to address. Daniel thus begins from the moment when that exile began and in anticipation looks to the moment when the seventy years “ended.” The whole period is set within the sovereignty of God.40 Panel 2 explains how the central figures in the book came to be serving in the palace of Babylon, sometimes using Babylonian names, sometimes Israelite ones, associated with the Babylonian advisers but possessing insight far more impressive than theirs, and how Daniel in particular gained his expertise in visions and dreams. As men of discernment (‫משכילים‬, v. 4, cf. v. 17), they embody the insight that will characterize the discerning teachers of the time of final pressure (11:33, 35; 12:3, 10), though there the participle ‫ משכילים‬will have become a quasi-­noun to describe a group of teachers within the community rather than one quasi-­adjective among a number of descriptions. Panel 2 holds the four young men together yet gives Daniel special prominence and thus answers questions raised by the fact that they function largely separately in later stories. Like panel 1B (v. 21), panel 2B (vv. 17–20) looks beyond the occasion of the immediately following stories: v. 17 applies to the book as a whole, vv. 18–19a describes the end of their training, vv. 19b–20 refers to their position at court through the rest of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign. As panel 3 contains the material that makes ch. 1 a story in its own right, 38 On the stories as a collection against the background of a “story-collection genre” in the medieval and ancient world, see T. L. Holm, Of Courtiers and Kings; more briefly, ———, “Daniel 1–6,” in Brant et. al, Ancient Fiction, 149–66. 39 Cf. Yamakazi-Ransom’s study of “Gentile Rulers in the Old Testament and Second Temple Jewish Literature,” in The Roman Empire in Luke’s Narrative, 17–67. 40 Bruce (“Discourse Theme and the Narratives of Daniel”) sees God’s sovereignty as the theme of the book as a whole.

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it relates less explicitly to the other stories in the book, though Daniel’s insistence on avoiding defilement while serving in the pagan court answers a question possibly raised by chs. 2, 4, and 5, while his willingness to stand up to the test in order to maintain his faithfulness introduces the theme of chs. 3 and 6. The story’s central question, then, is “How could these four famous young men have gained such success in the pagan court, without being tainted by it?” And the chapter as a whole endorses the lifestyle of the smart royal courtier41 yet assures us that Daniel and his friends in exile gained success in a way that avoided losing holiness. They proved that holiness was the source of health and that God was the source of discernment and the power behind history.

Comment 1–2 Virtually every word parallels earlier material: see esp. 2 Chr 36:6–7; Jer 20:4–5; 39:1; 46:2; also 2 Chr 35:19 (for ‫מלכות‬, “reign,” a favorite word in Chronicles and Daniel); Gen 12:1–9 and Zech 5:5–11 (for Shinar).42 Daniel replaces the name Yahweh in Jeremiah and Chronicles by ‫“ אדני‬the Lord” and ‫“ האלהים‬God.” The replacement may issue from reverence, but the effect is also to undermine any hint that Yahweh is merely Israel’s national God and the temple is merely Israel’s national shrine, just as Babylon has its gods and shrines. Rather, the titles “the Lord” and “God” with their absolute implications belong only to Yahweh; the exile happened by the act of this sovereign God who is also Israel’s God, not Nebuchadnezzar’s.43 Babylonian records (the Babylonian Chronicles)44 indicate that Jehoiakim’s reign saw several aggressive visits to the Levant by Nebuchadnezzar.45 Neither biblical nor extrabiblical sources require that Jehoiakim was himself taken to Babylon, and extrabiblical sources do not refer to a siege of Jerusalem in his time. Nebuchadnezzar is perhaps called king proleptically in v. 1, as in Jer 46:2. The invasion is presumably the one referred to in Jer 25, Jeremiah’s “seventy years” prophecy that will be taken up in Dan 9, though the date given there is Jehoiakim’s fourth year. The one-­year difference arises with other OT dates through the use of different methods of reckoning,46 whereby the years of a king’s reign can be counted from the new year before his accession, from the accession itself, or from the next new year; the fall of Jerusalem can thus be dated in Nebuchadnezzar’s eighteenth year (3:1 OG; 4:4 [1] OG; Jer 52:29) 41 Collins, Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel, 30. 42 See further Haag, “Israels Exil im Lande Schinar.” 43 See Lacocque, Daniel, and Plöger, Daniel, on the passage. 44 See Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles. 45 See, e.g., Hobbs, 2 Kings, on 2 Kgs 24; Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East 2:590–93. 46 Cf. Bruce, “Chronology of Daniel 1:1”; Wiseman, Notes on Some Problems in the Book of Daniel, 16–18.

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or in his nineteenth (2 Kgs 25:8; Jer 52:12). Here, however, the difference may mean that the date is not intended as a precise one (and vv. 1–2 may be conflating accounts of the subjugations of Jerusalem and the exiles of Judahites). Danielic dates cluster in the first three years of a king’s reign47 and perhaps affirm God’s lordship at key transition points in history, with “first” or “third” being simply concrete ways of saying “at the beginning” or “not long after the beginning.”48 A date can make a more than merely historical point.49 On one hand, the OG dates just mentioned will invite the reader to recall that the image maker of ch. 3, subjected to God’s judgment in ch. 4, is the man who destroyed and pillaged the temple in 587,50 while on the other, the MT’s chronological note opens the book with the beginning of Jeremiah’s seventy years.51 Their literal end comes at the chapter’s close (v. 21; cf. 2 Chr 36:20–23), but in another sense they continue through the period the book as a whole is concerned with (cf. ch. 9). The MT’s note also sets the four young men among the first of the exiles, the elite, the good figs of Jer 24.52 For the temple “articles” (v. 2), see 2 Chr 36:7, 10, 18, and lists related to 587 in Jer 52:17–23 and to 537 in Ezra 1:9–11. The reference to them, coming at the beginning of the book, is the first indicator of a concern with the temple and its worship that runs through both stories and visions in Daniel. This is going to be “a book about the conflict between true worship of the true God, represented by the Temple vessels, and false worship of a false god, represented by Nebuchadnezzar’s temple and god.”53 Many of the articles were made of precious metals (cf. Dan 5:2–3) and would be worthwhile plunder; thus the Babylonian Chronicle refers to tribute. They are also of religious significance, being the Jerusalem temple’s nearest thing to images. Removing them is therefore a sign of the victory of Nebuchadnezzar and his god over the Israelite king and his god. Wars were fought in a god’s name and plunder consequently belonged to him. The temple articles are his spoil. They are taboo and are put into the “treasury” that belongs to a temple for this purpose: see 2 Chr 5:1, referring back to 1 Chr 18:11 (also Josh 6:19, 24), and more specifically 2 Chr 36:18; Isa 39:2, 4; 45:3; though according to 2 Chr 36:7, Nebuchadnezzar took the articles to his ‫“( היכל‬palace”?). Temples were fortresses, treasuries, and museums as well as sanctuaries.54

47 Plöger, Daniel, on the passage. 48 See Segal, “Numerals in the OT.” 49 But further on ways of making the chronology work, see Wilson, Studies in the Book of Daniel; Mercer, “Daniel 1:1”; Hill, “Daniel,” 45–46. 50 Cf. Bruce, “The Oldest Greek Version of Daniel,” 27–28. 51 Cf. Larssen, “When Did the Babylonian Captivity Begin?” 52 So Calvin, Daniel 1–6, 20. 53 Bergsma, “Cultic Kingdoms in Conflict,” 48; cf. Vogel, “Cultic Motifs and Themes in the Book of Daniel,” 27; ———, The Cultic Motif in the Book of Daniel, e.g., 72–77; Bohnet, “Kultbezüge in Danielbuch.” 54 Buchanan, Daniel, 20.

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Shinar as a term for Babylon, the southeastern part of modern Iraq, is an archaism in the OT (e.g., Gen 10:10; 11:2; 14:1, 9; then only Josh 7:21; Isa 11:11; Zech 5:11) and outside it (corresponding to Šanhara in second-­ millennium cuneiform texts).55 In the OT, the name especially suggests a place of false religion, self-­w ill, and self-­aggrandizement (Gen 11:1–9; Zech 5:11). “His god” is probably Marduk/Bel (cf. 4:8 [5]; Bel and the Snake; Jer 50:2; 51:44), less likely Nabu (cf. “Nebuchadnezzar”). Both gods appear in Isa 46:1, but Nebuchadnezzar’s inscriptions refer most to Marduk, Nabu being his father’s god. 3–5 Taking young members of the leadership class to Babylon might have various objects: to bring home Judah’s vassal status in relation to Babylon (not to Egypt, whom Judah had courted); to discourage it from rebelling; to Babylon-­ize its future leadership; to add to the manpower of temple and palace. Educating them in Babylonian learning and giving them a place in the court presumably has the latter aims in mind;56 the effective contribution they will offer in the court, however, turns out to go beyond what Nebuchadnezzar would be expecting. While the OT suggests that the Judahites taken to Babylon were the significant people such as members of the administration, priests, and prophets, nevertheless Judahites in Babylon were not well off.57 They were a little like graduates from Asian countries coming to the United States and finding that their qualifications were not recognized. For most people, then, the stories might express how they wish things could be. The young men are to be Israelites: the qualification “some of the royal family” requires them to be genealogically Judahite (cf. v. 6), so Israelite is being used in the theological sense, to mean “members of Yahweh’s people” (as in Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah). They are “the flower of Jewish youth.”58 As their royal background should imply, they are to be such and will have already received some education to prepare them for political life. Four substantially synonymous terms are used to describe what this education should have given them (v. 4): ‫“ השכיל‬give attention to,” “have insight,” “teach”; ‫“ חכם‬be smart,” “be insightful,” “understand”; ‫“ ידע‬know,” “acknowledge,” “be skilled”; and ‫“ בין‬observe,” “discern,” “perceive.” In Daniel the second of these roots, the OT’s most common term for smartness (“wisdom”), comes only in chs. 1–6.59 The description recalls that of Joseph in Gen 41:33, 39. In combination, the four terms convey an impression of young men well 55 See Güterbock, “Sargon of Akkad,” 3; Zadok, “The Origin of the Name Shinar.” 56 S. M. Paul compares the process of induction portrayed in one of the Mari letters (“The Mesopotamian Background of Daniel 1–6,” in Collins/Flint (eds.,), The Book of Daniel, 1:55–68 [62–65]). 57 Cf. Newsom, Daniel, and her references. 58 Towner, Daniel, 21. 59 See Whybray, The Intellectual Tradition in the OT, 101–4.

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versed in the practical learning embodied in a book such as Proverbs. While such learning is not overtly directed to the education of palace and court, it would naturally be the special province of the king and others responsible for state affairs, and it is embodied above all in the royal figure of Solomon. In the Mesopotamian court, one may compare the role of Ahiqar as counselor and his Proverbs-­like teaching.60 The terms are also later brought into connection with supernaturally endowed, revelatory discernment, and in this context education in the learning of the Kasdites presumably refers not merely to the language of Babylon, a dialect of Akkadian (though they would also need that knowledge),61 but also to the script and contents of the cuneiform texts preserved among the Kasdite scholars, which formed the basis of their work as court counselors (cf. the recurrence of ‫“ ספר‬literature” in v. 17).62 The Kasdites or Kaldites (the switch from s´ to l sometimes happens in the Akkadian language) were a people from southern Babylon to whom Nebuchadnezzar’s father Nabopolassar belonged. They were the ruling caste in Babylon in the sixth century. In the OT, however, “Kasdites” is the regular word for the people of Babylon in general, though it was not used with this meaning by the Babylonians themselves. In Daniel, it also refers specifically to the Babylonian scholars, though again the word was not used with this meaning by the Babylonians; outside the OT, it first appears in Herodotus (Histories 1.181–83). Given the OT’s idiosyncratic use of the term, it might easily have been used in this way among Judahites even in the sixth century, as well as in the Persian period (cf. v. 21). Strabo 16.1.6 (first century BC) uses the term both to refer to the scholars and to an ethnic group, its original sense. There is no reason to infer from usage such as Daniel’s and Strabo’s that the scholars were Kasdite/Kaldite by race.63 The Babylonian scholars combined many of the functions fulfilled by counselors, prophets, and priests in Israel, though they are to be distinguished from ministers who were more especially concerned with the temple and its worship. They were the guardians of the sacred traditional lore developed and preserved in Mesopotamia over centuries, covering natural history, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, myth, and chronicle. Much of this learning had a practical purpose, being designed to be applied to life by means of astrology, oneirology, hepatoscopy and the study of other organs, rites of purification, sacrifice, incantation, exorcism and other forms of divination. The practice of divination presupposes that supernatural forces sometimes reveal events to come or reveal the significance of events that happen—­either on their own initiative or in response to human questioning—­in the way they 60 ANET 427–30; Hays, Hidden Riches, 97–112. 61 Collins notes that the use of “Chaldean” to refer to Aramaic was based on a misconception (Daniel, 138). 62 Cf. Koch, Daniel 1–4, 44. 63 Against Rowley, “The Chaldaeans in the Book of Daniel,” 425–26

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arrange natural phenomena such as the stars or the weather or the form or behavior of different creatures. Such phenomena can thus constitute warnings of coming events, which one can take steps to avoid by apotropaic rites. Or they can offer explanations of illnesses or other experiences, from which the subject can escape by such means as purification rites, exorcism, incantation, and prayer. The library Asshurbanipal assembled in the seventh century is dominated by divinatory texts that record phenomena of various kinds and the events they had presaged and by linguistic texts that enabled Akkadian-­ speaking scholars to use such texts written in the traditional Sumerian; many further texts consist in incantations, prayers, and conjurations for exorcism and protection. Many date from centuries before Asshurbanipal; others continued to be written and collected through the Babylonian, Persian, and Hellenistic periods. By applying their learning in such ways to questions affecting king and nation, the scholars fulfilled their role as the king’s advisers and protectors whom he would consult before taking any action. The stories in Dan 2; 4; and 5 have this activity as their background (cf. also Isa 44:25; 47:13; Esth 1:13), while Dan 1:3–4 may reflect an awareness of the requirements of descent, physical wholeness, and training that they had to fulfill.64 The palace where the young men would serve included “the throne room in which the king received ambassadors and other visitors, the large courtyard in front of it, and a special hall, perhaps used for official banquets. . . . Living quarters for the king and his entourage, as well as storage rooms, were built around these principal areas.” Into it “poured the tribute of subjugated and even of distant peoples, the yield of royal estates, and the products of royal workshops. From its storehouses had to be fed and clad, according to their status, the members of the royal family, the administrative officials of country and palace, the personnel of the royal household, the standing army and a host of serfs, slaves, and others who depended on the palace for their living.” A list of the personnel of Nebuchadnezzar’s court pictures him “surrounded by the administrators of his palace and of his realm, by bureaucrats and vanquished kings who lived at his court.”65 Regarding provision for exiled foreigners from the palace, the Babylonian provision records mention of Jehoiachin, other Judahites, and other foreign nationals.66 Second Kings 25:29–30 also uses the phrase “a daily allowance”; and other passages speak in related terms (see Gen 43:34; 2 Sam 11:8; Dan 11:26). 6–7 The Hebrew names are all known from a variety of OT contexts 64 On the scholars and their work, see, e.g., La divination en Mésopotamie ancienne; Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia; also “A Babylonian Diviner’s Manual”; Saggs, The Greatness That Was Babylon; Sachs, “Babylonian Horoscopes”; Lambert, “Dingir.šà.dib.ba. Incantations”; Leichty, The Omen Series Šumma Izbu. 65 Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia, 105, 104, 101; Kuhrt provides a more recent general picture in The Ancient Near East 2:603–10. 66 ANET, 308b; DOTT, 84–86.

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(see Form). They are not distinctively priestly and the four young men have no specifically priestly traits;67 the portrayal in vv. 3–5 is royal. Each name lacks a patronymic (like the names in Neh 8 and 10) and each is theophoric: Daniyye’l, “God is my judge”; H · ananyah, “Yah has been gracious”; Miša’el, “Who is what God is?”; ‘Azaryah, “Yah has helped.” Giving (new) names as a sign of (new) ownership and thus (new) destiny68 was common court practice: cf. Joseph/Zaphnat-­paneah, Eliakim/Jehoiakim, Mattaniah/ Zedekiah, Hadassah/Esther, Joshua/Jason (2 Macc 4:7). Zerubbabel’s and Mordecai’s Hebrew names are not even mentioned in the OT; the use of a foreign name could be quite acceptable, and ch. 3 uses only the three young men’s Babylonian names. There is thus a contrast between the giving of a theophoric name to replace a neutral one (Jacob-­Israel, Hoshea-­Joshua)69 and the replacing of an Israelite theophoric name by one of alien significance (see n. 7.b–­b). The three friends’ two sets of names appear together only here. As the Babylonian names come on their own in ch. 3 (also 2:49), in the apparently older material, the Hebrew names come on their own in 1:11, 19; 2:17. 8 Since Daniel and the other three are not the only exiles undergoing the training (see v. 6, “Among them were . . .”), Daniel’s decision presumably involves standing firm when other Israelites do not; the youths with whom they are compared in vv. 10–16, 19 are likewise presumably Israelites as well as Babylonians and other foreigners. Daniel’s concern about defilement corresponds to a characteristic feature of Leviticus and Ezekiel, though it is a motif also present elsewhere in the OT. He uses the verb ‫גאל‬, a mostly Second Temple word, but one having a similar range of meanings to the more common ‫( חלל‬Dan 11:31) and ‫טמא‬. Underlying references to defilement is the assumption that some objects and activities are proper to some groups but not to others (e.g., to the nations but not to Israel, or to laypeople but not to priests). The distinctiveness of the smaller group is safeguarded by its avoiding these objects and activities. Holiness/cleanness/defilement are thus theological or ritual categories, though they can also be applied to moral and religious activities because murder or worshiping other gods, as well as contact with a corpse or eating pork, defiles a person or a people and threatens their identity. For Israelites, living in a foreign country is an inherently defiling experience (cf. Hos 9:3–4; Amos 7:17) because the country belongs to other deities and its people worship them. Various considerations might lead Judahites in exile or dispersion specifically to fear defilement through what they ate.70 67 Against Gammie, “Intention and Sources of Daniel i–vi,” 283; Lacocque, Daniel, on the passage. 68 Lacocque, Daniel, on the passage. 69 Cf. Eissfeldt, “Renaming in the OT.” 70 On this discussion, see Towner, “Daniel 1 in the Context of the Canon.”

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a. The palace’s food and drink would likely come from the temple after being offered to the deity, as in Israel it would have been offered to Yahweh: cf. 5:3–4; Bel and the Snake; also Exod 34:15; 1 Cor 8–10; Acts 15:20, 29; Rev 2:14, 20. But this problem would arise with vegetarian food, which Daniel accepts: compare the offering of flour as well as meat and wine in Bel and the Snake 3. This consideration thus leads elsewhere to unease about all pagan food (Jdt 10:5; 12:2; Additions to Esther 14:17; Tobit 1:10–11). Daniel does not refuse to eat everything from the royal table; in this sense he is no more scrupulous than Jehoiachin, who apparently accepts the king’s provision without the scriptural text suggesting disapproval (2 Kgs 25:29–30).71 b. The palace would not observe rules in the Torah about which animals can be eaten and how they are to be killed and cooked: see Lev 11; Deut 12:23–25; compare the fear expressed in Ezek 4:9–17 (esp. v. 14), in the exile; 1 Macc 1:47, 62–63; 2 Macc 6:18–7:42, during the Antiochene persecution (cf. 4 Macc 5; Acts 15:20, 29). But the reference to wine as well as meat suggests this concern is not the focus. To infer that Daniel exemplifies “the most minute attention to the Divine Law”72 reads into Daniel a law-­centered piety of which there is no evidence in the context to which Daniel belongs. If Daniel is concerned about “the law” (the term does not appear here), it is only in the broad sense of Israel’s religion. c. Meat and wine are festival food, and abstaining from it is a sign of mourning or penitence; it would be appropriate in exile: cf. 10:3; Isa 22:13; T. Reu. 1.10; T. Jud. 15.4. Further, meat and wine suggest food fit for nobility, whereas the four young men ask for peasant food. But this understanding would not account for Daniel’s reference to defilement. d. Abstention from meat and wine was an ascetic practice among various groups, including the Essenes and the Hasidim.73 One reason for such abstention is preparation for a divine revelation (2 Esd 9:24; 12:51).74 Yet no such ascetic significance is attached to Daniel’s self-­denial here; contrast 10:2–3, where he takes on a similar diet in the course of seeking a word from God (see also 9:3).75 Daniel is not refraining from something good in order to seek God, but refraining from something incompatible with commitment to God; he is not seeking an inner freedom but an outward distinctiveness. 71 Cf. Bentzen, Daniel, on the passage. On everyday food and on sacrifices in Babylon, see Saggs, The Greatness That Was Babylon, 172–76, 351–54; Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia, 42–45, 188–93. 72 Bevan, Daniel, on the passage. 73 Cf. Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus, 387 (ET 1:213); cf. Cranfield, Romans, 694. 74 See J. Behm, TWNT 2:687–88 (ET 690). 75 Cf. Russell, Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic, 169–73)

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e. Accepting the king’s provisions would indicate dependence on him, entry into a covenant-­style relationship with him, becoming his courtiers, and accepting a commitment to supporting him as he supported them (cf. 11:26).76 “Control of food . . . is symbolic of power.”77 But it is not clear why this should be spoken of as defilement; and anyway, the young men do accept a position as the king’s courtiers. f. The Mishnah infers from Lev 11:37–38 that grain does not become unclean through contact with meat as long as the grain is kept dry (m. Makshirin 1:1; m. Uqtzin 3:1; with Danby’s notes). But it is not clear that Lev 11:37–38 refers to grain for eating or that Daniel alludes to that understanding of it. g. Pagan food and drink may simply epitomize that pagan uncleanness associated with exile (cf. Isa 52:11). h. More generally, what we eat and drink, like what we wear and how we speak, commonly constitute an outward expression of our self-­identity and commitments. They are particularly significant for groups in exile or under persecution.78 In this “liminal phase” of their preparation for service in the Babylonian court the Judahites create a strategy to sustain their identity.79 Daniel’s abstinence symbolizes his avoiding assimilation. 9–14 The romance and scriptural motif of the hero in exile getting on surprisingly good terms with imperial officials (see Form) perhaps contrasted with the usual experience of ordinary people in general and of Judahites in particular and was thus appreciated as expressing what such people would like to experience.80 It was really his own head that Daniel was risking.81 The reply by the head of staff (v. 10) need not constitute a refusal: it raises a problem, but it leaves open the possibility of agreeing to Daniel’s request if the problem can be overcome. Its implication then is, “Yes, if it doesn’t involve me and if it doesn’t make the king ask questions.”82 Verses 11–15 meet these conditions. Talk of forfeiting one’s head to the king could be metaphorical, like the expression “on your head be it.” But in light of the picture of Nebuchadnezzar in 2:12; 3:19–20, it is entirely reasonable to take the fear literally, as Syr. does with its “cut off my head”; compare the Red Queen’s “Off with his head” in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. There are few biblical references to or stories about people testing other 76 Baldwin, Daniel, on the passage; cf. Soesilo, “Why Did Daniel Reject the King’s Delicacies?” 77 Smith-Christopher, “Daniel,” 40: see further 40–42. 78 Cf. Lacocque, Daniel, on the passage. 79 See Venter, “A Study of Space in Daniel 1.” 80 Cf. Wallis’s account of a slave’s failure to gain his liberty in Babylon, “Aus dem Leben jüdischen Sklaven in Babylon.” 81 Cf. Calvin, Daniel 1–6, 35. 82 See Newsom, Daniel, 49.

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people (v. 11–12). For ‫נסה‬, there is only 1 Kgs 10:1 = 2 Chr 9:1, though also ‫ בחן‬in the Joseph story (Gen 42:15–16). “Ten days” does not imply that ten is a symbolic number, nor is ten days a common period for a trial.83 Ten is merely a standard round number (cf. v. 18; 7:7; Gen 31:7; Num 14:22; Neh 4:12; Job 19:3; Zech 8:23; Jub. 19.8; T. Jos. 2.7; m. ’Abot 5:1–6), and ten days simply suggests a period short enough not to arouse suspicion yet long enough for effects to be seen (cf. Gen 24:55).84 15–16 In T. Jos. 3.4 Joseph confesses, “I fasted for those seven years, and seemed to the Egyptians like someone who was living richly, for those who fast for God’s sake receive graciousness of countenance.” The language itself corresponds closely and uniquely to that used to describe the cattle in Gen 41:2, 18! 17–20 The resumptive opening to v. 17 indicates that panel 2B begins here; v. 17 does not follow from v. 16 as a reward of faithfulness or a fruit of asceticism—­indeed the endowments of v. 17 may have been given earlier. One would have assumed that in v. 4 the terms for knowledge, discernment, expertise, and insight referred to something rational, experiential, and administrative. Thus the term for expertise, conventionally translated “wisdom,” commonly denotes “a matrix of qualities including aptitude, technical skill, intuitive good sense, and experience—­demonstrated, for instance, in navigating a ship in open waters or crafting fine art from metal, wood, or precious stones.”85 But expertise and insight now suggest supernaturally revealed understanding, and in this connection they will be key terms in the following chapters. The ideals of court and school are thus brought into contact with a characterization of Daniel as a man of revelatory insight or “mantic wisdom.”86 The story hardly sees visions and dreams as a lower gift than prophecy;87 its stress lies on the excellence of what Daniel is given, which parallels the experience of Joseph and other heroes and corresponds to the demands of the contexts in which Daniel has to function.88 One might also compare the description of a prophet in Num 12:6. If anything, the story implies that dream interpretation is the highest of the gifts.89 Jesus will in due course note that no one but God’s insight has sent the prophets; prophecy can be understood as insight, insight as prophecy.90 83 Against Bentzen, Daniel, on the passage; he refers to Rev 2:10, but it is surely dependent on Dan 1. 84 See Brongers, “Die Zehnzahl in der Bibel und ihrer Umwelt”; P. Hauck, TWNT 2:35–36 (ET 36–37). 85 Hill, “Daniel,” 56. 86 Müller, “Magisch-mantische Weisheit und die Gestalt Daniels,” 86; see the comments on Streams of Tradition behind Daniel in the Conclusion to this commentary. On dream interpretation, see further chapter 2 Comment. 87 Against Montgomery, Daniel, on the passage. 88 Young, The Prophecy of Daniel, on the passage. 89 Cf. Koch, Daniel 1–4, 71. 90 Cf. Koch, Daniel 1–4, 78. See further Grabbe, “Daniel: Sage, Seer . . . and Prophet?”

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21 The reference to Cyrus’ first year may indicate that ch. 1 originally introduced not more than chs. 1–9 (see 10:1; cf. Jer 1:1–3 in relation to less than the whole of Jeremiah). But the inference is hazardous, since the concern of panel 1 is to reach from one end to the other of Babylonian dominance. It compares with 2 Chr 36:20–23; Ezra 1, with their reference to the temple articles being returned at this date. Daniel’s subsequent continuing at court after this year is neither implied91 nor precluded (for the ‫“ עד‬until” cf. Ps 110:1; 112:8).92 The story’s concern is rather to assure its hearers that Daniel (and the temple articles)93 lived safely through their long exile: and so may its hearers live through theirs (ch. 9). It thus parallels the encouraging conclusions to other chapters.

Explanation 1–2 The destiny of independent Judah was determined in the reign of Josiah: theologically, when he could not root out the paganism of Judah’s religious life; politically, when he could not bolster ailing Assyria’s hegemony in Mesopotamia. Assyria was replaced by the Kasdite dynasty in Babylon, under Nabopolassar (625–605) and his great son Nebuchadnezzar II (604–562), who sealed the fate of Assyria (and Judah) by his victory at Karkemish just before his father’s death and just after Josiah’s.94 The reigns of Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah are thus stories of defeat, humiliation, submission, and exile at the hands of Egypt and Babylon. The city that Israel called “the perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole world” (Ps 48:2 [3]) is blockaded, assaulted, defeated, raped, and pillaged by alien, pagan hands and feet. The sanctuary that David and Solomon had dreamed of and built and that Yahweh had undertaken to treat as his home is desecrated and torn apart. Its furnishings are transported if they can be carried (destroyed if they cannot) and taken to grace and to glorify the shrines of pagan gods hundreds of miles away in a city that prophets had declared was ripe for judgment and whose name stands for human achievement, glory, power, and pride. The royal line that had reigned in Jerusalem for 400 years, back almost to the time of the first Nebuchadnezzar six dynasties ago in Babylon, that line to which God had committed himself in perpetuity, has become a series of puppet kings to be bullied, maneuvered, and moved about by one whose name will also henceforth stand for worldly achievement, glory, power, and might (so that pretenders after the Babylonian throne will adopt it). To all appearances, the God of Jerusalem has been

91 Hammer (Daniel, on the passage) suggests he was in retirement at 10:1. 92 Poole, Annotations, on the passage. 93 See Ackroyd, “The Temple Vessels.” 94 On Nebuchadnezzar, see e.g., Wiseman, Nebuchadrezzar and Babylon.

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defeated by the gods of Babylon. Removing the possessions of the Jerusalem temple and taking them to a temple in Babylon encourages this impression. Yahweh’s personal “god-­space” has been successfully invaded. He was unable to protect it.95 So “our story begins at the end of another story.”96 Daniel begins with dates in terms of an Israelite king, but henceforth the dates will relate to the reigns of a Babylonian or Persian king. “The paradigm of traditional Judean life has been shifted, and there is no immediate hope or promise that it will return.”97 “It was the end of an era and the beginning of a new one.”98 Even though the exile involved a relatively small number of people, it was “a shattering of religious identity and spiritual hope.”99 This event, potentially as devastating for Judah’s self-­understanding as it is for its bricks and mortar, challenges its people of faith to a deep and wide-­ranging quest after its significance and after reactions appropriate to it. The responses affirmed within the OT agree that the fall of Jerusalem is not actually to be explained by Yahweh’s impotence or inactivity. Nor, as many people today might assume, was it merely the chance outworking of political (and personality) factors. It was the deliberate act of Israel’s own God. While it was Nebuchadnezzar’s idea to come to Jerusalem, it was Yahweh’s idea to give it up to him. Nebuchadnezzzar was the ax, but Yahweh was the one wielding it (Isa 10:15).100 Contrary to the impression one might have derived from v. 1, “Daniel’s God was not asleep but in full command of the situation—­he is ‘the Lord.’ ”101 A “cosmic deployment” was involved in what happened to Judah.102 “It was like some ghastly time-­warp, as if God had put history in reverse and taken Israel right back before Abraham was even heard of, back to the land which God had called Abraham to leave.”103 The book of Daniel thus opens on a despondent note. Not only has Jerusalem fallen; it was Yahweh who made it happen. “It is the end of a world.”104 Can Yahweh be worshiped any more? What, then, is the significance of his action? Often in the OT the fall of Jerusalem is seen as Yahweh’s holy and jealous response to the apostasy, neglect, disorder, and complacency of Israel’s life. Yet Dan 1 makes no reference to the sins of preexilic generations, perhaps because it presupposes a 95 On the binary relationship of Judah-Babylon and Jerusalem-Shinar, see Nel, “Function of Space in Daniel 1”; and Mills’s comments on “border crossing” (“Household and Table,” 412). 96 Longman, Daniel, 43; cf. Nolan Fewell, Circle of Sovereignty, 13. 97 Hebbard, Reading Daniel, 55, 56. 98 Wright, Hearing the Message of Daniel, 21. 99 Sumner, “Daniel,” 121. 100 Theodoret, Daniel, 18–19. 101 Miller, Daniel, 57. 102 Alomía, Daniel 2:15. 103 Wright, Hearing the Message of Daniel, 24. 104 Berrigan, Daniel, 4.

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postexilic perspective (v. 21), perhaps because that apostasy hardly explains the presence in Babylon of godly young men such as Daniel and his friends. These young men in exile, and the later generations to which the book speaks as people experiencing an exile far longer than originally envisaged (9:2, 24), acknowledge the waywardness they share with the rest of Israel (9:3–19), but this waywardness is not appealed to here as the explanation for the exile. That event is given no explanation except in terms of the hand of God (v. 2). A mysterious initiative on God’s part lies behind the extraordinary sequence of events comprised by Nebuchadnezzar’s expedition, his blockade of Jerusalem, Jehoiakim’s defeat, the plundering of the temple, and the glorifying of Babylonian idols. Nebuchadnezzar is set over against Jehoiakim, but more pointedly “the Lord” or “my Lord”105 is set over against “his god.” It looked as if “his god” had defeated “my Lord.” But Jehioakim and Nebuchadnezzar’s god fade from the story. Only the Lord and Nebuchadnezzar henceforth feature. And the Lord is the real power, the one who keeps “giving,” even though Nebuchadnezzar never realizes it. For Judahites in Babylon, this explanation was vague and it could be puzzling, but as a place to rest, it could be secure. Their story looks as if it has come adrift from the story of the people of God, but it has not really done so. They are still within the sphere of his activity, even though it does not look like it. They are not mere pawns on a political and geographical chessboard. To be in the hand of Nebuchadnezzar is not to be out of the control of God. The story of God’s acts in history has not come to an end. The presence of the Jerusalem temple vessels in Babylon (safe in a temple treasury there!) may itself even offer quiet testimony to the fact that God is still at work, his purpose intact, even though it is now being pursued in a surprising way in a surprising place.106 This fact about God is an important context for the experiences Daniel and his friends are to have on arriving in Babylon and over future years. It is what makes it possible to tell the story at all. The articles from the Jerusalem temple are put into the shrine of the Babylonian gods as if the latter had won them. Actually the God of Israel had given them to Nebuchadnezzar; this God is in control. The affirmation of God’s involvement raises questions as well as answers them. Of course the Lord has the right and power to do as he wishes with what belongs to him. Yet handing over king and belongings to an alien overlord is a puzzling action. What are articles from the house of God (the only real God—­the noun has no suffix or qualifier to relativize it) doing in the house of a Babylonian god? The scandal is underlined by the ancient versions referring to it as Nebuchadnezzar’s idol-­house. What happens here is quite different from what happened on an earlier occasion when symbols of Yahweh’s 105 See the note. 106 Koch, “Die Weltreiche im Danielbuche,” 830.

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presence were taken into exile (1 Sam 5–6; 2 Sam 6:6; cf. the warnings of Exod 19:21; Num 4:15, 20). The incident has opened up questions that will need answers before the story is over. 3–7 When Nebuchadnezzar came to the Levant and went back to Babylon, he took with him not only things but people. A group of young Israelites, for the moment silent, faceless, nameless, helpless objects for manipulating by the Babylonian state, are to be taken, taught, provided for, trained, and renamed in this alien environment. Trundled off to a foreign land, they are placed in the charge of a foreign official with a foreign name, are called by foreign titles, and are allocated a foreign education, foreign diet, and foreign names for themselves to prepare them to serve in a foreign court. Being propelled into exile is an experience of alienness, incomprehension, and abhorrence. In such circumstances, the commitment of faith might triumph, or at least survive, but it might wilt. Nebuchadnezzar’s renaming of Eliakim as Jehoiakim makes his name explicitly Yahwistic but presupposes that the main point about renaming is that it is an expression of authority. The king owned the king and he owns the young men; they are his servants.107 Nebuchadnezzar might have expected that the despondency caused by the fall of Jerusalem and their loss of their status and prospects there would give way to positive anticipation concerning their own prospects, and the situation and the implicit attitude of the four young men is indeed quite different from that suggested by Ps 137.108 But the general picture of the king’s action “unveils the colonizing strategy of the colonizer (Nebuchadnezzar) on the colonized (Israelites).”109 Deportation, education in the dominant culture and language, imposing names, and diet are the tools of empire.110 Though their provision of food might be better than that of siege conditions in Jerusalem, “we have therefore no cause to praise him for generosity.”111 “The triumphant imperial government offers scholarships to the brightest and the best among the vanquished,” but “the scholarships are reserved for those who are most likely to benefit the government directly.”112 And “indoctrination” is the means of achieving this end.113 “The entire cultural heritage of the Kaldeans” was to form part of the privileged young men’s education so that they would be useful to Nebuchadnezzar.114 Yet in these events might lie seeds of hope, a hope encouraged by stimuli toward recollection of earlier events and earlier Scriptures, which speak of life under alien pressures. Not long after an Assyrian chief of staff went to 107 Cf. Newsom, Daniel, 47. 108 Cf. Hebbard, Reading Daniel, 61. 109 Chia, “On Naming the Subject,” 175. 110 Sang Tin Uk, “Daniel,” 37–38. 111 Calvin, Daniel 1–6, 25. 112 Seow, Daniel, 23. 113 Kirkpatrick, Competing for Honor, 41. 114 Alomía, Daniel 2:21: nicely though misleadingly, the Spanish is bagaje cultural.

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Jerusalem, Isaiah told Hezekiah that his own sons would end up as eunuchs/ members of the palace staff in Babylon (Isa 36:2; 39:5–7), and that prophecy is now fulfilled.115 It was a word of judgment, but the context of God’s judgment is at least a context of meaning rather than one of meaningless disorder. A century after Hezekiah, when Jerusalem fell, a Babylonian chief of staff was among those who released Jeremiah from jail after the capture of Jerusalem (Jer 39:13); acting on Nebuchadnezzar’s behalf, Ashpenaz ensures that the fate of the royal family on that occasion (Jer 39:5–6) is not their fate here. Further, long ago at the beginning of Israel’s story a handsome young man was taken off against his will into a foreign country and put into the charge of a leading member of the palace staff; Joseph proved himself a man of insight and discernment and took his place in the royal court without compromising his faith—­and he, too, had received a foreign name (Gen 39:1–6; 41:39–46). The story that began by raising questions about faith thus goes on to raise questions about ambition or about life at court in a pagan culture. H. R. Niebuhr analyzed five views of the relationship between Christ and culture.116 At two extremes are the attitudes that either totally oppose these or assimilate them. Other attitudes see Christ as the fulfillment of the ideals that culture perceives but does not achieve, or see Christ and culture as making legitimate demands that stand in tension with one another, or see Christ as bringing the conversion of culture. The relationship between faith and culture is a question running through the OT. In different contexts the people of God acknowledge other cultural patterns without being significantly affected by them, or confront other cultural patterns that seem destructive and threatening, or let them influence it, both to its enrichment and to its debasement. The exile is a fruit of that debasement, and it naturally gives strength to a purist movement that emphasizes the distinctive features of Israel’s culture such as the sabbath, food laws, circumcision, and other topics stressed by Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Such a purist movement would speak with particular force in Babylon itself, where extra pressures drive Israel into assimilation to a pagan culture. Those pressures are overtly placed on the young exiles among the royalty and the nobility, who are educated in Babylonian religio-­political lore in order that they may join the king’s staff. That education means sharing in the life (specifically the food) of the palace and receiving names that suggest the service of foreign gods rather than the God of Israel. The provision of education, food, and names places them under powerful cultural forces. Nebuchadnezzar is attempting to turn the next generation of Israel (in the persons of its royal leaders) into good Babylonians. Nebuchadnezzar wants Israelites, members of a nation he had defeated and intends to keep under control; members of the royalty and the nobility, 115 Cf. Hippolytus, Daniel 1.9 116 See his Christ and Culture.

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able to exercise an influence on Judah in general, by their presence or by their absence; young men, with more potential and less prejudice; flawless and handsome men to grace his court; men whose capability, learning, knowledge, and discernment are already proved. But he is thus insisting on young men who belong to God’s chosen people and to the royal clan to which the Lord committed himself in perpetuity. Handsome and lacking shortcomings, they resemble David’s one-­t ime heir apparent, Absalom (2 Sam 14:25). Learned, knowledgeable, and discerning, they resemble David himself (1 Sam 16:12, 18; 18:5, 14–15) and the son who actually succeeded him and became the paradigm of learning and discernment in Israel (1 Kgs 5:9–14 [4:29–34]). They possess the attributes as well as the background of royalty. Nebuchadnezzar has thus chosen the best men, but also the worst, to seek to reeducate into men of the (Babylonian) world. To both Israelites and Babylonians, politics, learning, and religious commitment were interwoven; the notion of value-­free insight had not been conceived. While both their traditions include many observations on successful living and morality that lack overt reference to God, such observations presuppose a context in the faith of their respective religions. The Israelites were thus to be educated in the learning of the caste of priest-­counselors who served the Babylonian god into whose temple the trophies from the Lord’s temple had been placed. Babylonian diviners would pray to their gods before practicing their craft: they were concerned to discover what the gods were revealing. Worldly learning had many insights, but it was a potential threat to Israelite faith because of its relationship with Babylonian religion. Israelite learning was a threat to Nebuchadnezzar’s policy for court development, for a parallel reason. Nebuchadnezzar was looking for natural intelligence that could be developed by and adapted to his nation’s learning. But the foundation of Israelite insight is the worship of Israel’s God. If the Israelite princes and people of rank are particularly wise, learned, and discerning, that marks them out as also particularly committed to him. At the same time, the description places them in a tradition that had been accustomed to manifesting a discriminating openness to the learning of other peoples. A smart person knows how to learn from the insight of other peoples without being overcome by it. The story’s stance in relation to Babylonian expertise is thus different from that of Isa 40–55 (see esp. 47:9–13 for terms used in Daniel, though Daniel makes strikingly little specific reference to astrology). The stories do not portray a religious conflict between two purportedly divine revelations. Their contrast is between Israel’s divine insight and the merely human insight of Babylon. Babylon is thus as radically belittled as it is in Isa 40–55. The smart person also knows the power of laughter. The possibility that the outward renaming of the four Israelite young men might lead to their inner backsliding is undermined by the way their new names are reported.

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Belteshazzar, Shadrak, Meshak, and Abed Nego are all grotesque, silly names, which make fun of the gods whom they are supposed to honor. Like Zerubbabel and Mordecai, the four can use their foreign names without worrying about them, perhaps on the same basis that Paul can eat meat sacrificed to idols—­because the idol is really nothing. 8 By military defeat, geographical displacement, and cultural flooding the Babylonians have sought to manipulate the Israelites, as humanly helpless (though not godless or witless) victims of their will. Ashpenaz has just now been deciding on names for Daniel and his friends; but now Daniel does some deciding for himself. We wonder what will happen to Israelite youth and insight when it is thrust into exile and taught Kasdite. Will a group of mere youths be able to endure Nebuchadnezzar’s test?117 We hoped that the qualities of those young men would mean that things would turn out all right; now Daniel gives us the first concrete indication that it will be so, showing himself to be a worthy member of this elite.118 The young exiles cease to be faceless ciphers and helpless victims. Daniel seizes the initiative from the Babylonians. “Daniel and his friends studied the Babylonian curriculum and served in the Babylonian court. Yet Daniel did so while implicitly critiquing a culture that supported a government committed to conquest and colonization.”119 Daniel has no genealogy, and nothing explains his emergence at this point. Moses emerges from self-­caused obscurity because Yahweh takes an initiative; Daniel emerges from nowhere because he takes an initiative. He does so because he (alone) is prepared to say his “sturdy ‘no.’ ”120 In Daniel’s “magnificent refusal” on the basis of the conviction that “the food was fit for a king, but . . . not fit for a servant of the King of kings” lay “his own sharp focus, his own clear identity.”121 He recognizes the problem of the clash between what the Lord expects and what the lord expects (vv. 2, 10).122 Daniel does not attempt to avoid being dependent on Nebuchadnezzar, but he does set terms for his dependence. So at Babylonian food he draws the line. Questions about ambition lead to questions about purity. Daniel recognizes that there are moments when an issue in the life of the people of God requires one to take what Lutheranism would later call a confessional stand (a status confessionis), maybe on something that doesn’t look inherently important but that one recognizes is a make or break issue.123 Accepting the palace provisions involves a compromise of faith in a way that accepting a share in its life, its work, its education, and its 117 Cf. Pace, Daniel, 28. 118 Plöger, Daniel, on the passage. 119 Pace, Daniel, 42. 120 Cf. Berrigan, Daniel, 9. 121 Towner, Daniel, 23, 28. 122 Cf. Lucas, Daniel, 57. 123 Sumner, “Daniel,” 125.

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names do not. Believers in other contexts or in other cultures might have identified their sticking point elsewhere. In the context of the exile, when Isa 40–55 is scathing about Babylonian religion, Babylonian food is too trivial for the prophecy to mention. Perhaps part of the point is that a line should be drawn somewhere. Total assimilation is to be avoided. Food, in particular, is determinative of identity; it is part of being “embodied.” We are what we eat: the English call the French “frogs,” the French call the English “roast beefs.” It is common for an expatriate community to maintain its distinctiveness partly by maintaining its distinctive diet. Israel’s rules about food presuppose that food is determinative of identity; part of their point is to preserve the distinctiveness of Israel over against other peoples.124 The difficulty in discerning precisely what was defiling about the Babylonians’ food may indicate that it was nothing more sharply conceptualized than that it was Babylonian. And in the context of the story, the significance of Daniel’s refusal lies in where it leads—­the test and the triumph (the first of three triumphs). Already in this introductory chapter, then, a question the stories raise is how to express identity faithfully and to engage with the affairs of empire,125 and here discipleship expresses itself by insisting on maintaining the difference between clean and unclean food as the way the faithful will mark themselves out (to themselves and to others, and before God) as belonging to a special people and committed to a specific Lord. Works such as Leviticus and Esther take the same stance, though Esther compromises more.126 Also suggestive is Num 22–25, which juxtaposes the futility of pagan divination (22–24) and the danger of idolatrous feasting (25), and Rev 2:14, 20 takes up those chapters and reaffirms the association. 1 Cor 8–10 similarly insists that faithfulness involves being wary of idolatry and of anything that looks like idolatry, while also being wary of taking too seriously beings that are really no-­gods. Most importantly, however, faithfulness involves being concerned for our neighbors’ edification, and if they do not share our freedom, not to insist on exercising it in a misleading way (cf. Rom 14). In Mark 7 discipleship expresses itself by repudiating the distinction between clean and unclean food; in this way the faithful will demonstrate that the source of moral defilement lies elsewhere. Acts 10 takes the same stance on a different basis: God is now abolishing the distinction between clean and unclean, which symbolizes and reinforces that distinction between Israel and other peoples, because the gospel first preached to Jews is now to be preached to gentiles also. The gospel word that Daniel proves is 1 Cor 10:13 rather than Acts 10. He emphasizes an aspect of Judaism that may seem unimportant and passing; yet it was the means whereby the Jews maintained their identity, and it was God’s 124 Collins (Daniel, 146) thus refers to Douglas, Purity and Danger. 125 Cf. Meadowcroft, “‘Belteshazzar, Chief of the Magicians.’” 126 Cf. Michael, “Daniel at the Beauty Pageant and Esther in the Lion’s Den.”

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means of ensuring that they did so. There is a freedom with which Christ sets us free, but that freedom is not the one claimed by the Hellenizing Jews who eventually abandoned those emphases of Judaism.127 We are reassured that the Daniel who lives at court, stands by the side of the king, and serves the empire, is one who has taken his stand and kept himself pure; and we are challenged about our own willingness on one hand to accept an involvement in the world, but on the other hand to recognize that there are points at which we have to draw a line. We are called to be citizens of two worlds, neither surrendering one citizenship by assimilation nor surrendering the other by forming a ghetto. There will be other ways in which (for instance) Western Christians, who live in a “toxic culture” that stands at odds with their faith,128 have to discern where they must say “no.” 9–14 So Daniel takes his stand. For him to avoid the risk of defilement, however, is for Ashpenaz to take on the risk of his head, if his royal master spots from their appearance that the four young men have not been eating the king’s good food. Yet Ashpenaz is favorably disposed toward Daniel and sympathetic to his position, and does not turn his request down. To say that “the book of Daniel is all about imperial politics”129 is an exaggeration, but a major theme is the way imperial powers work and the way they affect the lives of the people they rule. The writer and most readers of this commentary are not members of a subaltern people; they are not Daniel. They may be Nebuchadnezzar. Their best hope may be to be Ashpenaz.130 Daniel’s demonstration of his commitments is matched by God’s own. In the story, it begins to look as if things will turn out all right because of who God is, as well as because of who Daniel is. The story has manipulated Nebuchadnezzar throughout. He thought he was in charge and understood things but he wasn’t and he didn’t. “As far as the king knows, his orders have been totally followed and completely obeyed,” but unbeknown to him, “Daniel and his three friends negotiate with the king’s servants to change the terms of their subjugation.”131 For a gentile court official to be so accommodating was a sufficiently remarkable and unusual experience to require explanation. Throughout the centuries the faithful have had to take their stand knowing that it might well mean loss, perhaps suffering and martyrdom. Whatever is meant by God honoring those who honor him (1 Sam 2:30), it is not that he always grants safety and protection to them. Yet sometimes he does grant it, and their faith then sees the hand of God at work—­so it had been once for Joseph, and for the Israelites on the eve of the exodus, and so Solomon prayed it would be in exile 127 Porteous, Daniel, on the passage. 128 See Novak, “Abandoned in a Toxic Culture”; cf. Longman, Daniel, 62. 129 Horsley, Scribes, Visionaries, and the Politics of Second Temple Judea, 173. 130 Smith-Christopher, “Daniel,” 45. 131 Valeta, “Polyglossia and Parody,” 100.

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(Gen 39:21, cf. T. Jos. 2.3; Exod 12:36; 1 Kgs 8:50; also Gen 43:14; Ps 106:46). God can inspire quite unexpected attitudes in friends or foes,132 so biblical precedent and prayer are once more being followed and fulfilled. Those who have to hold together the claims of the world and the claims of the faith are encouraged to remember that God has been known to make it possible for people to live in this world in accordance with the faith’s claims. “With the ‫ֶח ֶסד‬ of God who delivers and protects with power, the narrator presents, once again, the powerlessness of the colonizer in face of the power of the God of ‫ח ֶסד‬.” ֶ 133 Daniel’s purity is not yet secure, however, and sympathy cannot be translated into support until it can be shown that Ashpenaz himself is not about to be endangered. Perhaps Daniel will after all be driven into compromise, or into despair? Divine aid (v. 9) does not mean there is no need for the exercise of human responsibility and initiative (v. 11); rather it opens the way to it.134 Daniel proposes a period of testing to demonstrate that the vegetarian diet he seeks, free from the risk of uncleanness, can be as healthy as the official provision. What gave Daniel the idea and what he expected to emerge from it we are not told. The bold and bald wager, even fixing the terminus ad quem, is out of his mouth before there can be talk of thinking it over or seeking God’s guidance.135 Before the Israelites reached Canaan, God tested them by depriving them of regular provision to show them that people do not live on bread alone but by the word that God speaks (Deut 8:2–3; 29:6 [5]). After Israel has left Canaan, Daniel submits to a similar test (and in a sense tests God in the process) to prove the same point.136 The person who can do so is the one who has already discovered how to live with both plenty and poverty (Phil 4:12).137 15–16 All the questions have now been opened up: questions about how to believe in a God who lets Jerusalem fall, about what will happen to young men educated in the learning of a foreign court, about whether they can avoid defilement and satisfy their overlords that there is nothing to be lost by allowing them to do so. Now the answers that have been hinted become more overt. First, the test is successful; indeed, the four Judahites look better after ten days of vegetarian food than the young men who eat the royal provisions. While it may be that vegetarian food is better for you or that God has intervened to prove that people flourish at his word and not merely because of what they eat, the story does not tell us why or how this remarkable event took place. It only declares that it did. So the young men are permanently excused from the royal provision, and their purity is assured for the future. It is possible to be faithful in a pagan court. 132 Calvin, Danie1–6, 34–35. 133 Chia, “On Naming the Subject,” 179. 134 Joubert, “Power and Responsibility in the Book of Daniel,” 19. 135 Cf. Jerome, Daniel, 22; contrast Calvin, Daniel 1–6, 37. 136 Cf. Hippolytus, Daniel 1.10. 137 Calvin, Daniel 1–6, 40.

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17–20 Indeed, it is possible to be successful there. The OT is not inherently opposed to divination (and associated purificatory, exorcistic, and apotropaic rites), though dreams and casting lots are almost its only forms of approved divination, and they appear rarely; the OT knows that Yahweh has more distinctive, more direct means of communicating with his people (Deut 18:15). Yet Daniel earns the title “prophet” from later generations as a result of demonstrating his capacity to divine on the basis of visions and dreams (4QFlor 2.3; Matt 24:15; cf. Num 12:6). The Scriptures’ attacks on divination are attacks on the divination of alien religions (Deut 18:9–14; Isa 47). God, the true God of Israel, is the source of the young men’s insight and of Daniel’s achievements in the Babylonians’ own areas of expertise. There is no positive theology of pagan or secular learning here, but rather the assurance that it can be triumphed over. If there were two main attitudes to foreign insight in the Second Temple period, Daniel belongs ultimately with the more exclusive, not the more open.138 By allowing the young men to be open to alien learning, but then portraying their learning as superior, Daniel makes the same points as Isa 47, perhaps more strongly. It asserts that there is insight about life, history, and politics (the affairs the young men will be concerned with) that only God endows. God is the giver in connection with their destiny, even when it does not appear so (v. 2), the giver in connection with their relationships, even when these are most threatening (v. 9), and the giver in connection with their character and abilities, even when these are under most pressure (v. 17). His involvement thus relativizes military power, political power, and the power of human insight.139 “ ‘God gave’—­that is the Gospel of this chapter,”140 and thus “arguably the most significant theological claim of this chapter.”141 So it is hardly surprising that the young men’s counsel turns out to be not merely comparable with but ten times better than that of the king’s other advisers—­even if this claim seems a bold one, whether in a Babylonian, a Persian, or a Greek context. If the God of Israel is God, it is to be expected that he will enable his people to offer better counsel than those who seek their insight from other sources. The God whom Nebuchadnezzar was seeking to eliminate (vv. 1–7) is triumphing. The Israelite kingly family has been taken into the service of the Babylonian king, but it has found itself in a position of leadership in Babylon, not through military or political achievement but through showing itself discerning.142 The young men are in a position to bind together conventional wisdom and insight that comes from faith in God.143 138 Against Lebram, “Nachbiblische Weisheitstraditionen,” 234–37 139 Cf. Joubert, “Power and Responsibility in the Book of Daniel,” on the chapter. 140 Lüthi, The Church to Come, 24. 141 Seow, “The Rule of God in the Book of Daniel,” 220. 142 Cf. Boehmer, Reich Gottes und Menschensohn im Buch Daniel, 62–63. 143 Reid (“The Theology of the Book of Daniel and the Political Theory of W. E. B. DuBois”)

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21 Nor is this triumph a single belated event or one relevant only to the lives of individuals. We started on the broad canvas of a defeat by Nebuchadnezzar, a plundering of the temple, and an exiling of the flower of Israel’s manhood, which threaten to break off the story of God, his purpose with Israel, and their relationship with him. But Daniel lived through the seventy years of submission to Babylon prophesied by Jeremiah, on to “the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia,” who encouraged Judahite exiles to return with the temple articles to rebuild the temple (2 Chr 36:22–23). Daniel is still in Babylon when Nebuchadnezzar, who had imposed Babylonian authority over Israel, gives way to Cyrus, who terminates it. It’s not exactly the end of the exile according to ch. 9.144 But people hearing this story might well have recalled that the first year of Cyrus was the moment when Nebuchadnezzar’s action was reversed, when Cyrus commissioned Judahites in Babylon to go back home and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem—­he also being the means of fulfilling Yahweh’s intentions (Isa 44:24—45:7; 2 Chr 36:22–23).145 Daniel offers no answer to the question “Why are we here in exile?” It was simply God’s will. It can be accepted, partly because it is not without end. A beginning in “the third year of Jehoiakim” can be acknowledged and recorded because it contains the seed of an end in “the first year of King Cyrus,” not by forces immanent in history but by those immanent in the word of God that decides both beginning and end. “Nebuchadnezzar” spells invasion, siege, defeat, plundering, exile. “Cyrus” spells the end of each of these. “Nebuchadnezzar” brings the day of Yahweh’s abandoning his people to darkness and wrath, a historical experience and at the same time a pointer to ultimate darkness and wrath. “Cyrus” suggests deliverance and freedom, restoration and rebuilding, the joy of going home. It, too, is a historical experience yet at the same time a pointer to the deliverance freedom, restoration, and joy of the End (cf. Isa 44:24–45:7). While the fact that the exile does not go on for ever and that Daniel sees it out does not provide an intellectual answer to why it happens, it does provide some practical help for living in exile. On the basis of it, those who wait for Yahweh can find new strength (Isa 40:31). Their faith can survive and grow. The genius and the limitation of a story of this kind is its concrete nature. As it may be impossible to move from an “is” to an “ought,” it may be impossible to move from a narrative statement to a general statement, from “Yahweh enabled Daniel to triumph” to “Yahweh will enable us to the triumph.” But a concrete story describes what Yahweh has been known to do, and it opens up the possibility that he might do it again, or might do something analogous.

compares DuBois’s stress on the leadership role of “the ‘talented tenth’ of the Negro race.” 144 Smith-Christopher, “Daniel,” 44. 145 Cf. Theodoret, Daniel, 32–33.

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II. The God of the Heavens Reveals the King’s Dream to Daniel and the Empire’s Destiny to Nebuchadnezzar (2:1–49) Pericope Bibliography Alt, A. “Die Deutung der Weltgeschichte im AT.” Anklesaria, B. T. Zand-­î Vohûman Yasn. Arnold, B. T. “The Use of Aramaic in the Hebrew Bible.” Baumgartner, W. “Zum Traumerraten in Daniel 2.” —­—­—­. “Zu den vier Reichen von Daniel 2.” Bergman, B. Z. “Han’el in Daniel 2:25 and 6:19.” Beyerle, S. “The ‘God of Heaven’ in Persian and Hellenistic Times.” Birks, T. R. The Four Prophetic Empires. Brooke, G. J. “Qumran Pesher.” Bush, G. The Prophecies of Daniel. Caspari, W. “Eine neue Tiergestalt in Daniel.” Clerget, J. “L’énigme et son interprétation.” Collins, J. J. The Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel, 34–46. —­—­—­. “Nebuchadnezzar and the Kingdom of God,” in Seers, Sybils and Sages, 131–37. —­—­—­. “Persian Apocalypses,” in Apocalypse, 207–17. Davies, P. R. “Daniel Chapter Two.” Düsterwald, F. Die Weltreiche und das Gottesreich nach den Weissagungen des Propheten Daniel. Eddy, S. K. The King Is Dead, 16–35. Ehrlich, E. L. Der Traum im AT, 90–113. Finkel, A. “The Pesher of Dreams and Scriptures.” Flusser, D. “The Four Empires in the Fourth Sibyl and in the Book of Daniel.” Fröhlich, I. “Daniel 2 and Deutero-­Isaiah,” in van der Woude (ed.), The Book of Daniel, 266–70. Geffcken, J. Die Oracula Sibyllina. Gianto, A. “Notes from a Reading of Daniel 2.” Ginsberg, H. L. “ ‘King of Kings’ and ‘Lord of Kingdoms.’ ” Gladd, B. L. Revealing the Mysterion, 17–50. Glasson, T. F. Greek Influence on Jewish Eschatology. —­—­—­. “Visions of Thy Head” (Daniel 2 28).” Gruenthaner, M. J. “The Four Empires of Daniel.” Haag, E. “Weisheit und Heilsgeschichte.” Hanson, J. S. “Dreams and Visions in the Graeco-­Roman World and Early Christianity.” Hartman, S. “Datierung der jungavestischen Apokalyptik.” —­—­—­. “Fra˙gan om eventuellt iranskt inflytande pa˙ kristendomens och judendomens apokalyptik och djävulsföreställning.” Hasel, G. F. “The Four World Empires of Daniel 2 against Its Near Eastern Environment.” Hawkins, J. Treatise on the Second Chapter of the Prophet Daniel. Heller, B. “Das Traumerraten im Buche Daniel.” Horgan, M. P. Pesharim. Hüffken, P. “Heilszeitherrschererwartung im babylonischen Raum.” Hunter, E. C. D. “Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream in Daniel 2.” Husser,  J.-­M. “La fin et l’origine.” Irmscher, J. “Die hellenistische Weltreichsidee.” Jones, B. W. “Ideas of History in the Book of Daniel,”

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292–314. Koch, K. “Weltgeschichte und Gottesreich im Danielbuch und die iranischen Parallelen.” Labonté, G. G. “Genèse 41 et Daniel 2,” in van der Woude (ed.), The Book of Daniel, 271–84. Lattey, C. “Sovereignty and Realm in Dan. 2, 44.” Lawson, J. N. “‘The God Who Reveals Secrets.’ ” Lebram, J. C. H. “Die Weltreiche im jüdischen Apokalyptik.” Lenzi, A. “Secrecy, Textual Legitimation, and Intercultural Polemics in the Book of Daniel.” Lüwinger, S. “Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream.” McAllister, R. “Clay in Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream and the Genesis Creation Accounts.” Makujina, J. “Dismemberment in Dan 2:5 and 3:29 as an Old Persian Idiom.” Mastin, B. A. “Daniel 2:46 and the Hellenistic World.” —­—­—­. “The Reading of 1QDana at Daniel ii 4.” Mendels, D. “The Five Empires.” Milán, F. “El concepto de revelación en el libro de Daniel.” Millard, A. “Incense.” Momigliano, A. “The Origins of Universal History.” Nel, M. “Daniël 2 as Satire.” —­—­—­. “A  Literary-­Historical Analysis of Daniel 2.” Newton, B. W. Aids to Prophetic Enquiry. Niditch, S., and R. Doran, “The Success Story of the Wise Courtier.” Noegel, S. B. “Dreams and Dream Interpreters in Mesopotamia and in the Hebrew Bible.” Oppenheim, A. L. “The Interpretation of Dreams.” Olojede, F. “Daniel ‘More Than a Prophet’?” Pfandl, G. “Interpretations of the Kingdom of God in Daniel 2:44.” Pinker, A. “A Dream of a Dream in Daniel 2.” Pope, M. H., and J. H. Tigay, “A Description of Baal.” Prete, S. “Declino e corrompimento morale nella escatologia occidentale.” Prinsloo, G. T. M. “Two Poems in a Sea of Prose.” Rappaport, A. “‫המלכות הרביעית בספר דניאל‬.” Reichel, H. L. “Die vier Weltreiche des Propheten Daniel.” Resch, A. Der Traum im Heilsplan Gottes, 117–23. Rindge , M. S. “Jewish Identity under Foreign Rule.” Rowley, H. H. Darius the Mede and the Four World Empires, 61–185. Rundgren, F. “An Aramaic Loanword in Daniel.” Schreiner, J. “ ‘. . . wird der Gott des Himmels ein Reich errichten, das in Ewigkeit nicht untergeht.’ ” Segal, M. “From Joseph to Daniel.” Seow, C. L. “From Mountain to Mountain: The Reign of God in Daniel 2.” Sérandour, A. “Hébreu et Araméen dans la Bible.” Siegman, E. F. “The Stone Hewn from the Mountain.” Snell, D. C. “Why Is There Aramaic in the Bible?” Stevenson, W. B. “The Identification of the Four Kingdoms in the Book of Daniel.” Swain, J. W. “The Theory of the Four Monarchies.” Van Hoonacker, A. “The Four Empires of the Book of Daniel.” —­—­—­. “L’historiographie du livre de Daniel.” Venter, P. M. “The Function of Poetic Speech in the Narrative in Daniel 2.” Wallace, R. “Tyrant, Kingdom, and Church.” Walton, J. H. “The Four Kingdoms of Daniel.” Watts, J. W. “Daniel’s Praise,” in Psalm and Story, 145–54. West, E. W. (trans). Pahlavi Texts.

Translation In the second a year of Nebukadne’s· s· ar’s reign, Nebukadne’s· s· ar had dreams,b and his spirit was troubled. But sleep came over him.c 2So the king said to summon the diviners, the chanters, the charmers, and the Kasdites a to explain to the king what he 1

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175

had dreamed, and they came and took their places before the king. 3The king said to them, “I have had a dream and my spirit is troubled to know what I dreamed.” 4The Kasdites spoke to the king (in Aramaic): a “Long b live the king! Tell your servants the dream, and we will explain the interpretation.”c 5The king responded a to the Kasdites, “The thing is determined b by me: if you cannot let me know the dream and its interpretation, you will be torn limb from limb c and your houses will be turned into rubble.d 6But if you can tell me the dream and its interpretation, you will acquire from me gifts, a reward, and great honor. Now a tell me the dream and its interpretation.” 7 They responded a second time, “Let the king tell a his servants the dream, and we will explain the interpretation to him.” 8The king responded, “I know very well that you are buying the time,a because b you have seen c that I have made a firm decision 9athat if you cannot let me know what I have dreamed, there is a specific edict for you.a You have arranged with each other b to make a lying, base response before me, hoping the situation may change. Now c tell me the dream, and I will know you can explain its interpretation to me.” 10The Kasdites responded before the king, “There is no one on earth who could explain the thing that the king asks. Hence a no great king or ruler b has ever asked such a thing of any diviner or chanter or Kasdite. 11The thing which the king is asking is so formidable, there is no one else who can explain it before the king but the gods, and their home is not among mere human beings.” a 12At this the king got angry, indeed quite furious, and said that all the experts in Babel were to be put to death. 13 So the edict went out that the experts were to be killed,a and search was made for Daniyye’l and his friends so that they could be killed. 14Then Daniyye’l replied with shrewd judgment a to Aryok,b the royal chief of police,c who had gone out to kill the experts in Babel. 15He responded to Aryok, “Royal marshal,a why has this severe b decree come from the king?” cAryok explained the thing to Daniyye’l, 16and Daniyye’l went and a asked the king to give him a period of time and he would tell the king the interpretation. 17Daniyye’l came home and let his friends H · ananyah, Miša’el, and 18 ‘Azaryah know about the thing, for them to ask for compassion a from the God of the heavens regarding this mystery, so that Daniyye’l and his friends might not perish, with the rest of the experts in Babel. 19 The mystery was revealed to Daniyye’l in a vision during the night. Daniyye’l blessed the God of the heavens. 20Daniyye’l averred,a May the name of God b be c blessed from eternity to eternity;d Because expertise and might e are his. 21 He is the one who changes times and eras; a he removes kings and establishes kings. He gives their expertise to the experts and their knowledge to those who possess insight. 22 He is the one who reveals things deeply hidden; b

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The God of the Heavens He knows what lies in darkness, and light sojourns a with him. 23 You, God of my ancestors, I confess a and praise.b Because you have given me expertise and might.c You have let me know now what we asked of you; you have let us know the thing that the king asked.d

Thus Daniyye’l went to a Aryok, whom the king had delegated to kill the experts in Babel. He came a and said to him, “Do not kill b the experts in Babel. Take me before the king, and I will explain the interpretation to the king.” 25With urgency a Aryok took b Daniyye’l before the king and said to him, “I have found someone among the Judahite exiles who can let your majesty know the interpretation.” 26The king averred to Daniyye’l (whose name was Belt·ešas· s· ar), “Are you really a able to let me know the dream that I had, and its interpretation?” 27Daniyye’l responded before the king, “No experts, chanters, diviners, or exorcists a can explain to your majesty the mystery about which your majesty asks. 28Yet there is a God in the heavens who reveals mysteries, and he has let King Nebukadne’s· s· ar  aknow what is going to happen at the end of the era. This is your dream, the visionb that came into your head c as you lay in bed. 29You, your majesty, as you lay in bed: your thoughts a came up b of what is to happen in the future,c and the revealer of mysteries let you know what is to happen. 30This mystery has been revealed to me, not by means of an expertise that I possess that is greater than any other person’s, but in order for the interpretation to be made known to your majesty, so that you may know your inner thoughts.a 31 “Your majesty, you were looking, and there before you was a large a statue. This statue was big, with an extraordinary brightness, standing in front of you, an awesome sight. 32This statue: its head was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its stomach and sides of bronze,a 33its legs a of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of pottery.b 34You were looking as a a rock broke away b without being touched. It struck the statue on its feet made of iron and pottery, and shattered them. 35Then all at once a the iron, pottery, bronze, silver, and gold shattered.b They became like chaff from threshing-­ placesc in summer, and the wind carried them off. No place d could be found for them. But the rock that had struck the statue became a great crag which filled the whole world. 36 “That was the dream. Now we a will state its interpretation before the king. 37Your majesty, king among kings, you to whom the God of the heavens has given kingship, sovereignty, power, and honor, 38aand wherever they live, has given human beings,a creatures of the wild, and birds in the sky into your control and made you ruler over them all: you yourself are b the head made of gold. 39In your place another regime will stand, inferior to yours, and another, third regime of bronze, which will rule the whole world. 40aBut there will be a fourth regime as strong as iron—­because iron shatters and smashes anything.b cLike iron crushing things,c it will shatter and crush dall these.d 41 But in that you saw the feet and toes a made partly of clay b pottery and partly of iron, 24

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177

it will be a split c regime, though it will have some of the firmnessd of iron. In that you saw iron united with the earthen e pottery, 42aand the toes of a the feet part of them iron and part of them pottery, to some extent b the regime will be strong, but in part it will be fragile. 43In that you saw the iron united with clay pottery, ahuman beings will unite,a but they will not hold together, just as b iron does not unite with pottery. 44 And in the time of those kings the God of the heavens will cause a regime to stand which will not be destroyed a through the ages, nor will kingly authority b pass to any other people. It will finally shatter all those regimes but will itself stand through the ages, 45 insofar as you saw that a rock broke away from the crag without being touched, and shattered the airon, bronze, pottery, silver, and gold.” a “God Almightyb has let your majesty know what is to happen in the future. The dream is true. Its interpretation is trustworthy.” 46 Then King Nebukadne’s· s· ar fell on his face, prostrate,a before Daniyye’l. He said that an offering and fragrant oblations b were to be presented to him. 47The king averred to Daniyye’l, “Of a truth your God is aGod among gods, Master among kings, and Revealer of mysteries,a since you have been able to reveal this mystery.” 48The king elevated Daniyye’l. He gave him many great gifts and would have made a him governor over the entire province of Babel and chief officer over all the experts in Babel; 49but Daniyye’l asked the king to appoint a Šadrak, Mešak, and ‘Abed Nego over the administration of the province of Babel, Daniyye’l being at the king’s court.b

Notes 1.a. One ms of OG has “twelfth”; ch. 2 does not then backtrack on ch. 1. 1.b. The pl. hardly indicates that he had a number of dreams (cf. the double dream in Gen 41), since what follows refers to a single dream; rather it is pl. of extension, suggesting the parts of the one dream (cf. GKC 124). Verse 28 has s., then pl. for “visions” (cf. 4:5 [2]; 7:1). Thus the reference is to the one dream discussed by vv. 2–49. 1.c. Cf. Aq. for this translation of ‫נהיתה על‬. G, Sym., Vulg. translate “went from,” assimilating to 6:18 [19], which has the same Aramaic-­style word order and also has ‫על‬ (cf. Driver, JSS 9:349). But there the verb is ‫נדד‬. Here the verb is niphal of ‫היה‬, perhaps with intensive meaning (Ogden, VT 21:466), which fits 12:1 but not 8:27, where the most plausible explanation is to connect the verb with ‫“ היה‬fall”; and one might do the same here and in 12:1 (Rashi). See Gen 41:4–5 for the motif of going back to sleep after being wakened by a dream. 2.a. “Of the Kasdites” (OG) makes sense—­t hat is, this fourth term designates the three groups as a whole, as in v. 5 (cf. Koch). But MT simply links all four terms with waw and offers no hint that the text should be understood in OG’s way. 4.a. Although this part of v. 4 is missing in 1QDana, the size of the gap suggests that “in Aramaic” was part of the text (cf. Snell, “Why Is There Aramaic in the Bible,” 36; Ulrich, Biblical Qumran Scrolls, 756; Mastin, “The Reading of 1QDana at Daniel ii 4”). 4.b. ‫עולם‬/‫ עלם‬signifies the furthest possible time, here in the pl. of extension (GKC 124b; cf. colloquial English “for ages”). A standard hyperbole from courtly style, it appears on the lips of the nobles at Nabopolassar’s consecration (Grayson, Babylonian Historical- ­Literary Texts, 3). See further n. 20.d below.

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The God of the Heavens

4.c. ‫ פשר‬comes in the OT only in Dan 2–7 and Eccl 8:1; cf. BH ‫פתרון‬, only in Gen 40–41. The root denotes loosening, resolving, or explaining, esp. by divination or supernatural revelation, with specific reference to what is presaged by something enigmatic (see AHw on pišru; Oppenheim, “Interpretation of Dreams,” 217–25; Horgan, Pesharim, 230–37; Rabinowitz, “ ‘Pesher/pittaron’ ”). For the connection with loosing, cf. 5:12. Thus arguably “ ‘meaning’ or ‘interpretation’ is an inadequate translation” (Lucas, Daniel, 63). For ‫ פשרא‬some medieval mss have ‫פשרה‬, the alternative emphatic form; others have ‫“( פשרּה‬its interpretation”). MT, G, Vulg., Syr. show such variation through Dan 2; I follow L (and K rather than Q) throughout. 5.a. MT points ‫ ענה‬as a participle, but the more common pl.‫ ענו‬is unambiguously perfect, and perhaps ‫ ענה‬should be taken as perfect too. 5.b. Or “[hereby] proclaimed” (cf. Th., Vulg.; OG lacks the phrase). On ‫ אזדא‬see Rundgren, “An Aramaic Loanword”; Happ/Schmid, “Zu ἀσγάνδης”; HALOT. 5.c. An OP idiom, according to Makujina, “Dismemberment in Dan 2:5 and 3:29.” 5.d. ‫נולי‬. “Forfeit” (cf. G, Vulg.) or “dunghill” (cf. DTT, 887) may ultimately be guesses, but something extreme is required to match being torn limb from limb. 6 .a. ‫ להן‬is an adversative (cf. Th. πλήν). It does not mean “therefore” (Vulg.) in BA or BH (see Driver, “Problems in Aramaic and Hebrew Texts,” 64–66; contrast Eitan, “Some Philological Observations,” 13–15). Cf. 2:9; 4:27 [24]. 7.a. The Kasdites move from imperative to jussive; OG repeats the imperative from v. 4. 8.a. The meaning is less clear than the familiar English “buying time” suggests. Like BH ‫עת‬, ‫ עדן‬denotes not time in general but a specific time—­a time during which to concoct an answer to the conundrum or a time when they will come back with this answer (cf. vv. 9, 16). 8.b. ‫כל קבל די‬: on form and meaning, see BDB, 1110; Wesselius, “Language and Style in BA,” 195–204. 8.c. Rather than “you see” (cf. Li, Verbal System, 29). 9.a–­a. JB “Your intention is not to interpret my dream” apparently presupposes first that ‫ די הן‬is equivalent to BH ‫“( כי אם‬surely”), then that ‫ דתכון‬means “your purpose,” not “the edict which applies to you”: hence lit., “surely you will not make the dream known to me. You have a single purpose. . . .” But ‫( דת‬OP) elsewhere always means an actual edict (human or divine); cf. vv. 13, 15, also the similar phrase in Esth 4:11 (Ehrlich). 9.b. Taking ‫ הזמנתון‬as reflexive (hithpeel or hithpaal) with Q and many medieval mss, which have ‫הזדמנתון‬, and with Th., not as ‫ ַהזְ ִמנְ ּתּון‬with OG, Vulg. 9.c. See n. 6.a. 10.a. ‫( כל קבל די‬lit., “because”); see n. 8.b. 10.b. Cf. Th. MT accents and Vulg. take the phrase as one noun followed by two adjectives (“no king, however great and powerful”), but ‫ שליט‬is a noun in v. 15 (cf. 5:29; Gen 42:6). The Assyrian title “Great King” was still used in the Persian period (Koch). KJV takes both ‫ רב‬and ‫ שליט‬as nouns (“no king, lord, nor ruler”), but ‫ רב‬used as an absolute noun would be unique in BA/BH (contrast the construct in v. 14). 11.a. ‫בשר‬, conventionally “flesh,” humanity in its creaturely weakness (cf. Isa 31:3). 13.a. Taking the participle as gerundive (BDB; cf. OG, and see BL 81o). “And the experts were being killed” (cf. Th., Vulg.) underlines the drama of what follows and fits v. 18, though perhaps not v. 24, and one might expect a subsequent reference to the killing being halted. Li (Verbal System, 71, 72) has “about to be killed.” 14.a. ‫עטא וטעם‬: the second noun can mean “deference” (3:12; 6:13 [14]), but Daniel is not deferential here and more likely the two nouns are near-­synonyms, like other pairs in this chapter (cf. G, Vulg.). “Took counsel with” (Ginsberg, “Biblical Aramaic”) fits less well in the context.

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179

14.b. Cf. Gen 14:1; Jdt 1:6; perhaps Persian (Grelot, “Ariok”; Zadok, “Five Iranian Names”), though known as a Babylonian name, and cf. Sumerian Eri-­aku (servant of the moon [god]) (Jeffery). 14.c. ‫טבחיא‬, etymologically “slaughtermen” (cf. G, Syr.), which is just what they were on this occasion. But elsewhere the word simply means “guards/police” (cf. Vulg.). 15.a. MT accents link with ‫“ לאריוך‬to Aryok” (cf. Vulg.), but Th. more naturally takes it as opening the actual speech. 15.b. ‫ חצף‬seems to mean “barefaced/hardfaced,” thus “peremptory, uncompromising, arrogant” (cf. 3:22). Commentators look for a more polite translation if they take ‫ טעם‬to mean “deference”; but see n. 14.a. 15.c. ‫( אדין‬EVV “then”) appears at the beginning of the clause: it is a standard linking particle, used like ‫ ו‬in BH, and hardly requiring translation. ‫( באדין‬vv. 14, 35, 46) is less usual, though hardly a marker for a new section (against Charles); I translate it “then.” 16.a. Montgomery omits ‫“ על ו‬went and,” following Syr., on the grounds that Daniel cannot have gone straight in to the king without being taken in (cf. vv. 24, 25). But Taylor attributes the lack in Syr. to homoioteleuton (Peshitta, 68). Perhaps the narrator tells the story briskly here (or presupposes that a person of Daniel’s [later!] stature may not need that mediation?) and then tells it more slowly/dramatically in vv. 24, 25. But does v. 16 require that he actually saw the king, which would normally involve using the term ‫“ קדם מלכא‬before the king,” as in vv. 24, 25? Koch suggests that it was actually Aryok who went in. See also n. 24.a. 18.a. “Mercy” (Th., Vulg.) and “support” (OG) are too specific translations of ‫ ;רחמין‬see n. 1:9.b–­b. 20.a. KJV “answered and said” presupposes the common meaning of ‫ ענה‬in BH; cf. the combination where the meaning “answer” fits, in vv. 5, 7, 8, 10. Muraoka (Reader, 43) suggests it indicates “reaction to a situation,” which fits here, but elsewhere (e.g., 3:14, 19) even that understanding seems forced. Rather compare the BH meaning “aver” (and the later Hebrew and Aramaic meaning “begin to speak”); the word simply adds force to ‫“ אמר‬say” (cf. OG; and Koch). Many occurrences of the word in this chapter could be translated either way. 20.b. 4QDanb “the great God”; cf. OG “the great Lord.” 20.c. I.e., “may Yahweh be,” see Comment; avoidance of the actual name compares with the preference here and elsewhere for ‫ להוא‬or even ‫“( לוה‬may . . . be,” an EA-­t ype imperfect) to avoid the form ‫יהוה‬, which is identical with the divine name. 20.d. Or “from age to age”: both meanings of ‫ עלם‬apply here, suggesting furthest possible time, past or future. Either way, the word does not suggest timeless eternity: see v. 4 and n. 4.b. While that idea does emerge when ‫ עלם‬is linked with God/his dominion/his deliverance (e.g., 4:34 [31]), even then the connotation of unchangeable certainty is more important than the concept of mere temporal continuance (cf. Long, “Notes on the Biblical Use of ‫עולם‬-­‫עד‬.”) As v. 20 also implies, to say that God is eternal is not to make him outside time but to affirm him lord of all time and unlimited by time: see Jenni, “Das Wort ‘o¯la¯ m im AT”; cf. Barr, Biblical Words for Time, 69–70, 117 (rev. ed., 73–74, 123–24); Gerleman, “Die sperrende Grenze.” 20.e. Th. “insight” looks like a loose translation derived from the parallelism with “expertise,” not an indication that ‫ גבורה‬means “strength of insight”; see n. 23.c. 21.a. For ‫זמניא‬, EVV “seasons” could give the wrong impression; there is no great difference from ‫“ עדניא‬times.” 22.a. To translate the passive more literally, “is settled” (see BDB; cf. DTT 1629–30). 23.a. ‫ידה‬/‫ ידא‬can have sin as well as God (and human beings) as its object (see Comment [h] on 9:3–23); “confess” (cf. G, Vulg.) brings out its meaning in these different connections better than EVV “give thanks.”

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23.b. ‫שבח‬, too, is not an essentially religious word; it means “recognize the value of” (cf. DTT). 23.c. Whereas OG had “majesty” for ‫ גבורה‬in v. 20, here it has “intelligence,” which produces the kind of hendiadys Daniel is fond of. But on the basis of the usual meaning of ‫גבורה‬, “expertise and might” in vv. 20 and 23 is a bracket around vv. 21–22. 23.d. Lit., “the king’s thing.” 24.a. “Went to” is ‫ ;על על‬4QDana and some medieval mss omit “went,” while G, Vulg. omit “came” (‫)אזל‬. Both verbs are picked up from vv. 16, 17 and the omissions (the first being haplog.) as likely indicate simplification of an expansive style as a shorter original. 24.b. ‫אל תהובד‬: perhaps “stop killing.” 25.a. Or “with excitement” (cf. DTT; NEB has “in trepidation”): ‫ בהל‬suggests strong feelings, not just speed. 25.b. ‫הנעל‬: perhaps formed by analogy with the antonym ‫( הנפק‬5:2) (so Bergman, “Han’el”). 26.a. ‫ איתי‬followed by participle is emphatic/confirmative (EWS, 81). 27.a. ‫גזרין‬: see Comment on v. 2. 28.a. The unusual word order ‫( נבוכדנצר מלכא‬contrast, e.g., 3:1–9) seems to be a Hebraism (so Mastin, “Appositional Kingship in Daniel”); see n. 1:21.b. 28.b. ‫חלמך וחזוי‬: explicative waw; on s. and pl. see n. 1.a. 28.c. The OT usually associates mental activity with the heart, not the head (cf. n. 30.a; n. 1:8.a; Jer 23:16), and the reference may be to the head as containing the eyes. But Glasson (“Visions of Thy Head”) finds here the influence of Greek thinking, which did regard the head as the seat of consciousness and thought. 29.a. BHS and NJPS have the s. ‫( רעיונך‬cf. 5:10), but BHS notes that the original hand of L had pl. ‫( רעיוניך‬cf. 4QDanb and some medieval mss). 29.b. ‫“ סלק‬come up,” uniquely in BA; see DTT, also BH ‫( עלה‬BDB, 749a). 29.c. The clause is epexegetic to ‫“ רעיוניך‬your thoughts” (Montgomery), not indirect object of ‫( סלק‬Th.). 30.a. ‫“ רעיוני לבבך‬the thoughts of your heart”: see n. 28.c. The sentence is slightly elliptical; Daniel’s point is that he has the revelation not because of his wisdom but because of the divine purpose to make it known to the king. 31.a. Th. lacks “large,” but it may be abbreviating because of difficulty in construing the awkward and repetitive sentence (cf. the paraphrase in Syr.), which reflects the vision’s unutterable nature. 32.a. Or copper; but the alloy bronze is stronger and thus more commonly used, not least for images (see Koch). 33.a. ‫( שק‬BH ‫ )שוק‬denotes the leg as a whole (cf. DTT; OG σκέλη), though excluding the hip, which belongs to the bronze section. Th. κνῆμαι, Vulg. tibiae imply the lower leg only (shin/calf): so BDB, 1003, but its references do not necessitate this meaning for human beings and they exclude it for animals. 33.b. ‫חסף‬: not “clay” (the raw material; cf. ‫טינא‬, v. 41) but decorative tiling or potsherds (Th. ὀστράκινον), tatty decoration when strength of structure is really needed. Contrast the description of Bel as clay inside, bronze outside (Bel and the Snake 7). 34.a. ‫ עד די‬often means “as” not “until” in the visions (also 6:24 [25]) (BL 79i). On the similar phrases in vv. 31 and 34 see Li, “The Function of the Active Participle in the Aramaic of Daniel,” 91. 34.b. G, Vulg. add ‫“ מטור‬from a crag”; cf. v. 45. But interpretations often contain more detail than the original vision: cf. vv. 33, 41–42 (n. 41.a, n. 42.a–­a); 7:7–8, 19–21. Eissfeldt (“Die Menetekel-­Inschrift,” 112–13) compares with the scriptural

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interpretation in 1QpHab, e.g., 12.1, 7, as well as the omen interpretation in Dan 5:25–28. 35.a. ‫ כחדה‬suggests suddenness more than simultaneity; cf. BH [‫( יחד ]ו‬e.g., Isa 43:17; 45:16) more than ‫( כאחד‬e.g., Ezra 3:9; Isa 65:25). 35.b. I take ‫ דקו‬as intransitive active, though it could be passive or impersonal active (“they shattered the iron . . .”), still to be translated by the passive (HALOT). The word is pointed as from ‫דוק‬, not ‫ ;דקק‬both occur (DTT). 35.c. 4QDana, G, Vulg., Syr. have s. 35.d. HALOT suggests “trace,” but “place” (Th., Vulg.) fits regular usage of ‫אתר‬, fits the context (v. 35b: there was no room left for them), and fits the allusion in Rev 20:11 (Charles; Jones, “Ideas of History in the Book of Daniel,” 257). 36.a. While the pl. might denote deference/meekness (cf. v. 30), or less plausibly reference to the divine council or use of the “royal we,” the incidental but deliberate emphasis on including the friends in vv. 17–18, 23, 49 suggests the same significance here. 38.a–­a. MT accents suggest “and wherever human beings live, he has given . . .” (cf. Vulg.); but more likely human beings are mentioned as among those Nebuchadnezzar rules (cf. G, though there is no need on the basis of G to omit ‫“ ו‬and” (against JB). 38.b. ‫אנתה הוא‬: see GKC 141gh. 40.a. Verses 40 and 41 are repetitive, and many ancient and modern versions have shorter texts; see the following notes. The structure of the sentences, too, can be understood in varying ways, and in v. 41 I have not followed that of MT (for which see RV); cf. n. 45.a–­a. 40.b. ‫כלא‬. Not “wholly,” against Montgomery, “Adverbial kúlla”; see Fitzmyer, A Wandering Aramaean, 205–17. 40.c–­c. G, Syr., Vulg. omit. 40.d–­d. With MT I take ‫ כל אלין‬as object of the preceding verb. Th., Syr. omit ‫( אלין‬OG ἡ γῆ being surely explicative of ‫אלין‬, not grounds for emendation—­against NEB). Kaufmann (Religion of Israel 4:582) follows Th., Syr. on the grounds that MT nonsensically has the feet breaking the statue: but here surely the interpretation influences the vision and refers to the literal fact of the fourth regime destroying its predecessor(s). 41.a. OG omits; but see n. 34.b. 41.b. ‫ פחר‬can mean “potter” (cf. Vulg.) or “clay” (cf. OG); the latter fits better. Adding the word emphasizes the weakness of the material. McAllister (“Clay in Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream”) notes links between vv. 41–43 and Gen 1–2 (cf. also Doukhan, “Allusions à la création dans le livre de Daniel”). 41.c. ‫ פליגה‬could suggest “divided” (EVV) into smaller regimes, as happened to the Greek empire (Ginsberg). But it could equally suggest internally divided (DTT) or composite, and therefore vulnerable, which fits the context here better (Montgomery). 41.d. ‫ נצבתא‬usually means “seed/planting” (cf. G, Vulg., DTT); the nuance of firmness perhaps derives from the notion of a plant’s rootedness (Newsom, Daniel, 63). 41.e. ‫טינא‬, “wet clay” or “mud” (DTT); cf. EVV “miry.” 42.a–­a. JB omits, though here OG includes it (contrast n. 41.a). 42.b. ‫מן קצת‬: perhaps “as a whole” (Meek: see n. 1:2.c). 43.a–­a. The phrase could refer to a combining of two races generally, but it more naturally denotes intermarriage (cf. Ezra 9:2; Ps 106:35). 43.b. Probably ‫האך ]= היך[ די‬, not as MT ‫ ;הא כדי‬a strong form of ‫ =( כדי‬BH ‫)אשר‬. See BDB. 44.a. ‫ חבל‬can mean “be corrupted,” but this hardly fits the context; for the parallelism cf. 6:26 [27]; 7:14.

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44.b. “Its royal authority” (Th., Vulg.) would require final ‫ ּה‬and repointing, not ‫­—ה‬which is, however, unusual as emphatic state ending (Lattey, “Sovereignty and Realm”). 45.a–­a. The order is odd (contrast vv. 32–33, 35), but G’s “pottery, iron, bronze . . .” is surely secondary. Possibly the original omitted “pottery” or it was lost at an early stage and then (re)inserted variously. This phrase is the end of a sentence begun in v. 44b (cf. G); MT punctuation makes poor sense. 45.b. An overtranslation of ‫אלה רב‬, but using this expression enables one to avoid using either the definite article (G, cf. Syr., NRSV) when ‫ אלה‬is absolute, or the indefinite (RSV), which might be misleading (cf. Keil). 46.a. The translation takes ‫ סגד‬to refer to a physical action, repeating the content of the previous phrase; it is used in the papyri of prostration before a man (see H. D. Preuss in ThWAT on ‫)חוה‬. But Kreuzer (“Zur Bedeutung und Etymologie von hištah· awaˉh/yšth· wy”) thinks both expressions signify “do homage” without implying a physical gesture. 46.b. ‫ניחחין‬, used in the OT only of offerings to God (e.g., Gen 8:21). OG’s not modifying this expression of Nebuchadnezzar’s homage is perhaps surprising (cf. Meadowcroft, Aramaic Daniel and Greek Daniel, 187–90). But see the Comment. 47.a–­a. Again the second term in each construct chain is absolute, not emphatic; cf. n. 45.b. 48.a. Verse 49 suggests that ‫ והשלטה‬expresses a possible, not an actual, act (cf. in BH Exod 9:15; 1 Sam 13:13; GKC 106p). 49.a. Lit., “asked the king, and he appointed”: see BL 106e. 49.b. Lit, “gate”—­i.e., originally where the king’s servants awaited his call (Esth 2:19, 21; 3:2–3), though the term came to denote the chancellery. See Rüger, “Das Tor des Königs.”

Form/Structure/Setting Form See ch. 1 Form. Chapter 2 also combines features of court tale, legend, aretalogy, and midrash, blending these into a formally more compact whole than ch. 1. The story shares a basic structure and some verbal formulae with traditional tales that tell “the success story of the wise courtier,” including Ahiqar and Gen 41. With these, it has in common motifs which appear in other court tales in the OT and apocrypha (Esther, Tobit, 1 Esd 3–4) and elsewhere:1 the interrupted sleep, the puzzled king, the ineffectual experts, the angry tyrant, the imperiled hero, the victorious outsider appearing last, the king open to insight and change, the victor rewarded.2 Thus it also shares the satirical tone and aim of ch. 1.3 Its aim is presumably not to imply that any Judahite can expect to beat the authorities at their own game but rather to assure Judahites hearing the story that the God of the heavens is lord over the regimes that seem to control his people’s destiny. 1 2 3

Gnuse (“From Prison to Prestige”) adds Herodotus. Cf. Redford, Study of the Biblical Story of Joseph, 94–97; Humphreys, “Life-Style for Diaspora”; Niditch/Doran, “The Success Story of the Wise Courtier.” Cf Nel, “Daniël 2 as Satire.”

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As elsewhere in Daniel, Tobit, and 1 Esd 3–4, such motifs are reworked when the court tale is taken into a religious context; in this sense it becomes a legend. Daniel is a model of Israelite wisdom (v. 14) and a model of Israelite piety in his prayer (v. 18), his vision (v. 19), his praise (vv. 19–23), his witness (vv. 27–28), his self-­effacement (v. 30), and his conviction (v. 45). The fruit of his work is not merely rewards and promotion (v. 48) but obeisance and recognition of his God (vv. 46–47). In turn this last motif reflects the fact that in Dan 2 “the God of Daniel is the central figure and not the courtier”;4 contrast Josephus (Ant. 10.10.3 [10.200]) where it is out of regard for Daniel’s wisdom that God reveals the dream to him.5 When the situation looks hopeless, it is God’s intervention that redeems it. God’s revealing things to Daniel, confronting the experts’ assertion that the deity’s home is not among humanity (vv. 11, 23, 28–29, 45, 47), gives Dan 2 the features of an aretalogy.6 Daniel’s praise and his revelation emphasize God’s sovereignty in events (vv. 20–21, 37–45) and reinforce this feature; indeed, court tale, legend, and aretalogy are subordinate to the theme of the king’s recognition of God’s authority over him.7 The parallels between the court tale’s structure, plot, motifs, words, and phrases to those in the story of Joseph and the Egyptian ruler in Gen 40–41 are so substantial that Dan 2 has been described as a haggadah or midrash on those chapters.8 In both stories, a pagan king has his anxiety aroused by dreams. In both, he summons magicians (the word comes only in Gen 41, Exod 8–9, and Dan 1–2) and other experts, but none can offer an interpretation (‫פתר‬, the BH equivalent to ‫ פשר‬in Dan, appears in the OT only in Gen 40–41). Both stories refer to the king’s anger with his advisors, which leads them to be entrusted to the attention of his chief of police. Eventually a young Israelite who has been in exile in the king’s custody for two years and who may be able to interpret the dream is discovered and brought hastily before him. In response to the king’s inquiry about his ability as a dream interpreter, he denies possessing such ability in himself; it is God who must give any explanation of the dream. The dream, he declares, concerns future events affecting the king, which the young man explains, adding that the message is certain to come true. As a consequence the king determines to put the young man in a position of honor as prime minister over the whole land.9 4 Humphreys, “Life-Style for Diaspora,” 221. 5 Ehrlich, Der Traum im AT, 112 6 Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus, 205–6 (ET 1:111–12); cf. Berger, “Hellenistische Gattungen im NT,” 1210–31 and references. 7 Davies, Daniel, 52. 8 So Farrar, Daniel, and Lacocque, Daniel on the chapter. Wesselius sees a broader influence of the Joseph story on the book of Daniel (“Discontinuity, Congruance and the Making of the Hebrew Bible,” 67). But Labonté (“Genèse 41 et Daniel 2”) argues that they come from the same period, and Koch (Daniel 1–4, 123) sees the designation “midrash” as involving an “inflationary” use of that idea. 9 On the parallels and contrasts with the Joseph story, see further on Structure below.

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Daniel 2 has points of contact with other OT passages. It has links with Gen 11:1–9,10 and the story’s moral parallels Proverbs’ promises of success and long life to those who fear Yahweh (e.g., 9:10–11; 10:27; 14:27). The opening of the dream interpretation (vv. 37–38) reflects Ps 8:6–8 and/or Jer 27:5–7, passages that seem to have been an important stimulus to the content of the vision (see Comment). Gold, silver, bronze, and iron are listed together elsewhere (e.g., Josh 6:19, 24; 22:8; Job 28:1–2), though commonly stone and timber are added (e.g., 1 Chr 22:14–16, 29:2; 2 Chr 2:7–14 [6–13]; Isa 60:17; cf. Dan 5:23). The broadest influence on Dan 2, however, is that of Isa 40–66.11 “The author of Daniel 2 is clearly preoccupied with the same problems as Deutero-­ Isaiah .”12 The chapter’s major theme is the contrast between the helplessness of the Babylonians’ spiritual resources and the power and wisdom of the God of Israel to effect and to interpret history, which is a major theme of Isa 40–48 (e.g., 41:1–7, 21–29; 44:25–26; 47:9–15). Those chapters, too, suggest that silver and gold, bronze and iron, end up useless as clay (40:19; 45:2; 41:25), crushed and blown away like chaff (41:15–16; also 41:12, cf. v. 35). They, too, see Israel’s God as Lord even of things hidden in darkness, as Lord of light and darkness (45:3, 7; cf. v. 22). They, too, envisage the nations and their kings doing obeisance before the exiles and their God (45:3, 14; 49:23; 60:6–7, 14); in Dan 2 this actually happens (vv. 46–47). They, too, promise an ultimate realization of Yahweh’s kingship (44:6; 52:7). Daniel’s thanksgiving (vv. 20–23) parallels those in the Psalter and utilizes their phrases and motifs, though it is composed for its context in Daniel’s experience rather than reflecting existent use in worship. It is an imitation of a thanksgiving, like the wisdom psalms that have a thanksgiving motif.13 Its literary nature is reflected in the neatness of its structure in bicola.14 Its content recalls Job (e.g., 1:21; 12:22; 32:8; 38:19) more specifically than the Psalter. It begins with a liturgical blessing of God, like those at the end of the books of the Psalter (esp. 72:18–19). The opening formula briefly states the twofold reason for the blessing, God’s wisdom and might. Then vv. 21a and 21b-22 describe, in a series of participial phrases, how God’s might and wisdom are manifest in the world. Verse 23a corresponds to v. 20, praising the “God of my ancestors” as one who has shared with his servants the two gifts on which vv. 20–22 focuses. Verse 23b further narrows the focus to the particular 10 Barr, “Daniel,” on the passage; and Kim, “Biblical Interpretation in the Book of Daniel,” 77–89. 11 Cf. Fröhlich, “Daniel 2 and Deutero-Isaiah.” 12 Fröhlich, “Time and Times and Half a Time,” 47 (Fröhlich dates an earlier form of Dan 2 in the time of Isa 40–55). 13 Towner, “The Poetic Passages in Daniel 1–6,” 318–24; cf. Mowinckel, Psalms in Israel’s Worship 2:104–25. 14 Venter (“The Function of Poetic Speech in the narrative in Daniel 2,” 1011) analyzes the lines slightly differently, dividing the four-stress cola; Lee (“Aramaic Poetry in Qumran,” 70–84) takes three of the six lines as tricola.

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event that prompted this psalm and thus resolves a formal ambiguity about the psalm. 15 Internally, it has the fundamental feature of a hymn: it focuses on God’s characteristic attributes and actions rather than on confessing what God has just now done for the speaker. Yet it lacks the hymn’s characteristic imperative call to praise. The blessing formula and the concentrated acknowledgment of the reasons for praise that follows are characteristic of praise that confesses how God’s love and power have been personally applied to the worshiper’s needs (e.g., Gen 24:27; Ps 28:6; 66:20; 68:20, 36 [19, 35]; also Luke 1:68), which is the context the psalm presupposes. The content of the praise (vv. 20b–22) relates to the fact that God has answered Daniel’s prayer and to the content of that answer. The psalm is not a liturgical piece but (in the setting of the story) a confession arising from an experience of God’s action in the midst of life in the world. The relationship between praise and context is made explicit by v. 23a. The “psalm” makes for an interesting comparison with Ps 113 (also Ps 66). After declaring in very similar terms “may the name of Yahweh be blessed from now to all ages,” Ps 113 bases its affirmation in Yahweh’s continuing majesty and condescension to meet his people’s needs (mostly in participles). Here too, the general statement is closely related to a confession of a particular experience.16 Although Daniel’s hymn of thanksgiving delays and thereby somewhat reshapes the report of the dream and its interpretation, the report and interpretation have a similar form to those in Gen 40–41 and Dan 4.17 The introduction to a dream report commonly identifies dreamer, place, time, and the dreamer’s mental state. The dream may be visual (so here) or audio-­ visual (Dan 4) and may include words addressed to the dreamer (Dan 7). The dreamer’s awed reaction is usually described when dream figures appear and/ or when the dream is over. The dreamer expresses the need to have the dream interpreted; its reference may be to the immediate or more distant future of the dreamer or the dreamer’s people. Both the dreams’ content (their concern with God’s control of history as this affects his people’s lives) and their framework (the theme of the revelatory gifts of the Judahite seer) link the dreams with their narrative context in Daniel; they are integral to it and it to them. The form of the account of the dream’s interpretation, also used for the account of the omen in Dan 5, compares with the form of scriptural interpretation in the Qumran literature; successive features of the dream are quoted, identified, and explained.18 Interpretations commonly contain more 15 Cf. Calvin’s comment (Daniel 1–6, 67–68) that the thanksgiving does not really fit the occasion and Haag’s conclusion (“Weisheit und Heilsgeschichte”) that it was composed later than its context. 16 See further Towner, “Blessed Be YHWH and Blessed Art Thou, YHWH”; Westermann, Lob und Klage in den Psalmen, 61–102 (ET 81–135). 17 See Oppenheim, “Interpretation of Dreams”; J. S. Hanson, “Dreams and Visions.” 18 Brooke, “Qumran Pesher”; Finkel, “The Pesher of Dreams and Scriptures”; Silberman, “Unriddling the Riddle.”

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or less detail than the original revelation or fail to correspond to it in some other way; it is not a sign of textual development but of the way interpretations stand on their own. They are not simply the straightforward translation of a coded message but revelation in their own right.19 The dream’s contents and its interpretation have a more substantial extrabiblical background. a. Dreams, oracles, and prophecies with implications for the future of the state appear in Akkadian texts relating to Zimri-­Lim, Esarhaddon, and Asshurbanipal.20 A number of Akkadian texts offer descriptions in predictive form of the reigns of (unnamed) kings. They are apparently quasi-­predictions, at least until their closing sections where they come to express promises from the prophet’s day.21 Further such quasi-­ predictions come from Egypt and elsewhere in the Hellenistic period.22 It has been suggested that a Babylonian political prophecy from the Hellenistic period underlies Dan 223—­or that a Judahite prophecy from the sixth century does so.24 b. As royal dreams occur within the OT (e.g., Pharaoh, Solomon), so extrabiblical texts refer to the dreams of Sennacherib and Esarhaddon and include detailed accounts of dreams and other communications received by Nabonidus.25 It has been suggested that Dan 2 reflects factual or folk material concerning Nabonidus, not Nebuchadnezzar.26 Herodotus tells of dreams attributed to a series of Median and Persian rulers relating to their political or military future, some being interpreted by the dream interpreters (Histories 1.107–8, 209–10; 3.30; 7.12–19). c. The statue motif recalls colossi at Rhodes, Memphis, and elsewhere, not least in the palace and the temple at Babylon itself; it also appears in other stories (see Herodotus, Histories 1.183; Dan 3; Bel).27 Statues 19 Mertens, Das Buch Daniel, 117; cf. n. 34.b. 20 See ANET 449–51 (cf. 605–6), 623–26. 21 See NERT 118–22; Grayson, Babylonian Historical-Literary Texts; Grayson and Lambert, “Akkadian Prophecies”; Biggs, “More Babylonian Prophecies”; Borger, “Gott Marduk und Gott-König Šulgi als Propheten”; Ringgren, “Akkadian Apocalypses”; Baldwin, “Some Literary Affinities of the Book of Daniel”; Hunger and Kaufman, “A New Akkadian Prophecy Text”; Lambert, Background of Jewish Apocalyptic; Ellis, “Observations on Mesopotamian Oracles and Prophetic Texts”; Lucas, “Akkadian Prophecies, Omens and Myths”; Nissinen comments in a paper of this title that they are “Neither Prophecies Nor Apocalypses.” 22 See Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus, 386–89 (ET 1:184–86); McCown, “Hebrew and Egyptian Apocalyptic Literature”; Osswald, “Zum Problem der vaticinia ex eventu.” See further chs. 10–12 Form. 23 So Collins, Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel, 36–43. 24 So Davies, “Daniel Chapter Two,” 399–400. 25 See ANET 309–11, 606; Oppenheim, “Interpretation of Dreams”; Butler, Mesopotamian Conceptions of Dreams. 26 E.g., von Soden, “Eine babylonische Volksüberlieferung von Nabonid,” 84–85; McNamara, “Nabonidus and the Book of Daniel,” 145–148. 27 References in Kuhl, Drei Männer im Feuer, 6–7.

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made of a combination of materials are instanced: e.g., statues of Baal at Ugarit.28 Greek philosophy pictured the body-­politic, headed by the king, corporately,29 and Iranian sources picture the world as a huge man.30 d. Metals symbolizing eras appear first in the work of the eighth(?)-­century Greek poet Hesiod (Works and Days 106–201). He divides humanity into five ages, the first three and the fifth being golden, silver, bronze, and iron.31 This theme also features in Zoroastrian texts, medieval in the form known to us but containing material that may well derive from the Hellenistic period or even that of Zarathustra himself.32 In Denkard ix 8, the world’s spiritual history is divided into gold, silver, steel, and “mixed iron” ages, which take the world from the age of revelation to the age of apostasy and wickedness. In Bahman Yasht, Zarathustra dreams of a tree with branches made of these four metals, which Ahuramazda interprets to denote the reigns of a sequence of kings, and later of a tree with branches made of six or seven metals, denoting a longer sequence of rulers. None of these versions of the motif speaks of a final, ultimate age to succeed the iron/mixed iron age. e. The periodization of history into a sequence of empires reflects the actual shaping of the political history of the region by a succession of empires: Assyria, Media/Babylon (respectively to the north/east and to the south/west of the old Assyrian empire), Persia, Greece, and Rome. Ancient writers were quite aware of the outline of this history. It appears in Chronicles in the OT as Assyria, Babylon, Persia; in Herodotus, Histories 1.95, 130 as Assyria, Media, Persia;33 and in the Akkadian Dynastic Prophecy as Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, which may also picture good and bad reigns alternating.34 By about 300, in Sibylline Oracles Book 4 this historical outline has become a formal scheme of four empires, Assyria, Media or Babylon, Persia, and Greece, to which Rome is later added.35 Each scheme can work either to a climax that takes a positive view of the last empire or to a negative climax and the hope of a new empire—­though not necessarily a final, ultimate one.36 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Pope and Tigay, “A Description of Baal,” 127; ANEP 481–84. Cf. Flusser, “Four Empires,” 170. See Bentzen, Daniel, on the passage. See Fritz, “Weltalter und Lebenszeit”; and on the broader background, Cohn, Cosmos, Chaos and the World to Come. See the discussion in Hellholm, Apocalypticism. See Niskanen, The Human and the Divine in History, 27–43. See Grayson, Babylonian Historical-Literary Texts, 6–37. Cf. J. J. Collins in OTP 1:381–89. Collins elsewhere (Daniel 166–70) has a substantial excursus on the background of the four-empire scheme; cf. also Lucas, “The Origin of Daniel’s Four Empires Scheme.” But see Hallo, “Akkadian Apocalypses,” for an eschatological reading of Akkadian prophecies; also Höffken, “Heilszeitherrschererwartung im babylonischen Raum.”

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Parallels between such sources and Dan 2 indicate that they provide some of the background to the dream, and to chs. 7–12, but Daniel’s distinctiveness is sufficiently clear to locate it one step away from them, through the mediation of other cultures,37 and/or through the author’s creativity,38 and/ or through his theological and ethical distinctiveness.39 Is Dan 2 essentially a court tale which also contains a dream report or a dream report for which the court tale is simply a framework? The two features are both prominent, as they are in Gen 41. There, however, they are more integrally related: the insight which is proved by the court contest qualifies Joseph to deal with the crisis revealed by the dream. Daniel 2 corresponds to Gen 41 in including both features, but they do not interconnect. The contest and Nebuchadnezzar’s recognition of Daniel are unrelated to the content of the dream; the latter’s importance is independent of its context. The chapter simply has two facets, not wholly integrated, but both original. It is not to be assimilated to narratives in which the content of the dream/vision is less significant, or to dream/visions where the narrative element is merely framework. It has a theme within a theme. It thus parallels other ancient works that combine story and didactic material (especially Ahiqar). The chapter is almost entirely dialogue, so that it is “a drama, . . . a story whose plot proceeds mainly through the dialogues between the characters” and that comprises a series of acts and scenes “arranged in such a way as to show the rise of a conflict and how this conflict becomes more articulate until it reaches its highest point, the climax, only to resolve itself,” with the climax coming in v. 24 and the resolution following.40 While the description of the chapter as a drama is illuminating, however, the location of the “climax” only half way through the chapter shows how that description is also incomplete. The “resolution,” which occupies the whole of the second half of the chapter, is more than the resolution to the drama. As much prominence and significance attaches to the content of the revelation that Daniel is given for the Babylonian king as attaches to the story. Chapter 2 thus encapsulates the nature of the book of Daniel as a whole in which the stories are more than a mere preliminary to the visions and the visions are more than a mere postscript to the stories.

Structure The opening verse unveils the issue that concerns the chapter as a whole, the significance of a dream of Nebuchadnezzar’s. The first major scene (vv. 2–12) then describes an abortive attempt to deal with the matter. A brief

37 Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus, 331 (ET 1:181). 38 Hasel, “The Four World Empires of Daniel 2,” 23. 39 Baldwin, “Some Literary Affinities of the Book of Daniel,” 92–99. 40 Gianto, “Notes from a Reading of Daniel 2,” 59, 60.

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narrative opening introduces the Babylonian experts, at the king’s command (v. 2). The body of the scene comprises a conversation between the two parties, each speaking three times and becoming more anxious and hysterical (vv. 3–11). A brief narrative closure reports a second royal command, which provides the experts with a potentially fatal exit (v. 12). Ironic references to the times changing (v. 9) and to the impossibility of divining the contents of a dream without divine help (v. 11) point to later features of the story (vv. 21, 37–45; vv. 18–23, 26–30). The second scene (vv. 13–23) promises to deal with the issue that has been left unresolved, though it does not yet do so; it thus raises suspense. Conversation between Daniel and Aryok/the king (vv. 14–16) leads to a report of Daniel’s words with his friends and God (vv. 17–18) and of God’s response and Daniel’s song of praise (vv. 19–23). The length and exalted tone of this last make it the high point of the scene. It prepares the reader for vv. 37–45,41 anticipating the outcome and the dream’s contents without revealing the nature of the dream at this point. One could remove the the poetic section without disturbing the story’s plot, but not without disturbing its rhetoric. The scene as a whole takes matters round in a circle (from Aryok to prayer and back), like the opening scene, and further builds the story’s suspense. Verse 24 thus picks up from vv. 13–16; verbal parallels mark the links. Yet the third scene (vv. 24–30) further delays the resolution of the opening problem by requiring Aryok to introduce Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar (which for opposite dramatic reasons was not required in v. 16), having Nebuchadnezzar quiz Daniel about his ability, and allowing Daniel to draw attention to the theological background to and implications of the situation (taking up the experts’ words from vv. 10, 11). Daniel thus further teases the reader with the dream’s general significance without relating its contents. The slowing down of the story reaches virtual standstill in the chiastic repetitiveness of vv. 28–29. The fourth scene (vv. 31–45) consists solely in a speech of Daniel recounting the dream and its prophetic meaning and asserting the certainty of its fulfillment. In the dream, the focus is on the fearfulness of its subject, a statue, and on its destruction. In the interpretation, which receives twice as much space, the focus is on two specific parts of the statue, one of which relates directly to Nebuchadnezzar and on what displaces it. The closing scene (vv. 46–49) largely ignores the content of the dream. Nebuchadnezzar reveres Daniel and his God for the resolution of the original issue and puts Daniel in a position of power over the imperiled empire and the discredited experts. (The MT offers another analysis of the structure with a chapter break after vv. 13, 16, 28, and 45 and a section break after v. 24.)42 41 Cf. Jerome, Daniel, 27. 42 And cf. Koch’s analysis, Daniel 1–4, 106–10.

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Comparing Dan 2 with Gen 41 brings out some of its important distinctive marks, as well as important features it shares with Gen 41. a. In Daniel the king requires to be told the contents of the dream as well as its significance. The terms of the contest between the experts and the Israelite hero are thus higher, as are Daniel’s challenge and his achievement greater than Joseph’s. b. The varieties of experts are listed at length (vv. 2, 27) and their helplessness before their challenge is dwelt on at length. c. Nebuchadnezzar, the angry tyrant, also raises the stakes in the contest, threatening an unpleasant death if the experts cannot fulfill their task but offering rich rewards if they can. Daniel thus saves their lives and receives rich rewards. d. Daniel is not a humiliated prisoner, like Joseph, who needed to wash and change before entering the king’s presence, but a man of initiative and shrewd judgment. He marches in to request what the experts were denied, and gets it; he marches back with the solution for the king, and the king’s Lord High Executioner jumps to attention and scurries to lead him in to the king. e. Daniel is portrayed as a model for spirituality in his attitude of trust, expectancy, and gratitude, expressed in his practice of prayer and praise in the fellowship of his friends. f. His praise expresses key affirmations about God’s sovereignty over human affairs and his revelation of the secrets of history which God alone knows; these affirmations reappear in Daniel’s introductory words to Nebuchadnezzar. g. Daniel resists the claims of empire in a way that Joseph does not,43 and the dream’s revelation about the king and the future are more far reaching than is the case in the Joseph story with its focus on a pragmatic problem that will need to be addressed in the immediate future. 44 h. Given that the dream refers not merely to the immediate future within the king’s reign but to the end of the era, the story shifts the locus of God’s saving acts from past to future (even the hearers’ future) more radically than the prophets do; its readers can look to a new act of deliverance for themselves.45 The dream’s content and message are distinctive. Unlike Joseph, Daniel offers no practical suggestions arising from the dream.

43 Cf. Rindge, “Jewish Identity under Foreign Rule.” 44 Cf. Newsom, Daniel, 65; Husser, Dreams and Dream Narratives, 118–22; ———. Le songe et la parole, 248–52. 45 Jones, “Ideas of History in the Book of Daniel,” 86–88, commenting on von Rad.

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i. As a result of Daniel’s request regarding his friends, Nebuchadnezzar gives Daniel not merely administrative responsibility, like Pharaoh with Joseph, but authority over the experts, allowing him to remain at the court. Instead of giving him state honor, he offers sacrifice to him. Instead of giving him a pagan priest’s daughter in marriage, he acknowledges his God as sovereign and revealer. j. The characterization of the main figures in the story is effected by means of cartooning so as to polarize them: Nebuchadnezzar in the extremes of his original violence and anxiety and of his later reverence and gratitude, the experts exposed in their pretension and incompetence, Daniel as the model of wisdom and piety. Thus Dan 2 does not simply follow the pattern of the Joseph story.46 It has a more rhetorical and literary, less traditional character. Its distinctive features give Dan 2 a more heightened tone. It is like Gen 41, only more so.47 This feature, combined with Gen 41’s context on the eve of the exodus and Dan 2’s in the exile when Israel stands in need of a new exodus, means that Joseph could be seen as a type of Daniel. One might even contrast “the Egyptianization of Joseph” and the “Hebraicization of Daniel” and ask whether the Daniel story is “a satire on Joseph”: Daniel does everything that Joseph does, but does it more impressively.48 Some otherwise puzzling features of Dan 2 (e.g., vv. 1, 46, 48b) find an explanation in this relationship of correspondence/contrast with Gen 41 rather than in their relationship with the concrete historical actuality of the exile.49 Among the chapter’s stylistic features are: a. The accumulating of expressions of related meaning: many terms for experts (vv. 2, 10, 27), rewards (v. 6), rulers (v. 10), power (v. 37), shattering (v. 40), and homage (v. 46). The effect is to increase the force of a phrase, emphasizing what manifold opportunity was given to Babylonian insight to prove itself (v. 2), how great its opportunity for self-­advancement (v. 6), how unprecedented Nebuchadnezzar’s challenge to it (v. 10), how total its defeat (v. 27), how vast Nebuchadnezzar’s power (v. 37), how devastating the destructiveness of the fourth regime (v. 40), and how complete Nebuchadnezzar’s obeisance (v. 46). Further combinations of terms feature in the hymnic parallelism of vv. 20–23.

46 Against Niditch and Doran, “The Success Story of the Wise Courtier.” On the comparisons and contrasts, see e.g., Widder, “The Court Stories of Joseph (Gen 41) and Daniel (Dan 2) in Canonical Context.” 47 See further Olojede, “Sapiential Elements in the Joseph and Daniel Narratives.” 48 Wildavsky, Assimilation versus Separation, 119, 126. 49 Ehrlich, Der Traum im AT, 103.

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b. Hendiadys, often with assonance: perverse lies (v. 9), furious rage (v. 12), shrewd judgment (v. 12), deeply hidden (v. 22), acknowledge and praise (v. 23), visionary dream (v. 29), finally shatter (v. 44). Such usage stems from BH/BA’s relative preference for nouns and verbs over adjectives and adverbs; it adds emphasis by lengthening phrases. c. The alternating of words or forms of similar meaning: four words for “tell” (e.g., vv. 2, 4, 5), two for “kill” (e.g., vv. 12, 13), three expressions for “pottery” (vv. 33, 41), three for “partly” (v. 41); two forms of ‫פעם‬ (vv. 1, 3), of ‫( רעע‬v. 40), and of ‫( ערב‬vv. 41, 43); also the change in the order of the components in the statue (vv. 34, 45). Whereas these alternations seem to be stylistic, for the chapter’s major themes more significant is the recurrence of expressions related to time, especially ‫“ עלם‬age,” ‫“ זמן‬time,” ‫“ עדן‬time” (vv. 4, 8, 9, 16, 20, 21, 44); and other expressions in vv. 28, 29, 45. d. The reuse of words in fresh contexts or with different nuances. The root ‫ זמן‬itself is used both nominally for “time” and verbally for “arrange” (vv. 9, 16). ‫ על‬and ‫ אזל‬recur in connection with Daniel’s going to see the king and going home, then returning with his revelation (vv. 16–17, 24–25). ‫ נפק‬records first the ordinance’s going out, then the executioner’s going out (vv. 13, 14). ‫ בעא‬relates the executioners’ inquiry after Daniel, Daniel’s inquiry of the king, then Daniel and the friends’ inquiry of God (vv. 13, 16, 18, 23, also 49). A noticeable feature in vv. 1–23 is the nine occurrences of ‫“( מלה‬word, thing”; cf. BH ‫)דבר‬. The story trades on its range of nuances, by means of which it can make and at the same time deny links through the story and can keep jolting and slowing up the reader. A further rhetorical feature is the change within v. 4 from Hebrew to Aramaic, which we noted in the Introduction to this commentary. Aramaic was a foreign but related tongue that was the international language of the Middle East. For many modern readers, the combination of different languages in one book may seem to require an explanation, such as that the book was written in Aramaic but the opening and closing chapters were translated into Hebrew, or vice versa.50 If the stories are basically older than the visions, one could imagine a collection of stories in Aramaic being given a frame consisting of visions and an introduction in Hebrew. But the language difference overlaps with rather than being identical with the difference of form, which necessitates a more complicated theory of development. The combining of languages may not seem a puzzle to other modern readers in a location such as Southern California, who are used to shifting easily and fluently between (say) Chinese or Spanish and English. Such readers 50 See e.g., van der Woude, “Die Doppelsprachigkeit des Buches Daniel,” and his references.

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would be quite able to imagine an author moving from one language to another—­for instance, to mark the point when the foreign experts start speaking in their own language (they might actually speak either Aramaic or Akkadian), perhaps in a way that adds authenticity to the material.51 In a sense the transition thus comes at a natural point, like that in Ezra 4:8. Actually, the king would presumably have spoken in the same language as his staff, and in this sense the change does not come at a logical point. It rather marks a change in the implicit point of view with which people are invited to read the chapter. The story now encourages us to be a little like Babylonians. Yet the transition then also implies some irony, not least in the fact that the first Aramaic words are “Long live the king,” more literally “May the king live forever,” which is just what the revelation will say is not going to happen.52 In addition, Aramaic is the vernacular, while Hebrew is the scholarly language. Readers need to be able to move between the two.53 Further, modern bilingual readers will also be aware of the difference in status between their “natural” or home language (e.g., Chinese or Spanish) and the prevailing language of the broader, dominant culture in the country where they live. The rhetorical effect of using Hebrew is to establish that this book belongs to the Jewish people, tells their story, and relates the activity of their God.54 “According to Bakhtin, there are two extremely important factors in the prehistory of novelistic discourse, laughter and hetero-­or polyglossia”; heteroglossia can suggest “the presence of different ideological voices.” 55 Aramaic is the language of empire. Hebrew is the language of the people of God. The rhetorical effect of seguing into Aramaic is to affirm that the readers live their lives in the world, that their God is the God of the heavens, and that he sees to the working out of their story on the world stage. Whereas using Hebrew reasserts the importance of Yahweh’s distinctive involvement with Israel and his commitment to Israel, using Aramaic symbolizes the Jewish people’s place in the world of the nations. “Language enacts identity,” and in Daniel “the language of empire will be used to expose its lies and refute its claims.”56 So the arrangement whereby Hebrew material provides the framework for the whole points to the subordination of the empire’s speech and power to that of the God of the heavens who is the God of Israel. Bilingualism mixes the “local and sacred idiom” and the “official, international and political language, of profane use,” the “sovereign, sacred, secret laws” that express God’s power and the communication in Aramaic to the “peoples, nations, and languages” to 51 Cf. Snell, “Why Is There Aramaic in the Bible?” 52 See Arnold, “The Use of Aramaic in the Hebrew Bible.” 53 Hebbard, Reading Daniel, 54. For the broader context, see Gzella, A Cultural History of Aramaic, esp. 205–8. 54 Cf. the analogous questions raised by the use of Hebrew at Qumran (e.g., Bernstein/Koller, “The Aramaic Texts and the Hebrew and Aramaic Languages at Qumran,” 189–91). 55 Valeta, Lions and Ovens and Visions, 181. 56 Portier-Young, “Languages of Identity and Obligation,” 104, 107.

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the farthest reaches of the world.57 Daniel 2–7 becomes, if not “a tract to the nations,”58 a tract about the nations.

Setting Like ch. 1, Dan 2 implies a setting in a dispersion community where Judahites are a religious and ethnic minority. Even if the message speaks to people living in relatively stable times,59 it sets before them a “dream” of God putting their overlords down. It is oppositional literature.60 While the chapter makes little use of the kind of repetition that characterizes more traditional narratives,61 it does contain some repetitiveness (e.g., vv. 28–30) and discontinuity (e.g., over whether Daniel is one of the experts and is well known to the king). These features have encouraged the formulation of a number of theories regarding its redaction, conflation, or expansion (e.g, in vv. 13–23, 28–30, 36–45, 48–49), possibly in connection with conforming ch. 2 to the eschatological perspective of the later visions.62 The common scholarly view is that the four regimes to which the chapter refers are the Babylonian, Median, Persian, and Greek Empires, so that the chapter belongs to the Greek period, with vv. 41–43 reflecting its expansion in the third century.63 But repetitiveness or discontinuity may as likely issue from the work of an author as a redactor, and the Comment and Explanation below will argue that the vision refers to the destiny of the Babylonian kings, not to the sequence of empires. The chapter as we have it is thus not eschatological in the sense that chapters 7–12 are and it contains no specific pointers to a date in the Greek period. The title “Lord of the heavens” would perhaps have been avoided in a story developed in the second century (see Comment). In its place in the book, the chapter introduces the four stories that follow, in that v. 49 locates the three friends in the provincial administration for ch. 3 and locates Daniel at court for chs. 4–5.64 Chapter 2 holds the friends and Daniel together, though the former play a rather nominal role, whereas subsequently the friends and Daniel will appear only separately. While court tale and vision both lead in to chs. 3–6, the vision of God’s final reign, which 57 Sérandour, “Hébreu et Araméen dans la Bible,” 345. 58 Lederach, Daniel, 50. 59 Gowan, Daniel, on the passage. 60 Cf. Smith-Christopher, “Prayers and Dreams.” 61 Cf. Niditch and Doran, “The Success Story of the Wise Courtier,” 188. 62 So Hartman/Di Lella, Daniel, on the chapter; Davies, “Daniel Chapter Two”; Steck, “Weltgeschehen und Gottesvolk im Buche Daniel,” 53–62; Schreiner, “‘. . . wird der Gott des Himmels ein Reich errichten,’” 133–37”; Segal, “From Joseph to Daniel”; Milán, “El concepto de revelación en el libro de Daniel”; Segal, Dreams, Riddles, and Visions, ch. 2; Husser, “La fin et l’origine”; Kratz, Translatio Imperii. Koch (Daniel 1–4, 110–15) links at least part of the redaction to the translation of vv. 1–4a from their original Hebrew. 63 Ginsberg (Studies in Daniel, 7–9) seeks to specify the date more precisely. 64 Cf. Eissfeldt, “Daniels und seiner drei Gefärten Laufbahn.”

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replaces human regimes, sets those chapters’ concerns in a broader and more far-­reaching context from the beginning.65 It also introduces chs. 7–12, where Daniel himself dreams of such regimes and subsequently perceives further aspects of history to come. The chapter’s relationship with Dan 1 is ambiguous. The story gives substance to 1:20, though the king’s failure to consult Daniel and his needing to have him introduced is odd after 1:17–19. The motifs of the successful expert who appears last, and his being spectacularly rewarded at the end, are perhaps allowed to recur notwithstanding the formal tensions between the stories that this produces (but see also Comment on v. 1). Many motifs and expressions in ch. 2 parallel subsequent stories: the explaining of a royal dream about the future (ch. 4); the lists of experts (4:7 [4]); their greeting of the king (e.g., 3:9); the requirement to be told both dream and interpretation (5:7, cf. the wording of 4:9 [6]); the issuing of solemn and unalterable royal decisions (6:8 [9]); the threat of dismemberment and destruction of property (3:29); the king’s fury (3:19); the severity of his edict (3:22); Daniel’s coming before the king after the experts have failed (4:8 [5]); Daniel’s going home to pray and give thanks (6:10 [11]); the term “mystery” (4:9 [6]); the identity of the three other faithful Judahites (3:12); God as the one who deposes and sets up kings (4:17 [14]; 5:20); Aryok’s urgency (3:24; 6:19 [20]); Daniel’s description as one of the Judahite exiles when he is introduced to the king (5:13); his Babylonian name (4:8 [5]); the king’s question regarding Daniel’s ability to fulfill both parts of the interpretive task (5:16); the expression “the vision that came into your head as you lay in bed” (4:10 [7]); the statue and its gold (3:1); Nebuchadnezzar’s being given royal authority, sovereignty, power, and honor (4:30 [27]; 5:18); his ruling over the animals of the wild and the birds of the air (4:21–22 [18–19]); the eventual inheriting of sovereignty by a joint empire (5:28); the regime established by God which lasts for ever (4:3 [3:33]); Nebuchadnezzar’s falling prostrate before Daniel (the phrase comes six times in ch. 3); and Daniel’s position as head of the experts (4:9 [6]) but having no role in the administration of the affairs of the province of Babylon, for which his friends were responsible (3:12). It might be that these later chapters depend on ch. 2, but it is simpler to assume that ch. 2 was written in light of them, as it reflects other parts of the OT. A fuller way of describing its midrashic aspect, then, is to see it as a rereading of Dan 3–6 in light of Gen 41, Isa 40–66, and other passages; or as a reaffirmation of fundamental themes of Isa 40–66 on the basis of the stories told in chs. 3–6.66

65 Cf. Plöger, Daniel, on the passage. 66 Cf. von der Osten-Sacken, Apokalyptik in ihrem Verhältnis zu Prophetie und Weisheit, 23–25; Gammie, “The Intention and Sources of Daniel i-vi,” 287–91; Collins, Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel, 44–45.

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Comment 1 On such dates, see on 1:1. This date may suggest the period just after Nebuchadnezzar’s great triumph at Karkemish: the story then cuts the victor down to size.67 But the date is a surprise after 1:5, 18–20. It “both orientates and disorientates the reader.”68 While it can be harmonized with ch. 1 by assuming it uses the Babylonian reckoning,69 it’s not so odd that an episode in a story goes back on the conclusion of the previous episode, and if Dan 2 is doing so, it would cohere with the way Daniel and his friends are not among the experts summoned in v. 2. The denouements in 1:18–20 and 2:45–49 might then refer to the same events. On the other hand, our knowing from ch. 1 that the four Judahites are much better interpreters makes us not so surprised when in ch. 2 the best interpreters in Babylon fail, opening up the way for them to succeed. “While Nebuchadnezzar rightfully expects results, the reader intrinsically expects failure from the wise men.”70 Perhaps anyway the date is a fictional note designed to add to the impression of actuality rather than to convey historical information, so that the question of its relationship to ch. 1 need not be raised.71 2 In OT, NT, and elsewhere in the ancient world, dreams feature both as ordinary human experiences and as means of divine communication. Of the latter kind, some bring a straightforward, verbal message, while others convey the message in symbols that require interpretation. For their interpretation, one could look to further divine revelation, to a diviner’s intuition, or to the collections of oneirological omens that might provide a relevant precedent. Neither Israel nor other cultures give dreams a central place as a means of divine communication, but neither do they take a negative attitude to the phenomenon as such (though see Jer 23:9–40; b. Ber. 55–57 offers an interesting discussion).72 Nebuchadnezzar’s summoning of the diviners implies that the royal dream is assumed to be of state significance, not that he is troubled by an ordinary private dream. His assumption parallels the implications of reports of other royal dreams in the Middle East, including Pharaoh’s within the OT (Gen 41). It is the diviners’ responsibility to interpret omens of various kinds for the king and to advise him on how to avert any misfortune threatened by them.73 Their role in Babylon parallels that of prophets in Israel (e.g., 2 Kgs 23).74 67 Hammer, Daniel, on the passage. 68 Nel, “A Literary-Historical Analysis of Daniel 2,” 79. 69 Cf. Driver, Daniel, on the passage; and the Comment on 1:1. 70 Cf. Hebbard, Reading Daniel, 80. 71 So e.g., Plöger, Daniel, on the passage. 72 See further Oppenheim, “Interpretation of Dreams”; Gnuse, “Dreams and Their Theological Significance in the Biblical Tradition”; Resch, Der Traum im Heilsplan Gottes; Ehrlich, Der Traum im AT; Butler, Mesopotamian Conceptions of Dreams. 73 See e.g., J. Sweek, “Inquiring for the State in the Ancient Near East,” 41–56. 74 But Cryer, Divination in Ancient Israel and Its Near Eastern Environment, notes the importance of divination in Israel.

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“Diviner” is by origin an Egyptian word denoting priests/interpreters skilled in cuneiform. It is used for dream interpreters at the Assyrian court and in the OT for the Egyptian advisers to whom Joseph proved superior; both usages make it appropriate here.75 “Chanter” (Akk. âšipu) is a more common Babylonian term for practitioners who are skilled at interpreting signs in people when they are ill and (presumably) at conjurations and rituals designed to influence how matters turn out for them.76 The word may be cognate with BH ‫אסף‬, “cure” (2 Kgs 5): cf. the names of Asaph, the head of a guild of musicians and prophets, and of the diviner Joseph.77 The Akkadian word is commonly rendered “exorcist,” in the sense that they know how to deal with demonic activity.78 “Charmer” (Akk. kašapu) is another word for people skilled in charms and incantations; it is a more common OT term used to denote the not merely pathetic but sinful practitioners of alien conjuration and divination (e.g., Isa 47:9, 12). On “Kasdite,” see the Comment on 1:3–5; the term is also used (e.g., v. 4) to denote the group of practitioners as a whole, as are the words “experts,” conventionally “wise men” (e.g., v. 12) and “diviners” (4:9 [6]). The “experts,” then, are not smart people such as Proverbs speaks of but authorities in esoteric knowledge and mantic arts, people who can resolve enigmas (as sometimes in BH).79 A further term, ‫גזרין‬, appears first in 2:27, for which the meaning “exorcist” is suggested by its use in 4QPrNab 1.4. But ‫גזר‬ means “cut” and thus “determine”: cf. Symmachus θύτοι, Vulg. aruspix, perhaps implying hepatoscopers. They may be people who can “determine” the future,80 make “determinations” regarding spirits,81 or “cut” the way off for evil spirits.82 The terms are used randomly and interchangeably. The author was not referring to specific groups and consciously excluding ones that happen not to be mentioned; there was, indeed, no Babylonian group specifically concerned with interpreting dreams. The words are treated as variant synonyms for the Babylonian diviners whose role was central to Babylonian religious and political life; the author uses a number of the terms in combination to convey the impression of the various guilds,83 in a way that parallels the further collections of exotic foreign terms in ch. 3. 3–11 Has Nebuchadnezzar forgotten his dream, or has he only a vague idea what it was about (cf. v. 29a)?84 “Forgetting the details of a dream was a 75 See Oppenheim, “Interpretation of Dreams,” 238; Müller, “Der Begriff ‘Rätsel’ im AT,” 473. 76 Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia, 289–305; Saggs, The Greatness That Was Babylon, 303–28. 77 See MacLaurin, “Joseph and Asaph.” 78 Cf. Jeffers, Magic and Divination, 28–30. 79 See Müller, “Magisch-mantische Weisheit und die Gestalt Daniels,” 79–85. 80 Cf. HALOT. 81 Dupont-Sommer, “Exorcismes et guérisons dans les écrits de Qoumrân,” 256–58. 82 Carmignac, “Un équivalent français de l’araméen ‘gazir.’” 83 On which see Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia, 81–82; Saggs, The Greatness That Was Babylon, 346–48; Driver, Daniel, 12–16. 84 On the motif of the forgotten dream, see Heller, “Das Traumerraten im Buche Daniel”; Ehrlich, Der Traum im AT, 93–100; b. Ber. 55b.

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disaster, because one would be unable to perform a ritual to avert its possible evil consequences.”85 But the verses are ambiguous, which facilitates the motif of the experts’ possible misunderstanding of his expectation. As the dialogue develops, they and the story’s hearers continue in suspense over how much he remembers and how far he is thus capable of telling whether their account of the dream is correct, or how far v. 9 is bluff. Parallels with Nabonidus’s conflict with the Babylonian priesthood86 and with Darius I’s slaughter of diviners (Herodotus, Histories 3.68–79) may underlie the story, but the parallels are not close, and there are no Middle Eastern parallels for the threat of execution in the case of failure to work out a dream’s meaning.87 In itself a request for time (cf. v. 8) would not be unreasonable; consulting dream books and/or turning directly to a deity (as Daniel in due course does) would be a regular recourse in the circumstances. But what the king sees as the experts’ “lying, base response” (v. 9), uttered in the hope that the “situation may change” (more literally that the time may change—­i.e., that a more propitious day may arrive), refers to the undertaking to provide the interpretation if the king provides the dream. The king sees the experts as seeking to evade a challenge to show whether they have supranormal knowledge by revealing what the dream was, which the king may be able to check. For the king’s rage (v. 12) cf. 3:13, 19; Esth 1:12; 7:7; Prov 16:14; 19:12; 20:2; 2 Macc 7:3. 13–16 Daniel and his friends had apparently not yet attained the renown of which 1:19–20 speaks. Historically, entering the king’s presence (v. 16) demands protocol that is ignored here (contrast vv. 24–25; Esth 4:11; Herodotus, Histories 3.140; Josephus Ant. 10.10.3 [10.198]), perhaps partly to underline the contrast between Daniel’s confidence and the experts’ confusion.88 The king’s response to Daniel’s request is also unmentioned, however, and v. 16 seems to be deliberately brief, hastening on to vv. 17–18 (see also n. 16.a). 17–19a The title “the God of the heavens” (vv. 18–19) appears in Daniel only in ch. 2 (also in Ezra, Nehemiah). It may be a reverential substitute for “Yahweh” (see Comment on 1:2 and on vv. 20, 23), as “the heavens” becomes a reverential substitute for “God” (cf. Ahiqar 94–95). “The God of the heavens” parallels the expression “God On High” used in Dan 3–7 both in its general meaning and in its resembling gentile titles for God that Judahites might feel quite appropriate for Yahweh (in Gen 14 Melchizedek uses the title “God On High” and Abraham accepts it). But avoiding the name Yahweh hardly means that no need was now felt to distinguish Israel’s God from the gods of the gentiles; it is doubtful if any of the titles for God in Daniel implies a less particularist understanding of God than other parts of the OT.89 The popularity 85 Butler, Mesopotamian Conceptions of Dreams, 91. 86 ANET, 312–15. 87 Koch, Daniel 1–4, 150. 88 See Plöger, Daniel, on the passage. 89 Against Delcor, Études bibliques et orientales, 227.

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199

of this title in the Persian period has been attributed to the influence of Zoroastrianism,90 and the paucity of other links with the Pentateuch have been attributed to the international context of Daniel, like that of the wisdom tradition.91 But it is also reminiscent of the Canaanite title Baal šaˉ meˉ m (“lord of the heavens”: cf. 5:23, also 4:37 [34]), which—­like “On High”—­was apparently an epithet of the supreme god El.92 Worship of the supreme god as “the Lord of the heavens” was widespread throughout OT times, and he was later equated with Zeus. This equation may explain the apparent non-­use of the epithet in the Antiochene period, which parallels its non-­use before the exile. Here, OG replaces “the God of the heavens” by “the Lord On High,” perhaps because the former title seemed too “heathen-­sounding.”93 In the MT the title takes up the experts’ confession that the gods’ dwelling is not among mere humanity (v. 11), but it denies that God is therefore inaccessible; God is in the heavens, but he reveals things on earth (v. 28).94 “Mystery” (‫רז‬, OP, v. 18) appears in the OT only in Dan 2 and 4:9 [6]. At Qumran it becomes almost a technical term for an enigma that can be interpreted only by God’s revelation, and particularly for God’s hidden purpose at work in history despite its sin (e.g., 1QpHab 7.5, 8, 14; cf. NT μυστήριον; also BH ‫סוד‬, though it is a more general word).95 At this point in the chapter the word requires only the broader meaning “enigma,” but it will transpire that the dream reveals a mystery in something like that later, more technical sense; the same applies to the verb “reveal.”96 For such revelatory visions taking place at night (v. 19a), cf. especially Zech 1–6 (also 1 Sam 3; Job 4:13; 33:15). Daniel’s “vision” is not a superior means of revelation to Nebuchadnezzar’s “dream”: in v. 20 both words are used of Nebuchadnezzar’s experience. But only Daniel has things “revealed” to him (see vv. 28–30). 19b–23 “Blessing” is an expression familiar from worship, especially when used in the Psalms for human beings blessing God. Yet it also has a life setting in the everyday world, the realm of human relationships and, as we find it here, the experience of God acting in providence and grace toward his people, to which they respond in praise and thanksgiving. To bless someone is to express in solemn words one’s appreciation, gratitude, honor, recognition, or love; it suggests an acknowledging of communion with the one who is named as the object of blessing in light of what that one has come to mean to you.97 90 See Andrews, “Yahweh the God of the Heavens”; Eissfeldt, “Ba’alšame¯m und Jahwe.” 91 So Nel, “Pentateugtradisies en-temas in Daniël.” 92 So Oden, “Ba’al ša¯ me¯m and ‘El.” 93 Koch, Daniel 1–4, 94. But OG then apparently thinks it okay when addressing the gentile king (see vv. 28, 37, 44). 94 See further Beyerle, “The God of Heaven.” 95 E. Vogt, “‘Mysteria’”; Brown, “The Pre-Christian Semitic Concept of ‘Mystery’”; Willi-Plein, “Das Geheimnis der Apokalyptik”; Gladd, Revealing the Mysterion, 17–50. 96 Cf. Collins, Daniel, 159, who notes that Th renders the verb ἀπεκαλύφθη 97 See J. Gamberoni in ThWAT on ‫ברך‬.

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“The name of God” (v. 20) is a further reverential substitute for “Yahweh” (cf. v. 19b), as in later Jewish usage. A person’s name can express something of their character, calling, religious commitment, or personal significance. The name stands for the person. So it is with the name by which a deity is known: God is revealed in his name. To bless the name of God is thus to bless Yahweh himself; but the expression makes it possible to avoid uttering the name and perhaps misusing it (Exod 20:7). “The God of the ancestors” (cf. v. 23) is a title for God as he was known to Israel’s forebears before the revelation to Moses (Exod 3:13–16), but it came into increased usage after the exile, especially in Chronicles (1 Chr 5:25; 12:17; 2 Chr 33:12), where it suggests adherence to Israel’s traditional faith rather than recourse to novel or alien alternatives. The title here suggests a recognition that God is acting in faithfulness to the character he has revealed to Israel in the past, though it may also function as yet another reverential substitute for “Yahweh.” The “insight” of vv. 20–23 is again the fruit of supernatural revelation rather than empirical, rational discernment. It is something human beings receive from God rather than achieve; it is equivalent to the knowledge of God’s purposes that prophets gain through being admitted to Yahweh’s council. So “mystery” (vv. 18, 19) is “God revealing his wisdom,” and specifically doing so by means of something symbolic and cryptic that then receives interpretation.98 References to deeply hidden secrets and to light and darkness correspond to other allusions in the OT (Gen 1:4; Deut 29:29 [28]; Isa 45:7; Ps 139; Job 12; 28; 30:16–20) more than to those in the Qumran literature (especially light and darkness in 1QM) or Gnosticism. The content of the revelation (v. 21a) relates to God’s lordship in history (cf. “might,” v. 20); vv. 37–45 will expand on it. The expression “times and eras” comes only here in the OT.99 The talk of times and eras is taken further in the Qumran literature and in the periodizing of history in, e.g., 1 Enoch 91:12–17; 93:1–10 (cf. Dan 9:24–27), as a means of structuring the understanding and presentation of history.100 In Dan 2 the phrase has more general reference; any structuring of history that it presupposes is the structuring provided by the external course of political events, the fall and rise of dynasties referred to in v. 21 and developed in vv. 37–45. 24–30 Daniel apparently implies that the king’s own thoughts (vv. 29a, 30b) had turned to the future, and perhaps that he knew his dream related to the future of his empire—­which would give him some check on purported reconstructions and interpretations of his dream. That people’s dreams relate to their current preoccupations is a common enough experience; for the motif, cf. Xerxes’s dream (Herodotus, Histories 8.12–14). The king was thus not 98 Gladd, Revealing the Mysterion, 32, 33–34. 99 Cf. Koch, Daniel 1–4, 172. 100 Cf. Licht, “. . . ‫תורה העתים‬.”

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indulging in a pointless test of the experts; he knew he had dreamed about his own future but the dream had “hidden itself” (because of its unwelcome content) as dreams do. The king’s thoughts concern what will happen “in the future” (‫אחרי דנה‬ “after this,” v. 29). Etymologically, “the end of the era” (‫אחרית יומיא‬, literally “the end of the days”; v. 28) could also simply mean “the future.” ‫“ אחרית‬end” denotes not a single moment (contrast ‫“ קץ‬end”) but the last part or the aftermath of something (8:19, 23; 10:14; 11:4; 12:8), and ‫ אחרית יומיא‬could thus mean “the last part/aftermath of the [present] days”; cf. Akk. ana ahrat u ˉ mu ˉ meaning “in the future.”101 The fourteen OT occurrences of “at the end of the era/days” (see BDB, 31), however, suggest that in BH/BA the phrase has a more precise meaning. “The days” are a possibly long but not interminable period that will or must elapse before certain predictions, promises, or warnings are fulfilled. The phrase thus refers to the time of fulfillment. This fulfillment may come at the end of the age, though the phrase itself is not of eschatological significance; it acquires this association only through being used in such contexts (cf. CD 4.4; 1QSa 1.1). In vv. 28–29, then, “in the future” denotes the whole period from Nebuchadnezzar onward (cf. v. 45), while “at the end of the era” refers more specifically to the events that bring that whole period to a close (cf. v. 44).102 31–35 A variety of extrabiblical backgrounds have been posited for the five-­part statue (see Form). For its materials, the OT background is at least as significant.103 Gold and silver are standard symbols for what is majestic and precious in political and religious contexts; bronze and iron are standard symbols for what is strong and hard. The four metals together sum up the variety of valuable natural resources or valuable plunder (Josh 6:19, 24; 22:8; Job 28:1–2). There is no implication of deterioration as we move from head to trunk to hips to legs; nor are these four “the metals of idolatry” (cf. 3:1; 5:2, 23).104 So far, then, the statue embodies a many-­faceted power, splendor, strength, and impressiveness. Clay, however, suggests weakness and transience (Job 4:19; 13:12), so that pottery is a quite alien element, the antithesis of the political power and strength implied by the four metals (see Isa 41:25 in the context of 40:19; 45:2), threatening the stability of the otherwise uniformly overpowering edifice that towers above it. All that is needed for the edifice to collapse is a chance rockfall to hit the statue at its weak point. 101 CAD A, 1:194. 102 On “the end of the days,” see H. Seebass in ThWAT on ‫ ;אחרית‬Willis, “The Expression be’acharith hayyamim in the OT”; Staerk, “Der Gebrauch der Wendung ‫ באחרית הימים‬im at. Kanon”; Buchanan, “Eschatology and the ‘End of Days’”; Carmignac, “La notion d’eschatologie dans la Bible et à Qumrân”; Kosmala, “At the End of the Days”; van der Ploeg, “Eschatology in the OT”; Rinaldi, “Nota”; Jones, “Ideas of History in the Book of Daniel,” 220–39; Hoffmann, “‘‫אחרית הימים‘ ו ’ביום ההוא‬.’” 103 See Singer, Die Metalle Gold, Silber, Bronze, Kupfer und Eisen im AT. 104 Against Collins, Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel, 44.

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The logic-­suspending fantasy of dream then appears at its strongest as the awesome statue is not just toppled but in an instant turned into mere wheat husks as they are blown away from the threshing floors exposed to the wind (recalling Isa 41:12–16), while the rock grows into a monumental crag that dominates the whole world (recalling Isa 2:2–3; 11:9). 36–43 The statue’s four parts signify four regimes. ‫ מלכו‬can denote royal authority (5:18), realm (4:18 [15]), individual reign (6:28 [29]), or empire (7:23). The four ‫ מלכותא‬have usually been interpreted as four empires, but Nebuchadnezzar personally is the head, so it is more natural to refer them to the reigns of four kings over a single empire. The four metals are all part of one body that is then destroyed at a blow by the “rock.”105 In contrast to the dream, the interpretation gives special attention to the first and last elements in the statue. Nebuchadnezzar’s empire was indeed the most powerful of his day, and it was the one that dominated the people of God for several generations. The description of Nebuchadnezzar combines an anticipation of Dan 4 (esp. vv. 10–12, 20–22 [7–9, 17–19]) with a recollection of Jer 27:5–8 // Ps 8. Underlying these passages (and thus less directly Dan 2) are conventions of asserting humanity’s dignity and lordship by attributing to humanity authority over the animal creation. These conventions also underlie Gen 1–2, and perhaps also eastern monarchs’ establishing of game parks for captured wild animals.106 Verse 38 thus communicates Nebuchadnezzar’s worldwide rule metaphorically, as the description of him as king among kings (cf. Ezek 26:7, and common with reference to Persian and Seleucid kings) does so more straightforwardly. Nebuchadnezzar rules by the gift of God. Even his might, authority, and glory come not from himself but from the God of the heavens, the Lord even of the king among kings (v. 47). Jeremiah speaks of the rule of Nebuchadnezzar’s son and grandson after him, until after seventy years “the time of his country” comes (25:12; 27:7). This perspective thus extends beyond that of Dan 4 (with its reference to a particular context in Nebuchadnezzar’s own lifetime) to God’s activity as Lord of the future history of Nebuchadnezzar’s empire.107 In recalling Jeremiah’s words and his figure of speech, Daniel adapts them to another figure, four kings suggesting completeness (cf. four quarters of the world, four seasons, and especially the four horns/smiths of Zech 1:18–21 [2:1–4]). Possibly this presentation reflects the historical fact that Nebuchadnezzar was to have more than two successors before the seventy years would elapse. In Dan 2 the second regime is inferior to the first, the third is equal to it in power, and the fourth is of devastating might but ultimate vulnerability.

105 Koch (Daniel 1–4, 198) traces this “minority view” back to Hermann von der Hardt, De Quatuor Monarchiis Babyloniae (Helmstadt: Hommius, 1708). 106 Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia, 46–48. 107 Müller, “Magisch-mantische Weisheit und die Gestalt Daniels,” 86.

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The sequence thus manifests no consistent pattern of degeneration, as in Hesiod, nor a pattern of contrast between the first three and the last, nor a good-­bad-­good-­bad sequence like that of some Babylonian quasi-­predictions (see Form). Daniel passes quickly over the second and third regimes, however, in order to focus on the fourth, elaborating on the dream’s brief description (e.g., adding the toes) as he elaborates on the first. The fourth regime has a crushing power (v. 40) but an unexpected fragility (vv. 41–42: see n. 41.c). It seeks to repair this weakness, but it cannot do so in a lasting way (v. 43: the description sounds like a reference to intermarriage). Whereas Daniel thus characterizes the world power in originally positive terms, as impressive and deserving of admiration in its God-­g iven might, in its final manifestation its power has become crushing—­though not explicitly wicked—­yet strangely vulnerable and needing to be buttressed by desperate and doomed means. Chapter 2 does not identify the second, third, and fourth regimes. In ch. 7 the motif of four regimes recurs in the context of the setting of chs. 7–12 in the Greek period, but one should not assume that the motif is used in the same connection in ch. 2. The characterization of the fourth regime in vv. 40–43 has been connected with events in the Greek period,108 but it could as easily apply to the Babylonians or Persians. The hypothesis that the four-­empire scheme of ch. 7 developed from one that referred to a sequence of regimes fits with other possibilities regarding the diverse history of three-­and four-­ empire schemes.109 It does not carry the implication that ch. 2 had the same significance; indeed, it might seem more likely that the opposite was the case. Historically, Nebuchadnezzar II (604–562) was followed by Amel-­Marduk (Ewil-­merodak) (562–560), Nergal-­šar-­us· ur (Neriglissar (560–556), Labaši-­ Marduk (556), and Nabuna’id (Nabonidus) (556–539), whose son Bel-­šar-­us· ur (Belshazzar) was regent in Babylon when Cyrus conquered the city.110 The four reigns might thus be those of four of these kings,111 or—­less plausibly—­four Assyrian kings,112 Persian kings,113 or Ptolemaic kings.114 The possibility of these various interpretations raises the question whether the text’s unspecificness makes it inappropriate to attempt to identify the rulers referred to after Nebuchadnezzar, as Jer 27 names no specific descendants but simply has them in prospect.115 Perhaps even the symbolic number “four” cannot be pressed 108 See e.g., Torrey, “Notes on the Aramaic Part of Daniel.” 109 See J. Wiesehöfer, “Vom ‘oberen Asien’ zur ‘gesamten bewohnten Welt,’” 66–84; Collins, Apocalypse, Prophecy, and Pseudepigraphy, 116–18. 110 See e.g., Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East 2:597–603. 111 See Eerdmans, “Origin and Meaning of the Aramaic Part of Daniel,” 198–202; Beek, Danielbuch, 38–54; Davies, “Daniel Chapter Two.” 112 So Löwinger, “Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream.” 113 So Schedl, Geschichte des ATs 5:79–80. 114 So Gammie, “Classification, Stages of Growth, and Changing Intentions in the Book of Daniel,” 197–202. 115 Cf. Stevenson, “The Identification of the Four Kingdoms”; Bickerman, Four Strange Books of the Bible. 61–63

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historically. There are, indeed, hints of five regimes in vv. 32–33, 45, and a five-­ regime scheme might have been brought into conformity with a four-­regime one.116 There is a similar tension within some of the extrabiblical material. The unspecificity of Dan 2 means that the four regimes can be identified only on grounds external to the chapter. On the basis of other OT material they could be linked with Nebuchadnezzar and three of his Babylonian successors: the rock then is Cyrus, which fits with the role ascribed to him in Isa 41; 45. The downfall of the empire of Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian successors at Cyrus’s hand therefore links with the end of Judah’s exile, which fits with the promises in Jer 25:12; 27:7. But Daniel itself does not describe Cyrus’s arrival as the end of Babylon’s empire or the end of Judah’s exile. Cyrus’s arrival makes no difference to Babylon or to the exiles.117 The next four chapters in Daniel itself do refer to four regimes. After Nebuchadnezzar (2:37; 5:18) comes Belshazzar (5:28), his “son” (5:2, 11, 14, 18, 22), who is to be “inferior” to him (cf. 5:22–28).118 From Belshazzar the kingship passes to Darius the Mede (5:31 [6:1], cf. 6:28 [29]); he counts the whole world as within his realm, like Nebuchadnezzar (6:25–26 [26–27]). The fourth king is indeed Cyrus, mentioned only at the close of the stories (6:28 [29]) but well known for his irresistible might (see Isa 44:24–45:7). He was said to have been part-­Median, part-­Persian and to have married a Persian (Herodotus, Histories 1.55–56, 107–9; Xenophon, Cyropaedia 1.2.1; 8.5.17–20). Daniel 9:1 describes him as ruling over the empire of the Kasdim, the implication being that the Medes and Persians bring a new dynasty but one that rules within the history of one empire. The perspective suggested by ch. 1 and subsequent chapters, then, is that the four regimes in ch. 2 span the period from Nebuchadnezzar to Cyrus. Daniel thus traces an arc drawn from Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, when the world-­powers’ direct hegemony over Israel begins, to that manifestation of the world empire under which the book’s implied readers live. Indeed, this is the significance of the statue’s message however its parts are identified. The advent of the Persians has not brought the end of world dominion as Jeremiah and Isa 40–55 had promised. The implied readers of Daniel in the Persian period, perhaps disillusioned and depressed like those whom prophecies in Haggai, Zechariah, and Isa 56–66 addressed, are invited to hold onto the conviction that the Babylonian colossus will not stand for ever. It has feet of clay. 44–45 Jeremiah’s prophecy had not looked beyond the destruction of the Babylonian empire. Daniel’s message pictures the establishment of a different sovereignty.

116 Cf. Jepsen, “Bemerkungen zum Danielbuch,” 388; Schreiner, “. . . wird der Gott des Himmels ein Reich errichten,” 134. 117 Cf. Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East 2:603. 118 Van Hoonacker, “The Four Empires of the Book of Daniel,” 422–23.

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The rock, the crag into which it grows, and the crag from which it came, might all be symbols for Israel itself, centered on Mount Zion, and might then indicate the hope that it will be used to bring about the fall of the world empires.119 But the verses do not say that the new regime will be Israel’s (contrast 7:18, 27). More likely the rock destroying the regimes and growing into a crag filling the world stands for God’s own sovereignty and power establishing a lasting regime (cf. the mountain symbolizing and embodying God’s rule, in Isa 2:2–3; Ezek 17:23; Ps 2:6; 48:1–2 [2–3]). The crag from which the rock came (v. 45) might be a symbol for God himself in his strength and reliability (Deut 32:18; Ps 18:2 [3]; 31:2–3 [3–4]). The elaboration of the dream in the interpretation draws attention to the new regime’s divine origin.120 The one who was meant to be a source of strength and protection becomes a mortal danger to those who build their own edifices and refuges (Isa 8:11–15; but one should be wary of allegorizing the picture). There is no need to infer that all three regimes survive till a moment of simultaneous destruction:121 again, the visions are not allegories. There is no clear assertion that the fourth regime is brought to an end as a judgment on its sin (contrast ch. 7). It falls because of its inherent fragility. 46–49 Nebuchadnezzar’s prostrating himself before Daniel does not imply worship, nor does that implication stem from presenting an offering (a gift: e.g., Gen 43:11) or from presenting fragrant oblations, which can be an aspect of the recognition of a king.122 It might be seen as a way of “demythologizing” deified kings,123 or as a natural way of honoring a benefactor,124 or as a way of honoring the God Daniel represents: cf. Josephus’s story about Alexander and the high priest (Ant. 11.8.5 [11.329–39]).125 With the last understanding, we may compare the acknowledgment of Israel/Yahweh promised in Isa 45:14; 49:23; 60:14. But the acknowledgment of Daniel is more prominent than that of Yahweh and more explicit than that of Israel. Thus vv. 46–49 belong together: Nebuchadnezzar acknowledges Daniel, who has proved himself as a remarkable source of revelatory wisdom (v. 46), acknowledges the God who gave him this wisdom (v. 47), and determines to elevate Daniel to the position of political authority for which his insight qualifies him (v. 48a) as well as to a position of supreme authority over the leaders of the guilds of experts who provided the king with counsel (v. 48b), a post perhaps as difficult to accept as the possible worship of v. 46.

119 Davies, “Daniel Chapter Two,” 401. On interpretations of the rock, see Pfandl. “Interpretations of the Kingdom of God in Dan 2:44.” 120 Joubert, “Power and Responsibility in the Book of Daniel,” 35. 121 Against Ginsburg, Studies in Daniel, 6. 122 See Millard, “Incense,” 120–22. 123 Lacocque, Daniel, on the passage; Cf. Olmstead, History of the Persian Empire, 217. 124 Mastin, “Daniel 2:46 and the Hellenistic World.” 125 Cf. Jerome, Daniel, 33.

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Explanation 1–2 Nebuchadnezzar as an individual stood in the background in ch. 1; his figure now comes into sharper focus. It is only the second year of his reign. His prospects are high, his achievements already remarkable (see 1:1–2). Yet the beginning of a reign is a dangerous time,126 and he is ill at ease. He is disturbed by nightmares, and they are not merely (we shall discover) the reflection of a neurotic felt insecurity on the part of a mighty king troubled by inner doubts. They correspond in Nebuchadnezzar’s subjectivity to a real insecurity that attaches to his empire. The king who cannot sleep “is troubled—­not by the thousands of people he has forcibly displaced or the thousands he has massacred on the battlefield or the wealth he has pillaged from the surrounding nations. He is troubled by his dreams, which is perhaps a way of saying that these issues do trouble the monarch.” Actually he “has good reason to be troubled! His dreams announce to him that his powerful regime teeters on a foundation of clay: ‘Underlying the empires is an insatiable will to destruction; this is why they contain within themselves the seed of their destruction.’ ”127 No doubt his Judahite subjects and their descendants who told and heard the story often felt insecure and dreamed nightmares of their own about their future in dispersion. But Nebuchadnezzar’s nightmares witness to where actual insecurity lies. Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams cannot be ignored. They are signs and omens, significant for his empire’s destiny. Dreams, like prophecies, can be manufactured and need to be tested (Deut 13; Jer 23:25–32). Yet like vision and prophecy, they can be means of divine revelation. They cannot be evaded; they impose themselves, and they can testify to the transcendence of God revealing himself as sovereign shaper of earthly events (Gen 37–41; 1 Sam 3). They thus become part of the expectation and actuality of what God does at the climax of the ages (Joel 2:28 [3:1]; Matt 1–2; Acts 2:17).128 Like any powerful administration, Nebuchadnezzar’s regime has its backup agencies and task forces, with access to vast information resources to enable them to interpret the data Nebuchadnezzar provides and to suggest what measures need to be taken to counteract any threats to the state that the data portend. Dreams were not the most common sources of such data, but they were a familiar enough phenomenon, treated by dreambooks. So Nebuchadnezzar summons various of the guilds of his civil servants. The very variety of the ones he summons underlines the anxiety built into the situation, and the mockery (“that saving humor of the oppressed”)129 with which 126 Cf. Baldwin, Daniel, on the passage; and Nolan Fewell, Circle of Sovereignty, 23. 127 Smith-Christopher, “Daniel,” 49, quoting from Lacocque, Daniel, 48. 128 Resch, Der Traum im Heilsplan Gottes, 129–37; Gnuse, “Dreams and Their Theological Significance in the Biblical Tradition.” 129 Berrigan, Daniel, 24.

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Israelites are invited to view the multiplicity of the Babylonians’ toilsome attempts to control their destiny (Isa 47:12–13).130 If the implication of the date in v. 1 is that Daniel and his friends have not yet graduated into the guilds’ company,131 it strengthens the story’s point that the education they were being given is not the source of Daniel’s ability to interpret the dream. 3–9 “Explain my dream to me,” the king demands. “Long live the king,” they begin in reply: there is an irony about the standard courtly greeting because events are to affirm that the only lasting name and reign is the name and reign of God (vv. 20, 44). “Certainly we can explain your dream,” they go on, “Just outline it to us.” They have extensive collections of dream omens to consult if the motifs in the dream are not of obvious significance. But they have missed an ambiguity in the king’s request. It looks as if he may be requiring them to tell him the actual contents of his dream, not just to look up the meaning of its motifs. The requirement is solemnly proclaimed; failure will mean death and the ruin of their families, success will mean rewards and honor. “Before a public audience, the king has challenged the worth of his diviners. If they are able to defend their honor and fulfill their role, they will retain honor and win reward besides. If not, they will be dishonored as those who are unable to respond to a challenge.”132 They resemble students in a class on hermeneutics who are more interested is passing the exam than in offering good interpretation.133 So “the king has a problem with troubling dreams (v. 1), but his problem is far less dangerous than that facing the dream interpreters.”134 The alternatives the king lays out before them highlight the ambiguous prospects attaching to involvement in the Babylonian court.135 Nebuchadnezzar is a man of brilliance, achievement, vision, and generosity, yet also mistrustful, angry, arbitrary, and violent. The portrait is cartooned, yet consistent with other aspects of Middle Eastern courtly life (see Esther, Herodotus, the folk tales often referred to as The Arabian Nights). Like political life in the modern world, the power and glory of participation in the affairs of state would be attractive and an object of wistful longing for people like Judahites who were not part of the power structure, but at the same time alien and frightening because of its reputation for contention, betrayal, scandal, humiliation, and moral pressure. “All imperial power must ultimately appeal to . . . brute force, which is not merely lethal, but spectacularly lethal.”136 Grisly forms of execution are said to 130 Ehrlich, Der Traum in AT, 92. 131 Cf. Theodoret, Daniel, 38–39. 132 Kirkpatrick, Competing for Honor, 76. 133 Cf. Hebbard, Reading Daniel, 78. 134 Towner, Daniel, 31. 135 Cf. Müller, “Märchen, Legende und Enderwartung,” 340–41. 136 Smith-Christopher, “Daniel,” 51; Koch (Daniel 1–4, 156–57) compares with the speech of prophets, such as Amos 1–2.

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have been used in the Middle East, they were used (and not just by kings) in England by Catholics and Protestants, and they are widely used in the twenty-­ first century.137 Given that a king has permission to do what he likes,138 “how foolish, almost mad, are all who want to have very powerful kings.”139 Pardonably, we might think, the civil servants can hardly believe their ears. Their profession is to apply the insights of experience and tradition to data that the king gives them. They are men of sensitivity, imagination, and insight, but they need data to work on, as they patiently and politely point out, moving from imperative to the less peremptory jussive (v. 7). In their renewed request, however, the king sees evasiveness and a confession of helplessness that points to the possibility that their whole profession is a sham. All they can offer is textbook answers to set questions. Their inability to move beyond these parameters undermines the validity of the answers they provide within them. They are simply seeking to gain a period of time in the devious hope that the situation may change in some way. Perhaps they will be able to discover an answer to the apparently impossible question, perhaps sources in the palace will discover for them what the king dreamed or whether he knows what he dreamed, perhaps he will forget the matter (or himself be removed?). Nebuchadnezzar, however, will not let go the possibility of testing whether the experts have access to resources of insight beyond those available to other people. He perhaps takes account of the fact that the ancient world recognized deception as legitimate when one’s honor needed to be established or safeguarded140 and he requires of them a test that Jesus submitted to (Mark 2:1–12): do something that can be checked, whose testimony may carry over into the area that cannot be checked. If they can divine the contents of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, their understanding of its meaning compels respect. If not, the latter is no more than ordinary human opinion. Nebuchadnezzar’s talk of their buying a period of time and hoping the times may change picks up a motif that runs through the chapter. The experts vaguely hope that circumstances may alter and astutely seek to manipulate them, while Nebuchadnezzar sidesteps their maneuver and declares their hope false. Neither side takes into account the God who controls circumstances, though unconsciously they prepare us to meet him. 10–12 The experts’ third and final attempt to persuade Nebuchadnezzar to be reasonable admits what the king has suspected. After all, he should surely grant, they are only human beings: court counselors, learned experts, expositors of the tradition. The king is treating them as if they were privy to the secrets of the gods. The wistful, sad admission that seeks to excuse them

137 Cf. Di Lella, Daniel, 32. 138 The Latin tag is “quod libet, licet” (Calvin, Daniel 1–6, 54). 139 Calvin, Daniel 1–6, 94. 140 Cf. Kirkpatrick, Competing for Honor, 77.

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exposes them and judges them. The critique that began by making fun of the toilsome multiplicity of their guilds ends by scorning their futility. It parallels the contempt for the Babylonian experts in Isa 40–55 and the contempt for the Jerusalem prophets in Jeremiah (Isa 44:25; Jer 23:15–32). Judahite exiles might be tempted to think that Israelite wisdom and Israelite faith in their God as lord of history are looking extremely unimpressive compared with the resources and power of Nebuchadnezzar. Actually, Nebuchadnezzar is helpless. The Babylonians have only earthly techniques that are no heavenly use in the absence of data, and heavenly beings who are no earthly use. The experts’ profession does presuppose that the gods reveal things,141 but not the kind of thing the king requires in this story. The gods of Babylon are strikingly absent from the story. It is not an account of a conflict between the God of the heavens and the gods of Babylon (or Persia),142 but one between the this-­worldly wisdom of Babylon and the supernatural wisdom of Daniel. In the conversation between king and experts, deity is mentioned only in order to be excluded from consideration (v. 11). But Nebuchadnezzar does not accept the principle of Roman law that no one is obligated beyond what he is able to do.143 13–19a Nebuchadnezzar is a man of extreme emotions and actions: in relation to the advisers at the beginning of the story, he is haunted, fearful, peremptory, tyrannical, violent, suspicious, unreasonable, malevolent, irascible (though all in vain); in relation to Daniel at the end, he is extravagant in his appreciation, his rewarding, and his promotion of Daniel, and in his recognition of Daniel’s God. The Babylonian experts descend from a matter-­ of-­fact confidence, via bluster and disbelief, to a bewildered helplessness that faces the guillotine. Our attention now moves from these cartoon portraits to a picture in total contrast. “Daniel behaves here with the restraint of self-­control in contrast with the aggressive tactics of the Babylonian diviners and the hot-­headed rashness of the king (2:12). Daniel acts with prudence and measured care in contrast with the desperate maneuvers of the Babylonians.”144 He models insight and piety, he is shrewd and astute before Aryok, bold and confident before Nebuchadnezzar, open in fellowship with his friends, believing and urgent in prayer, lofty and profound in praise, decisive and assured when he returns with an explanation of the dream, straight and trenchant in declaring both its origins in God’s revelation and its content regarding Babylon’s future. He once again embodies both the experiential discernment of a statesman and the revelatory insight of a seer (cf. 1:4, 17–20). The so-­called experts have 141 Cf. Lawson, “‘The God Who Reveals Secrets.’” 142 Against von der Osten-Sacken, Die Apokalyptik in ihrem Verhältnis zu Prophetie und Weisheit, 18–34. 143 Koch, Daniel 1–4, 153. 144 Kirkpatrick, Competing for Honor, 79.

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shown themselves fools lacking the diplomatic adroitness to handle the king, but Daniel has it; he gets his way where they could not. They were refused time to devise a solution to the conundrum for themselves; he is granted time to seek a revelation from God. They were dismissed for their self-­confessed helplessness; he is accepted for his expectation that he can do something. He is not going to be held back by the fact that God is in the heavens and he is on the earth (Eccl 5:2 [1]).145 He knows that “what is impossible for a human being is possible for God.”146 His undertaking to provide an answer recalls the instinctive boldness of his earlier offer of a trial period on a vegetarian diet (1:12). No doubt it presupposes that he will seek God and receive a revelation from him, but initially the emphasis lies on his courageous expectation that he can provide the answer, and on his decisiveness and calm confidence, which contrast with the experts’ incredulous impotence (it’s not clear whether he is hoping to save all the experts or only himself and his friends). In relation to the Babylonian authorities, Daniel stands alone. In relation to the people of God, however, he stands in fellowship with his three friends. “Disciplined, lucid, strongly given to fasting and prayer,” they form “a kind of ‘base community.’ ”147 Here, the importance of this fellowship is that they join with him in laying hold of the divine resources that Daniel needs if his boldness is not to be exposed as foolhardiness. “If this chapter suggests a paradigm for a ‘Jew in the Diaspora,’ it is for a Jew that exploits to the fullest his intellectual abilities, but has the humility to fall on his knees before God.”148 Then, “in the midst of a praying, believing fellowship, God gives a vision in the night.”149 The “mystery” is “revealed” to Daniel. The background of these terms lies in the human experience of keeping and sharing confidence or secrets (see Prov 11:13; 20:19; 25:9; Sir 8:18; 12:11). This experience is applied to a prophet’s being allowed to share in Yahweh’s secret purpose (Amos 3:7; cf. 1 Sam 3:7; more generally, Deut 29:29 [28]). The theological term revelation, of great significance in recent centuries, has this rather narrow specific biblical background.150 Daniel deals in visions and dreams that reveal the secret purpose of God in history. Apparently understanding history is a divine gift, not a human achievement. The Babylonian experts were the guardians and expositors of secret lore, but Daniel has access to the real secrets of politics and history.151 “Daniel succeeds where they fail not merely because he is better at what they 145 Cf. Koch, Daniel 1–4, 161. 146 Hippolytus, Daniel 2.4. 147 Berrigan, Daniel, 26. 148 Pinker, “A Dream of a Dream,” 238. 149 Lederach, Daniel, 62. 150 See Downing, Has Christianity a Revelation? 151 See Lenzi, “Secrecy, Textual Legitimation, and Intercultural Polemics in the Book of Daniel.”

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do; he does not do a better job of performing the same task. Rather, Daniel has rejected and thus does not employ the divinatory rites that go under the name of insight in the Babylonian tradition.” Instead, he appeals to a different source, to the God of his ancestors (2:23).152 While the OT can be dismissive of dreams as a means of guidance, its alternative ideological or apologetic ploy is to say that Yahweh (and his servant) alone is the true interpreter of dreams.153 Daniel is a prophet in all but name (Num 12:6). But he is the recipient of revelation only in order that Nebuchadnezzar can be (v. 28). The God who sends sun and rain to the wicked as well as the good does not stand off from the heathen powers that control Israel’s destiny.154 He reveals his purpose to them through a prophet, as he had once to Israel’s own kings.155 19b–23 While we do praise God every day, “when God confers some wonderful blessing on his servants, they are the more stirred up to praise him,” with a “new song” (Ps. 40:3 [4]; Isa 42:9–10).156 Having shown himself a man of insight and a man of prayer, Daniel also models the response of praise. His praise and his subsequent confession before the king (vv. 27–30) affirm what the dream and its interpretation will later reflect, that the God of the heavens (v. 19) who is the God of Israel (v. 23) controls “times and eras”—­the successive epochs ruled by one king or another, one empire or another. He has control of history and (thus) has insight into history (vv. 20–22). The poetic section of the chapter articulates the main themes of the narrative.157 The insight described here is not merely the quality of discernment but the possession of knowledge about history that stems from being the deciding factor in history and issues in being solely able to grant knowledge about history. God’s ability to reveal the secrets of history proves that he does control history. Like Isa 40–55, Daniel does not accept that history is determined by the planetary forces that the Babylonians studied (cf. Isa 40:25–26). History is under the control of God in his freedom. It is thus his secret. It cannot be predicted or divined by means of techniques, as the experts have now acknowledged. It can only be revealed—­hence, in part, the motif of prayer and thanksgiving.158 The civil servants were supposed to know the times (Esth 1:13), but the idea is illusory. The times were fixed by a source to which they had no access. “No inexorable working out of fate here; God is personally in charge of events.”159 He controls times and eras, and his name is blessed from age to age. The words for time that appeared earlier in nontheological 152 Kirkpatrick, Competing for Honor, 59. 153 Cf. Noegel, “Dreams and Dream Interpreters in Mesopotamia and in the Hebrew Bible.” 154 See Jerome, Daniel, 30; Steck, “Weltgeschehen und Gottesvolk im Buche Daniel,” 56. 155 Cf. Anderson, Signs and Wonders, on the passage. 156 Calvin, Daniel 1–6, 67. 157 Cf. Venter, “The Function of Poetic Speech in the Narrative in Daniel 2”; Watts, “Daniel’s Praise”; Prinsloo, “Two Poems,” 100. 158 Grelot, “Histoire et eschatologie dans le livre de Daniel,” 105. 159 Towner, Daniel, 33.

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contexts (vv. 4, 8, 9, 16) now affirm that God alone is Lord of times and ages. Nebuchadnezzar, the experts, and also Daniel himself (v. 30) are relativized by him. The pretensions of human conjuring, of human power, and of human insight are exposed. “All the power and wisdom which are in the world are a witness to the power and wisdom of God.” 160 The light and darkness referred to similarly denote God’s capacity to perceive things when all seems dark to human beings. But God has a different relationship with light from the one he has with darkness; he stands over against darkness, knowing it from a distance, but light lives with him. There is an antithesis between light and darkness, but not a dualism. “Theologically, what is important in this story is not so much that God gave wisdom to Daniel, but why God could do so: the fact that he knows ‘what is in the darkness, and light dwells with him’ ” (v. 22).161 Such convictions are characteristic of the OT, though they are expressed here with a marked universality. They may be held to be implicit in the affirmation of Isa 41 that Yahweh alone is bringing about the victories of Cyrus over the Babylonians and that Yahweh alone is (thus) able to offer insight on the significance of these events. Yet those affirmations concern only specific historical events, and Daniel himself will later similarly speak of particular historical events. His testimony here goes behind those specific events to God’s control of and insight into history as a whole. When Amos speaks of God revealing his secret (3:7), he refers to the secret significance of particular events; when Daniel speaks of God revealing his secret, his secret relates to future history viewed as a whole and viewed from its destiny (cf. v. 44).162 Nebuchadnezzar has been wondering about the future (v. 29), and as so often the thoughts suggest the dream (as b. Ber. 55b notes). God reveals that the wondering relates to events at the end of the era (v. 28), to the time when God’s hand, long unseen, becomes visible as he brings about the fulfillment of his promises. The range of Daniel’s vision and his prophetic role extend far beyond anything ch. 1 hinted or chs. 4–5 parallel. The dream relates not just to a chapter in a man’s life or a moment in an empire’s history but offers a perspective on the future as a whole.163 In this sense, this apocalypse is one to which an eschatological perspective is integral. A dramatic effect is achieved by the way Daniel’s worship is recorded. First, the structure of his praise is other than one might have expected. The characteristic movement of a psalm would be from a testimony to God’s specific recent act of grace, via an acknowledgement of God’s characteristic activity as revealer and lord of history, to worship of him for his personal characteristics,

160 Calvin, Daniel 1–6, 69. 161 Lucas, Daniel, 78. 162 Grelot, “Histoire et eschatologie dans le livre de Daniel,” 89. 163 Müller, “Märchen, Legende und Enderwartung,” 338, 350; Plöger, Daniel, on the passage.

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which these activities reflect. The reverse movement here gives prominence to the particular experience of God’s power and wisdom that Daniel himself has been given. A further dramatic effect is achieved by recording this confession here while reserving the content of the revelation for later. This arrangement also has a theological implication. Daniel is to reveal the destiny of Nebuchadnezzar’s empire, and that revelation will evidence the power and wisdom of the God of the heavens. Most of the time, the people of God have to live without revelations of this kind, yet they are still called to affirm that power and wisdom with Daniel on the basis of a revelation which is in prospect but is yet unseen. We do not see much evidence of the might and wisdom of God in international affairs, but we are called to believe in that wisdom to be revealed. Daniel begins by talking about God but ends up talking to God (v. 23).164 Specifically, he talks to the God of his ancestors. The expression has various connotations in the OT, but in this context it links with this move to direct address to the God who is not only high and lifted up but involved with his people.165 24–30 So Daniel returns to offer his interpretation to the king, though first he gives him a theological lecture.166 There is an ambiguity about his own position. He is someone renamed Belteshazzar (v. 26) after the king’s god (4:8 [5]), yet he comes to the king as a Judahite exile (v. 25) who has received his revelation from his ancestors’ God (v. 23). He is able to reveal the mystery to the king, not because he is a more skilled expert (cf. v. 30) but because he is granted access to supernatural sources of information (cf. Gen 41:16). As in Isa 41 and 47, the reason why Babylonian expertise can be scorned is that something that works is now available. The key assertion of the book is not that there is a God in the heavens:167 everyone believed as much. It is that, contrary to the despairing assumption of the experts (v. 11), this God reveals secrets. The experts were right that a divine revelation would be needed to provide what the king asked for, wrong to assume that this was unavailable. 31–35 The awesomeness of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream-­statue derives chiefly from its size. It anticipates the statue in ch. 3; like that statue, it might have represented a god or a man. The various metals suggest a combination of costliness and strength. Yet when our eyes reach the bottom of the statue a bizarre feature appears. “In an appropriately surreal fashion,”168 a single rock is enough to exploit a fatal weakness that lies not in its head, like Goliath’s,169 but in its feet. No human action is involved. 164 Cf Hebbard, Reading Daniel, 87. 165 Cf. Koch, Daniel 1–4, 177–79. 166 Di Lella, Daniel, 40. 167 Against Montgomery, Daniel, on the passage. 168 Newsom, Daniel, 76. 169 Cf. Anderson, Signs and Wonders, on the passage.

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36–45 The statue represents the empire led by Nebuchadnezzar. It is a single statue, a single empire, passed on from one king to another. Daniel’s vision focuses not on Israel’s history, like the prophets, but on world history, and it offers a theology of worldly history, not one confined to salvation history.170 Yet it does not stand for the whole of history seen as a “single compact phenomenon.”171 If Daniel knows a scheme that suggests a theology of universal history, such as features in some extrabiblical texts, the vision turns this scheme into a means of interpreting a particular segment of history, that which begins with Nebuchadnezzar.172 Daniel relates only a “limited apocalyptic history.”173 Yet picturing an empire headed by Nebuchadnezzar is not fortuitous, for he had brought the rule of Davidic kings in Jerusalem to an end. He ruled the first gentile empire to exercise direct control of Jerusalem’s destiny. Beginning in his day the Judahites are part of worldly history. This development does not mean that history is working against God and his purpose for Israel. The Middle Eastern kings under whom the Judahites will henceforth live are under God’s sovereignty in the same real, though indirect, way as the kings of preexilic Judah had been. He sets their story in motion; he terminates it.174 The history of the world (Gen 1–11) had narrowed to become the history of Israel (from Abraham to the exile), but it now broadens to become the history of the nations, on the way to becoming the history of God’s rule. It will turn out that some irony attaches to the description of Nebuchadnezzar as “king among kings” (v. 37). Nebuchadnezzar’s kingship is derived (v. 38), and that from one who is Lord over the earthly king among kings (v. 47).175 “Kings are enthroned on high. . . . But: the same eminences can be dethroned, brought low with astonishing ease.”176 Daniel’s “You are the head made of gold” recalls Nathan’s “You are the man” (2 Sam 12:7) and offers the first hint that Daniel is a prophet as well as a court adviser—­or rather, that as a court adviser he is bound to become a prophet.177 He declares that the golden splendor of Nebuchadnezzar’s empire is God-­g iven. God gave Nebuchadnezzar not only Jerusalem (1:2) but all his royal might and power (v. 37, cf. 5:18), indeed gave him authority over all creation (v. 38). Based as it is on Jer 27:5–7, Daniel’s claim represents the same theology of worldly powers as the prophets’ (cf. also Isa 10), though it takes that theology further. There a theology of world history was a marginal 170 Koch, “Spätisraelitische Geschichtsdenken am Beispiel des Buches Daniel,” 3. 171 Against Noth, “Das geschichtsverständnis der alttestamentlichen Apokalyptik,” 262 (ET 206). 172 Jones, “Ideas of History in the Book of Daniel,” 250–52; Murdock, “History and Revelation in Jewish Apocalypticism,” 170–71. 173 Hall, Revealed Histories, 82–96. 174 Koch, “Spätisraelitische Geschichtsdenken am Beispiel des Buches Daniel,” 25–32. 175 Cf. Seow, “From Mountain to Mountain,” 366; Daniel, 44. 176 Berrigan, Daniel, 28. 177 Cf. Olojede, “Daniel ‘More Than a Prophet’?”

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concern, here it becomes central. Further, while there is an implicit moral aspect to Jer 27:5–7 (and Isa 10) in that Nebuchadnezzar is given his power in order to exercise it in accordance with Yahweh’s judgment (even though Nebuchadnezzar does not realize it), here the royal ideology is “amoral.”178 Were Nebuchadnezzar himself to claim to be “king among kings” and to hold “kingship, sovereignty, power, and honor,” we would take it as an arrogant appropriation of God’s own splendor (cf. v. 47; 1 Chr 29:10–11; and the traditional ending to the Lord’s Prayer). But it is God’s revelation that gives Nebuchadnezzar the “charisms” that will subsequently be given to the human-­like figure in 7:13–14179 and that gives his rule its major theological significance. The book of Daniel makes its affirmations in the context of the domination of gentile peoples over Judahites and asserts that this domination comes about by the will of God. Yet it is ultimately destined to be brought to an end and replaced by God’s implementing of his kingship. Bowing down to Babylon will not be for ever, but it is necessary now theologically, not merely pragmatically (as in Jer 27; 29). The regimes that follow Nebuchadnezzar are not identified, nor are the reasons for the transitions discussed. Subsequent chapters may make it possible to infer their identity (see Comment), but in the drama of the story the description has to be allowed to remain allusive. We miss the point when we spend time arguing over who the empires were. For the recipients of the book what mattered was that they lived during the fourth regime, and when successive generations have reapplied the scheme of empires to the history of their day, in principle they have responded to the vision in the way it sought. If for them the fourth empire is Britain or America or Israel or some other, then the vision applies to it. Lüthi nicely comments that he isn’t sure whom the four metals denote but he doesn’t think it matters too much because he couldn’t think of a regime to which the passage didn’t apply.180 The vision looks beyond Nebuchadnezzar himself to that final denouement; the inferior second and strong third are relatively unimportant. It may be that a further theological point is implied. Daniel’s understanding of Nebuchadnezzar as Yahweh’s agent (1:1–2; 2:37–39) corresponds to the prophetic perception of specific international events such as foreign invasions of Ephraim or Judah as a fulfilling of God’s purpose. Yet when Daniel goes on to describe the development of imperial history after Nebuchadnezzar, no further events of this theological significance are envisioned. Theologically nothing happens, as (or is it “therefore”?) historically nothing happens—­ though the book’s context in the fourth regime may be the consideration that explains the feeling of nonengagement with real events in the Daniel stories 178 Koch, Daniel 1–4, 194. 179 Koch, Daniel 1–4, 190, 192. 180 The Church to Come, 34; cf. Sumner, “Daniel,” 132.

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despite the vision’s concern with history.181 Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that there is no “is given” in vv. 39–40, and the message may be that God is not in this history.182 If the fourth regime is that of Cyrus, it is a striking judgment in light of the historical significance of Cyrus for Judah and his theological significance in Isa 40–55. If the Zand-i Wahman yasn pictures the iron-­mixed age as the period of domination by demons,183 Daniel’s message contrastingly continues on the human plane; it suggests no cosmic dualism. The fourth regime has a remarkable strength. Evidently the readers know that they live under a power capable of awesome violence and destructiveness. Yet the capacity to crush and shatter is not wicked in itself (God’s rule has the same capacity: v. 44). The description of the empire’s downfall apparently follows attempts to mend its inherent fragility by intermarriage. The readers are assured that these attempts will fail. Yet there is no explicit condemnation of the fourth regime, any more than of the others, nor does the vision imply that history has reached such a low point that divine intervention is inevitable (or imminent). History, it hints, is proceeding according to “laws” of its own, neither progressing nor degenerating but simply taking its changing course, by God’s permissive will. History does not proceed as a series of acts of divine acts of grace, nor as a sequence comprising blessing, disobedience, punishment, repentance, and restoration. But “God remains the ultimate power over history even in the absence of God’s salvific nearness.”184 But then God acts, for reasons we are not given, though apparently not because history has manifestly reached the appropriate point for this intervention or because a necessary sequence of events has taken place. It is not possible to work out when the act must come. Human history always stands before the possibility of God’s acting.185 His act emerges from his own freedom. But when God’s time comes, his reign requires the destruction of earthly regimes rather than his working through them. They are God’s will for now, but not for ever; and when his moment arrives, his reign comes by catastrophe, not by development.186 So there is no hint of timing in Daniel’s revelation. Whether the revelation comes from the Babylonian period, the Persian period, or the Greek period, it implies that history can be divinely foreknown, but not that it is divinely foreordained. It does not speak of final events fixed since time’s beginning, 181 182 183 184

Steck, “Weltgeschehen und Gottesvolk im Buche Daniel.” 57–58. Atzerodt, “Weltgeschichte und Reich Gottes im Buch Daniel,” 242. So Flusser, “The Four Empires,” 166–68. Merrill Willis, Dissonance and the Drama of Divine Sovereignty, 59 (she makes a comparison with Sirach that is illuminating even if one does not accept her views on redaction and dating). 185 Noth, “Das geschichtsverständnis der alttestamentlichen Apokalyptik,” 263–65, 272–73 (ET 207–8, 214). 186 Atzerodt, “Weltgeschichte und Reich Gottes im Buch Daniel,” 248, 249.

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of the whole world under evil’s power, of a dualism of this world and the righteous world to come, of judgment in the form of an immutable fate, or of a division of world history into periods determined by God—­Moltmann’s characterization of apocalypticism.187 Indeed, it satisfies von Rad’s characterization of Israelite historiography.188 It assumes that human beings make real decisions that do shape history, yet that human decision making does not necessarily have the last word. It affirms the sovereignty of God in history, working sometimes via the process of human decision making, sometimes despite it. “History moves on the border of chaos like a [path] winding along a cliff . . . At one particular time, however, history will turn over the edge.”189 The end of history promised here is not history coming to its goal.190 Nor, however, is it history being broken off.191 Nor are the four empires succeeded by a further, fifth empire, but by something wholly other. Daniel promises a new future, one which is not merely an extension of the present.192 It is of supernatural origin. But it is located on earth, not in the heavens. Daniel envisages no dissolution of the cosmos or creation of a different world. His understanding of this reign is more like the prophetic idea of the day of Yahweh than that of some later apocalypses. The problems of politics and history can be resolved only by a supernatural intervention that inaugurates a new regime, but this intervention involves changing the lordship of this world, not abandoning this world. The new regime fills the earth. History is not destroyed; other sovereignties are.193 The qualities of this new rule are not described except by saying that it is God’s and that it lasts, both of which qualities contrast with those of its predecessors. The rule, the power, and the glory had belonged to Nebuchadnezzar for a while by God’s gift, but now they are manifested elsewhere “for ever and ever” (v. 44). The motif of time recurs once more: Nebuchadnezzar’s kingship cannot last for ever (contrast v. 4), but God’s regime will do so, because he himself does (cf. v. 20). Whereas the insight and power of Israel and its God seemed unimpressive (as they did to the exiles to whom Isa 40–55 is addressed), in fact God holds and shares resources of insight and power beyond Nebuchadnezzar’s dreaming (as Isa 40–55, too, asserts in relation to Babylon and Cyrus)—­not that Daniel sees the rock as representing an

187 Theologie der Hoffnung, 120 (ET 133–34). 188 “Der Anfang der Geschichtsschreibung im alten Israel,” 148–54 (ET 166–71); cf. Jones, “Ideas of History in the Book of Daniel,” 91–92. 189 Kvanvig, “The Relevance of the Biblical Visions of the End Time,” 47; cf. Kruschwitz/ Redditt, “Nebuchadnezzar as the Head of Gold,” 412. 190 So Pannenberg, “Heilsgeschehen und Geschichte,” KD 5 (1959) 220 = Grundfragen systematischer Theologie, 25 (ET 18). 191 So Bultmann, History and Eschatology, 29 192 Jones, “Ideas of History in the Book of Daniel,” 102, 113–18. 193 Barth, Diesseits und Jenseits im Glauben des späten Israel, 93–100; Jones, “Ideas of History in the Book of Daniel,” 253–56.

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Israelite empire. His emphasis is that power and insight belong to God. Nebuchadnezzar’s dream “reveals that the traditional Israelite ways of narrating divine power and presence in history are no longer able to account for the experience and also what it does for its . . . readers.”194 In those circumstances, if encouragement is the first aim of a piece of apocalyptic literature such as this one,195 it is that fact about God’s power and insight rather than their own status that Daniel offers as an encouragement to his Judahite readers. Indeed, Dan 2 has no reference to the people of God, the Messiah, the eternal destiny of humanity, the remnant, or the temple.196 God’s rule has sole focus. This focus gives a context to subsequent chapters’ references to these other motifs. Daniel’s vision was not fulfilled in the historical periods to which the book refers. In this it parallels the many prophecies that give the impression that the day of Yahweh is about to dawn, but after which things continue as they have done before. It happens again after Jesus came declaring the present or imminent establishing of God’s reign (see 2 Pet 3:4). Yet each prophet’s words (and Jesus’s words) were received as from God, partly in the conviction that they would find their fulfillment in time, partly in the awareness that they had seen some measure of fulfillment already, which encouraged the conviction that further fulfillment would follow. So it is with Daniel’s vision. The regimes that Daniel and the readers knew did disappear; the reign of the God of the heavens was reestablished in Jerusalem. By NT times, the rock in Daniel had become associated with other “rock” passages, such as Isa 8:14 (see also 28:16) and Ps 118:22 (see Luke 20:17–18).197 While “Daniel 1–6 has no interest in the Davidic line”198 and there is no indication that Daniel understood the rock to denote a Messiah, it turned out that the one who initiated the ultimate downfall of worldly empires and the establishment of God’s reign was the man Jesus.199 His virgin birth makes a parallel point to the picture of the rock breaking off without human involvement. He came to a people looking for God’s reign, and he proclaimed that it was now arriving (Mark 15:43; 1:15), though it transpired that the King among kings could also be described as a lamb with the marks of slaughter upon him (Rev 5:6; 17:14), which excludes any triumphalistic understanding of this kingship.200 Christians living much later than Jesus’s day have to face the difficulties of their conviction about him. Calvin attempts to demolish Avravanel’s exposition 194 Merrill Willis, Dissonance and the Drama of Divine Sovereignty in the Book of Daniel, 36 (she specifies a redaction and a reading in the early Seleucid period, but the point is not dependent on this assumption). 195 Cf. Sappington, “The Factor of Function in Defining Jewish Apocalyptic Literature,” 97–98. 196 Barth, Diesseits und Jenseits im Glauben des späten Israel, 97, 99. 197 See e.g., Siegman, “The Stone Hewn from the Mountain,” 375–79; Schreiner, “Peter, the Rock.” 198 Collins, “Nebuchadnezzar and the Kingdom of God,” 132. 199 So Chrysostomus, Daniel, on the passage. 200 See Dietrich, “Gott als König.”

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of these difficulties, but he is not entirely successful.201 The book of Daniel’s own response to the fact that the exile did not bring the ultimate realization of Yahweh’s kingship, in keeping with the proclamation in Isa 40–55, is not to turn that kingship into something nationalistic (Yahweh is Israel’s king) or individualistic (Yahweh’s kingship is realized in the individual believer’s life) or inward (it is realized in a person’s inner being) or otherworldly (it is realized in heaven).202 It reaffirms the universal, this worldly, material, corporate perspective of Isa 40–55. It is talking about a reign of God on earth, which continues to be more an object of hope than of sight. We still pray “may your reign come” (Luke 11:2), and—­in light of Daniel’s revelation—­we have to be referring to a reign that is temporal, worldly, material, and social. Precisely at moments when such a vision is difficult to believe, Daniel’s readers are urged, via his final declaration to the king (v. 45b), to take it with utmost seriousness (cf. 8:26; 10:21; Rev 19:9; 21:5; 22:6). 46–49 Giving Nebuchadnezzar the vision brings glory to God and comfort to dispersion Judahites,203 and withholding the vision and its interpretation for a while from Nebuchadnezzar has brought recognition to Daniel as a prophet.204 Nebuchadnezzar is not now expected to take any action in light of this foreshadowed future (contrast 4:27 [24]). He offers the only possible response, an acknowledgment of the revealer—­of God and of his human agent. The experience of God at work leads to an awareness of who God is and who is God (v. 47). Arguably it is the goal of the story, and its point is the main one. Perhaps one may infer that “God loves Nebuchanezzar, too, and has a role for him to play in the fabric of his history.”205 Its point would then parallel that of Jonah: not just that Yahweh is concerned for all nations, as the OT often affirms, but that God reaches out to oppressors. Acknowledging God as Master among kings does mean Nebuchadnezzar implicitly qualifying the meaning of his own kingship in a revolutionary way. Acknowledging him as God among gods is not technically a monotheistic statement,206 but it means such a radical qualifying of the ascription of divinity to other deities that when “monotheism or polytheism” becomes the question in the context of later Greek thinking, monotheism is what it implies. The story’s envisaging of such a response by the heathen king corresponds to the earlier affirmation of his position (vv. 37–39); indeed it works out the demand implicit in that affirmation. Both affirmation and expectation correspond to ones regarding Cyrus in Isa 40–55 (e.g., 45:1–7). The two belong together. The affirmation (cf. Rom 13) presupposes the expectation that the gentile 201 Calvin, Daniel 1–6, 101–4. 202 Cf. Coppens, Messianisme royal, 27–28. 203 Jerome, Daniel, 24. 204 Hippolytus, Daniel 2.2. 205 Towner, Daniel, 43. 206 Cf. Lucas, Daniel, 80.

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authority submits its power to God; where this expectation is not fulfilled, the affirmation is withdrawn (cf. Revelation). Yet the idea of an Israelite being the head of the Babylonian experts again suggests a less exclusive attitude to their worldly wisdom than that of Isa 40–55.207 Verses 46–48 may seem to confuse the testimony of vv. 1–30 that Babylonian wisdom is worthless and that Daniel is nothing except by God’s power,208 but we are invited to sense no conflict between this insistence and Nebuchadnezzar’s instinct to honor Daniel as God’s representative, the prophetic expert par excellence.209 Daniel’s revelation has referred to a future assertion of God’s reign. Paradoxically, it effects a realization of God’s reign even now. Nebuchadnezzar acknowledges that God already rules, “on earth as in the heavens,” and by giving God’s servants authority over the experts and over Babylonian political affairs he institutes another indirect form of divine rule in Babylon itself, “on earth as in the heavens.” The fact that there is to be a new future makes it possible to hope for a new present; it does not mean ceasing to have any hopes for the present. It does imply that any hopes that Judahites have for the present need to bear in mind the interim, temporary, and doomed nature of that system with which they seek to work. The dream “destabilizes the ideological compromise between an affirmation of YHWH’s sovereignty and the reality of Gentile rule” because it speaks of “action by God to bring to an end the delegation of divine rule to Gentile powers. . . . It challenges the compromise that the plot of the stories had made with Gentile rule.”210 The book’s implied readers under the fourth regime (or its actual readers later) are invited to join Nebuchadnezzar in acknowledging the insight of Daniel’s God as revealer and his sovereignty as lord of history, the more convincedly now that they have seen regimes passing as Daniel described, and to look with expectation for the rock breaking off from a crag and destined to dominate the world. Whether they are tested by persecution or by success, such testing is designed to draw them to acknowledge that God is Lord. He is lord of history, whether or not at present he seems to be acting as such. History is going somewhere, even if not by its own energy or design, and even if its movement can be perceived only by divine revelation, not read off from events.211 While the vision offers no hint regarding the chronology whereby God’s rule will arrive, it does invite its recipients to live as people who expect it as a living reality.212 207 Lebram, “Nachbiblische Weisheitstraditionen,” 234–37. 208 Ehrlich, Der Traum im AT, 103. 209 Müller, “Mantische Weisheit und Apokalyptik,” 275–77. 210 Newsom, Daniel, 17. Newsom’s pluperfect verb presupposes the traditional understanding of the regimes as empires and the view that the dream in its present form is a later addition to the story, but her point also holds on the interpretation adopted in the present commentary. 211 Schreiner, “. . . wird der Gott des Himmels ein Reich errichten,” 141–49. 212 Grelot, “Histoire et eschatologie dans le livre de Daniel,” 105.

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“The story from beginning to end portrays the nature of the reign of the God of Heaven, as it is manifested on earth.”213 The world rulers are under God’s control, and when he chooses he can make them acknowledge it. The shape of human history is under his control, and the coming of God’s rule is certain. People in exposed positions such as Daniel’s prove God’s wisdom before gentile masters; how much more can ordinary people do so in the context of their ordinary pressures. Only God controls history, and only he reveals what it holds. The unique sovereign power of the God of Israel has been simultaneously unveiled to and concealed from Nebuchadnezzar, relied on by Daniel, revealed through and in the dream/vision, and recognized by Nebuchadnezzar.

213 Seow, “From Mountain to Mountain,” 356.

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III. God Vindicates His Power When Three Judahites Choose Burning Rather Than Compromise (3:1–30) Pericope Bibliography Alexander, J. B. “New Light on the Fiery Furnace.” Astour, M. C. “Greek Names in the Semitic World and Semitic Names in the Greek World.” Auscher, D. “Les relations entre la Grèce et la Palestine avant la conquête d’Alexandre.” Avalos, H. I. “The Comedic Function of the Enumerations of the Officials and Instruments in Daniel 3.” Beaulieu,  P.-­A . “The Babylonian Background of the Motif of the Fiery Furnace.” Brensinger, T. L. “Compliance, Dissonance and Amazement in Daniel 3.” Cook, E. M. “In the Plain of the Wall.” Cook, S. A. “The Articles of Dress in Dan. iii,21.” Coxon, P. W. “Greek Loan-­words and Alleged Greek Loan Translations.” —­—­—­. “Daniel iii 17.” Delcor, M. “Un cas de traduction ‘targoumique’ de la LXX.” Dulaey, M. “Les trois Hébreux dans la fournaise.” Dyer, C. H. “The Musical Instruments in Daniel 3.” Eichhorn, D. E. “Sanhedrin 93a and the Third Chapter of Daniel.” Finesinger, S. B. “Musical Instruments in the OT.” Gevaryahu, H. M. Y. “‫דניאל‬ ‫עיונים בספר‬.” Grelot, P. “L’orchestre de Daniel iii.” Gunn, D. M., and D. Nolan Fewell. “Nebuchadnezzar and Three Jews.” Haag, E. “Die drei Männer im Feuer.” Heller, R. L. “ ‘But if not . . .’ What?” Holm, T. L. “The Fiery Furnace in the Book of Daniel and the Ancient Near East.” Kuhl, C. Die drei Männer im Feuer. Margoliouth, D. S. “The Greek Words in Daniel.” Mastin, B. A. “The Text of Daniel 3:16.” Mitchell, T. C. “And the Band Played On.” —­—­—­. “The Music of the OT Reconsidered.” Mitchell, T. C., and R. Joyce. “The Musical Instruments in Nebuchadrezzar’s Orchestra.” Nyberg, H. S. “Ein iranisches Wort im Buche Daniel.” Paul, S. M. “Dan 3:29.” Peters, J. P. “The Three Children in the Fiery Furnace,” in “Notes on the OT,” 109–11. Polin, C. C. J. Music of the Ancient Near East. Prinsloo, G. T. M. “Daniel 3.” Ron, Z. “Rescue from Fiery Death.” Sanders, B. G. “The Burning Fiery Furnace.” Shea, W. H. “Daniel 3.” Van Deventer, H. J. M. “ ‘We Did Not Hear the Bagpipe.’ ” Van Henten, J. W. “Daniel 3 and 6 in Early Christian Literature,” in Collins/Flint (eds.), The Book of Daniel 1:149– 69. —­—­—­. “The Reception of Daniel 3 and 6 and the Maccabean Martyrdoms in Hebrews 11:33–38.” Wegner, M. “Das Nabuchodonosor-­Bild.” Werner, E. “Musical Instruments.” Wharton, J. A. “Daniel 3:16–18.” Yamauchi, E. M. “Greek Words in Daniel.” —­—­—­. “Daniel and Contacts between the Aegean and the Near East before Alexander.” —­—­—­. “Greece and Babylon Revisited,” in Merling (ed.), To Understand the Scriptures, 127–36.

Translation King Nebukadne’s· s· ar made a gold statue, sixty cubits high and six b cubits wide, and set it up in the vale of Dura in the province of Babel.c 2And King Nebukadne’s· s· ar sent word for the assembling of the asatraps, governors, and commissioners,a the bcounselors,c treasurers,d judges, officers,b and all the provincial officials, to come to the 1a

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223

dedication of the statue which King Nebukadne’s· s· ar had set up. 3aThey assembled, the satraps, governors, and commissioners, the counselors, treasurers, judges, officers, and all the provincial officials, for the dedication of the statue that King Nebukadne’s· s· ar had set up, and they were standing in front of the statue bwhich Nebukadne’s· s· ar had set up.b 4 And the herald a proclaimed in a loud voice: “Peoples, nations, and languages: you are bidden,b 5at the set moment when you hear the sound of the horn,a the pipe,b the guitar,c the trigon,d the banjo,e the ensemble f with every kind of music, to gbow prostrate g before the gold statue that King Nebukadne’s· s· ar has set up.  6Anyone who does not bow prostrate will be thrown straightaway into the middle of a red-­hot blazing furnace.” 7So at the very moment the peoples all heard the sound of the horn, the pipe, the guitar, the trigon, the banjo,a with every kind of music, the people of all races, nations, and languages would bow prostrate b before the gold statue which King Nebukadne’s· s· ar had set up. 8a So at that very moment some Kasdites came forward and denouncedb the Yehudites. 9 They averred to aKing Nebukadne’s· s· ar, “Long live the king! 10Your majesty, you gave notice that everyone who heard the sound of the horn, the pipe, the guitar, the trigon, the banjo, and the ensemble with every kind of music, was to bow prostrate before the gold statue, 11and that anyone who did not bow prostrate would be thrown inside a red-­hot blazing furnace. 12There are some Yehudites whom you appointed over the affairs of the province of Babel, Šadrak, Mešak, and ‘Abed Nego. These people have not taken any notice of you, your majesty. They have not honored your gods a or bowed down to the gold statue which you have set up.” 13 Nebukadne’s· s· ar, in a furious rage, said to bring Šadrak, Mešak, and ‘Abed Nego. These men were brought before the king. 14Nebukadne’s· s· ar averred to them, “Šadrak, Mešak, and ‘Abed Nego, do you really a not honor my gods or bow down to the gold statue that I have set up? 15If you are indeed a now ready to fall prostrate before the statue I have made, at the set moment when you hear the sound of the horn, the pipe, the guitar, the trigon, the banjo, and the ensemble with every kind of music. . . . b But if you do not bow down, you will be thrown straightaway inside a red-­hot blazing furnace. Then who everc is the god who c could rescue you from my power?”e 16Šadrak, Mešak, and ‘Abed Nego responded to King Nebukadne’s· s· ar,a “We do not need b to make any cresponse regarding this.c 17If  a our God, whom we honor, exists,b he is able to rescue us from the red-­hot blazing furnace, and he will rescue us from your power, your majesty. 18Even if he should not,a your majesty may be assured that we are not going to honor your gods or bow down to the gold statue which you have set up.” 19 Nebukadne’s· s· ar filled with rage, and the image on his face towards Šadrak, Mešak, and ‘Abed Nego changed. He averred that the furnace was to be heated seven times a higher than it was usually heated.b 20He told athe strongest men in his army a to tie up Šadrak, Mešak, and ‘Abed Nego for throwing b inside the red-­hot blazing furnace. 21These men were tied up in their trousers,a their pattishin,b their headwear and their clothes, and thrown inside the red-­hot blazing furnace. 22Now as a result of the king’s strict order about the furnace being heated very high, the flames from the fire killed those men who took up Šadrak, Mešak, and ‘Abed Nego. 23a So these three men, Šadrak, Mešak, and ‘Abed Nego, fell inside the red-­hot blazing

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furnace, tied up. 24Then King Nebukadne’s· s· ar, astartled, stood up in alarm a and averred to his courtiers,b “Was it not three men that we threw into the middle of the fire, tied up?” They responded to the king, “Yes it was, your majesty.” 25He averred, “There, I can see four men, free, walking about a in the middle of the fire. It has no effect on them. And the appearance of the fourth is like a divine being.” b 26 Nebukadne’s· s· ar went towards the door of the red-­hot, blazing furnace and averred, “Šadrak, Mešak, and ‘Abed Nego, servants of God On High, come out, come here.” Out came Šadrak, Mešak, and ‘Abed Nego from the middle of the fire. 27The satraps, governors and commissioners, and the royal courtiers,a gathered around to see b these men: the fire had had no power over their bodies, the hair on their heads was not singed, their trousers were unaffected, and the smell of the fire had not come onto them. 28 Nebukadne’s· s· ar averred, “Blessed be a the God of Šadrak, Mešak, and ‘Abed Nego: he has sent his aide and rescued his servants who entrusted themselves to him. They defied b the word of the king and gave up their bodies c rather than honor or bow down before any god but their God. 29I hereby give notice that anyone of any people, nation, or language that says anything remiss a about the God of Šadrak, Mešak, and ‘Abed Nego’ will be torn limb from limb, and his house turned into rubble, because there exists no other God who can deliver in this way.” b 30 The king promoted Šadrak, Mešak, and ‘Abed Nego in the province of Babel.a

Notes 1.a. G adds “in Nebuchadnezzar’s eighteenth year,” the year of his capture of Jerusalem (cf. Jer 52:29), which would have been the source of some of the gold that is about to be referred to. See also the Comment on 1:1. OG also adds a description of Nebuchadnezzar’s worldwide rule (and another description in v. 2). 1.b. One ms of OG has “twelve,” which gives the statue more plausible proportions. 1.c. Or “in the vale of the wall in the city of Babylon” (so Cook, “In the Plain of the Wall”; Saadia also has “city”). 2.a–­a. The “and” separates ‫( אחשדרפניא‬OP), ‫סגניא‬, and ‫( פחותא‬both Akk.) from the other officials, who are apparently less senior. As the words mix OP and Akk., they hardly belong to a single ranking structure (e.g., as ministers of satrapies, of provinces, and of smaller areas). Rather, the list adds to Persian satrap two more familiar Semitic terms known from various contexts in the OT (including 2:48). Both can denote area-­or city-­governors, or officials more generally, and they need not be distinguished too specifically from satrap or from each other here. “It is noteworthy, however, that none of these titles is Greek” (Collins, Daniel, 183; see also Koch). 2.b–­b. OP terms of more specific, though sometimes uncertain, meaning (see Koch). 2.c. ‫אדרגזריא‬: perhaps equivalent figures to the “king’s eyes” (and ears) known from Greek and Aramaic texts, officials in the imperial administration whose task was to keep the king informed on affairs in the empire (Oppenheim, “ ‘The Eyes of the Lord,’ ” 178; Balcer, “The Athenian Episkopos,” 256–57; cf. Xenophon, Cyropaedia 8.2.10–12). 2.d. ‫( גזבריא = גדבריא‬or does it refer to the royal hairdressers?—­so Gershevitch, “Amber at Persepolis,” 202).

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225

3.a. ‫“ באדין‬then” is used as a connecting particle here and elsewhere in ch. 3 (like ‫ אדין‬in ch. 2); I have left it untranslated. 3.b–­b. G omits, simplifying the repetitive MT. 4.a. ‫כרוזא‬, cf. OP xrausa, Gk. κῆρυξ, which may be of eastern origin. 4.b. Lit. “they are saying” (impersonal third person pl.). 5.a. ‫קרנא‬, ram’s horn (cf. ‫)שופר‬, more a heraldic than a musical instrument. 5.b. ‫משרוקיתא‬: ‫“ שרק‬hiss” (onomatopoeic?) suggests a whistle or shepherd’s pipe (cf. Judg 5:16). 5.c. ‫ רוסתקי‬corresponds to κίθαρις; it is unclear whether it is originally a Gk. or Semitic word. It refers to something like a lyre or guitar (which etymologically derives from words such as κίθαρις). 5.d. ‫סבכא‬, a Semitic word to denote an instrument of Asian origin, a triangular harp with four or more strings, played for entertainment (Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 4.175de; Macrobius, Saturnalia 3.14.7). 5.e. ‫ פסנתרין‬corresponds to ψαλτηρίον (from ψάλλω “pluck”), another triangular stringed instrument, with a sounding board, played for entertainment (Macrobius [see n. 5.d]; mentioned earlier in Aristotle, Problemata 919b). 5.f. ‫ סומפניה‬corresponds to συμφωνία. It can denote ensemble playing, here indicating the instruments playing together after each plays individually, in accordance with common practice. Later it can refer to a particular instrument, perhaps a tambourine (Mitchell). When Antiochus Epiphanes revels to the συμφωνία (Polybius 26.1.4), it could have either meaning. Its omission in v. 7 (whether original or not) is more natural if it is taken to refer to playing together; it would be less dispensable if it referred to a specific instrument. In contrast with the list in v. 2, several Gk. words come in this list. 5.g–­g. Lit., “fall and bow down”: see n. 2:46.a. 7.a. Some medieval mss, Th., and Vulg. add ‫“ וסומפניא‬and the ensemble”; more likely assimilation to vv. 5, 10, 15 than original here. 7.b. Taking the participles ‫ סגדין‬. . . ‫ נפלין‬to have imperfect meaning, though BA participles often have aorist meaning, and the context could refer to one occasion. See BL 81n. 8.a. Th., Syr. lack ‫“ כל קבל דנה‬so” (OG links it to v. 7), which could be dittog. from v. 7 where it is also followed by ‫“ בה זמנא‬at the moment that,” but is more likely an omission on the basis of unclarity about the logic of the “so” (see Comment). 8.b. ‫“ אכלו קרציהון די‬ate pieces of,” an Akk. expression for “accusing” (CAD A, 1:255–56). 9.a. Usually people speak “before” (‫ )קדם‬not “to” (‫ )ל‬the king (cf. 2:10, 27). The story may imply discourtesy on the accusers’ part (cf. vv. 16, 24; 6:6, 15 [7, 16])(Charles). 12.a. K’s ‫ אלהיך‬explicitly marks the word as pl. (cf. Muraoka, Reader, 47); Q ‫אלהך‬ may conform the spelling to a different morphological convention or may be s. OG τῷ εἰδώλῷ σου takes as s., and specifically takes the statue as a god/idol. 14.a. ‫ ;)יצד √( דצא‬cf. Torrey, “Stray Notes on the Aramaic of Daniel and Ezra,” 231– 32. It need not be equated with or emended to ‫( אזדא‬BDB) or translated “deliberately” (cf. BH ‫)צדיה‬. 15.a. ‫ איתיכון‬retains an emphatic sense. 15.b. “The fact that the first sentence lacks an explicit apodosis is not disturbing, as there are many parallels for this phenomenon” (Wesselius, “Language and Style in BA,” 205; cf. JM 167r). 15.c. ‫( מן הוא‬BDB, 1100b). 15.d. Reading ‫ּד י‬,ִ not ‫“ ֵּד י‬sufficient” (BDB, 191)—­against L.

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15.e. MT has pl. “my hands”; some medieval mss, Th. have ‫“ יְ ִד י‬my hand”; v. 17 has s. ‫“ ידך‬your hand.” 16.a. Repunctuating with BHS against MT ‫“( למלכא נבוכדנצר‬to the king: “Nebukadne’s· s·ar . . .’ ”), which is implausibly discourteous (see further Mastin, “The Text of Daniel 3:16”), though it prompts Rashi to pass on the observation that when Nebuchadnezzar acts legitimately he is “the king,” but on an occasion like this one he is simply “Nebuchadnezzar.” 16.b. Read ‫ ָחשחין‬with some medieval mss, not ‫“ ַחשחין‬needed,” against L (‫השחין‬ in the BHS fascicle is a misprint). “We have no difficulty . . .” (Ehrlich) is attractive, but difficult to justify. “We do not mind/care . . .” (cf. RV mg., Ps-­Saadia) presupposes that ‫חוש = חשח‬/‫חשש‬. 16.c–­c. ‫ ;על דנה פתגם‬cf. Ezra 5:11, 17; TTH 208. EVV “in this matter” assumes ‫דנה‬ qualifies ‫( פתגם‬cf. G but not Syr.); this would require ‫( פמגמא‬emphatic). 17.a. Vulg. takes ‫ הן‬to mean “behold,” and G imply the same assumption, as they have a statement and they thus avoid what might seem a troubling if-­clause, but ‫הן‬ does not mean “behold” in BA. 17.b. Cf. NEB; ‫ איתי‬thus, uninflected, usually means “is, exists” (cf. esp. v. 29). RSV has “If it be so [i.e., if the king does so], our God is able . . .” (cf. Ezra 5:17), but the phrase is abrupt, and the punctuation destroys the parallel with v. 15, which v. 17 takes up. “If our God . . . is able . . .” (NRSV) links ‫ איתי‬with ‫יכל‬, but the separating of copula and participle is unparalleled in BA. Further, it is unlikely that the men would be pictured as questioning God’s power, whereas the question whether such a God exists has already been raised (v. 15), and v. 17 takes this up; cf. v. 29. See discussion in Coxon, “Daniel iii 17”; Joubert, 56–58. 18.a. ‫והן לא‬, i.e., “even if he does not rescue us,” not “even if such a God does not exist.” The conditional clause follows on from that in v. 17, rather than paralleling it (Heller, “ ‘But If Not . . .’ What?” argues for “even if you do not throw us into the furnace”). OG again safeguards against the scandalous possible interpretation by turning the if-­clause into an affirmation, “and then it will be clear to you” (cf. Collins, Daniel, 177). 19.a. Lit. “one seven”; a proverbial hyperbole (cf. Prov 26:16, 25). 19.b. “Lit., “was seen” to be heated—­than anyone had seen before (Behrmann; cf. Koch). 20.a–­a. Lit., “men mighty of strength who were in his army”; for this as superlative (NJPS, NEB), cf. ‫ גבוד ב‬in Ps 112:2 (NEB), Prov 30:30 (BDB, 150a). Variants of the same roots are here used for “men” and “mighty,” then for “strength” and “army,” so that the effect is almost “the most forceful he-­men in his forces.” ‫ גבר‬itself suggests “man as strong” (BDB, 150). 20.b. The second inf. ‫ למרמא‬is dependent on the first ‫“ לכפתה‬to tie up”; cf. BL 85a. EVV “and to throw them” requires ‫ ו‬before the verb (haplog?). 21.a. See Lacocque. Less plausibly ‫ טרליהון‬is taken to denote cloaks (Cook, “The Articles of Dress in Dan. iii, 21; BDB; DTT) or headwear (Nyberg, “Ein iranisches Wort im Buche Daniel,” 178–87). 21.b. ‫ פטישיהון‬is the most puzzling of the four words in the list. DTT suggests “trousers”; Gk. πέτασος means “headwear.” Possibly at least one of the words is an explanatory gloss on an unfamiliar expression (see Nyberg, “Ein iranisches Wort im Buche Daniel”); I have thus transliterated this word, which may have been strange to the original hearers. 23.a. The verse reads better as a resumptive lead-­in to a new paragraph than as (otiose) repetition at the end of the previous paragraph (against MT).

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24.a–­a. ‫ תוה וקם בהתבהלה‬suggests fear, not mere amazement (BDB), as Syr. makes explicit: cf. n. 2:25.a. 24.b. ‫הדברוהי‬, cf. 3:27; 4:36 [33]; 6:7 [8]. The term is not used in a consistent way and it is not clear how these people relate to the groups listed in v. 2. In v. 27 it may summarize the second, subordinate group of officials in that list. 25.a. On the vocalization of ‫מהלכין‬, see Eitan. 25.b. ‫בר אלהין‬. “The Son of God” (KJV) would require emphatic ‫אלהיא‬, or better emphatic s. ‫אלהא‬. Further, in BA pl. ‫ אלהין‬does not elsewhere have s. meaning like BH ‫( אלהים‬Ginsberg, Handbook i, 2:17; BL 87f). OG has “angel of God,” Th. “a son of God,” Vulg. “a/the son of God.” Jewish tradition identifies the aide with Gabriel, who appears in Dan 8 and 9 (see Pace, Daniel, 107). 27.a. See n. 24.b. 27.b. See BL 107h. 28.a. ‫ בריך‬is peal (contrast 2:20), perhaps implying “blessed is . . .” (cf. Bickerman, “Bénédiction et prière,” 527). 28.b. So EVV for ‫( שנא‬lit., “change”); BDB, “frustrate.” 28.c. G “to the fire” adds ‫( לנורא‬cf. 1 Cor 13:3). 29.a. While ‫ שלה‬might be a misspelling of ‫“( שאלה‬thing,” 4:17 [14]), the latter would be a weak word here—­hence perhaps Q ‫“( שלו‬remissness,” 6:5 [6]). Perhaps K is ‫“ ׂש ָֹּלה‬insult, blasphemy” (NEB; Akk. sillatu, BHS; and cf. BH ‫סלה‬, Jewish Aramaic ‫ ;סלא‬see Paul, “Daniel 3:29”). 29.b. ‫כדנה‬: “like this [god]” (Bentzen) is grammatically possible, but would be unusual. 30.a. MT correctly marks a section division here (cf. EVV). The printed Hebrew Bible locates it three verses later.

Form/Structure/Setting Form See ch. 1 Form. Along with ch. 6, Dan 3 can be seen as a tale of court conflict, concerning three men who have been promoted in the administration; a royal edict gives their rivals the opportunity to attack them for treason, they are found guilty, but they are then vindicated and further promoted. Given that the story concerns a religious and not merely a political offense, it can also be seen as a confessor legend telling of heroes of faith who defy a royal edict despite the sanction of execution, because obeying it would mean contravening a fundamental aspect of their religious commitment. The skeptical king examines them and gives them a final opportunity to obey, but he thereby only provides them with a chance to make their confession before the king himself, despite the reiterated threat of death. The penalty is duly exacted. Matters do not turn out as the king expected, because the story also has features of an aretalogy—­it is not merely about their amazing faithfulness but about God’s amazing faithfulness. The confessors’ peril is underlined by repeated motifs such as the king’s personal initiative regarding the statue (vv. 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 12, 14, 15, 18) and the ceremony (vv. 2, 4–5, 10–11, 12, 15),

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his wrath (vv. 13, 19), the red-­hot blazing furnace (vv. 6, 11, 15, 17, 20, 21, 23, 26) heated extraordinarily high (vv. 19, 22), and the men’s being tied up, by particularly strong soldiers (vv. 20, 21, 23). The theological possibility of some act of God is underlined by the overt blasphemy (v. 15b), which makes explicit the statue’s own significance, and the possibility of such an act of God is raised by the men’s confession (v. 17). The act itself comes at the last moment; the event is announced first by the king’s reaction (v. 24). It constitutes an extraordinarily complete preserving of the men, by clearly supernatural means (vv. 25–26), whose results are also witnessed by the ministers of state (v. 27). Blasphemy is replaced by blessing, confrontation by recognition, opposition and persecution by tolerance and protection (v. 28–29). In effect, as a result of the act of God, the chapter ends up as a conversion story. The three men do not emerge as individuals in the story, and they themselves give us no account of their experience. The one who gives the account is Nebuchadnezzar; the story is about him.1 The chapter begins with Nebuchadnezzar as something like a blasphemer and ends up with him as someone who is blessing God2—­even if it will turn out that he has been only “half-­converted.”3 The story combines factual allusions and traditional motifs that appear in many court folktales.4 A place called Dura, colossal gold-­plated statues or monuments, dedication ceremonies, lists of state officials, the use of a variety of musical instruments, brick furnaces, and execution by burning are all known from the Babylonian or Persian periods. They indicate either that the story has factual reference or that the storyteller is giving local color to his fiction. Jeremiah 29:21–23 tells of the burning of two patriotic prophets by Nebuchadnezzar, and Dan 3 has been read as a legend based on that event.5 With Dan 6, the companion court conflict tale/confessor legend/ aretalogy/conversion story, the chapter as a whole is closer to oral models than are other stories in Daniel. This aspect is reflected in the extensive use of repetition (much of which OG removes):6 “the satraps, governors, and commissioners . . . ,” “the [gold] statue that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up,” “people of all races, nations, and languages,” “the moment you hear the sound of the horn, the pipe . . . ,” “fall prostrate,” “Shadrak, Meshak, and Abed Nego,” and “[thrown inside the] red-­hot blazing furnace”; the ten occurrences of ‫“ גברין‬men” are also noticeable. In other instances, words or phrases recur with different meanings: the king gives notice (v. 10), the men take no notice (v. 12), the king gives notice in the opposite direction (v. 29) (each time 1 Cf. Gunn/Nolan Fewell, “Nebuchadnezzar and Three Jews,” 185–86. 2 Cf. Newsom, Daniel, 101. 3 Lucas, Daniel, 96. 4 See Kuhl, Die drei Männer im Feuer. 5 So Peters, “The Three Children in the Fiery Furnace.” 6 Kuhl, Die drei Männer im Feuer, 21.

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‫ ;)שם טצם‬Nebuchadnezzar’s attitude changes (v. 19), the men’s appearance is not changed (v. 27), they change the king’s word (v. 29).7 Repetition need not suggest mockery or humor (repetition is a stylistic feature in Gen 1), but in this story several of the repetitions do convey a humorous, mocking impression, and thus heighten a sense of satire about the story.8 It is “a parody of this ruthless king.”9 Daniel 3 can also be seen as a midrash, the story taking as its text Isa 43:1–3 (cf. Ps 27:2; 66:10–12); compare Isa 48:10; 50:11.10 Its polemic against idolatry gives concrete form to the sarcastic attacks on idolatry in Isa 40:18–20; 41:6–7; 44:9–20; 46:1–7 (cf. Jer 10); ‫“ סגד‬bow down” occurs in the OT only in Isa 44:15–19; 46:6; Dan 3 (ten times), also 2:46.11 OT promises about Yahweh’s heavenly aides protecting his people (Ps 34:7 [8]; 91:11) become concrete reality here. The story also parallels Gen 38, the one other OT story about someone who escapes judgment by fire.12

Structure After the opening statement setting the scene (v. 1), the story begins (vv. 2–7) with a paragraph involving Nebuchadnezzar and his herald, and the state officers who are summoned for the ceremony. This paragraph hints at the difficulty that becomes explicit in the second paragraph (vv. 8–12), which involves Nebuchadnezzar and the accusers, and is dominated by the words of the latter. The third paragraph (vv. 13–18) comprises a confrontation between Nebuchadnezzar and the three Judahites, which brings the confessor legend to its climax. The plot thus far is simple; it is dominated by dialogue.13 Verses 19–29 are more complex. They interweave dialogue and action, bring several actors onto the stage at once, and describe feelings as well as words and deeds (vv. 19, 24). The straightforward narrating of words and events is also varied by the suspenseful device of recording the king’s response to what happens before relating the event itself; indeed, the main description of the event is given via Nebuchadnezzar’s words (vv. 24–25), as is the main theological response to its significance (vv. 28–29). Verse 30 rounds off the court tale aspect of the story. The MT has section breaks after v. 12, 18, and 25 and a chapter break after v. 23. 7 8

See Coxon, “The ‘List’ Genre and Narrative Style in the Court Tales of Daniel.” See Avalos, “The Comedic Function of the Enumerations of the Officials and Instruments in Daniel 3.” 9 Gunn/Nolan Fewell, “Nebuchadnezzar and Three Jews,” 175. 10 Haag (“Die drei Männer im Feuer”) sees Isa 43 as suggesting key aspects to the original form of the story, which was then reworked in the Antiochene period and in other contexts. 11 See Heaton, Daniel, on the passage; Gammie, “On the Intention and Sources of Daniel i–vi,” 288. 12 Cf. Ron, “Rescue from Fiery Death.” 13 Kuhl speaks of its “naive storytelling” technique (Die drei Männer im Feuer, 18).

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The story relates how the three men are put on the spot, denounced, interrogated, sent for execution, delivered, and promoted. The arrogant king is humbled, the faithful Judahites are exalted. Put diagrammatically: The king commands all to bow to the statue  Judahites sentenced. The king commands all to bow to God On High  Judahites saved.14 After v. 23 G includes a song of praise by the confessors, closing with a prayer, and nicely adds that it was the sound of the singing from the furnace that gained the king’s attention. The effect of the additions is to suggest a link between prayer and deliverance,15 to slow the narrative down markedly, and to shift the center of the chapter from the story to the prayer and song.16

Setting The pressure to assimilation and the mortal price that may be paid for faithfulness suggest a setting in the dispersion, though the challenge to resist pagan pressure, if necessary to the death, would also be urgently relevant in the Antiochene crisis in Jerusalem. Three of the terms for musical instruments are of Greek origin, which could point toward a setting in the Greek period, though the evidence for Greek influence in Asia in the Persian era means that one need not make this inference.17 The event has been connected with a ceremonial convocation to pledge loyalty to Nebuchadnezzar referred to in Jer 51:59–6418 and with Nabonidus’s introduction of the Sin cult in Babylon.19 Herodotus, Histories 1.86–87, relates a story about Cyrus putting Croesus, the king he had defeated, on a funeral pyre, wondering if some god would save him; Croesus is saved by a rainstorm in response to his prayer to Apollo. Dan 3 comprises a sharpened version of Dan 1. The three men are put into a difficulty that follows from 2:49, though Nebuchadnezzar’s own behavior and his skeptical question (v. 15) do not follow on from his experience in ch. 2 and his confession in 2:47. The stories in Daniel are separate and largely independent, and they deal in types and cartoons rather than rounded characterization; there is no character development in them, as if they were

14 Adapted from Joubert, “Power and Responsibility in the Book of Daniel,” 60. 15 Cf. Dulaey, “Les trois Hébreux dans la fournaise,” 36–37. 16 Meadowcroft, Aramaic Daniel and Greek Daniel, 128–29. 17 See Auscher, “Les relations entre la Grèce et la Palestine avant la conquête d’Alexandre”; Coxon, “Greek Loan-Words and Alleged Greek Loan Translations in the Book of Daniel”; and the works of Yamauchi (see Pericope Bibliography). 18 So Shea, “Daniel 3.” 19 So von Soden, “Eine babylonische Volksüberlieferung von Nabonid in den Danielerzählungen,” 85–86.

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231

a modern novel.20 But the order of the book might imply that building a real statue arose from seeing the visionary statue of ch. 221 and sought to consolidate the empire that the dream threatened. And/or the story about a statue clarifies the significance of the dream statue in the preceding story.22 The gold statue affirms that Nebuchadnezzar is the head of gold and ignores what happens later to the statue in a way that parallels the cynical reading of Isa 39:8. One can only guess at the reason behind Daniel’s absence from the chapter. The effect of his absence is to make the story complement the previous chapters in which he has been the key figure. While the three men are not exactly ordinary Judahites, they are not in the same league as Daniel, and their story might speak in a distinctive way to ordinary Judahites.

Comment 1–3 Setting up statues is a familiar feature of the Babylonian, Persian, and Greek Empires.23 This statue stands higher than most, though not than the Rhodes Colossus (70 cubits; the various standards for the cubit average about half a yard). Perhaps it included a pedestal like statues that are said to have been located at one of the various Babylonian sites called Dura/Duru/Dur (Akk. “fortification”).24 This understanding would also account for the statue’s odd proportions; compare also inscribed steles with figures at the top,25 though a stela is really a ‫ מצבה‬not a ‫צלם‬.26 But to reduce the statue to something normal (cf. JB) is to miss the point that the statue is extraordinary and monumental, even grotesque. Maybe the fact that sixty cubits was the height of the Second Temple (Ezra 6:3)27 implies that it is pretentious and begins to hint at its blasphemous nature. On the other hand, the repetition of the figure six suggests something symbolizing imperfection, even something horrendous (cf. Rev 13:18).28 “Gold” may imply gold plating rather than solid gold (Isa 40:19), though Herodotus (Histories 1.183) describes a Bel statue made of 800 talents (22 tons) of gold. The gold also recalls the gold of Solomon’s Temple; R. Bibi ben Abaye related that the Babylonians had to bring all the gold that had been plundered from Jerusalem to make its base so that it would not fall over.29 20 Against e.g., Wallace, Daniel. 21 So Hippolytus, Daniel 2.15. 22 Cf. Meadowcroft, “Metaphor, Narrative, Interpretation and Reader in Daniel 2–5,” 265–66. 23 Cf. Montgomery, Daniel, on the passage. 24 Young, Daniel, on the passage; cf. ANET, 313. 25 Saggs, The Greatness That Was Babylon, plate 21b. 26 Cf. Keil, Biblischer Kommentar, on the passage. 27 Cf. Pace, Daniel, 90. 28 So Di Lella, Daniel, 53. 29 Cf. Rashi in ‫ מקראות גדולות‬on the passage.

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The statue may have represented Nebuchadnezzar himself. Assyrian kings set up such statues as symbols of their dominion, and Hellenistic monarchs were deified, and this understanding is suggested by the date in G (see n. 1.a). If Nebuchadnezzar had been insisting that he himself be worshiped, however, one would have expected the story to incorporate some explicit critique (cf. Isa 14:13–21; also Judith’s treatment of Holofernes, who seeks this worship on Nebuchadnezzar’s behalf [Jdt 3:8]). The association of bowing down before the statue with serving Nebuchadnezzar’s god(s) (vv. 12, 14) rather suggests a statue of a divinity, presumably Bel.30 But the text’s omitting to clarify what the statue represented reflects its concern with the challenge it issued to the three Judahites and reflects the interwovenness and support of god, king, and nation.31 One might compare the army commander’s combining of pragmatic and religious arguments—­the latter themselves mutually contradictory—­in 2 Kgs 18–19. Further, even if it was Nebuchadnezzar’s statue, falling prostrate before it would imply acknowledging his god, as Nebuchadnezzar’s falling prostrate before Daniel (2:46—the same words) implied acknowledgment of Daniel’s God. Conversely, even if it is a statue of a god, it is a kind of idol of Nebuchadnezzar himself, an extension of his will.32 4–7 People hearing this story in a Persian context might smile first at the talk of a gathering of all the peoples, nations, and language groups. The Persian empire was indeed the largest that Western Asia (let alone Europe or North Africa) had ever known. It was proud of the fact, and it preserved and exhibited many lists of these nations, but it needed means of holding the empire together.33 As in many cultures, music draws attention to state and religious processions and ceremonials. The band likely comprises two wind and three string instruments (see Notes).34 None are used in Israelite worship; most of the terms are foreign ones for instruments used in secular contexts. They thus imply a double judgment on the alien, pagan nature of the ceremony that Nebuchadnezzar is inaugurating. The omission of the word for “ensemble” when the list recurs may anticipate the disobedience of the Judahites. The king’s instructions are already not being completely heeded.35 Commentators usually assume that the furnace (v. 6) was metal and beehive-­shaped with an opening on the top into which the men were thrown, and a door at the side through which the inside could be seen,36 though a story 30 31 32 33 34

On such divine images, see Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia, 183–89. Cf. Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East 2:619–21. Sumner, “Daniel,” 137. See Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander, 172–83. See the discussion in Mitchell/Joyce, “The Musical Instruments in Nebuchadrezzar’s Orchestra”; Mitchell, “The Music of the OT”; ———“And the Band Played On”; Dyer, “The Musical Instruments in Daniel 3”; and the series of illustrations in Alomía, Daniel 2:87–95. 35 Cf. Van Deventer, “‘We Did Not Hear the Bagpipe.’” 36 See e.g., Baldwin, Daniel, on the passage.

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about Abram in The Book of Biblical Antiquities (Pseudo-­Philo) 6.15–18 implies it might have been a tunnel-­shaped brick furnace. The burning of criminals is referred to throughout the Babylonian, Persian, and Greek periods (Jer 29:22; Herodotus, Histories 1.86; 4.69; 2 Macc 7; 13:4–8).37 Persians might see such an event as trial by fire rather than as punishment, because of the sacredness of fire.38 8–12 The “so” parallels the expression that opens v. 7 and draws attention to the mean logic of the Kasdites. “The heart of a good story is gripping conflict moving toward resolution,”39 and here the conflict begins. Why would the three Judahites not bow down? Bowing need not suggest the acknowledgment of a deity. Yet their refusal compares with Mordecai’s (Esth 3), and bowing down to any image came to be suspect.40 Although the OT can take for granted that no Israelite would be free to obey the king’s edict, the OT as a whole also makes clear that in practice Israelites often did bow down to other gods and their images, and the polemic of Isa 40–55 implies that such submission would indeed be a temptation in Babylon. Thus the assumption that the three men would take their firm stance would be a challenge to Judahites in exile.41 The Kasdites may be people of Babylonian race (as in 1:4) who are hostile to the three Judahites on ethnic grounds (cf. Haman in Esther); or they may be court experts (as in ch. 2) suffering from professional jealousy (cf. ch. 6).42 Their accusation (v. 12) relates to the three men’s office, which explains their expected presence at the ceremony and might explain Daniel’s absence (cf. 2:49). The three who were merely youths in ch. 1 and merely Daniel’s friends in ch. 2 are here full-­grown men (‫ )גברין‬of importance in their own right. 13–18 For the king’s rage, see the comment on 2:12. His question in v.15 has special emphasis, being an addition to the form of words used when the command and its sanction have appeared before in the chapter.43 It is uncomfortably similar to the questions attributed to the Assyrian king in 2 Kgs 18:28–35.44 In the context of Daniel, the obvious answer to his question is, “The one you just called God among gods” (2:47).45 Yet the arrogance of his challenge and of the confessors’ reply should not be exaggerated. Nebuchadnezzar may not be seen as purposely slighting 37 See Beaulieu, “The Babylonian Background of the Motif of the Fiery Furnace”; earlier, Alexander, “New Light on the Fiery Furnace.” But Holm (“The Fiery Furnace in the Book of Daniel”) argues that it has a more substantial Egyptian background. 38 Cf. Bickerman (Four Strange Books of the Bible, 89); Sanders, “The Burning Fiery Furnace.” 39 Hill, “Daniel,” 78. 40 See Koch, Daniel 1–4, 284–95. Pace (Daniel, on the chapter) emphasizes parallels between this story and Esther. 41 Cf. Newsom, Daniel, 108–9. 42 Cf. Kirkpatrick, Competing for Honor, ch. 4. 43 Joubert, “Power and Responsibility in the Book of Daniel,” 55. 44 Cf. Newsom, Daniel, 109. 45 Jerome, Daniel, 37.

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God. His skepticism compares with that of the experts in 2:11, and he is not condemned for blasphemy; indeed, he is granted a revelation, to which he duly responds (vv. 24–29). He is not an anticipation of the small horn of 7:24–25.46 In the confessors’ reply (vv. 16–18), the lack of formal address to the king corresponds to the form of exchanges in chs. 1–2; their directness also parallels Daniel’s directness elsewhere (though the formal greeting appears in 6:21–22 [22–23]) and expresses a positive commitment to God more than a contempt for the king. The this to which they need make no response is perhaps not the command of v. 15a but the theological assertion at the end of v. 15.47 With “our God, whom we honor” (v. 17), compare the characterization in vv. 28, 29 and the contrast with vv. 12, 14. Chapter 3 again avoids using the name Yahweh by utilizing these phrases. The three men speak as if their God’s existence is an open question (see n. 17.b), and thus as if their rescue is an open question. But the allowance is made only for the sake of argument; it is the point that Nebuchadnezzar has implicitly questioned (v. 15) and that events will have to establish. For themselves, the story assumes, the three have no doubt that their God can and will rescue them: v. 17 makes this conviction explicit. There is here no questioning of God’s power or will separate from the questioning of his existence. If his existence is accepted, it is the existence of one who can and will rescue. The confessors’ implied confidence of rescue thus parallels Daniel’s confidence in 1:12–13; 2:16. Philologically, indeed, their “if not” (v. 18) could denote “if he cannot [rescue]” or “if he does not [exist]”; the three men would then be genuinely contemplating the possibility that their God lacks existence or power, yet boldly resolving to continue to be loyal to him. But this magnificent idea is implausibly modern. The three men are granting only the theoretical possibility that God will not intervene and assuring the reader, for whom God will probably not do so, that this possibility would make no difference to their stance. Saadia comments that there are three situations in which one would be compelled to give up one’s life: if we are pressured to commit something forbidden such as adultery (cf. Gen 39:9), if we are pressured to kill (cf. 1 Sam 22:17), and if we are pressured to bow down to an image.48 19–22 The narrative nicely reuses the word for “image” to apply to the look on Nebuchadnessar’s face. He is so angry that the executioners are not even allowed time to strip the prisoners (v. 21; contrast Ps 22:18 [19]; Mark 15:24; m. Sanh. 6:3), which eventually heightens the miracle (v. 27). Tormentors are often described as experiencing the torment they had planned (6:24 [25];

46 See the positive reading of Nebuchadnezzar in Coxon, “Nebuchadnezzar’s Hermeneutical Dilemma.” 47 Cf. Byington, “Hebrew Marginalia iii,” 353. 48 Daniel, 465–66.

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Esther),49 in accordance with their deserve; the fate of these executioners in the fierce fire once more underlines the confessors’ hopeless situation. 23–30 The resumptive introduction to this paragraph and what follows (vv. 23–24) takes attention away from the three men and their fate and builds suspense as it requires us to look at things from Nebuchadnezzar’a angle. We no longer see things for ourselves; we see them only though his eyes.50 Apparently he alone sees the “divine being” (v. 25; cf. theophanies in 2 Kgs 6:17; Acts 9:17). ‫ בר אלהין‬might for Nebuchadnezzar suggest an actual god. Similarly, God’s aide (‫מלאך‬, EVV “angel,” v. 28; cf. 6:22 [23]) might signify in effect God himself; compare Yahweh’s ‫ מלאך‬in passages such as Exod 3:2. Indeed, Isa 43:1–3 has promised God’s own presence when Israel walks through fire. Nevertheless, to Judahites ‫ בר אלהין‬would rather indicate a subordinate heavenly being: compare the supernatural lookout (‫ )עיר וקדיש‬of 4:13, 17, 23 [10, 14, 20], and the humanlike heavenly interpreters and leaders in chs. 7–12. In such a context, then, God’s ‫ מלאך‬will denote a heavenly being who is of another order than God himself. The title “God On High” (v. 26) is another expression at home on the lips of either a foreigner (4:2, 17, 34 [3:32; 4:14, 31]; Gen 14:18–20; Num 24:16; Isa 14:14) or a Judahite (Dan 4:24–32 [21–29]; 5:18, 21; 7:18–27; Gen 14:22; Deut 32:8; Psalms), though its nuances for each would differ. To both it suggests a God of universal authority but of otherwise undefined personal qualities. For a pagan it would denote only the highest among many gods, but as an epithet of El it was accepted in early OT times and applied to Yahweh, so that for a Judahite it has monotheistic (or mono-­Yahwistic) implications. Like terms such as “Lord of the heavens,” this expression of ultimately pagan origin becomes popular after the exile as a substitute for “Yahweh”; unlike the former it continues to increase in popularity over later centuries (cf. 2:18 Comment).51

Explanation 1–7 This Nebuchadnezzar is one whom God allowed to devastate and pillage the temple in Jerusalem (cf. G’s date), which David had enriched with 100,000 talents of gold. He is one who has been characterized in ch. 2 as the gold head of a multi-­metaled statue, and he has allegedly acknowledged the picture. But “here is a strange alteration of a man, that upon so good ground a little before acknowledged one only true God, now to fall to this foul sin of exalting himself as a God, but such is the fickleness and inconstancy of carnal men.”52

49 Also The Book of Biblical Antiquities (Pseudo-Philo) 6:15–18. 50 Cf. Meadowcroft, Aramaic Daniel and Greek Daniel, 131–32; Newsom, Daniel, 111. 51 See Eichrodt, Theologie des AT 1:88 (ET 181–82). 52 Mayer, Commentary upon All the Prophets, 526 (cf. Beckwith, Ezekiel, Daniel, 267).

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That earlier acknowledgment seems to have been “the confession . . . of a man thunderstruck,”53 after which “he returned to his former self, like a dog to his vomit” (Prov 26:11).54 He now constructs an immense gold statue of his own, one that signifies “erecting Nebuchadnezzar’s ego.”55 It affirms the beginning of his dream vision but it implicitly disputes what follows, and in particular disputes that statue’s fatal weakness and destruction.56 This statue was to be more impressive than any that dispersion Judahites would ever see, to be dedicated in the presence of as impressive a gathering of state dignitaries as they would ever witness, representing as many nations as they could ever envisage, at a ceremony heralded by as cosmopolitan an ensemble as they would ever hear. It is an occasion like the inauguration of a president or the coronation of a monarch. Such great ceremonial occasions use religion to undergird their significance. They play an important role as affirmations of national identity; they reinforce the bonds that are needed to hold the nation together. They are occasions that make a point of involving representatives of the nation’s various ethnic groups; they are designed to incorporate the nation’s diversity into that bond. Nebuchadnezzar similarly wanted the diversity of his empire to be recognized and to have its diverse ethnicities and cultures join together. So we might have little grounds for complaint at Nebuchadnezzar’s plan, unless it sounds like a worrying reversal of the scattering from Babel in Gen 11.57 The herald’s summons comes to its climax, however, with the sanction applied to nonparticipation in the ceremony, a personal holocaust for anyone who refuses to take part. The image now assumes more sinister significance regarding the destiny of any nonconformist, and regarding the thinking of the king himself. Unclarity over whether the statue represents Nebuchadnezzar or his god does not matter so much. The point is that Nebuchadnezzar set it up (vv. 1, 2, 3a, 3b, 5, 7, 12, 14, 18). It represents his authority. It counteracts the vulnerability implicit in the image in ch. 2. But “there’s a suspicious abundance about this music” that suggests Nebuchadnezzar only half-­believes that he has people’s inner allegiance.58 He feels insecure.59 The atheism of force is actually an atheism of fear.60 But when Nebuchadnezzar summoned, people assembled (v. 3), and when his band played, people fell on their faces, “as if mindlessly . . . as if that

53 Calvin, Daniel 1–6, 118. 54 Theodoret, Daniel, 68–69. 55 Hebbard, Reading Daniel, 95. 56 Cf. Ps-Saadia’s comments in ‫ מקראות גדולות‬on the passage. 57 Coxon, “The Great Tree of Daniel 4,” 92. 58 Lüthi, The Church to Come, 42. 59 Longman, Daniel, 100. 60 On these expressions, see Gowan, Daniel, in his “Theological and Ethical Analysis” of the chapter, though I have reworked his use of the phrases.

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bowing down were just a thoughtless reflex.”61 An impressive ceremony of the kind described, supported by the sanction attached to neglecting it, embodies the double pressure of the pagan state, its attractiveness and its unscrupulousness.62 The participants are leaders of all ranks from all over the empire, and Judahite leaders would be expected to take part among them. For most Judahites, the expectation would not apply; ordinary people did not have to attend. But the story presupposes contexts where some Judahites attain positions of responsibility in the state and have to face the question of where lie the limits to their accepting its expectations. Nebuchadnezzar might have reminded the Judahite leaders that there had been contexts when bowing before foreign idols was tolerated (2 Kgs 5:18–19). Judahites had not minded worshiping idols when they were in Canaan (there were no Judahite martyrs then), and Moses had said they would do so in exile (Deut 4:27–28).63 So it might not be obvious that they had to draw the line where they did, as was the case over where to draw the line in ch. 1; and there is no indication that they made a point of publicly displaying their non-­cooperation. Yet the story assumes that they had no difficulty perceiving that they could not take part. It does not even directly state the fact. After all, the prostration required is just like that offered to Yahweh (e.g., Pss 95; 100).64 Paul will later tell the faithful in Rome to be subject to the governing authorities (Rom 13:1), but John will imply that faithfulness will refuse to bow down to an image set up by a beast even though it is given authority (Rev 13).65 Perhaps the Judahites face a choice between offering loyalty and honor to the king as their patron or to their God as their patron. You can’t be loyal to and honor two patrons.66 8–12 Some Kasdites draw the king’s attention to the Judahites’ indifference to his favor, their flouting of his word, their rejection of his gods, and their disregard for his statue. Perhaps behind their action is another dispersion experience, the jealousy of members of the host nation at Judahite success. The Kasdites’ attack and Nebuchadnezzar’s reaction suggest that they saw the Judahites’ stance as involving both disloyalty (as if it were the king’s statue) and impiety (as if it were a god’s). From Nebuchadnezzar’s angle, the Kasdites suggest, the problem with the Judahites action is that it ignores “your” gods and the statue that “you” have set up (v. 12; cf. v. 18). Whatever the statue’s nature, it held religion and state together. The institution that claims absolute authority is inclined also to claim the sanctions of religion. “Nebuchadnezzar’s statue stands for political and economic power” while the 61 Seow, Daniel, 54. 62 Porteous, Daniel, on the passage. 63 Cf Lev. Rab. 33:6; and Bickerman, Four Strange Books of the Bible, 87–88. 64 Cf. Alomía, Daniel 2:90. 65 Cf. Wright, Hearing the Message of Daniel, 66; and 2:46–49 Explanation, above. 66 Kirkpatrick, Competing for Honor, 103.

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Judahites are characterized by “political ‘atheism’ . . . in their refusal to bow to the symbols of Babylonian power.”67 Empires can have feet of clay and can fall apart, so it is as well to use all means to reinforce their strength and unity.68 God is acknowledged not because he is God, but because this acknowledgment helps to undergird the state. Herr Baldur von Schirach declared in 1936, “One cannot be a good German and at the same time deny God, but an arousal of faith in the eternal German is at the same time an arousal of faith in the eternal God. If we act as true Germans we act according to the laws of God. Whoever serves Adolf Hitler, the Führer, serves Germany, and whoever serves Germany serves God.”69 Five years later in an essay on “The Gods of the Nations and God,” Martin Buber observed how every nation is inclined to make an idol of its own inner spirit; Israel’s calling was to erect a throne to God rather than to itself, and “that is why every nation is bound to desire to get rid of us at the time it is in the act of setting itself up as the absolute.”70 The reality of the actual holocaust that followed prevents us from regarding chapters such as Dan 3 as children’s stories. And whereas readers in the United States and the United Kingdom are inclined to identify with the three men, it is at least important for us to identify with Nebuchadnezzar. 13–18 Nebuchadnezzar’s reaction of rage parallels the fury he expressed to the Kasdites in 2:12. There is no carryover from the recognition reached in 2:46–49. The king has become “a persecuting tyrant.”71 The personal nature of his reaction suggests that the statue embodies not only a religious and national commitment but a personal one. Nebuchadnezzar’s own standing was tied up with the statue. He is offended at the affront, not just at their blasphemy or at their rebellion. His expectation is, “You shall have no other god but me.”72 The point becomes explicit when he asks rhetorically whether any god could rescue the confessors from his power. The challenge recalls those of Sennacherib’s field commander in 2 Kgs 18:33–35; 19:10–13.73 Here as there and as in the story of the seven martyrs in 2 Macc 7, such expressions of human confidence and skepticism unwittingly function chiefly to provide opportunity for giving testimony in word or event to the reality and power of the God who is slighted. The behavior and words of the three men stand in stark contrast to the “comic and absurd mechanistic behavior” of the officials.74 They speak straight 67 Smith-Christopher, “Daniel,” 66, 65. 68 See Wallace, Daniel, on the passage. 69 The Times (London), 29 July 1936; cf. Lang, Histories and Prophecies of Daniel, 42–43. 70 Israel and the World, 200; quoted by Wink, Unmasking, 95. 71 Towner, Daniel, 47. 72 Cf. Baldwin, Daniel, on the passage. 73 Cf. Theodoret, Daniel, 72–73. 74 Avalos, “The Comedic Function of the Enumerations of the Officials and Instruments in Daniel 3,” 586.

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and succinctly without the repetitions that characterize everyone else.75 “The miracle of the confessing Church stands before Nebuchadnezzar in absolute sovereign power” in a way comparable with the stances of Jesus’s declaration before Pilate, of the apostles before the Sanhedrin, and of Paul before Felix and Agrippa (Matt 27:11–14; Acts 5:20; 24–26).76 There can be various reasons for refusing to reply to attacks and accusations (Ps 38:13–16 [14–17]; Isa 53:7; Mark 14:60–61; 15:4–5; Luke 23:9; 1 Pet 2:22–23). The confessors do so in order to leave events to testify to the sole worth-­ship of their God, though they allow themselves two remarks that need to be made before the implementing of the king’s threat. The first remark is their expression of conviction regarding what God is going to do (v. 17). The confessors know a God who makes Nebuchadnezzar’s goldplated statue look tawdry.77 Formally, the existence of their God is expressed hypothetically; but neither they nor their readers regard his existence as uncertain. And given that he exists, he is able to rescue; that follows logically. And he will rescue; that is a bold, unevidenced wager parallel to those of 1:12–13; 2:14–16. This expectation is expressed before the event, like a prophecy, so that the event can be seen to be the vindication of it, of those who express it, and of the one in whom they hope. The second remark stands in superficial tension with the first, for it speaks of the possibility of not being rescued. Their “if . . . but if not” in vv. 17–18 thus balances the king’s “if . . . but if not” in v. 15.78 Their wager has affirmed that they will be rescued. But such rescue has often not been the experience of the faithful, and for their sake the three heroes make clear that even in that situation they would still maintain their commitment to God. The implicit question being asked of them is the Adversary’s question about Job: does he honor God only because of the blessings God gives him? God may be trusted to protect us, but our honoring him is not conditional upon his preserving us from every blazing furnace, so that if he should not do so, we are free to abandon him and try some other god.79 Death is preferable to apostasy. We regard no other god but God, no matter what happens. We obey God, not human beings (Acts 4:19–20; 5:29). Such a confession means that human potentates are defeated whether their victims escape the flames (as they will here) or whether they do not (as in 2 Macc 7). The confession of the three is the more remarkable because it is made without reference to the prospect of resurrection. It thus contrasts with the confessions made in 2 Macc 7 and expected in Matt 10:24–33 (cf. also Dan 12). If they are to be martyred, the confessors envisage no such 75 Cf. Nolan Fewell, Circle of Sovereignty, 48–49. 76 Lüthi, The Church to Come, 48; cf. Towner, Daniel, 51. 77 Frost, OT Apocalyptic, 209. 78 Cf. Seow, Daniel, 56. 79 Cf. Kennedy, “Daniel,” on the passage.

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vindication or resurrection. Their confession is made starkly for God’s sake. “Whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s” (Rom 14:8).80 Their testing takes place in the flames, but it has already taken place when the flames have been threatened. In the dispersion this testing takes place both metaphorically and literally. The exile is a white-­hot crucible that tests by threatening to consume (see Ps 66:10–12). For many Judahites who are not threatened with a literal furnace, the furnace gives concrete form to the image of walking through fire. Life in exile can bring a threat to the distinctiveness of Judahites (ch. 1), to their very life (ch. 2), and also to their faithfulness to God. It asks for a bold trust and obedience that gives Caesar what is his but reserves what is God’s for God. 19–25 While the story reaches one climax with the Judahites’ confession, Nebuchadnezzar’s fury sets it on the way to another. He is enraged at the rights of God being exalted over his own, and he determines to seal the confessors’ fate more securely and speedily. The possibility of his moves being counterproductive is already advertised; his fury is beginning to rebound (v. 22). The men who submitted to the king lose their lives; what will happen to the men who resisted the king? The confessors fall to their doom (v. 23). “At first it looks here as if God were deserting his servants”; he does not protect them from being thrown into the furnace. “No help appears from heaven.”81 But suddenly Nebuchadnezzar sees a sign he cannot ignore, as he could ignore the deaths of his best soldiers. The king who thought that no god could save the confessors from his power is the one who now perceives God’s intervention.82 The three men have not been delivered from the fire, but they are delivered in the fire (cf. Rom 8:37).83 They reach affirmation and vindication not by way of risk-­free triumph but by the way of the cross. They are free, looking as if they are enjoying a walk in the garden.84 Nebuchadnezzar sees four unbound (v. 25), who contrast with three bound. The deliverance of the three comes through the presence of a fourth person in their midst. Nebuchadnezzar will later declare that this person is a divine aide (v. 28), the kind of supernatural being acting on God’s behalf and representing God who appears elsewhere in the OT (there is no pointer toward its being a preincarnate appearance of Jesus). It is the divine aide who camps around those who honor God and extricates them from peril (Ps 34:7 [8]) and who here enters the fire, perhaps neutralizing its capacity for harm by the presence of his superior energy. God’s promise “I will be with you” characteristically belongs to such contexts of affliction and pressure (Exod 3:12; Isa 7:14; 43:1–3; Matt 28:20; see also Ps 23:4–5). The experience of God’s 80 Cf. Hippolytus, Daniel 2.36. 81 Calvin, Daniel 1–6, 136. 82 Joubert, “Power and Responsibility in the Book of Daniel,” 59. 83 Philip, By the Rivers of Babylon, on the passage. 84 Yephet, Daniel, on the passage.

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being with his people not only follows on their commitment to him rather than preceding it; it comes in the furnace, not in being preserved from it.85 26–30 The kiln apparently has a door at ground level as well as the opening at the top through which the confessors were thrown. At Nebuchadnezzar’s command they emerge through this door. The courtiers who had looked on at their trial are there; so are the leading figures among the dignitaries who had gathered for the statue’s dedication. Once more they assemble as representatives of the peoples of the world as a whole, now not to bow before a statue and the king and empire it supports but to witness how God may act when people bow before him alone. As ch. 2 shows that there is a God who can reveal the mysteries of the heavens, so ch. 3 shows that there is a God who can intervene in individual and national life, discrediting human pretensions and the monuments that embody them. The statue is now forgotten; both God and human beings have relativized the claim to universal significance made in respect of it (v. 28).86 God has quenched Nebuchadnezzar’s flames. So has the faith of those Nebuchadnezzar subjected to them (Heb 11:34), the act of consecration whereby they gave up their bodies for God’s sake (Rom 12:1).87 The issue in Dan 3 “does not really concern the golden image but actually the question ‘who is god/God.’ ”88 Nebuchadnezzar’s acknowledgment of God brings the story to its second climax. In outward expression of this acknowledgment, the king makes Judaism a recognized religion with rights to toleration and respect, in a way that parallels the actions of Persian kings in Ezra and elsewhere.89 It also prefigures Constantine’s, who later turns from making the faithful suffer to making the impious suffer.90 It does mean that Nebuchadnezzar still expects to control people’s religion; religion is still subordinate to the state. And the theological justification for his action (v. 29b) might point to much more and might make his action seem anticlimactic. But the act does close off one road that could take dispersion Judahites to the furnace, when clashes with the state arise from their religion’s not being recognized. And the prospering of the confessors in provincial affairs brings a final climax. The power of their God and the power of their commitment to him also bring them political power.91 A narrative that combines features of court tale, legend, aretalogy, and midrash does not invite us to treat it as historiography. Yet its picture of a God who rescues from certain death hardly emerges from pure hope-­against-­hope. Judeo-­Christian faith and hope claimed to be based on what God had done, 85 Kennedy, “Daniel,” on the passage. 86 Joubert, “Power and Responsibility in the Book of Daniel,” on the passage. 87 Lang, Histories and Prophecies of Daniel, on the passage. 88 Prinsloo, “Daniel 3,” 74. 89 Cf. Collins, Daniel, 191. 90 Augustine, Letter 93, to Vincent (Letters 2:56–106 [65]). 91 Joubert, “Power and Responsibility in the Book of Daniel,” 62.

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not merely on itself, as if faith were its own miracle. It seems a priori likely that some experience of God’s deliverance underlies this story of God’s deliverance. It might be the experience of God’s delivering individuals in some extraordinary way; it might be the experience of his preserving people in the metaphorical fire of exile itself. Whether or not the story was inspired by the real, but metaphorical, fire of exile, it could be applied to that experience. God had promised that he would deliver, and the story gives believers who walk that fire a narrative embodiment of his keeping this promise. It more specifically speaks to the individual experience of actual persecution. Daniel 12 (or 2 Macc 7, or Matt 5:11–12) envisages reversal, resurrection, vindication, and reward after death. Dan 3 reminds us that the first fruits of that reversal are sometimes experienced now.92 From a position after Jesus, we can say that final resurrection is certain because it has begun in Jesus himself. Experiences such as the one underlying Dan 3 then evidence that God was always the God of resurrection. To put it the other way, if final resurrection is certain and its reality has already been at work in Jesus, why should it not also be known from time to time in other contexts before and after Jesus? After all, Jesus does promise his disciples that not a hair on their heads will perish (Luke 21:19).93 The story of the faithfulness of the three men will turn out to be important in the context of the Maccabean crisis (1 Macc. 2:59), and it also likely lies in the background of Heb 11:34 and 1 Pet 4:12.94 Admittedly, the all-­powerful God’s intervening in the confessors’ extremity does not imply that he can be expected to do so for all the faithful under pressure. Confessors often become martyrs, and their conviction that God can and will rescue from death has to be referred to that resurrection which Dan 12 envisages. But when the faithful face some white-­hot furnace they may be encouraged to be steadfast in their commitment to their God, confident that he is Lord of death and that he will demonstrate that he is. The power of paganism offers no ultimate threat. When situations are utterly hopeless, they can trust him to vindicate their commitment and his power by rescuing them one way or the other. The stories in Daniel speak of frightening threat and terrible danger, even though they have happy endings. Life in the dispersion is never safe. Yet it is possible to survive and even to triumph, and the faithful need to live in the conviction that the promises expressed in Daniel’s interpretations of dreams will be fulfilled.95 As I was completing work on this commentary, I received this message from a friend who is a bishop in northeast Africa. 92 Philip, By the Rivers of Babylon, on the passage. 93 Di Lella, Daniel, 79. 94 Cf. Collins, Daniel, 194; Lucas, Daniel, 96. On the substantial afterlife of the story in Jewish and Christian contexts, see Breed, “History of Reception,” 113–24. 95 Cf. Pace, “Diaspora Dangers, Diaspora Dreams.”

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An icon often seen in the churches of Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan, North and South, is that of the four in the fiery furnace: Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and “the One,” whom the Babylonians described as “like a son of the gods” (Daniel 3:25). In the suffering of the long war between North and South Sudan, it was this God, “He who suffers with us,” who was the comfort and the hope of many Christians. “Our God is able to save us from this fiery furnace,” the three young men declared, “but if not” (in this way), we will cleave to Him (“not bow down to Nebuchadnezzar”). Throughout northeastern Africa the message of this God is one that resonates with the African heart.

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IV. Nebuchadnezzar Testifies to Kingship and Sanity Threatened, Lost, and Restored (4:1–37 [3:31–4:34]) Pericope Bibliography Alonso Díaz, J. “La conversión de Nabucodonosor en bestia.” Appler, D. “Digging in the Claws.” Ball, C. J. “Daniel and Babylon.” Basson, A. “ ‘A King in the Grass.’ ” Beaulieu,  P.-­A . The Reign of Nabonidus. Becking, B. “A Divine Spirit is in You,” in van der Woude (ed.), The Book of Daniel, 515–19. Brueggemann, W. “The Non-­negotiable Price of Sanity.” Bucheim, J. G. Dissertatio de μεταμορψώσει regis Nabuchodonosoris. Bunta, S. N. “The Me¯su-­tree and the Animal Inside.” Burkholder, B. “Literary Patterns and God’s Sovereignty in Daniel 4.” Cook, S. L. “Mythological Discourse In Ezekiel and Daniel.” Coxon, P. W. “Another Look at Nebuchadnezzar’s Madness,” in van der Woude (ed.), The Book of Daniel, 211–22. —­—­—­. “The Great Tree of Daniel 4.” Cross, F. M. “Fragments of the Prayer of Nabonidus.” Davis Bledsoe, A. M. “The Identity of the ‘Mad King’ of Daniel 4.” Di Lella, A. A. “Daniel 4:7–14.” Dommershausen, W. Nabonid im Buche Daniel. Ehrlich, E. L. Der Traum im AT, 113–22. Ferguson, P. “Nebuchadnezzar, Gilgamesh, and the ‘Babylonian Job.’ ” Freedman, D. M. “The Prayer of Nabonidus.” Gadd, C. J. “The Harran Inscriptions of Nabonidus.” —­—­—­. “The Kingdom of Nabu-­na’id in Arabia.” García Martínez, F. “4Q Or Nab.” Gowan, D. E. When Man Becomes God. Grelot, P. “Rudolph Meyer, Das Gebet des Nabonid.” —­—­—­. “La prière de Nabonide.” —­—­—­. “Nabuchodonosor changé en bête.” —­—­—­. “La Septante de Daniel iv et son substrat sémitique.” Haag, E. “Der Traum des Nebukadnezzar in Dan 4.” Hartman, L. F. “The Great Tree and Nabuchodonosor’s Madness.” Hays, C. B. “Chirps from the Dust.” Henze, M. The Madness of King Nebuchadnezzar. —­—­—­. “Nebuchadnezzar’s Madness (Daniel 4) in Syriac Literature,” in Collins/Flint (eds.), The Book of Daniel 2:550–71. Hurvitz, A. “The History of a Legal Formula.” Koch, K. “Gottes Herrschaft über das Reich des Menschen,” in van der Woude (ed.), The Book of Daniel, 77–119. Lust, J. “The Septuagint Version of Daniel 4–5,” in van der Woude (ed.), The Book of Daniel, 39–53. McNamara, M. “Nabonidus and the Book of Daniel.” Mastin, B.A. “The Meaning of hala´ at Daniel iv 27.” Meadowcroft, T. “Point of View in Storytelling.” Mertens, A. Das Buch Daniel, 34–42. Metzger, M. “Der Weltenbaum in vorderorientalischer Bildtradition.” Meyer, R. Das Gebet des Nabonid. —­—­—­. “Das Qumranfragment ‘Gebet des Nabonid.’ ” Milik, J. T. “ ‘Prière de Nabonide’ et autres écrits d’un cycle de Daniel.” Murray, R. “The Origin of Aramaic ‘îr, Angel.” Newsom, C. A. “Why Nabonidus?” Nober, P. “Yeba’on (Dn 4, 33).” Oppenheim, A. L. “The Interpretation of Dreams.” Rabinowitz, J. J. “A Legal Formula in the Book of Daniel.” Resch, A. Der Traum im Heilsplan Gottes, 123–26. Richter,  H.-­F. “Daniel 4,7–14,” in van der Woude (ed.), The Book of Daniel, 244–48. Röllig, W. “Nabonid und Te¯ma¯.” —­—­—­. “Erwägungen zu neuen Stelen König Nabonids.” Sack, R. H. “The Nabonidus Legend.” —­—­—­. Images of Nebuchadnezzar. Schrader, E. “Die Sage vom Wahnsinn Nebukadnezar’s.” Shea, W. “Further Literary Structures in Daniel 2–7,” 193–202. Soden, W. von. “Eine babylonische Volksüberlieferung von

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Nabonid in den Danielerzählungen.” Steinmann, A. “The Chicken and the Egg.” Van der Woude, A. S. “Bemerkungen zum Gebet des Nabonid.” Vogt, E. “Precatio regis Nabonid in pia narratione Iudaica (4Q).”

Translation “King Nebukadne’s·s·ar to all peoples, nations, and languages who live in all the earth: May your well-­being  a abound! 2It has seemed good to me to tell of the wondrous signs a that God On High has done for me. 1

His signs, how great, his wonders, how mighty! His kingship lasts through the ages, his rule through all generations! 3

I, Nebukadne’s·s·ar, was successful b and thriving,c at home in my palace. 5I had a dream, and it disturbed a me. bThe imagesc in the vision d that came into my head e as I lay in bed b alarmed me. 6So I issued an order that all the experts in Babylon should be brought before me so they could let me know the interpretation of the dream. 7aThe diviners, the chanters, the Kasdites, and the exorcists a came, and I recounted the dream before them, but they could not let me know its interpretation. 8Then finally a Daniyye’l, who is named Belt·ešas· s· ar after my god,b came before me. The spirit of holy deity c is in him. I recounted the dream before him: 9 “Belt·ešas· s· ar, head of the diviners, I myself have come to acknowledge a that the spirit of holy deity is in you and that no mysteryb defeats you. Tell me about the vision in the dream I have had, and its interpretation.c 10The vision that came into my head as I lay in bed: 4a

I was looking, and there before me was a tree, at the center of the earth, of great height. 11 The tree grew a in stature and might, its height reached b to the heavens; c it could be seen from c the ends of the earth: 12 Its foliage lovely, its fruit abundant, food for everyone in it.a Beneath it the animals of the wild sheltered, in its branches the birds of the heavens dwelt, from it all living beings got food for themselves.

I saw in the vision that came into my head as I lay in bed, and there before me was a lookout,a a holy being,b descending from the heavens,14 and proclaiming  a in a loud voice: 13

‘Fell the tree, cut off its branches, strip off its foliage, scatter its fruit.

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Nebuchadnezzar Testifies The animals must flee from beneath it, the birds from its branches. 15 Yet athe stock from its root a leave in the earth. With a ring of iron and bronze around him,b with c the grass in the wild, He is to be watered with the dew from the heavens and to share d in the plants e of the earth, with the animals. 16 His human mind is to become changed and an animal’s mind is to be given to him; seven periods a are to pass by for him. 17 The decision is by the decree of lookouts, the intent a by the word of b holy beings: With the object that human beings may come to acknowledge that the One On High rules over human kingship. He can give it to anyone he wishes and set over it the most ordinary of human beings.’

That is the dream which I, King Nebukadne’s· s· ar, had. You, Belt·ešas· s· ar, tell me the interpretation, since all the experts in my kingdom are unable to let me know the interpretation, but you can do so, in that the spirit of holy deity is in you.” 19 Daniyye’l, whose name was Belt·ešas· s· ar, was overcome for a moment. His thoughts alarmed him. The king averred, “Belt·ešas· s· ar, the dream and the interpretation are not to alarm you.” Belt·ešas· s· ar responded, “My lord, the dream should   a apply to your opponents and its interpretation to your foes. 20The tree you saw which grew in stature and might—­its top reached to the heavens, and it could be seen from the ends of the earth; 21it had lovely foliage, much fruit, and food for everyone; beneath it the animals of the wild dwelt, and in its branches the birds of the heavens nested: 22you, your majesty, are the one who has grown in stature and might; your stature has grown until it reaches the heavens and your rule until it reaches the end of the earth. 23Your majesty saw a lookout, a holy being, descend from heavens and say, 18

Fell the tree and destroy it; yet the stock from its root leave in the earth. With a ring of iron and bronze around him, with the grass in the wild, He is to be watered with the dew from the heavens and to share with the animals of the wild, until seven periods pass by for him.’ ‘

This is the interpretation, your majesty. It is the decision of the One On High that has befallen a my lord the king. 25You are going to be led away from human society. Your home will be among the animals of the wild. You will be fed plants like an ox and be 24

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247

watered with dew from the heavens, and seven periods will pass by for you, until you acknowledge that the One On High rules over human kingship, and that he can give it to anyone he wishes. 26But in that the stock from the tree’s root was to be left, your kingship will become firm for you from when you acknowledge that the heavens rule. 27 Nevertheless,a your majesty, may it seem good to you to accept my counsel: break with b your wrongdoing by acting in faithfulness,c break with b your waywardness by showing favor to the lowly, in case there might be ea prolonging of your success.”e 28 All this befell King Nebukadne’s· s· ar. 29At the end of twelve months, he was walking on the roof of the royal palace in Babylon. 30The king averred, “This is great Babylon, isn’t it! a And I myself built it as a royal seat, by my sovereign might and for my kingly honor.” 31The words were still on the king’s lips when a voice came down from the heavens, “These words are for you, King Nebukadne’s· s· ar. Kingship has passed from you. 32You are going to be led away from human society; your home will be among the animals of the wild. You will be fed plants like an ox, and seven periods will pass by for you, until you acknowledge that the One On High rules over human kingship, and that he can give it to anyone he wishes.” 33 That very moment the words came true for Nebukadne’s· s· ar. He was led away from human society, he ate what grows from the earth like an ox, and his body was watered with dew from the heavens, until his hair had grown long like eagles and his nails like birds. 34 “But when the time was over, I, Nebukadne’s· s· ar, lifted my eyes a to the heavens. As my understanding b returned,c I blessed the One On High and praised and honored the One who lives for ever. His rule lasts through the ages, his kingship through all generations. 35 All the inhabitants of the earth are to be counted a as nothing.b He does as he wishes with the forces of the heavens and the inhabitants of earth. There is no one who can restrain his hand or say to him, “What have you done?”

When that same hour my understanding returned, and as for a my royal honor, my glory and my splendor returned to me, my courtiers and lords sought audience c with me. dSo I was restored to my kingship,d and yet more greatness was added to me. 37Now I, Nebukadne’s· s· ar, praise and exalt and honor the King of the heavens. All his deeds are true and his ways just; those who walk a in pride he can put down.” 36

b

Notes 1.a–­a. Your ‫שלם‬: the greeting is a standard one in a letter or encyclical (cf. 6:25 [26]). 2.a. Literally, “signs and wonders” (cf. v. 3): a hendiadys.

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4.a. OG provides the same date as in 3:1, suggesting that it was through an accomplishment such as the capture of Jerusalem that Nebuchadnezzar was successful and thriving. 4.b. Paralleled by ‫“ רענן‬thriving,” ‫ שלה‬suggests “prosperous” (cf. Th.) rather than “relaxed” (cf. OG, Vulg.). 4.c. ‫( רענן‬see Thomas, “‫;)”ר ֲענָ ן‬ ַ used of persons only here and Ps 92:14 [15] in a similar context, though see also the similes in Pss 52:8 [10]; 37:35. 5.a. ‫וידחלנני‬, like many verbs in ch. 4, is imperfect. I have followed BL 78mpq in assuming that these are past continuous or occur in circumstantial clauses. But Daniel may be using the imperfect as a simple aorist-­t ype tense, perhaps in imitation of BH’s alternation of perfect and imperfect. 5.b–­b. Literally, “the images on my bed, even the visions of my head”; Th. paraphrases and Syr. abbreviates. 5.c. ‫“ ;הרהרין‬fantasies” (NEB) is a later meaning, and only in the sense of sexual fantasies. 5.d. On pl. ‫ זחוי‬see n. 2:1.a. 5.e. See n. 2:28.c. 7.a–­a. On these terms see on 2:2. 8.a. ‫עד אחרית‬: probably abstract pl. of ‫“ אחר‬after” (Montgomery). 8.b. See n. 1:7.b–­b. Nebuchadnezzar might imply that Belt·ešas· s· ar is an abbreviated form of a theophoric name which omits the divine name, a common enough convention in OT names (e.g., Ahaz). But it would be odd to use the shortened form when the allusion is to the name that is omitted. More likely the name’s interpretation, like many in the OT, is based on assonance rather than etymology (cf. Driver). 8.c. ‫אלהין קדישין‬. On a pagan’s lips, the pl. would usually mean “holy gods”: cf. 5:11; Eshmun’azar’s inscription (ANET, 662); Vulg. Nebuchadnezzar’s pagan faith has just been referred to, and expressions such as this one are not used of the true God elsewhere in Daniel (contrast 2:47; 4:2, 34 [3:32; 4:31]; see BL 87f). Nevertheless, a Judahite writing or reading the phrase could take it to mean “the holy God”; cf. Th.; Josh 24:19; there may be an implcit allusion to Gen 41:38 (cf. Becking, “A Divine Spirit Is in You”). In Akk. the equivalent pl. is used for a single deity (Montgomery). See also n. 3:25.b. 9.a. It is “not necessary to give the pf. the present sense, ‘I know,’ for ‘I have come to know’ makes good sense” (Muraoka)—­“I have come to acknowledge” fits even better. 9.b. ‫( רז‬see on 2:18) here denotes a specific problem, not the great mystery of God’s plan for all history. 9.c. As was the case in ch. 2, there is initially some ambiguity about whether Nebuchadnezzar is asking Daniel to tell him the dream as well as the interpretation. But it is not what happens, and further, ‫ חזוי חלמי‬is an odd phrase; Syr. paraphrases, apparently recognizing the problem (Taylor, Peshitta of Daniel, 135–36). Müller (“Magisch-­mantische Weisheit,” 86) takes the ‫ ו‬of ‫ ופשרא‬as epexegetic (see n. 6:28.a): “Tell me the dream vision I have had—­t hat is, its interpretation.” 11.a. ‫רבה‬, perhaps “had grown”; but the visions in Dan characteristically portray happenings rather than static scenes, which suggests that Nebuchadnezzar sees the tree growing. 11.b. See n. 5.a. 11.c–­c. ‫“ וחזותה ל‬and its appearance to”: cf. the phrase in 7:20 and the note. 12.a. MT by its maqqeph links ‫“ לכלא בה‬for all [who live] in it” (cf. Keil); more likely ‫ בה‬links with ‫“ מזון‬food . . . in it” (cf. G, Vulg., Syr.). 13.a. ‫עיר‬, perhaps “protector” (see Murray, “The Origin of Aramaic ‘îr,”), though this nuance does not esp. fit the context. Rather cf. BH ‫“ ציר‬envoy” (van Selms, “The Expression ‘the Holy One of Israel,’ ” 265).

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13.b. ‫ קדישין‬are heavenly beings subordinate to God (van Selms [see n. 13.a]; cf. Ps 89:5–7 [6–8]). The term does not suggest beings that are holy in the moral sense but beings that belong to the supernatural realm. The ‫ ו‬is explicative (n. 6:28.a). 14.a. I follow Li (Verbal System, 47) in translating the participles. 15.a–­a. For ‫עקר שרשוהי‬, BDB implies that both words mean “root” (OG omits the first); the combination then conveys emphasis (cf. Common English Bible “its deepest root”). But ‫ עקר‬can suggest “descendant,” and it makes better sense to take it to denote the stock that grows up from the root, which as such can be fettered (cf. Th.; Koch, Daniel 1–4). 15.b. See Comment: the vision’s reference to a man becomes clearer during the course of v. 15; lacking a neuter gender, Hebrew can retain a semblance of ambiguity as it uses m throughout vv. 7–13 in referring to the tree. 15.c. Emendations are proposed by Torrey (“Notes on the Aramaic Part of Daniel,” 269–70) and by NEB, but the phrase’s repetition in v. 20 argues for MT. 15.d. ‫ חלק‬could refer to his portion of food (cf. Deut 10:8) or to the lot in life allocated to him by God (cf. Isa 17:14); the latter is more common, but the former fits the context. 15.e. ‫ עשב‬surely refers to edible plants as in Gen 1 (cf. G, Vulg.) not “grass” (EVV, including NETS); Nebuchadnezzar’s diet need not be that bovine. 16.a. “Years” (OG) resolves the allusiveness of ‫עדן‬, which denotes a set but unspecified period of time (‫ עדון‬refers to a woman’s monthly “period” [DTT]); cf. 7:25; also ‫ מועד‬in 11:29; 12:7. The Akk. equivalent of ‫ עדן‬means “year” in the Harran Nabonidus inscription (Gadd, “Harran Inscriptions,” 88), as does Gk. χρόνος (Ginsberg, Studies in Daniel, 1–2). But for “year” Daniel could have used ‫( שנה‬e.g., 1:5; 5:31 [6:1]]; 7:1; 11:6; also Gen 41:25). So the period denoted may be a year, but “year” is not the meaning of ‫ עדן‬or ‫ מועד‬themselves. Theodoret makes them seven “seasons,” 3 1/2 years, assuming a two-­season year; Hippolytus refers to the view that they denote 1 3/4 years, seven seasons of three months; Ps-­Saadia notes that they have been taken to be weeks or months or years. 17.a. On ‫שאלתא‬, see Montgomery; also Gordis, “Studies in Hebrew Roots,” 45 = 197. 17.b. ‫[“ מאמר‬by] the determination of”: ‫ ב‬is understood from the parallel colon (GKC 119hh; Lacocque). Some medieval mss provide ‫ב‬. 19.a. This might be a real wish (“may the dream . . .”) or only a hypothetical one (“if only the dream . . .”): see v. 27 Comment. 24.a. ‫ מטא‬is used for “reach”/“befall” in vv. 24, 28 as vv. 11, 22 (Coxon, “The ‘List’ Genre,” 112). 27.a. See n. 2:6.a. 27.b. ‫“ פרק‬break” can mean “untie” and thus “release/redeem”; but the object is then the thing to be released, not the bond (cf. Ps 136:24; Lam 5:8), so that “redeem your sins . . .” (G λύτρωσαι, Vulg. redime; cf. NEB) or “atone for your sins” (NRSV) is hardly possible (cf. Koch, Daniel 1–4). 27.c. ‫ צדקה‬includes seeing to a fair distribution of resources, and it came to mean charity, which Anderson (Sin, 135–44) takes as the specific meaning here (cf. Tob 12:9; 14:11; and here G ἐλεημοσύνη; similarly Vulg., Syr.). But a king had a distinctive responsibility for ‫ צדקה‬in the broader sense, and Nebuchadnezzar is addressed as king, so the older/broader meaning is appropriate. Cf. the parallel expression “showing favor to the lowly.” 27.c. Both ‫ חטיך‬and ‫( עויתן‬wrongdoing, waywardness) might be s. or pl. 27.e–­e. ‫ ;ארבה לשלותך‬RV mg. “a healing of thine error” (cf. Syr., Th., Vulg. for the second noun) implies the pointing ‫לּותך‬ ָ ‫( ֲא ֻב ָכה ְל ָׁש‬cf. BDB, 74a, 1115b). But ‫ שלוה‬is surely picked up from v. 4.

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30.a. I take ‫ הלא‬as an interrogative expecting the answer “Yes,” as in 2:27; 6:12 [13]. Mastin, “The Meaning of h ala´, argues that here it is an asseverative; the implication is the same. 34.a. ‫ נטלת‬. . . ‫ עיני‬indicates not merely the direction the eyes take but the deliberateness involved in activating them (Reif, “A Root to Look Up,” esp. 239). The first idea is appropriate here; the second is even more so: see Comment. 34.b. ‫ מנדע‬denotes his capacity for knowledge or “his understanding and capacity for rational thought” (G. J. Botterweck, ThWAT 3:511 [ET 5:480]); and cf. Seow, Daniel, 72–73. 34.c. On the imperfect, see BL 78mq; Joüon, “Cinq imperfaits.” 35.a. See BL 82c. 35.b. ‫כלה‬: for the spelling, cf. Deut 3:11; many medieval mss have the more usual ‫כלא‬. For the use, cf. GBA 87. 36.a. ‫ל‬: see GKC 143e; BDB, 514b; F. Nötscher, “Zum emphatischen Lamed,” esp. 377. The usual meaning of ‫ ל‬fits less well. 36.b. ‫ ;הדרי‬Th. ἤλθον presupposes ‫ הדרת‬or takes the word as 1 s. from ‫( רדה‬see DTT), “I returned (to the honor of my kingship).” But the form is Eastern Aramaic; MT is taking up the phrasing from v. 30. 36.c. ‫“ יבעון‬made request,” part of honoring him as king again; virtually “acclaimed” (Nober, “Yeba’on”). The courtiers and lords are the people who had been exercising authority in the king’s place. I have taken the verb as a “genuine” imperfect, the preceding ones in v. 33 being subordinate to it (cf. n. 34.c): but such an understanding may be forced, and the apparent use here of the “imperfect” as a narrative tense is the starting point for Rosén’s reconsideration of “The Use of the Tenses in the Aramaic of Daniel.” 36.d–­d. ‫“ ועל מלבותי התקנת‬and to my kingship it was restored”: variant readings are perhaps combined in this verse (cf. BHS). 37.a. ‫מהלבין‬: on the vocalization, see Eitan (cf. 3:25).

Form/Structure/Setting Form Like ch. 2, Dan 4 is a subtle, complex, and sophisticated composition that brings together elements from several genres (see chs. 1 and 2 Form). The opening verses suggest a letter; the identification of writer and addressee, and the greeting, are regular features of Aramaic and other letters.1 It specifically suggests an encyclical (cf. Ezra 1:1–4). The form of a royal proclamation gives the content a special degree of authority, which is then used to testify to a higher authority than the human king.2 The king is the central character in this chapter to a greater extent than is the case in other stories.3 His consultation of the experts is briefer and more formalized, and it conveys a less cartoon-­like impression, while there is no reference to Daniel

1 2 3

See Fitzmyer, “Aramaic Epistolography”; also Doty, “The Classification of Epistolory Literature”; Alexander, “Remarks on Aramaic Epistolography in the Persian Period.” Barr, “Daniel,” on the chapter. Cf. Koch, Daniel 1–4, 401.

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being rewarded or promoted. Elements of court-­contest tale, legend, and aretalogy thus reappear, but they are less prominent than in ch. 2. The king’s confession of God’s greatness (vv. 2–3) marks a transition to something like a thanksgiving or testimony (e.g., Ps 30), in which a person recalls how their life was going well, how it went wrong, but how God then restored them; the closing verses resume the form of a testimony. More specifically, it parallels the less usual kind of testimony psalm that speaks of the suppliant’s wrongdoing, of God’s chastising, and then of God’s restoring (e.g., Ps 32). A second-­millennium fictional story about King Naram-­Sin of Kuth in Mesopotamia also combines an encyclical with an autobiographical account of humbling and advance to meekness.4 The testimony parallels other “pseudo-­autobiographies”5 such as the second-­century account of a failure of the Nile’s inundation by the third-­millennium pharaoh Djoser, which speaks of a period of seven lean years (ANET, 31–32). The praise of God thus has both thanksgiving features (vv. 2, 34a, 37a) and hymnic features (vv. 3, 34b–35, 37b). Each is appropriate to the context; the formal ambiguity that results from their combination (is it a hymn or a thanksgiving?) reflects the origin of the verses in a literary rather than a liturgical setting.6 The offering of praise after the beginning of a letter is paralleled in NT Epistles; as is the case with this feature in the Epistles, the poetic passage fulfills a didactic function.7 The confessional opening and closing of the chapter help to unify its diverse formal features into a distinctive, intricately wrought whole. The encyclical/confession forms a bracket around the chapter’s dominant formal feature, a dream report, with introduction, dream, interpretation, and fulfillment.8 The fulfillment motif further distinguishes ch. 4 from ch. 2, as does the story’s ending with Nebuchadnezzar’s restoration rather than Daniel’s exaltation. The first-­person form maintained through much of the chapter is natural to a dream report9 as well as to the confessional praise with which it begins; compare Nabonidus’s testimonies (ANET, 308–11; 562–63) and the Qumran “Prayer of Nabonidus,” 4QPrNab (4Q242). Throughout, midrashic or intertextual features interweave. The basic story of the threatening royal dream that can be interpreted by no one but an exiled Judahite again parallels Gen 41; the king’s description of the interpreter, as one in whom is the spirit of holy deity, is a correspondence of detail with that story. Job 33 parallels the motif of God’s speaking through a dream to warn a man of the judgment coming upon his pride, then drawing him through 4 Bickerman, Four Strange Books of the Bible, 98–99; see further Gurney, “The Cuthaean Legend of Naram-Sin.” 5 Grayson, Babylonian Historical-Literary Texts, 7; see Longman, Fictional Akkadian Autobiography. 6 See further ch. 2 Form on 2:20–23. 7 Towner, “The Poetic Passages in Daniel 1–6,” 317. 8 Oppenheim, “Interpretation of Dreams,” 187. 9 Examples in Oppenheim, “Interpretation of Dreams.”

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illness to prayer, repentance, restoration, and testimony. Nebuchadnezzar’s sovereignty over all peoples, and God’s capacity to give earthly power to anyone he wishes (vv. 17, 25, 32), recall Jer 27:5–7. The theme of God’s lordship over kings parallels Job 12:12–24; 36:5–14; Isa 40:17, which reflect psalmic traditions, as do Nebuchadnezzar’s confessions of this lordship (cf. Ps 145, especially v. 13). Nebuchadnezzar almost “crowned all the songs and praises of David” (b. Sanh. 92b). The central motif, the tree,10 appears widely in myth (see Comment), but the description of the tree and its felling, and the motif of the humbling of a proud monarch, follows passages such as Ezek 17 (the Judahite king as a tree planted, uprooted, replanted, fruitful, and protective [cf. Lam 4:20]; see especially vv. 23–24); Ezek 19:10–14 (Jerusalem as a vine, flourishing, strong, and impressive, but uprooted); Ezek 28 (the prince of Tyre pretending to deity and to a wisdom greater than Daniel’s [!], but humiliated; the king of Tyre in his splendor in Eden, God’s garden, but humiliated for his violence, injustice, and pride); Ezek 31 (the Egyptian king as a tree, lofty, flourishing, impressive, protective, but felled for his wickedness; see especially vv. 5–6, 12–13); Isa 14:4–23 (the king of Babylon fallen for his pretense to deity and his affliction of people);11 Ps 92 (praise of the One On High for his great works, which the brutish person cannot recognize; the wicked only flourish in the short term, the just flourish like strong trees); cf. also Isa 10:5–11:10; Deut 17:14–20.12 Tree fables (Judg 9:8–15; 2 Kgs 14:9; cf. 1 Kgs 4:33 [5:13]) are a wisdom feature, and the humbling of the proud monarch recalls aphorisms in Proverbs (Prov 16:5–7, 12).13 The tree is also one motif suggesting a link with with Gen 1–3; 11.14 The account of the king’s chastisement/madness/illness/exile and restoration has several parallels outside the OT. (a) The Greek writer Megasthenes (c. 300 BC) writes of Nebuchadnezzar announcing from his palace roof under some god’s inspiration the coming fall of Babylon to “a Persian mule,” who Nebuchadnezzar wishes might rather take himself off to some animal-­like existence (see Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 9.41.6).15 (b) A fragmentary cuneiform text seems to refer to a mental disorder on Nebuchadnezzar’s part, and perhaps to his neglecting and leaving Babylon.16 (c) Josephus refers 10 See Coxon, “The Great Tree of Daniel 4.” 11 Wilkie (“Nabonidus and the Later Jewish Exiles”) sees Nabonidus behind both Isa 14 and Dan 4. 12 See also the Aramaic apocalypse 4QFour Kingdoms (4Q552–553) (Reynolds, “Symbolic and Non-Symbolic Visions of the Book of Daniel,” 223–25). 13 Gammie, “On the Intention and Sources of Daniel i-vi,” 284 14 See Di Lella, “Daniel 4:7–14”; Kim, “Biblical Interpretation in the Book of Daniel,” 125–66; Doukhan, “Allusions à la création dans le livre de Daniel.” But Metzger (“Der Weltenbaum in vorderorientalischer Bildtradition) sees the OT references as independently taking up the image from its ancient Near Eastern context. 15 See Schrader, “Die Sage vom Wahnsinn Nebukadnezars.” 16 Grayson, Babylonian Historical-Literary Texts, 87–92; cf. Hasel, “The Book of Daniel,” 41–42.

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to an illness of which Nebuchadnezzar died (Ag. Ap. 1.20 [1.146]). (d) The Babylonian poem of a righteous suffere, Ludlul Be¯l Ne¯meqi (“I Will Praise the Lord of Wisdom,” ANET, 596–600) testifies to chastisement by God, illness, humiliation, seeking interpretation of a terrifying dream, being thrown over like a tree, being put outside, eating grass, losing understanding, being like an ox, being rained on by Marduk, nails being marred, hair growing, and being fettered, and then to a restoration for which he praises the god.17 (e) In a number of inscriptions, especially from Harran, the last king of the neo-­Babylonian empire, Nabonidus, testifies to praying before Marduk for a long and successful reign and receiving the deity’s promise that it would be granted, and to being led by a dream to spend ten years away from Babylon in Tema in Arabia, but then to return to Babylon. We have noted other inscriptions referring in the first and also in the third person to Nabonidus’s years away from Babylon and (with hostility) to his being punished for his “mad” neglect of Babylon’s deities (ANET, 305–16, 560–63).18 Nabonidus is the only known Babylonian dreamer.19 (f) The Qumran “Prayer of Nabonidus” records Nabonidus’s testimony to his being afflicted by God for seven years in Tema by a physical illness. He prayed to his gods for healing but received it only after a Jewish exorcist (‫ )גזר‬exhorted him to honor the true God.20 Daniel 4 may then contain “ ‘ghost memories’ of Nabonidus.”21 Scholars have held a wide variety of views on the relationship between these various documents and the traditions they represent, and on the development of the chapter.22 Whether or not we can reach any conclusions about the historical questions, study of comparative materials may help us to perceive characteristic and distinctive features of the text that concerns us.23

Structure The whole chapter is in direct speech except for vv. 19, 28–30a, 31a, and 33. It opens with Nebuchadnezzar’s introduction and his act of praise, and it closes with his second acts of praise. The beginning of the chapter announces where

17

Ball, “Daniel and Babylon; Ferguson, “Nebuchadnezzar, Gilgamesh, and the ‘Babylonian Job.’” 18 Gadd, “The Harran Inscriptions of Nabonidus”; Röllig, “Erwägungen zu neuen Stelen König Nabonids.” 19 Oppenheim, “Interpretation of Dreams,” 186. 20 See Pericope Bibliography; and on Nabonidus, see Saggs, The Greatness That Was Babylon, 145–52; Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia, 152–53; Beaulieu, The Reign of Nabonidus; Koch, Daniel 1–4. Steinmann (“The Chicken and the Egg”) argues that the Qumran prayer is based on Dan 4. 21 Newsom, Daniel, 130; cf. Newsom, “Why Nabonidus?” 22 See Mertens, Das Buch Daniel im Lichte der Texte vom Toten Meer, 37–40; more recently Segal, Dreams, Riddles, and Visions, ch. 4. 23 For example, Bickerman (Four Strange Books of the Bible, 74–77) nicely suggests that the message lying behind Dan 4 gives the real divine response to Nabonidus, in contrast to the one in the Harran inscriptions.

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it will end; the question then is how it can reach this “unlikely” conclusion. Once the first-­person testimony begins, it uses suspenseful devices similar to those in ch. 2: the effect of the dream on Nebuchadnezzar is announced before its content, the sages are unable to interpret it, and the effect of its message on Daniel is announced before its content. The dream itself is recounted once again before its interpretation is given, its positive aspects thus standing in contrast to the solemnity of the message it brings. The tree theme is not developed in a sustained way; it is subordinate to the message, and the interpretation enters into the presentation of the dream itself as early as vv. 15–16. The first overt climaxes come in the brief interpretive announcements in vv. 22a and 25–26, then in the unpresaged admonition/invitation of v. 27. Whereas chs. 2, 3, and 6 are narratives that close with proclamation, ch. 4 is a proclamation incorporating a narrative; and whereas Daniel has considerable prominence in ch. 2, here he is a role rather than a personality (like the Judahites in ch. 3), as Nebuchadnezzar has more focus. The structure might be presented as 1  introduction to encyclical 2  introduction to opening confession 3  hymnic confession 4–18 report of dream (first person) 4–5  dream’s occurrence 6–9  quest for an interpreter (court contest) 10–17  content of dream 10–12  the tree in the dream 13–17  the lookout’s intervention in the dream 18  request to Daniel 19–27 interpretation of dream (third person) 19  introductory wish 20–26  interpretation 20–2  interpretation of the tree 23–26  interpretation of the lookout’s message 27  closing admonition 28–33  report of fulfillment (third person) 34–36  introduction to closing confession 37  hymnic confession The chapter begins with stock phrases and expressions familiar from other stories of this kind and from elsewhere in the OT (vv. 1–3, 5–10a). Verse 3, however, which is poetical in form (it manifests meter and parallelism), introduces roots that will be of key significance for the story: ‫ רב‬and ‫“ תקף‬great,” “mighty” (vv. 11, 20, 22, 30, 36), ‫ מלך‬and ‫“ שלט‬kingship,” “rule” (vv. 17, 25, 26, 32, 34). The poetic form of v. 3 reappears in part of vv. 34–37, its actual

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phrasing being reworked in part in v. 34b. Verses 34–37 also take up the terms of v. 30 and make clear that the antithesis between divine and human kingship is not to be sharply drawn, nor does the humbling of human kingship necessarily mean dethronement rather than chastisement. Here, too, stock phrases accumulate, yet they become the vehicle of vivid testimony. Nebuchadnezzar’s account of his dream introduces a further key pair of terms, the antithesis ‫שמי ן­—ארע‬. Both terms are ambivalent. ‫ ארע‬can mean “earth” in the sense of “world,” and thus suggest the extent of Nebuchadnezzar’s rule (vv. 1, 10, 11, 20, 22), though also suggest its ultimate insignificance compared with God, before whom the whole earth is nothing (v. 35, twice). It can mean “ground,” and thus more directly suggest the extent of Nebuchadnezzar’s humiliation (vv. 15a, 15b, 23, 32, 33). ‫ שמין‬means “heavens” (vv. 11, 12, 15, 20, 21, 22, 23, 23, 25, 26, 31, 33, 34, 35, 37) both in the physical sense of the sky and in the metaphysical sense of God’s dwelling; the passage makes use of the fact that the former is a symbol of the latter, lets one meaning hint at the other, and sometimes leaves unclear which is referred to. No other chapter of the OT uses ‫שמים‬/‫ שמין‬as often, or uses the word as a periphrasis for God (v. 26) or refers to God as king of the heavens (v. 37), bringing together the two key fields of terms we have noted. Nor does any other chapter of the OT use as often the related title One On High: vv. 2, 17, 24, 25, 32, 34. In their various senses ‫ שמין‬and ‫ ארע‬can both confront and associate with each other, setting up both links and tensions within the passage. The accounts of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, its interpretation, and its fulfillment introduce a more sustained lyrical strain to the main body of the chapter. Nebuchadnezzar’s description of his own situation in v. 4, the only non-­stock element in the material that precedes the dream, anticipates both the theme of the “thriving” tree that is first described in vv. 10b–12 and the content of Daniel’s exhortation in v. 27 regarding a prolonging of Nebuchadnezzar’s success. The second part of the dream uses the lyricism to solemn, foreboding effect. Its implicit significance is made explicit in more prosaic and direct theological terms and parenesis (vv. 17b, 27). Opinion varies as to how far to present the dream material as lyrical prose or as loose verse; I have followed BHS, but Lee24 not only sees vv. 4–5 as continuing the poetry of v. 3 but sees vv. 10b–17 as originally the continuation of that poem. The chapter is as repetitive as others, yet it sustains interest by the use of variation, drama, and suspense; the repetition is the repetition of literary technique rather than the more artless repetition of folktale. As the book of Daniel combines Hebrew and Aramaic in the manner of Ezra-­Nehemiah, so it combines first-­and third-­person ways of narrating in

24 Aramaic Poetry, 84–130. Di Lella (“Daniel 4:7–14”) analyzes the literary devices in those verses; see also Richter, “Daniel 4,7–14.”

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the manner of Ezra-­Nehemiah and Tobit.25 This chapter does so in a distinctively integral fashion. “The story is not only that of Nebuchadnezzar: it is also about Nebuchadnezzar.”26 Combining a testimony (vv. 1–17, 34–37) with narrative (vv. 19–33) has a dramatic effect: it enables the chapter to tell the story from two points of view or perspectives, from the implicit angle of the narrator (which the narrator presumably expects us to accept) and from the explicit angle of Nebuchadnezzar (which the narrator may or may not expect us to accept). Indeed, we get three perspectives in the chapter, insofar as it also reports the words of Daniel. In the context of the book as a whole, we might assume that we are expected to accept Daniel’s angle but to be more suspicious of Nebuchadnezzar’s.27

Setting The Qumran “Prayer of Nabonidus” shows that material such as this testimony could be of interest in Greco-­Roman Judea and could function as an attack on Hellenistic kingship ideology,28 and Hippolytus notes parallels between Nebuchadnezzar and the proud Antiochus Epiphanes (cf. 11:37), who was lampooned as Epimanes (Madman) and who acknowledged God on his deathbed according to 2 Macc 9.29 But the parallels are too broad to suggest that Nebuchadnezzar directly mirrors Antiochus. The latter’s character and story are different,30 and Daniel has different hopes of him (11:40–45). There are no concrete indications than Dan 4 was composed in Greco-­Roman Judea; the eastern dispersion is the more natural context. The substantial difference between the MT and OG may suggests that there were several versions of the story. In particular, OG includes a substantially more elaborate version of vv. 34–37 that partly corresponds to the content of vv. 1–3 (which do not appear in OG) but is also substantially longer than the MT version. It spells out the nature of Nebuchadnezzar’s kingship and expands on his expression of commitment to the One On High.31 The suggestion has been made that the Hebrew forms of the chapter developed in stages through the conflation of different versions until it reached the form we have, with one stage coming in the Antiochene period.32 But the attempted 25 Wesselius (“The Writing of Daniel”) sees the structure of Daniel as modeled on that of Ezra. 26 Meadowcroft, “Point of View in Storytelling,” 34. 27 Cf. Meadowcroft, “Metaphor, Narrative, Interpretation and Reader in Daniel 2–5,” 270–71. 28 Meyer, Das Gebet des Nabonid, 111–12. 29 Hippolytus, Daniel 3.4. 30 Cf. C. F. Keil, Daniel, 140–42. 31 See Koch, Daniel 1–4, 444–50. 32 On these questions, see e.g., Collins, Daniel, 216–21; Koch, Daniel 1–4, 377–80, 387–401; Haag, Die Errettung Daniels; Wills, The Jew in the Court of the Foreign King; Albertz, Der Gott des Daniel; Schlenke, Gottes Reich und Königs Macht; Henze, The Madness of King Nebuchadnezzar, 14–49; Meadowcroft, Aramaic Daniel and Greek Daniel, 31–56; McLay, “The OG Translaton of Daniel iv–vi”; ———. “Double Translations in the Greek Versions of Daniel.”

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reconstructions of this process vary, their evidence is circumstantial, and their basis sometimes seems questionable: for example, alternating between first-­ and third-­person is not evidence of redactional work.33 Chapter 4:1–3 initially appears to carry on from 3:30, and b. Sanh. 92b connects Nebuchadnezzar’s praise in those verses with the story in ch. 3; printed Hebrew Bibles count 4:1–3 as 3:31–33. The broader ordering of the material in the book, whereby a further chapter about Nebuchadnezzar follows the story in ch. 3 (as the story in ch. 3 followed directly on ch. 2) encourages this understanding. But the MT locates the chapter break after 3:30; it provides a petuchah or chapter break at that point and not even a section break after 4:3. So “this chapter division . . . is not of masoretic origin, nor from any other Jewish source, but was introduced by gentile Bible scholars.”34 The chapter divisions in modern Hebrew Bibles apparently go back to the introduction of chapter divisions into the Vulgate in the medieval period; whereas the chapter divisions were traditionally ascribed to Stephen Langton in the thirteenth century, they seem actually to have been developing before his day. But in his century “the Paris Bibles made the ‘Langtonian’ chapter division the standard.” They thus appear in the Gutenberg Bible,35 and they were also taken over into printed Hebrew Bibles. In these chapters in Daniel, however, it soon becomes clear that 4:1–3 begins a new unit. Thus Luther abandoned the “Langtonian” chapter division that he found in contemporary Bibles and pushed the beginning of the new chapter division back to where the Masoretes themselves had located it, and EVV follow.36 The end of ch. 3 marked the three friends’ final appearance in the book. Henceforth it entirely focuses on Daniel as its hero. Before ch. 3, Dan 4 does link in theme with the earlier dream chapter, Dan 2. Daniel’s appearing last among the experts (v. 8) need not be in tension with 2:48. It is not said that he is summoned after the others, only that (dramatically) he arrives last; perhaps he was with them but was at the end of the line.37 Chapter 4 also marks the last appearance of Nebuchadnezzar. There is no development in Nebuchadnezzar’s character through chs. 1–4; the chapters do not recount Nebuchadnezzar’s spiritual biography. Indeed, as ch. 3 pairs with ch. 6, ch. 4 has a closer relationship with ch. 5, where Belshazzar will pay a more conclusive penalty for a more explicit blasphemy accompanied by a refusal to learn from Nebuchadnezzar’s experience. In other words, ch. 4’s relationship with ch. 5 is more significant than its relationship with 33 Berger, “Hellenistische Gattungen im NT,” 1274. 34 Goldwurm, Daniel, 133. 35 See F. Van Liere, “The Latin Bible, c.900 to the Council of Trent 1546,” 2:93–109 (106). The text of the Gutenberg Bible is accessible at http://www.bl.uk/treasures/gutenberg/ record.asp. 36 See Luther, “Der Prophet Daniel,” 144; cf. Calvin, Daniel 1–6, 151. 37 Cf, Jeffery, “Daniel,” on the chapter.

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chs. 1–3. “Daniel 4 is the positive example of an earthly king who suffers a great indignity and thereby comes to ‘know’ that God has sovereignty over human kingship, whereupon the king has his earthly dominion restored to him. Daniel 5 is the negative example of an earthly king who has not learned the lesson, does not acknowledge God’s sovereignty, and thereby suffers the ultimate loss of not only his kingship but his life.”38

Comment 1–3. The testimony put on Nebuchadnezzar’s lips in Dan 4 is centrally concerned with the kingship or rule of Nebuchadnezzar and the kingship or rule of the One On High, the kingship or rule of [the King/Lord of] the heavens (vv. 2, 17, 18, 22, 24, 25, 26, 30, 31, 32, 34, 36, 37; cf. 5:18–23). “The One On High” was Nebuchadnezzar’s title for God in 3:26, and here he uses it again in both his opening and his closing act of acclamation. Nebuchadnezzar does not stand for ordinary humanity being judged for ordinary human pride. Nor does the chapter stress the fact that he is a gentile and Daniel a Jew, or picture Nebuchadnezzar turning from paganism to faith in the God of Israel. But Nebuchadnezzar’s ghost writer does have him giving testimony in good Jewish fashion to the “signs and wonders” that the God On High has done (cf. Exod 7:3; Deut 4:34; 6:22; 7:19; 26:8; 29:2–3; 34:11; Neh 9:10; Pss 105:27; 135:9; Jer 32:20–21; also Darius the Mede’s testimony in Dan 6:27 [28]).39 4–10a. Troubled by another dream, Nebuchadnezzar recognizes Daniel as one in whom God’s spirit dwells (v. 8). In the OT the presence of God’s spirit often implies the activity of God in his dynamic power, giving life and freedom to his people and to the world; the effect of this presence on human beings is to make them behave in remarkable ways and perform extraordinary deeds. Someone who receives out-­of-­the-­ordinary insights or revelations does so by the work of the divine spirit (Gen 41:38; Num 24:2; 2 Sam 23:2; 2 Chr 15:1; 20:14; 24:20). Remarkable words suggest the breath of God himself, whether or not they reflect an ecstatic experience (see Job 32:8, 18; contrast 15:2!). Verse 8 does not imply that all words of insight indicate the activity of God’s spirit. Nebuchadnezzar is referring to knowledge of an extraordinary and inexplicable kind: such insight reflects the spirit of prophecy.40 This conviction has been expressed without using the word spirit, in 2:11. Reference to God’s spirit reinforces the suggestion of a real dynamic presence of God that contrasts with the spurious presence that the statue of ch. 3 might have claimed to imply. References in Daniel to the human spirit on its own are negative: it is disturbed by divine revelations (2:1, 3; 7:15) and insensitive to 38 Kirkpatrick, Competing for Honor, 117. 39 Cf. Collins, Daniel, 221; Pace, Daniel. 124–25; Newsom, Daniel, 134. 40 So Ps-Saadia, on the passage.

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divine prompting (5:20). Daniel comes to be someone of extraordinary spirit (5:12; 6:3 [4]) only through the activity of the divine spirit (4:8, 9, 18; 5:11, 14).41 10b–12 The portrayal of the tree has a background in OT texts (see Form), but a more general background in the OT and elsewhere. A lofty, preeminent, verdant, protective, fruitful, long-­lived tree is a common symbol for the living, transcendent, life-­g iving, sustaining cosmos or reality or deity itself. A sacred tree at the center of the earth symbolically links the earth and the heavens; a tree of life grows in God’s garden; world history can be symbolized as a tree.42 The image can be applied to humanity in general (Ps 1) or to one’s own nation—­Babylon43 or Israel (Isa 4:2; 5:1–7). It is a natural symbol for the king, who mediates God’s life, provision, and protection to his people; he is tree-­like to them (Isa 11:1; 53:2; Herodotus, Histories 1.108; 7.19).44 The symbol is reworked in Dan 4, as metaphor rather than myth. The obvious interpretation is to refer it to the royal dynasty, which will be cut down (the present king will be removed) but will survive as a stump with the potential for renewed growth (a new king will arise); compare Isa 6:13; 11:1; also Job 14:7–9, which notes that what can be true of a tree cannot be true of an individual man. Daniel applies the dream to Nebuchadnezzar personally rather than to the dynasty. On the king’s authority over the animal creation (v. 12), see on 2:37–45. 13–18 In Daniel “supernatural lookouts” is one of a number of expressions for heavenly beings; for others see 3:28; 7:16; 10:13.45 These terms utilize the arrangements of a human court to picture God’s management of the affairs of the heavens and the earth, or they presuppose that God’s management of the affairs of the heavens and the earth are reflected in the arrangements of a human court. An earthly king had lookouts who were the eyes and ears whereby he controlled and provided for his realm (see n. 3:2.c). There is nothing mortal that is faster than the system the Persians have devised for sending messages. Apparently, they have horses and men posted at intervals along the route, the same number in total as the overall length in days of journey, with a fresh horse and rider for every day of travel. Whatever the conditions—­it may be snowing, raining, blazing hot, or dark—­t hey never fail to complete their assigned journey in the fastest possible time. (Herodotus, Histories 8.98). 41 See Lys, Ruach, 252–55. 42 See G. van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, ch. 5.3; Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, ch. 8; Cook, “Mythological Discourse in Ezekiel and Daniel.” Bunta (“The Meˉ su-tree and the Animal Inside”) sees a background in the Mesopotamian meˉ su-tree. 43 Langdon, Building Inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, no. 19. 44 See Engnell, Studies in Divine Kingship, 25–30; Widengren, The King and the Tree of Life, 42–58; further references in Koch, Daniel 1–4, 424–26; and on the iconography, see Koch,” Gottes Herrschaft über das Reich des Menschen.” 45 Buschhaus, “Anunnakku¯ und Igigu¯ im Buch Daniel,” notes the need for some clarification of the terms.

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The heavenly king governs his realm by similar means. Such members of the council of Yahweh, his cabinet (1 Kgs 22:19–22; Job 1–2; Ps 89:5–7 [6–8]; Jer 23:18), act as his eyes (2 Chr 16:9; Zech 4:10; cf. 1:9), keeping him informed on affairs in his realm and seeing that his will is put into effect throughout it. For “lookouts” in particular, perhaps compare Isa 62:6. Of course an earthly king’s agents might rebel, and so might God’s agents, and “lookouts” became a term for such rebels (1 En. 1:5; 10:9, 15; 12:4; 13:10; contrast 12:2, 3); compare the “gods” in Ps 82.46 Such supernatural figures also feature in Canaanite, Babylonian, and Persian religion;47 the Babylonians in particular personified night watches who, vigilant and never sleeping, are responsible for destinies on earth (CAD E: 326). Nebuchadnezzar might then be using a pagan expression, which Daniel later “corrects” (v. 23); “lookout” is a description of God himself in Ps 121:3–4, as ‫“ קדוש‬holy/supernatural” often is. Yet Daniel refers elsewhere to God’s heavenly agents without implying that they rival God himself, and the rest of Nebuchadnezzar’s statement (v. 17b) seems “orthodox” enough (see also v. 35 and Explanation below). Nor need one infer that this way of picturing God acting is alien to that which generally appears in the OT.48 It emphasizes the means of God’s governing the world and not his direct agency, but it need not thereby imply that God is remote and inaccessible. The Isaiah who emphasizes God’s transcendence (Isa 6:1) also assumes God’s direct involvement in Israelite and international affairs; the Gospels and Acts that stress God’s presence with humanity in Christ and in the Spirit also portray the involvement of angels in the story of Jesus and the beginnings of the church. The proclamation’s addressees are not specified (cf. Isa 40:1); the plurals (v. 14) are impersonal and are syntactically, though not rhetorically, equivalent to passives (cf. vv. 15–16; Luke 12:20). The point is the certainty that God’s destructive purpose will be fulfilled. When the lookout’s message describes someone being reduced to animal-­like existence, the implication is not that he is going insane. It is rather that God is going to turn him from a creature with one set of instincts to a creature with a different set. What is natural for him is going to change. Restraint by a metal ring is more likely part of that description (Jerome does compare it with the chaining of someone who is mad)49 than an aspect of tree culture, whether designed to keep the tree from disintegrating altogether or to keep it from branching anew. It suggests a reversal of the treatment Nebuchadnezzar had given Israel (Jer 28:14; 39:7; 52:11; cf. Deut 28:48; also Jer 1:18; Mic 4:13; Ps 107:16). To live in the open, tethered, feeding on nat-

46 47 48 49

See further Collins, Daniel, 224–25. Cf. Murray, “The Origin of Aramaic ‘îr.” Against Eichrodt, Theologie 2:105 (ET 199). Cf. Jerome, Daniel, 51.

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ural vegetation, and exposed to the elements is natural and not unpleasant for animals, but alien to human beings. The curses in a vassal treaty made by Esarhaddon, the seventh-­century Assyrian king, include the prospect of wandering in the countryside like a wild donkey or a gazelle.50 Talk of God’s being able to do as he wishes (‫יצבא‬, v. 17) or acting according to his wish (‫מצביה‬, v. 35) reflects the formulae of legal transactions51 and is thus another aspect of the portrayal of God’s way of acting by analogy with that of the human king. 19–27 Daniel’s interpretation of the dream presupposes Babylon’s position as the world power of the day, as did 2:37–38. Psalm 79 spells out the results of such a world power’s typical behavior in relation to the people of Judah.52 Interpreters such as Rashi then note that Daniel’s wish can seem puzzling because Nebuchadnezzar’s opponents would then be the Jews. Such commentators commonly think in terms of Nebuchadnezzar’s being in charge of Israel (v. 12), of his oppression of them (v. 27), and of his empire’s destruction as the means of the exiles being able to escape his rule (v. 14). But Rashi and Ibn Ezra note that Daniel’s wish actually is a figure of speech.53 In isolation, “the heavens” (v. 26; the word occurs only in the plural) might denote the supernatural lookouts (v. 17). After the assertions about the rule of the One On High in vv. 24–25, however, more likely it is a surrogate for God himself. The two ideas (“God as king” and “the heavens”) are brought together at the climax of the chapter (v. 37).54 As a surrogate, it is unique in the OT; elsewhere, see 1 Macc 3:18–19; 4:10; 2 Macc 7:11; m. ’Abot 1:3, 11; 2:12; 4:4, 11, 12; Matt 21:25; Luke 15:18; John 3:27; and the phrase “the reign of the heavens” in Matthew.55 More significant than these later parallels is the utilization of the term ‫ שמין‬throughout ch. 4 (see Structure). Nebuchadnezzar is like a tree reaching from the earth to the heavens (vv. 11, 20, 22) and protecting the birds, which themselves defy the separation between the earth and the heavens (vv. 12, 21); yet he is subject to judgment from the heavens (vv. 13, 23, 31). The heavens to which he reached will supply his humble needs as it supplies those of the rest of creation (vv. 15, 22, 25, 33; 5:21). In the end he must look to the heavens as the real source of help rather than pretending to be self-­sufficient; he must acknowledge that the heavens rule, and as a king on earth he must bow down to the King of the heavens who rules in the heavens as on the earth (vv. 26, 34, 35, 37; cf. “Lord of the heavens,” 5:23). The acknowledgment of which Daniel speaks has, in effect, already been 50 See ANET, 538; cf. Grelot, “Nabuchodonosor changé en bête.” 51 Rabinowitz, “A Legal Formula in the Book of Daniel”; Hurvitz, “The History of a Legal Formula”; and references. 52 Smith-Christopher, “Daniel,” 75. 53 See their commentaries in ‫ מקראות גדולות‬on the passage. 54 See Plöger, Daniel, on the passage. 55 See Vattioni, “Aspetti del culto del signore dei cieli,” esp. 498, 48.

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made in 2:47 in response to the revelation there; it is another indication that the chapters do not build on one another in offering a portrayal of the king. In the context of the Babylonian or Persian Empire, it would not be surprising if the wrongdoing of which Daniel speaks included the accumulation of land, the accumulation of labor, and the imposition of burdensome taxes—­a s would have been the case in preexilic Judah.56 In this chapter Nebuchadnezzar is no longer a “likeable rogue for whom Daniel has considerable respect.”57 Yet “the empire is understood by the narrative as a potential place for mercy; Nebuchadnezzar is presented as a ruler who is capable of mercy to the oppressed.” Empires can be brought to a potential place of mercy when brought under God’s sovereignty.58 28–33 The sense of achievement that Nebuchadnezzar here articulates is severely understated compared with that expressed in his successive building inscriptions in Babylon, which occupy 126 pages of text and translation in Langdon’s edition of them.59 The palace from which he surveyed Babylon was one of the citadels on the north side of the city. It had large courts, reception rooms, throne room, residences, and the famous hanging gardens, a vaulted, terraced structure with an elaborate water supply for its trees and plants; it was apparently built by Nebuchadnezzar for his Median queen. From the palace he would see in the distance the city’s sixteen-­mile outer double wall, which he had built. His palace stood just inside the double wall of the inner city, which was punctuated by eight gates and encircled an area two miles by a half-­mile, with the Euphrates running through it. The palace adjoined a processional avenue that Nebuchadnezzar had paved with limestone and decorated with lion figures, emblematic of Ishtar. This avenue entered the city through the Ishtar Gate, which he had decorated with dragons and bulls, emblems of Marduk and Bel. It continued south through the city to the most important sacred precincts, to whose beautifying and development Nebuchadnezzar had contributed, the ziggurat crowned by a temple of Marduk where the god’s statue resided. In Marduk’s temple there were also shrines to other gods, and in the city elsewhere temples of yet other Babylonian gods, restored or beautified by Nebuchadnezzar.60 “The magnificence of Babylon became legendary throughout the ancient world,” but “these building projects, although they served social, religious, and military purposes, were also material propaganda 56 See Appler, “Digging in the Claws,” 125. 57 Meadowcroft, “Metaphor, Narrative, Interpretation and Reader in Daniel 2–5,” 271. 58 Appler, “Digging in the Claws,” 136, quoting from Brueggemann, “At the Mercy of Babylon,” 14. 59 See Langdon, Building Inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian Empire; excerpts in Driver, Daniel, xxiv–xxv. 60 See Koldewey, The Excavations at Babylon; Parrot, Babylon and the OT; Wiseman, Nebuchadrezzar and Babylon; Langdon, Building Inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian Empire; Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East 2:593–97; for other ancient testimony to his achievements both as soldier and as builder, quotations in Josephus, Ant. 10.11.1 [10.219–28]; Ag. Ap. 1.19 [128–41]; and for the motif of the proud king risking divine judgment, Herodotus, Histories 7.10.

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for the imperial power of the king. . . . The grandeur of the palaces, temples, and fortifications thus stands as a testament to the power of the god as manifested on earth through his chosen kng.”61 The bat-­qol,62 the voice from the heavens with nothing to be seen (v. 31), is a common Semitic and biblical motif (Isa 9:8 [7]; T. Levi 18.6; Syriac Ahiqar 1.6; Mark 1:11; 9:7). While Nebuchadnezzar’s subsequent behavior (vv. 32–33) may resemble the symptoms of lycanthropy, a psychotic or depressive delusion,63 it need not do so—­anyone’s hair and nails will grow long in the wild, and anyway the chapter itself is more concerned with the theological than the medical significance of Nebuchadnezzar’s experience. More significantly, the terms used to describe what happens to the king correspond to images for spirits and demons in the ancient Near East, and in ancient Near Eastern texts the vicitms of such demons can begin to look like them. Thus “Daniel 4 uses imagery of the underworld to convey to the reader the extreme affliction of its main character,”64 though the absence of explicit reference to demons in the OT makes it hard to know whether readers were necessarily expected to think in demonic terms about the affliction. In modern terms, it’s a kind of liminal experience as the king straddles the territory between human and animal before he can be reassimilated to the sphere of order.65 34–37 Looking to the heavens (v. 34) suggests seeking God’s aid (Ps 25:15; 121:1–2; 123:1–2; 141:8)66 and thus implicitly recognizing God’s kingship. It opens the way to restoration, which is portrayed in v. 36 along the lines of the allegory of the Davidic dynasty’s restoration in Ezek 17:22–24. In tales of danger/humiliation and restoration, the subject’s last state is characteristically higher than his first, as is the case with Daniel himself elsewhere in Dan 1–6 and with Job. The restoration of Nebuchadnezzar’s human understanding and his resuming an ordinary human life is introductory to the restoration of his power: once again, the story is about his power, not merely about what happens to him as a human being. Similarly, Nebuchadnezzar is portrayed as moving, not from the worship of Marduk to that of Yahweh (contrast 2 Macc 9:17) but from a sole acknowledgment of his own kingship to an acknowledgment of God’s kingship (v. 37). “King of the heavens” is another expression unique in the OT (though cf. 1 Esd 4:46, 58; Tob 13:7, 11; and for similar expressions, Dan 5:23; Jer 7:18; 44:17–19). Here its significance is to bring together at the climax of the chapter its two key motifs, kingship and the heavens. 61 Newsom, Daniel, 146. 62 See Ps-Saadia on the passage. 63 So Baldwin, Daniel, on the passage. 64 See Hays, “Chirps from the Dust”; quotation from 324. Jerome reports and dismisses the view that Nebuchadnezzar himself stands for Satan (Daniel, 46–47). 65 So Basson,”‘A King in the Grass.’” 66 See Young, Daniel, on the passage.

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Explanation 1–3 A man of authority speaks to us. The great Nebuchadnezzar, lord of a worldwide empire, sends word around this empire, and his subjects wonder what further demand or obligation is to be placed on them. The content of his message confounds their expectations. The communication ceases to be an encyclical and becomes a testimony such as we read in the Psalter, the confession of a man whom God has marvelously rescued from some calamity who now makes public acknowledgment of the wonders God has performed for him and offers the praise that recognizes how God’s power extends beyond this one moment to the whole of history. Earthly might acknowledges the power of God; one who rules for a while as king acknowledges one whose kingship is unconstrained by time. His testimony subverts any tendency to be overimpressed by the significance of human government, as happened within the ancient Near Eastern royal ideologies, rather as ch. 3 subverts any tendency to be overimpressed by the significance of human religion.67 The chapter concerns the question of who is king, but by its form it gives us the answer before we begin. OT narrative, psalmody, and prophecy elsewhere speak of nations and kings once acknowledging God, challenged to acknowledge him, and destined to acknowledge him. Nebuchadnezzar makes this acknowledgment, in the present, in the history of this age. Whereas often it does not seem that God rules in history, occasional yet momentous events whose memory the Scriptures preserve give the grounds and the periodic reinforcement for the conviction that he does rule. The author of Daniel affirms that conviction of faith for himself and for his readers as he puts it on the lips of the great Nebuchadnezzar. 4–9 When a confessional psalm (e.g., Ps 30) begins as this chapter has in vv. 1–3, it invites us to pay close attention to the testimony that follows, which takes us over the way its unlikely result came about. As happens in such a psalm, Nebuchadnezzar now begins at the beginning. His confession goes further than the one in ch. 2, and his testimony takes us further back than ch. 2 did when he recounted his earlier dream. He begins from the secure, successful circumstances of his life before his troubling dream came. The very description of things going well would make us wonder whether catastrophe is imminent, especially as God is omitted from what he says (Deut 8:11–14; Ps 30:6–7 [7–8]; Luke 12:19). The thriving state of Nebuchadnezzar’s monarchy, at the head of its mighty empire, is to be reflected in the flourishing tree of his dream, symbolic of the great cosmic provider and of his royal earthly embodiment; but the broken tree of the dream will reflect the dreamer’s actually fragile position—­and perhaps his subconscious sense of that fragility—­which

67 See Bentzen, Daniel, on the passage.

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even a dream that hardly required much interpretation68 could nevertheless not enable to become a conscious awareness. “Absolute power is inescapably haunted by misgivings and precariousness, for every absolute power is inherently edgy in its awareness of fragility. Daniel’s interpretation gives force and specificity to the misgivings hosted by arrogant power.”69 Among the people invited to interpret the dream, Daniel arrives at the end of the line. The other experts’ failure (caused by their own fear of saying the obvious?)70 heightens the challenge to and our expectations of someone who already has a special status deriving from a special divine gift. As usual, the “ ‘court contest’ is in reality . . . ‘no contest.’ ”71 The Nebuchadnezzar of ch. 2 had been told by the experts that conundrums beyond human insight could not be solved, because the gods’ home is not among mortal humanity; Daniel had then proved to him that the God of the heavens could solve them (2:11, 28). Here the king expresses convictions about God’s presence in Daniel and about his consequent ability to solve conundrums, which the story will vindicate. Notwithstanding the apparent obvious meaning of the dream, Daniel’s insights do not reflect merely human capacities; they come from divine revelation regarding what would otherwise remain mystery. The OT does not assume that the meaning of historical events (such as the dream portrays in symbol) can be read off from them. Neither the unbelieving world, nor the believing community, is at fault for finding history enigmatic. The significance of events may be perceived only when God chooses to reveal it through some person he endows with prophetic gifts. 10–16 Humanity finds ways of reassuring itself that the life and resources of the cosmos are secure. The myth of all-­providing science has offered that reassurance in Western history; the myth of the cosmic tree offered it to the ancient Near Eastern world. Nebuchadnezzar’s fearful dream warns of the wasting of this resource, from the very quarter it sought to reach. It is not, after all, a secure locus or source of achievement and transcendence, of life, security, and provision. (It will eventually be a very different tree that more effectively links the earth and the heavens and displays itself—­or rather displays the one it bears—­before the earth and the heavens. It will be a tree which, moreover, also has to become a tree of shame—­but not for its own shortcomings—­before it can be a tree of glory. That tree will offer life, security, and provision in fuller senses, though the fuller sense must not exclude the physical senses which are this vision’s concern, and which are God’s own concern.) The visionary tree is not totally destroyed; God’s judgment characteristically has a “yet” (v. 15) contained within it. But like the survival of a (mere)

68 Cf. Hippolytus, Daniel 3.6. 69 Brueggemann, “The Non-Negotiable Price of Sanity,” 33. 70 Cf. Saadia, Daniel, 484. 71 Lucas, Daniel, 114.

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remnant in OT prophecy, the way its remains survive serves to underline the wasting it experiences. From the center of the earth it had reached towards the heavens; now it is confined to the earth, fed from the earth, and all it knows of the heavens is rain. It had provided for the animals; now it is provided for in the midst of them. Its abasement will last for a long, but unspecified, period of time, though a time determined, not a time to last forever. As happened in ch. 2, the dream vision is now in the midst of taking a bizarre twist. The tree is being treated like an animal. The animal turns out to be a human being deprived of his senses. The life and resources of the cosmos, then, had been embodied in a person. This, too, is a familiar ancient Near Eastern and OT theme; a nation’s king embodies, guarantees, and sustains its life and destiny. For all the repudiation of monarchy in the modern world, the hopes and expectations attached to presidents, prime ministers, and heads of state evidence the same instinct (again I note that I write on the eve of a presidential inauguration). The OT warns against it (see Jotham’s parable, Judg 9:6–15, especially v. 15) and often portrays the judgment of kings. It is dangerous to embody too much in one person. Severe theological questions are thus raised by the traditional shaping of ministry (one church, one minister), as well as by the papacy, and by any situation in which monarch, president, prime minister, or party secretary becomes the equivalent to the government, becomes the embodiment of all power, in his or her own thinking or in the people’s. Only God is the One in whom all things hold together. Other so-­called embodiments of some whole are idols who will disappoint, fail, and fall. So here a royal figure is taken from being the lord of all and source of life for all to being the least of all, unable even to sustain his own life. (The real tree of life will indeed bear such a man.) 17–18 The tree’s downfall is ordained and announced by supernatural lookouts who make and implement decisions on behalf of God On High. Heavenly figures involved in such ways in God’s governing of the world appear from time to time throughout the Scriptures. Their activity indicates the reality of God’s involvement in the world to protect his people and to punish evil, yet it also indirectly suggests his own exaltedness and transcendent authority, implemented (like that of the imperial authority) by means of his subordinate representatives. They belong to the heavens, they are themselves supernatural beings, and they thus bring the word of God. They descend from the heavens and they speak in the hearing of an earthly king, and they thus implement the will of God on earth. Daniel’s lookouts well illustrate the thesis that the true ministry of angels is that of witnesses to God’s work and word, to the God who alone rules.72 The object of the event they announce removes any possibility that they 72 So Barth, CD iii, 3:460–63 on the rule of the heavens and the ambassadors of God is relevant to Dan 4.

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might be rivals of God. Its object is that people may acknowledge that the One On High rules. This declaration is perhaps a tautology; of course the One On High rules. But it might be possible to understand that rule as holding in the world above and in the world to come but not in this present world. The lookout declares that God rules here and now. The Scriptures often affirm that God rules through human kingship; the calling of political authorities is to be the means of realizing God’s provision, justice, and discipline in the world (hence Rom 13:1). Thus God works through the successive kings of the Middle Eastern empires (Isa 10:5; 13:3–6; 45:1). It also affirms that God rules over human kingship, for the pride or the failure of political authorities may require that they themselves be disciplined (hence Mark 12:17; and see Isa 10:5–19). God’s power to overrule them is demonstrated by his ability to deprive the mighty of their authority and to give it to nobodies like Nabonidus, who broke the power of Nebuchadnezzar’s dynasty and whose person is part of the background to this chapter. That ability, too, belongs not merely to past history (Ps 78:70–71) or to the moment when God’s ultimate purpose is fulfilled (Luke 1:52) but to present events, to current experience. To affirm that the heavens rule (as v. 26 later does) is to affirm that history is not limited to what seems humanly possible: the heavens are “where God is enthroned” and they are thus “the source of the transformative possibilities that God presents to every actual entity. . . . To paraphrase Whitehead, ‘Heaven’ is the ‘home of the possibles.’ ”73 The first reason the chapter gives for the felling of the tree is that it will show that God rules. Its cause here is not Nebuchadnezzar’s pride; it is not for reasons to do with Nebuchadnezzar at all. The lookout is concerned about whether people in general have the right attitude to human governments. The author will have in mind the unbelieving world of his day and the faithful insofar as they are tempted to adopt that world’s way of thinking. The felling of the tree proves who is king. The tree speaks of a human authority that has its place (cf. v. 36) but that has to be kept in its place. Human power is helpless outside of the permissive will of the divine power. Much of the dream’s basic meaning thus overlaps significantly with that of ch. 2. So what is its purpose? Is the implication that the dream comes because Nebuchadnezzar didn’t get the point the first time?74 Or is it that the readers might not have gotten it the first time? Dramatically, the inability of Nebuchadnezzar and his experts to understand the dream heightens the suspense and prepares the way for Daniel to do so, even though its interpretation will require little more than Nathan’s “You are the man” (2 Sam 12:7). Perhaps we are to infer that Nebuchadnezzar’s 73 Wink, Naming the Powers, 119. I take Wink to be referring to Alfred North Whitehead’s Religion in the Making. 74 Cf. Nolan Fewell, Circle of Sovereignty, 67.

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staff were scared to risk saying what was really self-­evident.75 Such an inability would reflect an understandable fear on the part of ministers of state as well as king. Messengers who bring bad news sometimes pay for it as if they were responsible for it, but the king reassures Daniel that he is not to fear for his own fate. 19 Daniel’s fear, however, is for Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel is not a prophet who enjoys delivering a message of judgment.76 His desire that the dream portrays the fate of the king’s enemies rather than that of Nebuchadnezzar again builds up the tension, though it implies a positive concern for the king. Daniel here encourages the readers of the book to long for God to have compassion on world rulers, specifically the wicked ones, and he encourages the world to assume that judgment is never inevitable. Both features parallel the book of Jonah. If we bait the tyrants and dare them do their worst, they may. Daniel invites readers to care about people in power, even people who abuse power, to appeal to their humanness not their sinfulness, and to treat them as people given a responsibility by God and people who may respond to an appeal to right and wrong.77 20–27 Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon had been the contemporary embodiment of that recurrent ambition of nations to be the Godlike ruler of and provider for the whole world. But “reaching up to the heavens” can suggest a rebellious arrogance, which the heavens themselves must judge (Gen 11:4; Isa 14:13).78 Only a tree that stands for God’s own rule will ultimately be allowed to grow so high and broad that the birds of the heavens shelter in its branches (Mark 4:30–32). Every Nebuchadnezzar has a lookout by his side,79 one who implements not merely the will of subordinate heavenly powers but the will of the One On High (v. 24). The action he heralds is designed to bring Nebuchadnezzar to acknowledge the One On High (contrast v. 17). Actually, Nebuchadnezzar would have acknowledged that the One On High ruled (indeed, see 2:47); but earthly rulers find it difficult to make this acknowledgment something more than formal, one that does not compromise their sense that they themselves are in control. Andrew Melville (1545–1622) reminded James VI, when he was asserting his rights, that Scotland had another king “of whose kingdom King James is neither Lord nor Head, but subject.”80 Nebuchadnezzar was affirmed in ch. 2, was confronted over religious questions in ch. 3, and is now confronted over his fulfillment of his kingship. At least it is a comfort that even God’s judgment has as its object not 75 Cf. Hebbard, Reading Daniel, 119. 76 Cf. Calvin, Daniel 1–6, 171. 77 Aukerman, Darkening Valley, 99; cf. Wink, Naming the Powers, 115–16. 78 On the relationship between Gen 11 and Dan 4, see further Frisch, The Danielic Discourse on Empire in Second Temple Literature, 113–16. 79 Lüthi, The Church to Come, 58. 80 Kennedy, “Daniel,” on the passage. For the words’ attribution to Andrew Melville, see e.g., Tranter, The Story of Scotland, 129.

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merely destruction but recognition (cf. psalms such as Ps 83 with its surprising ending). Nebuchadnezzar is promised that he can be king from the point he acknowledges that actually he is not, because God is. Yet what was Nebuchadnezzar thinking when he asked after the dream’s meaning? He seems to have thought that the terror would be lessened.81 When he asked for interpretation, he did not ask for advice, and the person who offers unrequested advice risks the reaction “If I’d wanted your opinion, I’d have asked for it”82—­or a much worse reaction, if we are talking about a Babylonian king. The potential good news for Nebuchadnezzar is that announcements of judgment have as their object that their recipients give this recognition without the judgment having to draw it forth. Whereas the lookouts’ decision might sound like an expression of determinism,83 Daniel knows that as usual everything depends on the subject’s response.84 Jeremiah 18:1–12 expounds the principle. When John the Baptizer says, “Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees” (Matt 3:10), like Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Jonah, and Jesus, along with Daniel, he utters his warnings in order that what is announced can be averted.85 And like these prophets, Daniel is not the kind of prophet who is looking forward with enthusiasm to seeing the guilty get their comeuppance. His wish that disaster be averted may be conventional, but it is real. To avert it, the action required is to act in faithfulness (‫צדקה‬, conventionally “righteousness”). It denotes doing the right thing by the people in one’s community and thus doing what is right instead of what is wrong. More specifically, it involves taking action on behalf of the ordinary, lowly, powerless people (‫ענין‬, conventionally “poor”) (v. 27). Such policies are closely associated governmental obligations (Isa 11:4; Jer 22:15–16; Ps 72:2). Indeed, in building inscription 12, Nebuchadnezzar claims to be a just king, meek and humble.86 This royal ideal is suggested by the imagery of provision and protection in his dream vision, but it is omitted in Daniel’s description of what Nebuchadnezzar has actually achieved (v. 22). Daniel’s implicit accusation is not justified by anything we have been told in earlier chapters about Nebuchadnezzar.87 But a great national empire such as Nebuchadnezzar’s is characteristically the political equivalent to the Indian god Vishnu, who was supposed to be the preserver of human life but whose huge image was traditionally carried in processions on a giant wheeled 81 Cf. Pace, Daniel, 130. 82 Wright, Hearing the Message of Daniel, 100. 83 Cf. Montgomery, Daniel, 83. 84 Cf. Lucas, Daniel, 117. 85 See Jerome, Daniel, 51–52. 86 See Langdon, Building Inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. 87 Towner, Daniel, 63.

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throne that crushed anything that got in its path. The “ juggernaut” that is supposed to be preserver and provider easily becomes crusher and destroyer, totalitarian and absolute in its demands.88 And in this connection a passage such as Hab 2 gives Yahweh’s perspective on Babylon.89 Even pagan kings are called to be the means of God’s caring kingship being implemented;90 this king who has so far failed to implement it must take action now if he is not to fall as a result. In his case, at least, sin consists in injustice and unconcern. Such sins are a yoke weighing down on his neck that needs to be broken off if Nebuchadnezzar is to be free of their bondage,91 free to take on another yoke, but an easier one (Matt 11:28–30). In effect Daniel implies that the emperor has to stop behaving like an emperor. Daniel assumes that a regime that puts faithfulness first will then itself prosper. 28–33 “Daniel disappears from the account at this point”; there is no reference to Nebuchadnezzar acknowledging him.92 In Jonah, Nineveh received no explicit invitation to repent, yet Nineveh and its king knew that contrition, fasting, prayer, and reform were the appropriate responses to Jonah’s warning of judgment. Nineveh and its king were given forty days to turn from their wrongdoing; Nebuchadnezzar is apparently given a year. But in contrast to the king of Nineveh, the king of Babylon apparently makes no response to the warning he has received, and he continues to enjoy the life of a successful monarch, the life he describes at the beginning of his story (v. 4). He provides an anticipatory example of Paul’s charge in Rom 2:4–9.93 Nebuchadnezzar had built an empire, built a culture, built an educated, multi-­cultural administration—­and he had built a city.94 His sense of achievement over his building projects in Babylon is quite justified, yet it is precisely this sense of achievement that apparently leads to his downfall. Perhaps his concern with his own kingship hindered him from seriously acknowledging God’s (cf. v. 25), though again there is no explicit reference to pride on Nebuchadnezzar’s part (contrast Isa 14; Ezek 28; Acts 12:22–23). Perhaps the attention he gave to building projects should have been given to a concern for the needy (cf. v. 27). “He heard the lowly coming to the door and crying out. He said, ‘What is the sound of this multitude in my ears?’ His servants said to him, ‘The lowly for whom you arranged a time for their provision.’ ” But if he fed them, he pointed out, he wouldn’t have been able to build great Babylon.95 Or perhaps the sense of achievement over these projects has usurped the place of a desire for a sense of achievements in the area of 88 Aukerman, Darkening Valley, 50–51. 89 Wright, Hearing the Message of Daniel, 99–100. 90 See Joubert, “Power and Responsibility in the Book of Daniel,” on the passage. 91 Cf. DTT on ‫פרק‬. 92 Cf. Pace, Daniel, 138. 93 So Theodoret, Daniel, 124–25. 94 Cf. Wright, Hearing the Message of Daniel, 89. 95 Rashi in ‫ מקראות גדולות‬on the passage.

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faithfulness toward his people (cf. Jehoiakim, Jer 22:13–19). Human kingship is called to reflect the kingship of the God who works through it and to reflect his priorities. Yet further, even in the absence of pride, perhaps anything that or anyone who becomes great threatens by that very fact to rival the greatness of God (for “great Babylon,” cf. Rev 18:2). Whenever human beings rejoice in success and achievement, they may be about to experience the action of God to remind them and the world of their place as mere creatures before his majesty, the only true majesty. Absolute human power and achievement are only relative in relation to God’s power. Being rich in earthly possessions and achievements must not take the place of being rich toward God (Luke 12:16–21). God characteristically shames the wise and strong by means of the apparently weak and foolish (1 Cor 1:27).96 Nebuchadnezzar’s banishment from human society into the wild is his personal and royal experience of that banishment experienced by the OT’s first human beings (that, too, being a story about a quasi-­royal figure and involving a tree of life). “The words were still on the king’s lips” balances “on the day that you eat of it” (cf. the “immediately” in Acts 12:23). A particular word or act, arguably no worse than many others, becomes the occasion of a devastating declaration of judgment. The original act of defiance meant banishment for all humanity; yet Adam and Eve’s fellow human beings often earn banishment from the alternative gardens they create for themselves. The desire to be like God led to humanity’s losing even its authority over the animals; yet the members of that humanity are sometimes transformed into beasts when they have sought to be like God (cf. also Ps 49:12, 20 [13, 21]).97 Insanity can take the form of religious delusion, but in Nebuchadnezzar’s case it was irreligious delusion that lost him his real humanity. Within him “there is a deep vein of irrationality and even madness.”98 In other words, if the story speaks of madness, it is making a theological point rather than a psychological one. The achievement and the splendor then suddenly seem insignificant. Perhaps one should say that the true insanity belonged to the Nebuchadnezzar who had earlier been talking as if he were the eternal king and as if God did not exist. His outwardly weird behavior is the external expression of a delusion of which he has already been the tragic victim. Only a madman thinks he is a king or an emperor: politics is the house rules of a lunatic asylum99 (though those rules are important, because they make the madness as little harmful as possible). 34–37 As God demonstrated his power and his faithfulness to his word in bringing judgment on Nebuchadnezzar, so he does once again in bringing

96 97 98 99

Rupert of Deutz, De Trinitate: in Danielem, on the passage. Cf. Theodoret, Daniel, on the passage. Sumner, “Daniel,” 148. Cf. Pascal’s Pensées, 331 (Thoughts of Blaise Pascal, 129).

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to an end the time of Nebuchadnezzar’s humiliation. We are not told that Nebuchadnezzar repented before he was restored; indeed, it would be difficult for a man in his condition to do so. The reason for the timing of his restoration lay in the will of God. “Chapter 4 is a story about two sovereignties.”100 Nebuchadnezzar’s confession affirms that his rule can be suspended or terminated; God’s never is. His power can be cast aside as a mere feebleness; a fortiori the power or opinion of other human beings counts for nothing. Supernatural lookouts scurry to implement God’s will; the forces of the heavens are under his unquestioned command; the possibility of rebellion is hardly envisaged (see further Dan 10–12; contrast Isa 24:21). God rules in the heavens, but he also rules on the earth. Readers of Dan 4 who are impressed by earthly powers, and perhaps by heavenly ones, may be encouraged to live by Nebuchadnezzar’s confession. Occasions such as the exodus or the return from exile (or the emptying of the tomb) demonstrate the kinglike authority of God and make it possible to continue to believe in it between times. As it recounts how the restoration came about, the chapter closes with a return to Nebuchadnezzar speaking, which complicates an understanding of it. When the narrator is speaking, we are presumably intended to believe what the narrative said. But when Nebuchadnezzar is speaking, it is a more open question whether we are expected to do so. And there are two ways of reading Nebuchadnezzar. One possibility is to take his words at face value. Their implication then is that “an attack of humility also led to sanity.”101 Nebuchadnezzar had looked over Babylon with a justifiable pride; now the determined period of his chastisement is over and he looks to God in recognition and need. God’s handling of him was effective. “The good news for Nebuchadnezzar—­and for everyone made insane by power—­is that the story turns. . . . The great usurper has come to his senses.”102 As was intended (vv. 25, 32), dethronement and restoration have brought the earthly king to praise and confession before the One On High as the one whose kingship is never set aside. It is the praise and confession that an angel’s witness is designed to inspire.103 Thus the events follow a significant sequence. The time comes to an end; so the king turns to God for mercy; so God restores him to his full humanness; so he opens his mouth in fervent praise and worship. The “new Nebuchadnezzar” makes the confession appropriate to “Yahweh’s servant” (Jer 25:9; 27:6; 43:10),104 the confession to which Isa 40:12–26 invites Judahites in Babylon.105 The confession of God as 100 Towner, Daniel, 59. 101 Wright, Hearing the Message of Daniel, 107. 102 Brueggemann, “The Non-Negotiable Price of Sanity,” 34. 103 Barth, CD iii, 3:461–62. 104 Alomía, Daniel 2:120, 122. 105 Cf. Theodoret, Daniel, on the passage.

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King might seem to leave no place for human government (cf. Judg 8:23; 1 Sam 8:4–7; 12:12). But the chapter continues to assume that if God’s kingship is acknowledged, human kingship can find its place. “Nebuchadnezzar is responsible for the way he handles power; he can set himself up as sovereign, or he can treat his sovereignty as derivative from God’s.”106 Even the majesty and the glory of human kingship are affirmed, in the context of that confession which is the fruit of personal abasement. It really is “the context”: the confession appears on both sides of the reference to his own glory, acting like a metaphorical lookout in relation to that dangerous self-­description. Rule on the earth as well as the rule of the heavens comes to belong to the one who becomes poor in spirit (cf. Matt 5:3).107 The king’s sin has been characterized both as pride and as injustice or unconcern. His testimony finally brings the two together. God is the embodiment of faithfulness and justice and the demolition of pride. Nebuchadnezzar is an example, a warning of how not to be led astray by power and achievement, and a model of how to respond to chastisement and humiliation. He is even more a promise that earthly authorities are in the hand of God, not merely for their judgment but for his glory. The account of Nebuchadnezzar in chs. 1–4 thus comes to a happy ending. It is a coming-­of-­age story about Nebuchadnezzar’s personal and spiritual education and his “final transformation.” He moves from being the confident victor over Judah to recognizing the smartness of some of the people he transported (ch. 1), from anxiety and heavy-­handedness to recognition of Yahweh and his servants (ch. 2), from a demand for the acknowledgment of his statue to an insistence on people’s acknowledging Yahweh (ch. 3), and from disdain toward Yahweh’s warnings to praise of Yahweh as the God of the heavens (ch. 4).108 But Calvin comments, “It is not known, however, whether this confession came from a true and genuine penitence. I leave it undecided.” 109 And whereas the praise in vv. 34 and 36 is nearly all his, his, he, he, his, him, his, his, he, the testimony in v. 35 is all my, my, my, my, me, my, me, I, my, me (with another I in v. 36). So the I’s have it.110And Calvin seems not to remain undecided: “I rather incline to the opposite conjecture, that he had not put off his errors but had been compelled to give glory to the supreme God.”111 The account of Nebuchadnezzar’s response to God’s rescue of the three youths in the fiery furnace indicated aspects of the king’s bifurcated character. On the one hand, he praised the “God of Shadrach, Meshach, 106 Burkholder, “Literary Patterns and God’s Sovereignty in Daniel 4,” 53. 107 Cf. Theodoret, Daniel, on the passage. 108 See Newsom, Daniel, 33–34. 109 Calvin, Daniel 1–6, 153. 110 Cf. Nolan Fewell, Circle of Sovereignty, 77. 111 Calvin, Daniel 1–6, 154.

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and Abednego”; on the other hand, Nebuchadnezzar continued his tyranny by decreeing that he would “tear to pieces” anyone who would speak derisively against their God, thus showing the emptiness of his understanding. This dual presentation invites questions about Nebuchadnezzar’s future behavior. Will his praise of God translate into just behavior, or will his unpredictability continue to prove dangerous? The account of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the great tree (Dan 4) probes the nature of Nebuchadnezzar’s character and explores God’s concern for the just exercise of human power. By using this dream account as the last episode from Nebuchadnezzar’s life, the author modulates the king’s legacy. He is no longer the invincible conqueror; he is a subject to God’s will. The last words Nebuchadnezzar speaks prove his subordination: “the Most High has sovereignty over the kingdom of mortals and gives it to whom he will” (4:25, 32 [4:22, 29 MT]). . . . This submission consists of Nebuchadnezzar’s defeat, not of his transformation. With words, Nebuchadnezzar ultimately recognizes God’s power over earthly sovereigns, but he remains blind to its implications. Indeed, Nebuchadnezzar’s words and actions display a significant range of his ability to exercise power, but little change in his character. First a self-­congratulatory emperor, he becomes a frightened man upon receiving the dream. The emperor who boasts of his great accomplishments loses not only his kingdom but also must leave his place in society itself. Upon completion of his exile, he rejoins the human community, praising “the Most High” and “the king of Heaven”; his recognition of God, nevertheless, is incomplete. His words of praise ultimately say more about Nebuchadnezzar himself than they do about the God of Israel. Remaining obsessed with power, Nebuchadnezzar proclaims that his sovereignty is greater than any experienced previously. Ultimately, the author uses this ambiguous presentation of Nebuchadnezzar to underscore that God is indeed the final victor over tyrants, and that Jewish life, even under the rule of foreign kings, would continue despite the sudden and unpredictable challenges to security and even to life itself.112

If insightful exegetes can read the confession either way, we should hardly seek to resolve the question of which way to read it. The way the chapter does its work on readers is by making them live inside the questions and the possibilities that the two interpretations raise.

112 Pace, Daniel, 117–18.

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V. Belshazzar Fails to Learn from His Father’s Experience and Is Put Down (5:1–31 [5:1–6:1]) As with ch. 4, I follow Luther’s chapter division. The medieval division that appears in printed Hebrew Bibles such as BHS treats 5:31 (EVV) as the first verse of ch. 6. By means of its petuchah the MT itself makes the chapter break after 5:30; it then has section breaks after vv. 7 and 12.1 The distinctive chapter division in printed Hebrew Bibles perhaps issued from misreading a marginal note when the divisions were transferred from the Latin Bible to the Hebrew.2

Pericope Bibliography Alfrink, B. “Der letzte König von Babylon.” —­—­—­. “Darius Medus.” Alt, A. “Zur Menetekel-­Inschrift.” Anderson, S. D. “Darius the Mede.” Arnold, B. T. “Wordplay and Narrative Techniques in Daniel 5 and 6.” Auchincloss, W. S. “Darius the Median.” Bauer, H. “Menetekel.” Boutflower, C. “The Historical Value of Daniel v and vi.” —­—­—­. “ ‘Belshazzar the King.’ ” Broida, M. “Textualizing Divination.” De Bruyn, J. “Daniel 5, Elohim and Marduk.” Bulman, J. M. “The Identification of Darius the Mede.” Cerceau,  J.- ­A . du. Balthasar. Clay, A. T. “Gobryas.” Clerice, J. de. Dissertatio de epulo Belschasar. Clermont- ­G anneau,  C. “Mané, thécel, pharés et le festin de Balthasar.” Colless, B. E. “Cyrus the Persian as Darius the Mede.” Couroyer, B. “Lh·n: chantre?” Coxon, P. W. “A Philological Note on ‫ אשתיו‬Dan 5 3f.” Dobberahn, F. E. “Daniel 5.25.” Dougherty, R. P “Ancient Teimâ and Babylonia.” —­—­—­. Nabonidus and Belshazzar. —­—­—­. “Nabonidus in Arabia.” Eissfeldt, O. “Die Menetekel-­Inschrift.” Emerton, J. A. “The Participles in Daniel v. 12.” Galling, K. “H. H. Rowley, Darius the Mede. . . .” —­—­—­. “Die 62 Jahre des Meders Darius in Dan 6 1.” Genouillac, H. de. “Nabonide.” Gibson, M. D. “Belshazzar’s Feast.” Grabbe, L. L. “Another Look at the Gestalt of ‘Darius the Mede.’ ” —­—­—­. “The Belshazzar of Daniel and the Belshazzar of History.” Grelot, P. “Le chapitre v de Daniel dans la Septante.” —­—­—­. “L’écriture sur le mur.” Gruenthaner, M. J. “The Last King of Babylon.” Guglielmo, A. de. “Dan. 5:25.” Halévy, J. “Balthasar et Darius le Mède.” Hilton, M. “Babel Reversed.” Hoffmann, G. “Mene, mene tekel upharsin.” Horner, J. Daniel, Darius the Median, Cyrus the Great. Kirchmayr, K. P. “Mene-­tekel-­uparsin.” Koch, K. “Dareios, der Meder.” König, E. “Mené, mené, tek·él upharsin.” König, F. W. “Naboned und Kuraš.” Kraeling, E. G. “The Handwriting on the Wall.” Krappe, A. H. “La vision de Balthassar.” Lambert, W. G. “Nabonidus in Arabia.” Linder, J. “Der König Belšas· s·ar nach dem Buche Daniel und den babylonischen keilinschriftlichen Berichten.” Liptzin, S. “Belshazzar’s Folly.”

1 2

Lederach (Daniel, 120) sees an advantage in keeping a link between the comment on Darius’s accession and his first act as king. Cf. Goswell, “The Divisions of the Book of Daniel,” 92.

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Lister, J. M. “ ‘Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin.’ ” Millard, A. R. “Daniel and Belshazzar in History.” Nöldeke, T. “Mene tekel upharsin.” Pannkuk, J. L. “The Preface to OG Daniel 5.” Paul, S. M. “Decoding a ‘Joint’ Expression in Daniel 5:6, 16.” Peters, J. P. “Notes on the OT,” 114–17. Pinches, T. G. “Fresh Light on the Book of Daniel.” Polaski, D. C. “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin.” Prince, J. D. “Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin.” Robinson, A. C. “Darius the Median.” Rowley, H. H. “The Belshazzar of Daniel and of History.” —­—­—­. Darius the Mede and the Four World Empires. —­—­—­. “The Historicity of the Fifth Chapter of Daniel.” Segal, M. “Rereading the Writing on the Wall.” Shea, W. H. “Darius the Mede.” —­—­—­. “Darius the Mede in His Persian-­Babylonian Setting.” —­—­—­. “Further Literary Structures in Daniel 2–7,” 277–95. —­—­—­. “Nabonidus, Belshazzar, and the Book of Daniel.” —­—­—­. “Nabonidus Chronicle.” —­—­—­. “The Search for Darius the Mede (Concluded). —­—­—­. “An Unrecognized Vassal King of Babylon in the Early Achaemenid Period.” Smith, S. Babylonian Historical Texts Relating to the Capture and Downfall of Babylon. Sparks, H. F. D. “On the Origin of Darius the Mede.” Stefanovic, Z. “Like Father, Like Son.” Steyl, C. “Meˇ ne meˇ ne teˇ qel ufarsîn.’ ” Van Deventer, H. J. M. “Another Wise Queen (Mother).” —­—­—­. “Would the Actually ‘Powerful’ Please Stand?” Waterhouse, S. D. “Why was Darius the Mede Expunged from History?” in Merling (ed.), To Understand the Scriptures, 173–89. Whitcomb, J. H. Darius the Mede. Wilson, R. D. Studies in the Book of Daniel 1:96–263. —­—­—­. “Darius the Mede.” Wiseman, D. J., et al. Notes on Some Problems in the Book of Daniel, 9–16. Wolters, A. “Belshazzar’s Feast and the Cult of the Moon God Sîn.” —­—­—­. “The Riddle of the Scales in Daniel 5.” —­—­—­. “Untying the King’s Knots.” Young, I. “The Original Problem.” Zimmermann, F. “The Writing on the Wall.”

Translation King Belša’s· s· ar a gave a great dinner for his thousand lords,b and he was drinking wine cin the company ofcthese thousand. 2aWhen he tasted a the wine, Belša’s· s· ar said to bring the gold and silver vessels which his father Nebukadne’s· s· ar had taken out from the palace in Jerusalem, so that the king and his lords, his consorts, and his mistresses b could drink from them. 3aThey brought the gold b vessels that had been taken out from c the palace in the house of God c in Yerušalem, and the king and his lords, his consorts, and his mistresses drank d from them. 4As they drank the wine, they praised the gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone. 5 That very moment the fingers of a human hand went out a and they were writing on the plaster of the wall of the royal palace, over against the candelabra. The king could see the actual b hand as it was writing. 6The king a—­his face fell b and his mind was filled with alarm. The knots of his hips went loose and his knees knocked against each other. 7 The king called in a loud voice to fetch the chanters,a the Kasdites, and the exorcists. He averred to the Babylonian experts, “Anyone who can read out this inscription and explain its interpretation shall wear the purple, with the gold chainb around his neck, and shall rule as a deputy c in the kingdom.” 8a All the king’s b experts came in,a but they could not read out the inscription or let the king know the interpretation. 9King Belša’s· s· ar grew very alarmed. His face fell further,a and his lords were put in turmoil. 10 Because of the talk on the part of the king and his lords, the queen came into the banqueting hall. The queen averred, “Long live the king! Your thoughts should not 1

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277

alarm you, and your face should not fall. 11There is a man in your kingdom who has the spirit of holy deity a in him. In your father’s time he was found to have insight and ability,b and an expertise like the expertise of the gods. King Nebukadne’s· s· ar, your father, made him head of the cdiviners, chanters, Kasdites, and exorcistsc—­your father as king.d 12Since this Daniyye’l, whom the king named Belt·eša’s· s· ar, was found to have a remarkable spirit, knowledge, and ability, ainterpreting dreams, explaining puzzles, and loosening enigmas,a Daniyye’l should be summoned now, and he will explain the interpretation.” 13 So Daniyye’l was brought before the king. The king averred to Daniyye’l: “So you are Daniyye’l, one of the Yehudite exiles whom my father as king brought from Yehudah? 14 I have heard tell of you, that the spirit of deity a is in you. You have been found to have insight and ability and remarkable expertise. 15The experts (the chanters) have just been brought before me to read out this inscription and tell me its interpretation, but they were unable to explain the thing’s interpretation. 16But I myself  a have heard tell of you, that you can give interpretations and resolve enigmas. Now, if you can read out the inscription and let me know its interpretation, you shall wear the purple, with the gold chain around your neck, and rule as a deputy in the kingdom.” 17 Daniyye’l responded before the king, “You may keep your gifts or give your rewards a to some other man. Nevertheless, I will read out the inscription for your majesty and let him know the interpretation. 18You, your majesty: a God On High gave broyal authority and glorious splendor b to your father Nebukadne’s· s· ar. 19Because of the authority that had been given him, people of all races, nations, and languages stood in fear and trembling before him. He would kill whom he wished and spare whom he wished, elevate whom he wished and humble whom he wished. 20But when his attitude became elevated and his spirit arrogant, so that he behaved presumptuously, he was deposed from his royal throne, and honor was taken away from him. 21He was led away from human society, his mind became a like an animal’s, and he lived with the wild donkeys.b He was fed plants like an ox and his body was watered with the dew from the heavens until he came to acknowledge that God On High rules over human kingship and sets over it whomever he wishes. 22 As his son a you, Beˉlša’s· s· ar, have not humbled your attitude because b you knew all this 23but have elevated yourself above the Lord of the Heavens. The vessels from his house have been brought before you, and you and your lords, your consorts, and your mistresses have drunk wine from them and you have praised the gods of asilver and gold,a of bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which cannot see or hear or know, and have not glorified the God bwho has your lifebreath and all your ways in his hand.b 24That is why from his presence a hand was sent and this inscription written. 25This is the inscription that was written: a‘Counted at a mina,a a sheqel,b and two halves,’c 26This is the interpretation of the words. ‘A mina’ means ‘God counted out the days of your kingship and handed it over’.a 27‘A sheqel’ means ‘You have been weighed on the scales and found deficient.’ 28‘A half’ means ‘Your kingship has been broken in half and given to Maday and Paras.’ ” 29 Belša’s· s· ar said to clothe a Daniyye’l in the purple, with the gold chain around his

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neck, and a proclamation was issued concerning him, that he would rule as a deputy in the kingdom. 30That very night Belš’as· s· ar a the Kasdite king was killed, 31and Dareyaweš the Medite acquired a the kingship as b a man of sixty-­two years.

Notes 1.a. ‫בלשאצר‬, Be¯l-­šar-­u s· ur, “Bel protect the king.” One might have expected in BA ‫( בלשראצר‬cf. Ne¯rgal šar-­’es· er, Jer 39:3) (Plöger). ‫( בלאשצר‬5:30; 7:1; 8:1) is more anomalous: see n. 30.a. 1.b. Taking the whole phrase ‫ לרברבנוהי אלף‬as determinate; cf. Th., BL 95k, against NRSV, Ehrlich “1000 of his lords.” Cf. 7:24 “the ten horns,” not “ten of the horns.” 1.c–­c. Cf. JB; for the king to dine with them was an exceptional event. But ‫לקבל‬ may suggest “before them,” i.e., sitting at high table facing them (making a display of himself?). 2.a– ­a . ‫בטעם‬, perhaps implying “under the influence of ” (e.g., Meadowcroft, Aramaic Daniel and Greek Daniel, 59–60; and the story in Esth 1:10). 2.b. ‫שגלתה ולחנתה‬: Apparently Akk. terms for the more high ranking of the king’s wives and for other women from the royal household. The first is usually taken to mean “she of the palace” (cf. Newsom), though Feigin (“Word Studies,” 47) doubts this understanding and argues for “lady of the harem” more generally. The second might denote senior figures in the harem or might simply signify secondary wives (see HALOT; CAD E: 61–62; A/1:294; Diakonoff, “Some Remarks on I 568”). But there is a disparaging tone about the two words, esp. in the pl., and about the combination. The women contrast unfavorably with ‫“ מלכתא‬the queen” who appears in v. 10, since the terms here do not denote people who exercise authority in the way that she does; cf. the two classes of women of the palace and of the harem in 1 Kgs 11:3; Song 6:8 (Landsberger, “Akkadische-­hebräische Wortgleichungen,” 198–204; Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia, 104; and for the Persian period, Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander, 277–86). JB “singing women” for ‫ לחנתה‬connects the term with a word used at Elephantine (cf. Reider, “The Brooklyn Museum Aramaic Papyri,” 339; Couroyer, “Lh·n: chantre?”; Torrey, “More Elephantine Papyri,” 150–51, appealing to an Arabic root; cf. BDB for an Arabic cognate). 3.a. The verse begins ‫( באדין‬EVV “then”) and the chapter uses both ‫ באדין‬and ‫אדין‬ as linking particles, hardly requiring translation (cf. notes 2:15.c and 3:3a). 3.b. Presumably the silver ones are implicitly included (cf. v. 2); Th., Vulg. make this explicit. 3.c–­c. The expression might distinguish the ‫ היכל‬from the wider complex of temple buildings as a whole, cf. 1 Kgs 6:3. But more likely the pleonastic expression makes clear that the ‫ היכל‬in question is the temple, as Yahweh’s “palace,” not the king’s palace (as in 4:29 [26]). It thus prepares for v. 4 and makes explicit Belshazzar’s sacrilege. Vulg. omits it and Plöger sees it as a gloss; Syr., Th. omit ‫בית‬. 3.d. ‫( אשתיו‬also v. 4). The prosthetic ‫ א‬is a mark of eastern imperial Aramaic, not of late Aramaic (Coxon, “A Philological Note”). 5.a. Q ‫( נפקה‬f. verb); K has m. verb with f. subject. Cf. n. 7:8.b; n. 7:20.a. The verb picks up the one used in the haphel in vv. 2 and 3, there translated “taken out” (see Arnold, “Wordplay and Narrative Techniques”). 5.b. ‫ פס‬usually refers to the palm, which would be hardly visible during writing, even to someone below it (Bentzen). Effectively it refers here to the back of the hand or knuckles (Th.; NEB, Plöger, comparing Gen 37:3). It thus suggests merely a hand

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279

(unconnected to an arm; cf. Hartman/Di Lella). Perhaps we should think of it as a severed hand (Polaski, “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin,” 653). The hand writes on the wall above the high table, illuminated by the candelabra (cf. GNB). 6.a. Whereas in BH subject preceding verb is uncommon and usually implies an emphasis on the subject, in the BA of Daniel this word order appears in nearly a quarter of the clauses (see Buth; Cook; Folmer; Yakubovich [see Commentary Bibliography]). In part this difference may reflect the influence on Aramaic of languages such as Akkadian and Persian, which are more mixed in word order. But it is worth asking whether in particular cases the subject or object preceding the verb suggests some emphasis or focusing. And in this clause the extraposed position of the subject makes the focalizing clear. 6.b. Literally, “changed [on] him: the suffix on ‫ שנוהי‬is an anomalous indirect object (BL 75d, GKC 117x; and see Cohen, “Subject and Object,” 21); compare and contrast ‫ עלוהי‬in v. 9 and see n. 9.a. 7.a. 4QDana, OG (Pace, The OG Text, 34) have an extra group, ‫“ חרטמיא‬diviners,” as in 2:10. 7.b. ‫( המונכא‬Q ‫)המניכא‬, a Persian word perhaps denoting a collar on the garment rather than a chain; cf. the ‫ רבד‬of Gen 41:42 (and Gen 41:41–42 for this passage as a whole). Cf. Hittite mannin(n)i (so Kronasser, “Heth. mannin(n)i-­’Halsschmuck’.”). But Gk. μανιάκης denotes a bracelet (cf. Belardi, “Greco μανιάκης”). 7.c. ‫ תלתי‬has the word for “third” lying behind it; it might connect with the three overseers of 6:2 [3] (cf. OG), or suggest that Daniel would be third in rank within the kingdom (after Nabonidus and Belshazzar? or after Belshazzar and the queen? cf. EVV). But perhaps, like BH ‫שליש‬, it has lost its numerical meaning altogether. In form, it may combine Aram. ‫ תליתי‬and the Akk.-­influenced ‫ תלתא‬of vv. 16, 29 (see GBA 69, 71; Torrey, “Stray Notes on the Aramaic of Daniel and Ezra,” 232). 8.a–­a . The phrase is resumptive after v. 7b, to lead into the statement of the experts’ incomprehension; it is rather wooden to propose emendation because v. 7b suggests the experts are already in the hall (against BHS). 8.b. ‫ מלכא‬is odd; some medieval mss have the more usual ‫בבל‬, while BHS notes the proposal ‫מלכותא‬. 9.a. ‫( עלוהי‬literally, “upon him”) suggests the deepening of the king’s alarm. 11.a. See n. 4.8.c; here Th. has “spirit of God,” Sym., Vulg. have “spirit of holy gods,” OG conflates the two references to “spirit” in vv. 11–12. 11.b. ‫נהירו ושכלתנו‬, perhaps hendiadys, “brilliant insight” (Hartman/Di Lella). 11.c–­c. See on 2:2 and on 4:8 [5]. 11.d. ‫אבוך מלכא‬, perhaps a variant for ‫“ מלכא נבכדנער אבוך‬King Nebuchadnezzar, your father” (Ehrlich); Th., Syr. lack it. But Belshazzar omits the reference to Nebuchadnezzar’s elevating Daniel when he recapitulates the queen’s words (vv. 13–16) (Plöger); perhaps the words are repeated for emphasis here. 12.a–­a. A parenthesis after the absolute ‫“ שכלתנו‬ability.” ‫“ מפשר‬interpreting” and ‫“ משרא‬resolving” need to be understood as verbal nouns, like ‫“ אחוית‬explaining,” which may not involve emending them if the participle can denote the action as such, without focusing on an agent: so Emerton, “The Participles in Daniel v 12,” noting that Syr., Th. do not support emendation. NEB’s “unbinding spells” for ‫ משרא קטרין‬fits the Babylonian context, but it is not clear that the phrase would have been understood thus, and the literary context (v. 16) implies that the ability referred to here relates to interpretive activity. The expression recurs from v. 6 where it referred to muscles going loose. 14.a. Vulg. has “spirit of gods,” Th. “spirit of God.” Some medieval mss and Syr. also have ‫“ קדשין‬holy,” as in v. 11. But such variation where phrases recur is common in Daniel. Keil thinks the omission is significant on the lips of Belshazzar. 16.a. ‫ אנה‬is emphatic (contrasting with v. 14, after v. 15).

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17.a. ‫נבזביתך‬: the form is odd (GBA 62) and may be a corruption of ‫“ נבזבת ביתך‬the gift of your house”; cf. Th., Syr. (Kallarakkal, 84–85). 18.a. ‫אנתה מלכא‬: the hanging nominative makes clear that what follows relates to him (Zoeckler). 18.b–­b. Taking ‫“ מלכותא ורבותא ויקרא והדרה‬kingship, greatness, honor, and splendor” as a double hendiadys (Hartman/Di Lella). 21.a. K ‫ שוי‬is peil; Q and some medieval mss have ‫ שויו‬pael (3 pl. impersonal). 21.b. ‫ ;ערדיא‬a few medieval mss read ‫“ עדריא‬flocks/herds,” perhaps to harmonize with what follows, “eating plants like an ox.” 22.a. NIV mg. “descendant” or “successor” are possible renderings of ‫ ;בר‬see Comment on v. 2. 22.b. “Although” (EVV) for ‫ כל קבל יד‬is hard to parallel; the usual “because” is quite possible if the clause is linked with the verb rather than with the negative (Keil). 23.a–­a. Th., Syr. reverse these words to the more usual order. 23.b–­b. Linking ‫ לה‬with what follows rather than with what precedes, with Th. (cf. BHS) against MT accents (cf. RV). 25.a–­a. ‫מנא מנא‬. The lack of one ‫ מנא‬in G (OG in its introduction to ch. 5; Josephus, Ant 10.11.3 [10.243–44], does not quote the inscription itself) more likely reflects haplog./assimilation of the inscription to the threefold interpretation than dittog. in MT. On differences between omen text and interpretation, see n. 2:34.b. Cf. rather Syr.’s suggestion of a play on words, menê menâ (so Montgomery). The first ‫ מנא‬is then passive participle, the second a noun (Prince); with this use of the verb, cf. 2 Kgs 12:10 [11] (Eissfeldt, “Die Menetekel-­Inschrift,” 109). 25.b. ‫תקל‬. A homonym means “fall” (DTT), an appropriate idea in the context (König, “Mené, mené, tek· él upharsin,” 956). Zimmermann (“The Writing on the Wall”) translates “the Persian trap is set” on the basis of the related noun. 25.c. Again, s. ‫ פרס‬implied by G (Josephus, Ant. 10.11.3 [10.243–44], is once more hardly relevant) more likely reflects assimilation to the interpretation (v. 28) than MT expansion, since the pl. occurs only in v. 25. I have taken ‫ פרסין‬as dual in meaning (cf. ‫עדנין‬, 7:25; and see Comment on v. 31, but it could indicate “some halves” (Nöldeke, “Mene tekel upharsin,” 415–16). 26.a. EVV have “brought to an end”; but ‫ שלם‬haphel suggests rather God’s original entrusting of the kingship to Belshazzar (Ezra 7:19; DTT), which gives a better sequence and more dramatic effect. 29.a. See BL 106e. 30.a. At the point of his death, the anomalous spelling ‫ בלאשער‬might suggest “Bel [in] the fire of an adversary” (Poole on 7:1). 31.a. ‫ קבל‬need not imply “took [by force],” though “grab” was apparently a favorite verb of Darius I [Cook, Persian Empire, 66]). Nor need it imply “received [from God or Cyrus]”: it may simply indicate that he succeeded Belshazzar (Young). 31.b. ‍‫ כ‬denoting time at which; EVV “about” is unnecessary (GBA 78; GKC 118s-­x).

Form/Structure/Setting Form Elements of court contest tale, legend, and midrash again interweave (see ch. 1 Form). The story’s background is a palace banquet; it concerns king, queen, and members of the administration. Once more a king receives an alarming omen, of evidently portentous significance and requiring interpretation. His

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experts are impotent, but finally the hero (now an old, forgotten adviser?) arrives, interprets the omen, and is rewarded. The queen’s reassurances and the king’s response to the message (vv. 10, 29), both out of keeping with its contents, are court-­contest tale motifs. The writing on the wall has been seen as a folktale motif,3 though there are no very close independent parallels.4 As in chs. 1–4, the court tale is utilized in a religious setting; the story becomes a prophetic legend. The omen is provoked by an act of idolatrous sacrilege in a context of Bacchanalian excess. The omen is manifestly of supernatural origin and it elicits the response appropriate to an announcement of divine judgment. The story’s Judahite hero is able to interpret it because the spirit of holy deity is in him. The story closes with the confirming of his word by events that take place that very night; in contrast to chs. 2 and 4, there is no acknowledgment of God by the hearer. The opening rebuke regarding the hearer’s wrong attitude to the prophet (v. 17) is also at home in such stories. Although the message includes no “messenger formula” (“thus says Yahweh”), its form otherwise recalls the indictments of the prophets.5 It especially resembles ones in 1 Sam 2:27–36; 15:17–26; 2 Sam 12:7–12); like these examples, it will constitute the narrator’s idea as to what an appropriate prophetic word in this context would have been.6 It is literary prophecy. After the repudiation of the offered reward, the message includes a developed reminder of the history behind the present situation (vv. 18–21), which provides the background and grounds for a reproof (vv. 22–23). There follows an introduction to the announcement of judgment (vv. 24–25a, 26a), then the announcement itself (25b, 26b–28). The last is fairly brief; the heart of the message lies in the preceding indictment (vv. 18–23), in the background to the omen rather than in the omen itself.7 The interpretation of the omen utilizes paronomasia, in the manner of a prophet (Jer 1:11–12; Amos 8:1–2) (see Structure), though it follows the pesher form, stating and interpreting the omen element by element. The utilization of the pesher form compares with ch. 2; in contrast, the importance of the Jonah-­like “prophetic” indictment of the king8 distinguishes chs. 4 and 5 with their focus on events in the kings’ own day from ch. 2 with its message relating directly to the readers’ time. Chapter 5 does resemble ch. 2 in containing no overt invitation to repentance on the king’s part. The story has one or two midrashic or intertextual aspects. The attack on idolatry, the scorning of the experts, and the contrasting portrayal of a God able to declare his intentions and fulfill them, recalls Isa 41:21–29; 44:6–28; 46:1–7, 3 Gunkel, Das Märchen im AT, 142 (ET 153). 4 See Krappe, “La vision de Balthassar”; Baumgartner, “Ein Vierteljahrhundert Danielforschung,” 134–35. 5 Westermann, Grundformen prophetischer Rede = Basic Forms of Prophetic Speech; Koch, Was ist Formgeschichte? = The Growth of the Biblical Tradition, chs. 15–18. 6 Cf. Wilson, “Form-Critical Investigation of the Prophetic Literature,” 117. 7 So Plöger, Daniel, on the passage. 8 Cf. Bentzen, Daniel, on the chapter.

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with their focus on the fall of Babylon (also Job 34:16–30; 36:5–14; and further the idol polemic of Deut 4:28; Ps 115; 135:15–18).9 Belshazzar’s distraught response to the omen, and the fall of his dynasty to a Median king on a night of revelry, recall other prophecies of Babylon’s fall (Isa 21:1–10; also 13:17–19; 14:3–23; Jer 51, especially v. 57). Indeed, the story has been called a “narrativization” of Isa 21; it has turned that prophecy into a story.10 The attack on idolatry resembles 4QPrNab, too, where Nabonidus acknowledges his mistaken worship of gods of silver and gold, bronze and iron, wood, stone, and clay. The story utilizes ultimately historical traditions about Belshazzar and his regency in Babylon and about the Persian conquest(s) of Babylon, and reflects the local color of Babylonian palace life, including folk tradition about the queen mother (cf. Herodotus, Histories 1.185–87). The omen itself might be a secular riddle.11 The narrative reveals little of the distinctive personalities of the characters; it mostly concerns Belshazzar, yet from it we learn little of him as an individual. He fulfills a role, acting and being acted on, but in himself he is a cipher. Even the anxious fear attributed to him is a motif characteristic of such stories. His personal reaction to Daniel’s message is unrecorded because it is irrelevant. In the case of the queen, too, we learn only what relates to the dramatic function she fulfills in commending Daniel and incriminating Belshazzar. She is simply a voice. On the other hand, the speeches by the queen, Belshazzar, and Daniel are the means of more overt description of the characters’ personalities and qualities. The former two repeat and thus emphasize those personal gifts of Daniel which are relevant to the story. The queen’s speech also offers preliminary hints of Belshazzar’s shortcomings, which Daniel’s speech develops. The distinctive and original element in the chapter is the omen and its interpretation (vv. 25–28), around which a narrative context has been constructed, using remembered historical facts such as the regency of Belshazzar, the forms of court conflict tale and prophetic legend, the technique of midrash, and some of the characteristic structural, verbal, and theological features that appear elsewhere in the Daniel stories (see Setting). The narrative context adds to the omen’s impact, giving concrete expression to the king’s deserving of punishment, the helplessness of Babylonian expertise, and the contrasting insight found in the Judahite expert by the gift of God.

Structure Contrasting with ch. 4, ch. 5 returns to the simple sequential narrative construction of ch. 3.12 It also resembles ch. 2 in that Daniel’s speech, dominating the latter part of the chapter, carries much of its freight. Narrative, however,

9 10 11 12

See Gammie, “On the Intention and Sources of Daniel i-vi,” 287–89. So Segal, Dreams, Riddles, and Visions, section 3.3. Cf. e.g., Ginsberg, Studies in Daniel, 26. Cf. Plöger, Daniel, on the passage.

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provides the chapter’s framework. Verses 1–9 give the introductory setting for the speeches, describing the circumstances and the act of sacrilege (vv. 1–4), the appearing of the omen and the king’s response (vv. 5–7), then the failure of his initial attempt to discover its meaning and the consequent deepening and broadening of his dismay (vv. 8–9). Tension develops steadily through this narrative introduction (which compares with 2:1–13): the Bacchanalian context already bodes ill, the act of sacrilege makes us look for some heavenly response, the omen’s contents are unrevealed but its effect on the king increases our concern regarding them, and the experts’ failure to read the omen deepens this concern. The bulk of the chapter consists of speeches in this brief narrative setting. The queen appears; she functions as a means of introducing the hero, announcing in anticipation the abilities he is shortly to be challenged to demonstrate, and introducing the theme of the king’s looking back from his reign to his father’s (vv. 10–12; cf. Aryok’s role in 2:14–25). Daniel appears, to be addressed by the king (vv. 13–16; cf. 2:26). There may be an irony about the king’s opening words, where his description of Daniel goes beyond anything the queen has told him, to facts from a past of which Belshazzar has not taken account in his act of sacrilege and in his neglecting to turn to Daniel earlier. Much of the king’s subsequent speech merely recapitulates what we have already been told, so that the effect of the two speeches is to promise resolution of the tension established by the narrative opening but to heighten it in the short term by slowing the pace of the story. Daniel’s prophetic indictment (vv. 17–28) carrying much of the burden of the chapter’s message (cf. his speech in 2:27–45) continues this effect. Finally, the narrative framework of the chapter reappears (vv. 29–31) and the tension is resolved. The truth of Daniel’s interpretation is acknowledged, and confirmed by events. The reference to Darius in v. 31 looks like part of the closure of ch. 5 (so EVV), denoting how power passes from the Babylonians to a Median, rather than the introduction to ch. 6, which relates a specific incident in Darius’s reign. There are several instances of paronomasia. ‫ שרא‬and ‫ קטרין‬appear together in vv. 6, 12, and 16 to denote the weakening of joints (Belshazzar’s problem) and the solving of enigmas (Daniel’s solution). Nebuchadnezzar was free to kill, elevate, and humble when he wished (‫שפל‬, ‫רום‬, ‫קטל‬, ‫צבה‬, v. 19); Belshazzar elevated himself like Nebuchadnezzar instead of humbling himself, and he learns that God enthrones whom he wishes (vv. 19–23) when he himself is killed (v. 30). ‫ קטל‬and ‫( תקל‬sheqel/weigh, vv. 25, 27) are thus juxtaposed.13 The paronomasia comes to a climax with the omen and its interpretation, which utilize the different significance of ‫מנא‬, ‫תקל‬, and ‫ פרס‬as nouns and as verbs and add further additional plays on ‫( מנא‬repeating the word in different senses) and ‫( פרסין‬linked also to ‫“ פרס‬Persia”). 13 Cf. Joubert, “Power and Responsibility in the Book of Daniel,” 100.

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Differences between the OG and MT are stronger in ch. 5 than in any other chapter. OG has a long introduction and a number of omissions and has the name Artaxerxes or Xerxes (manuscripts vary) instead of Darius in v. 31.14 “Apparently the story circulated in several versions. . . . A comparison of the three accounts helps one see both how traditional stories tend to exist in variant versions and appreciate how the author of the MT carefully developed details.”15 The MT’s version is more expansive and suspenseful; it puts more emphasis on Daniel’s expertise and his confrontation of Belshazzar and on the contrast between Belshazzar and Nebuchadnezzar.

Setting Of the kings in Daniel, Belshazzar might most plausibly be viewed as a cipher for the sacrilegious Antiochus Epiphanes (see 1 Macc 1:20–64; also Heliodorus in 2 Macc 3), ch. 5 then being the youngest of the stories.16 The careers of Antiochus III and his son (cf. 11:10–19, 21–45) correspond to those of Nebuchadnezzar and his son, and the pattern of father and son in chs. 4–5 may lie behind that in ch. 11.17 Yet in content chs. 4 and 5 have also been seen as the oldest stories,18 and there is no concrete indication that chs. 4–5 were written in light of the experience of Antiochus. The parallels are general, and sacrilege and idolatry were not a distinctively second-­century phenomenon. For the worship of false gods, compare 4QPrNab. Antiochus only plunders the temple; he does not misuse vessels in a religious connection. The words for “proclaim” and “gold chain” (‫כרז‬, ‫ )המונכא‬appear in Greek (κηρύσσω, μανιάκης), but the latter is of Persian origin and even the former, if not a loan-­word in Greek, is likely an early borrowing.19 Once again the dispersion and as likely the Persian as the Greek period is the story’s natural historical setting. As with other chapters, scholars have argued that ch. 5 as we know it came into existence by a process of redaction during different periods, though opinions vary as to the nature of this process.20 In its literary setting, the story has a close relationship with ch. 4. Its picture of a sacrilegious king who finds no mercy compares and contrasts with the

14

For approaches to the relationship between the two versions, see e.g., Ashley, “The Book of Daniel Chapters 1–6”; Grelot, “Le chapitre v de Daniel dans la Septante”; Pannkuk, “The Preface to OG Daniel 5”; Young, “The Original Problem”; Collins, Daniel, 241–43; Albertz, Der Gott des Daniel; Wills, The Jew in the Court of the Foreign King, 87–152. 15 Newsom, Daniel, 161–62. 16 So Davies, Daniel, on the passage. 17 See e.g., Towner, Daniel, 77. 18 So Müller, “Magisch-mantische Weisheit und die Gestalt Daniels,” 86. 19 See Montgomery, Daniel, on the chapter. 20 See, e.g., Hall, “Post-exilic Theological Streams and the Book of Daniel,” 136–85; Haag, Die Errettung Daniels aus der Löwengrube; Schreiner, “‘. . . wird der Gott des Himmels ein Reich errichten, das in Ewigkeit nicht untergeht,’”132; Schlenke, Gottes Reich und Königs Macht; Wills, The Jew in the Court of the Foreign King, 87–152.

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earlier picture of an overbearing king who did find mercy.21 Like ch. 2 as well as ch. 4, the narrative tells of a buoyant king disturbed by an omen; he summons his experts to interpret it and his promise of rewards parallels ch. 2, but they fail, and only then does Daniel appear on the scene. While paralleling Aryok’s role in ch. 2, the queen’s action also recalls 1:7, 17, 20; 2:48; and 4:8–9 [5–6], and the king’s speech refers back to 1:3; 2:25; and 4:9 [6], and thus, behind the queen’s words, to 1:17, 20. Daniel’s speech refers back to God’s dealings with Nebuchadnezzar in ch. 4 (and behind that to 2:21, 37). The sacrilege with the vessels, to which Daniel refers, recalls 1:2. As in 4:31, 33 [28, 30], judgment is declared instantly and implemented instantly (5:5, 30). The announcement of the consequent change of king leads into ch. 6. Meanwhile, “Daniel 5 completed the process of rethinking the Babylonian Empire. It certainly was no longer golden.” The chapter brings to a sad end its story as Dan 1–5 tells it.22

Comment 1–4 It is an abrupt start, like that of ch. 3.23 There is no hint that the historical situation has moved on spectacularly. Nebuchadnezzar died in 562, three kings reigned for a short time, and the last actual Babylonian king, Nabonidus, came to the throne in 556. For most of his reign he “entrusted the kingship” in to his son Be¯l-­šar-­us· ur during a ten-­year absence from Babylon, returning as the threat from Cyrus grew in 539. Belshazzar thus fulfilled the functions of kingship, though he was not called king nor did he play the king’s part in the New Year Festival.24 This latter may reflect more the religious conflict between the Marduk priesthood and Nabonidus’s regime than Belshazzar’s not technically being king.25 If Dan 5 relates to the occasion when control in Babylon passed from a Babylonian king to a Median (5:30–31), the occasion must be the fall of Babylon to the forces of Cyrus.26 We have several other accounts of this event. a. According to the Cyrus Cylinder, “without any battle [Marduk] enabled [Cyrus] to enter his city Babylon, sparing Babylon any calamity. He delivered into his hands Nabonidus, the king who did not worship him. . . . When I [Cyrus] entered Babylon as a friend, I set up the seat

21 Plöger, Daniel, on the passage. 22 Redditt, Daniel, 100–1. 23 Nolan Fewell, Circle of Sovereignty, 81. 24 See the “Nabonidus Lampoon,” ANET 313; the Harran stelae, ANET 560–63; other material in Dougherty, Nabonidus and Belshazzar; cf. Millard, “Daniel and Belshazzar in History.” 25 So Lambert, “Nabonidus in Arabia,” 59–61. 26 For a current historical account, see e.g., Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander, 40–44.

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b.

c.

d.

e.

Belshazzar Fails to Learn of government in the royal palace amidst jubilation and rejoicing. . . . My numerous troops walked around in Babylon in peace.”27 According to the Babylonian Chronicle, in the last year of Nabonidus’s reign the New Year Festival was properly observed and the gods of other cities were brought into Babylon. “In the month of Teshrit, while Cyrus was attacking the Babylonian army at Opis on the Tigris, the people of Babylon revolted, but he [Nabonidus] slew some of the people. On the fourteenth day, Sippar was taken without a battle. Nabonidus fled. On the sixteenth day [12 October], Ugbaru, the governor of Gutium, and the troops of Cyrus entered Babylon without battle. Afterwards Nabonidus was arrested when he returned to Babylon.” Religious ceremonies were not interrupted. “On the third of Marcheswan [29 October], Cyrus entered Babylon and they waved branches before him. Peace settled on the city and Cyrus proclaimed peace to Babylon. Gubaru, his governor, appointed local governors in Babylon. . . . On the night of the eleventh of Marcheswan [6 November] Ugbaru died. On the . . . th the . . . of the king died”;28 according to one reading, the king’s son was killed.29 According to Berossus, the third-­century Babylonian historian, “when Nabonidus perceived [Cyrus] was coming to attack him, he met him with his forces, and, joining battle with him, was beaten, fled with a few of his troops, and was shut up within the city Borsippus. Thereupon Cyrus took Babylon, and gave order that the outer walls of the city should be demolished, because the city had proved very troublesome to him, and cost him a great deal of pains to take it.” When he went to besiege Borsippus, Nabonidus surrendered and was exiled to Carmania (see Josephus, Ag. Ap. 1.151–53 [1.20]). According to Herodotus (Histories 1.190–91), Cyrus brought his siege of Babylon to a successful conclusion by temporarily diverting the course of the Euphrates, the city’s western defense, during a nocturnal festival. Xenophon has a similar story; he adds that the Persians killed the Babylonian king, a riotous, indulgent, cruel, and godless young man (see Cyropaedia 4–7 on the fall of Babylon).

Of these sources, the Cyrus Cylinder and the Babylonian Chronicle are closest to the events, but they have their own slant; the former has been called “a propaganda exercise.”30 We can accept their account of Babylon’s falling to Persian troops without a battle in Nabonidus’s absence, Cyrus himself

27 See ANET 315–16; DOTT 92–95. 28 See ANET 306; DOTT 81–83; Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles, 7 29 Cf. Driver, Daniel, on the passage. 30 Cook, The Persian Empire, 12.

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entering the city some days later. Herodotus’s account of the Persian forces gaining access to the city by temporarily diverting the Euphrates is entirely plausible.31 The picture of the city feasting when it was about to fall looks like a popular tale. In form and content, Dan 5 has more in common with the two Greek historians than with the Near Eastern sources, all being “traditional developments of the popular memory of the fall of Babylon.”32 Belshazzar’s feast might have taken place after he had held out in a fortified location when the city had been taken, and he might have been killed there as a result of a night assault.33 It is perhaps more likely that Belshazzar was the commander of the Babylonian forces at Opis and was not in Babylon when the city fell.34 However that may be, in Dan 5 there is no suggestion that the empire is about to fall. There is no hint that Belshazzar is holding a bizarre final banquet, aware that the enemy is at the gates; indeed, the portent he receives and his reaction to it presuppose that, like Nebuchadnezzar in ch. 4, he has no present reason for anxiety, while the message conveyed by the portent has its force removed if we presuppose that “the writing was on the wall” already. B. Megillah 11b nicely argues the opposite: Belshazzar thought that Jeremiah’s prophecy that the exile would last seventy years was not fulfilled and that therefore he could relax. On this basis he is deliberately disdaining the God of Israel.35 Nor is there any suggestion that Belshazzar was playing games in promoting Daniel to the position of deputy. The chapter describes an unexpected coup, not a surprise attack or the climax of a siege—­or the judgment of an empire.36 It portrays God’s punishment of one man for his wrongdoing. The entirety of this man’s humanity is involved in his blasphemy and in his consequent predicament—­thoughts, words, and actions.37 Although the king would normally dine privately, banquets were a regular enough occurrence (cf. Esth 1). 38 Custom varied regarding whether women were invited (contrast Esth 1 with 1 Esd 1); their presence here is perhaps part of the exoticness of the story for its Jewish listeners. There is no concrete indication that it was a religious occasion (so Xenophon), but it might have been the New Year Festival.39 But like the dedication festival in ch. 3, the banquet is simply the background to the story, the occasion of the revelry

31 Though see Cook, The Persian Empire, 31. 32 Montgomery, Daniel, 72. 33 See Driver, Daniel, xxxi: but see Rowley, “The Historicity of the Fifth Chapter of Daniel,” 26–30. 34 Rowley, “The Belshazzar of Daniel and of History,” 258–62. 35 Cf. Hilton, “Babel Reversed,” 100; also Jerome, Daniel, 56; and Yephet, Daniel, on the passage. 36 So Keil, Biblischer Kommentar, on the passage. 37 Kirkpatrick, Competing for Honor, 129–37. 38 On banquets in the Persian period, see Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander, 286–97. 39 So Wolters, “Belshazzar’s Feast and the Cult of the Moon God Sîn,” following Beaulieu, The Reign of Nabonidus.

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and excess that lead to sacrilege and idolatry. The suggestion that it was a festival to celebrate Belshazzar’s taking the throne on the defeat of Nabonidus by Cyrus seems implausible.40 It would nevertheless be a religious occasion, not simply a modern-­style “secular” state banquet at which the drinking of libations from sacred vessels was an afterthought or an oddity.41 Belshazzar’s actual father (v. 2) was Nabonidus, who had come to the throne through a coup and did not belong to the royal line. There are two kinds of approach to the description of Belshazzar as Nebuchadnezzar’s son.42 Belshazzar might be so described because he was Nebuchadnezzar’s successor or because he was his descendant—­supposing that Nabonidus had married into Nebuchadnezzar’s line (cf. NIV mg.). Herodotus (Histories 1.188) makes Nabonidus the son of Nebuchadnezzar (he actually calls both Labynetos) by the otherwise unknown Nitocris (cf. Megasthenes [Eusebius, Praeparatio 9.41.6]). But there is no other evidence of such descent, which would be surprising, and such an indirect relationship may hardly justify the story’s emphasis on the father-­son relationship and on the obligations it placed on Belshazzar. The other approach is to look behind the figures of Nebuchadnezzar or Belshazzar. If the story in ch. 4 actually relates to Nabonidus, Belshazzar is his son. Alternatively, given that Nebuchadnezzar’s actual son and successor Amel-­Marduk (Ewil-­merodak) did come to a violent end like Belshazzar, many commentators identified Belshazzar with him43 before Belshazzar’s identity and position as Nabonidus’s son became clear from cuneiform texts. Whichever approach is right, the two chief points in neo-­Babylonian history are the empire’s rise under Nebuchadnezzar and its fall under Nabonidus/ Belshazzar, so that “Nebuchadnezzar the father of Belshazzar” summarizes and reflects the general historical framework of the period.44 5–9 On the palace, see on 1:3–4; 4:29–30 [26–27]. It included a plastered throne room 150 feet by 50 feet (though one thousand guests there would find themselves crowded). The candelabra made the writing clearly visible at least to the king; although we are told only of the king’s reaction to the portent (v. 6), this need not suggest that only he saw it. The story implies that something happened, not that the king in his drunkenness placed a supranatural construction on something natural.45 There is perhaps some humor in the description of Belshazzar’s reaction to the portent, if it refers to

40 Shea, “Darius the Mede,” 142; see the critique in Grabbe, “The Belshazzar of Daniel and the Belshazzar of History.” 41 Cf. Newsom, Daniel, 165. 42 See further Stefanovic, “Like Father, Like Son.” 43 E.g., Keil, Biblischer Kommentar, on the passage. 44 Prince, “Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin,” 11. 45 See Prince, “Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin,” 12; contrast Gibson, “Belshazzar’s Feast”; Baldwin, Daniel, on the passage.

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his losing control of his bodily functions,46 but it is a deadly serious comprehensive description of the physical manifestations of terror,47 the appropriate response to the prospect of divine judgment (cf. Isa 21:3; 45:1, both relating to the fall of Babylon; Ezek 21:6–7; Nah 2:10; Ps 69:23 [24]). “Theater of the absurd? Perhaps, but with a deadly serious subplot.”48 To wear purple and a gold chain and to be given a position of authority close to that of the king himself (v. 7), are typical expressions of honor from a king (Gen 41:42–43; Esth 8:15; 10:3; 1 Esd 3:6–7; 1 Macc 10:20; 14:43). It is not specified what made the words unreadable as well as unintelligible (v. 8). There is no suggestion that they were in code or were written in an odd way (against b. Sanh. 22a). Perhaps they were difficult because of their use of ideograms or their peculiar cuneiform. The story might reflect the existence of OP cuneiform, used less than Akkadian or Aramaic but favored—­ and invented?—­by Darius I.49 Weights could be abbreviated, as in English, and perhaps the inscription consisted in a series of abbreviations that were not immediately recognizable as such.50 Perhaps they were written in digits not words.51 But most straightforwardly the story implies that the words were written as unpointed consonants. Being able to read out unpointed text is partly dependent on understanding it. In actuality, Daniel later reads the words out one way and interprets them in another. 10–16 “Queen” suggests not a mere consort (see v. 2) but a political figure, presumably the queen mother, often a significant person in an ancient court; in the OT, see 1 Kgs 15:13; 2 Kgs 11:1–3; 24:12; Jer 13:18. As “senior counsellor to king and people,” she could “provide a stabilizing, moderating influence in the political system” and “circumscribe royal power to some extent and . . . represent the interests of people or court before the king.”52 She could take the initiative in coming into the king’s presence, unlike his consort (Esth 4:11). But “her unbidden entry” and “defiance of convention reinforces the picture of Belshazzar’s insecurity.” 53 The queen’s identity is uncertain. Nabonidus’s mother, Adadguppi, apparently lived through Nebuchadnezzar’s reign and would thus have been in a position to address Belshazzar as the queen does here, were it not for the fact that she died in 547 BC (see ANET, 306, 560–62). Herodotus (Histories 46 So Wolters, “Untying the King’s Knots”; cf. Rashi in ‫ מקראות גדולות‬on the passage. 47 Cf Towner, Daniel, 73. 48 Berrigan, Daniel, 77. 49 See Frye, Heritage of Persia, 74–75. 50 Cf. Alt, “Zur Menetekel-Inschrift.” 51 So Kirchmayr, “Mene-tekel-uparsin.” 52 Andreasen, “The Role of the Queen Mother in Israelite Society,” 191, 194; for Babylon, cf. Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia, 104; for Persia, see Montgomery, Daniel, on the passage; and on this example, Van Deventer, “Another Wise Queen (Mother).” ———. “Would the Actually ‘Powerful’ Please Stand?” 53 Meadowcroft, Aramaic Daniel and Greek Daniel, 68–69.

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1.185–88) talks at some length about the role in Babylon of Queen Nitocris, who he says was Nebuchadnezzar’s wife. The difficulty with this statement is that Nitocris was actively anti-­Median, whereas Nebuchadnezzar was pro-­ Median and had a Median wife (see 4:29–30 [26–27] Comment).54 The skills attributed to Daniel (vv. 11–12) relate directly to the interpretation of a portent.55 “Insight” (‫ )נהירו‬suggests illumination from God, who is the source of light (2:22). “Ability” (‫ )שכלתנו‬indicates that Daniel not only possesses intellect or talent; he knows how to use it by God’s gift (according to 1:17). “Expertise” (‫ )חכמה‬denotes in Daniel the supernatural intuition of an interpreter of dreams or omens, that expertise that also belongs supremely to God (2:20) and that as his gift makes Daniel outstanding among experts (1:17; 2:21, 23). “Knowledge” (‫ )מנדע‬here likewise denotes an interpreter’s God-­given supernatural knowledge (1:17; 2:21). The reference to “the spirit of holy deity”/“a remarkable spirit” (see on 4:8 [5]) underlines the implication that Daniel’s extraordinary ability and his “keen mind”56 comes from God. The outworking of his gifts develops these points. Regarding “interpreting” (by magical means or by supernatural revelation) (‫)פשר‬, see n. 2:4.c on the cognate noun. “Dreams” were the specific area of Daniel’s expertise in ch. 4, to which ch. 5 refers back, while an enigmatic puzzle is the specific concern of ch. 5 itself.57 “Puzzles” (‫ )אחידן‬are, with dreams and visions, one of the somewhat opaque forms that supernatural revelation can take (cf. Num 12:6–8; Sir 39:1–4).58 The Hebrew equivalent also refers to “allegory” (Ezek 17:2) and other expressions of verbal play and expertise. “Enigmas” (‫קטרין‬, literally “knots”) are complicated, knotty mysteries such as the writing on the wall, which require extraordinary insight to unravel. Belshazzar desires that the experts “spell out” the handwriting so that his “charmed” existence may continue unharmed.59 The question why Daniel has not already been summoned if he is so gifted has been explained historically (he must now be eighty-­f ive), psychologically (Belshazzar knows the kind of message he will get from him), and rhetorically (the successful interpreter appears after the others have failed). Belshazzar’s apparent lack of knowledge of him recalls the Pharaoh who did not know or acknowledge Joseph.60 17–24 The repetitive nature of vv. 13–16 has heightened suspense; Daniel now confronts Belshazzar like a prophet, as he did Nebuchadnezzar, though there his confrontation constituted a prophetic challenge to repent, whereas here it constitutes a lengthy prophetic critique and warning. 54 Rowley, “The Belshazzar of Daniel and of History,” 193–95. 55 Ashley, “The Book of Daniel Chapters 1–6,” 147–54. 56 Miller’s paraphrase of “remarkable spirit” (Daniel, 160). 57 See Plöger, Daniel, on the passage. 58 See Müller, “Der Begriff ‘Rätsel’ im AT.” 59 Paul, “Decoding a ‘Joint’ Expression in Daniel 5:6, 16.” 60 Lacocque, Daniel, 97.

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Why does Daniel go through the motions of refusing rewards that he has accepted before (2:48) and will accept later (v. 29)? While he might be inviting Belshazzar to wait till he has heard the message before he decides whether he wants to reward the messenger,61 the abruptness of Daniel’s words (there is no salutation) suggests that they are more confrontational than this explanation would imply (cf. 2:27, and contrast 4:19 [16], at equivalent points in earlier chapters). More likely he is sidestepping any pressure to modify the portent’s message, pressure that derives from the assumption that financial considerations determine the content of a seer’s message (see Num 22:18 and Num 22–24 generally; Amos 7:12; Mic 3:5, 11).62 There is no danger of that sidestepping once the hard message has been given (v. 29) (though contrast 2 Kgs 5:16). Further, as refusal at this point indicates his independence, acceptance later will enable his eminence to be revealed.63 There may also be a suggestion that Daniel’s refusal signifies his dissociating himself from the wrongdoing of the regime he is sent to indict (cf. 1 Kgs 13:7–9). Nebuchadnezzar’s power to kill, spare, elevate, or humble compares with the power Eliphaz attributes to God—­but even Eliphaz adds a note that God also saves and gives hope to the needy (Job 5:11–16).64 It seems that Nebuchadnezzar “had dared to usurp the power that belonged to God alone,”65 though at least in some sense he learned his lesson. Nebuchadnezzar’s “spirit” (v. 20) contrasts with Daniel’s, as Nebuchadnezzar’s wife describes it (v. 12); see on 4:8 [5]. The “ways” of a person (v. 23) are the course of life that they follow, which is seen as known by God and under God’s control—­w ithout implying that it is predetermined in such a way as to make human decision making illusory (cf. Job 8:13; Prov 3:6; 4:18; also ‫ דרך‬in, e.g., Job 22:28; 24:23; Ps 18:32 [33]; 37:5, 7, 23; 146:9; Prov 20:24; Isa 40:27; Jer 10:23). The idea is prominent in books such as Proverbs and Job; the idea of God’s holding a person’s breath (‫ נשמה‬or ‫ )רוח‬also appears there (e.g., Job 12:10; 34:14–15; cf. Gen 2:7; Ps 104:29). Being sent out from God’s presence makes the hand a divine envoy like the spirits in 1 Kgs 22:20–22.66 25–28 Each word in the inscription has several possible meanings (DTT). Like a dream, the portent has a surface meaning and one or more allegorical meanings, and Daniel’s act of interpretation follows the procedures of divinatory interpretation of dreams or omens.67 On the surface, ‫מנא‬, ‫תקל‬, and ‫פרס‬ refer to three weights, a mina (about a pound), a sheqel (about 20 pounds), 61 So Plöger, Daniel, on the passage. 62 So Lacocque, Daniel, on the passage. 63 Cf. Anderson, Signs and Wonders, on the passage. 64 Smith-Christopher, “Daniel,” 83. 65 Seow, Daniel, 82. 66 Collins, Daniel, 250. 67 Cf. Broida, “Textualizing Divination.”

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and a half.68 Elsewhere a “half” is a half-­mina, though this meaning seems to be determined by the context, and the context here suggests a half-­sheqel, ‫ פרס‬then being equivalent to Heb. ‫בקע‬.69 The inscription thus represents something like a merchant’s shout (“Reckoned at a mina, a sheqel, and [two] halves!”), or his documentary record of this evaluation.70 Daniel has to explain what this puzzling phrase refers to. The only point implicit in the statement is that the sheqel suggests something very lightweight compared with whatever is symbolized by a mina. Whatever is symbolized by the half is even less significant than the former (if it is a half-­sheqel) or more so (if it is a half-­mina). Allegorically the omen might have originally referred to Babylonian kings: e.g., Nebuchadnezzar, Nabonidus, Belshazzar;71 Nebuchadnezzar, Ewil-­merodak, Belshazzar;72 Nabonidus, Belshazzar, Darius and Cyrus;73 Nabonidus, Belshazzar, Median and Persian kings generally;74 Babylonian, Median, and Persian kings.75 Further possibilities emerge if the first ‫ מנא‬is taken as part of the sequence, making a series of four: Neriglissar, Amel-­ Marduk, Labashi-­Marduk, Nabonidus/Belshazzar;76 Babylonian, Median, Persian, and Greek kings generally.77 Whether or not the message started off as an allegory of this kind, what is explicit is that Daniel turns the merchant’s record into a message about history by playing on each of the three words, utilizing the meaning of the verbal root that underlies each noun. This approach to interpretation via paronomasia was applied to the Scriptures in 1QpHab.78 Daniel uses it to make the statement refer to Belshazzar’s being appointed, evaluated, and punished. ‫ מנא‬is used in the everyday sense of “count,” but it can also suggest “appoint” or “destine” (cf. the god Destiny, ‫מני‬: see Isa 65:11–12); for the idea of “numbering one’s days” as applied to the individual, see Ps 90:12. Weighing (‫ )תקל‬a person’s moral value is an uncommon image (see Job 31:6; Ps 62:9 [10]); more often the OT speaks of measuring it (‫ ;תכן‬see BDB). “Half” (‫ )פרס‬receives a double interpretation; the noun [‫ פרס]ין‬suggests first the verb ‫“ פרס‬broken in half,” then another noun ‫ פרס‬Persia. Median and Persian kings will receive the kingship in 5:31; 6:28 [6:1, 29]. Daniel need not mean that the empire will be 68 So since Clermont-Ganneau, “Mané, thécel, pharés.” Wolters (“The Riddle of the Scales”) argues that the image of weighing on scales runs through all the levels of interpretation of the riddle. 69 Eissfeldt, “Die Menetekel-Inschrift,” 111–12. 70 Cf. Brown, “Proverb-Book, Gold-Economy, Alphabet,” 187; Eissfeldt, “Die MenetekelInschrift,” 109–111. 71 So Freedman, “The Prayer of Nabonidus.” 72 So Ginsberg, Studies on Daniel, 25. 73 So Hoffman, “Mene, mene tekel upharsin.” 74 So Prince, “Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin.” 75 So Haller, “Das Alter von Daniel 7.” 76 So Kraeling, “The Handwriting on the Wall.” 77 So Lacocque, Daniel, on the passage. 78 Silberman, “Unriddling the Riddle,” esp. 333.

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divided between the two rather than that Belshazzar’s dynasty will be broken and his authority will pass to others. The terms “Median” and “Persian” are often not distinguished.79 The paronomasia has power because words and things are related. “The interpreter’s construction of punning meaning was not a display of wit but a perception of hidden realities and, indeed, an act of power.”80 29–31 Except for Xenophon’s account of the Persians killing the unnamed Babylonian king (see on v. 1), we have no independent record of Belshazzar’s death or of what happened to him when Babylon fell. In v. 20 the implicit subject of the passive verb was God, which would suggest the same applies here. No Median Darius (daˉ rayavahuš, a Persian name: see OP 189) is otherwise known. Critical scholarship has regarded him as an imaginary construct built up from various separate historical and scriptural elements.81 Cyrus’s Persian empire did replace a Median empire, in areas north of Babylon; Cyrus himself did not immediately assume the title “King of Babylon” but ruled through a vassal king; Belshazzar’s successor as lord of the Babylonian empire (i.e., Cyrus) was about sixty-­t wo and may have been part-­Median himself; Babylon was captured and ruled by a Darius who appointed satraps (6:1 [2]) and who was related to Xerxes (9:1—but see Comment)—­that is, Darius Hystaspis, Cambyses’ successor, Xerxes’s father.82 The prophets speak of a Median conquest of Babylon (Isa 13:17; 21:2; Jer 51:11, 28) and of a Darius as king when Jerusalem is being restored after the exile (Hag 1:1, 15; 2:10; Zech 1:1, 7; 7:1).83 “Median” might be an archaizing description of the Achaemenids.84 Those who are inclined to take Daniel as historical point out that known history once contained no reference to Belshazzar.85 Darius might have been a throne-­name for some ruler known to us by another name.86 Among the identifications proposed for this ruler are Xerxes or Artaxerxes (OG); Cyrus the Persian himself;87 Cyrus’s son Cambyses, who at some time was titular king of Babylon;88 the last Median king Astyages;89 his son Cyaxares II, referred to only by Xenophon (Cyropaedia 1–8);90 Cyrus’s general Gobryas (Gubaru/ Ugbaru, OP Gaubaruwa) who captured Babylon for the Persians, ruled there 79 Cook, The Persian Empire, 42–43). 80 Newsom, Daniel, 178, comparing Noegel, Nocturnal Ciphers, 178. 81 See e.g., Grabbe, “Another Look at the Gestalt of ‘Darius the Mede.’” 82 See Rowley, Darius the Mede. 83 Sparks, “On the Origin of Darius the Mede.” 84 See Caquot, “Les quatre bêtes et le ‘Fils d’homme’ (Daniel 7),” 45. 85 See Young, Daniel, on the passage; also Waterhouse, “Why was Darius the Mede Expunged from History?” 86 Cf. Frye, Heritage of Persia, 97 on the name Darius. 87 So e.g., Colless, “Cyrus the Persian as Darius the Mede in the Book of Daniel.” 88 So Boutflower, “The Historical Value of Daniel v and vi.” 89 So Alfrink, “Darius Medus.” 90 So Anderson, in the most recent systematic study, “Darius the Mede”; Waterhouse, “Why Was Darius the Mede Expunged from History?”

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on Cyrus’s behalf for a period, and as governor of Gutium could be thought of as a Mede;91 and—­on the hypothesis that this Gobryas/Ugbaru died very soon after the fall of Babylon (so one understanding of the Babylonian Chronicle)—­Cyrus’s governor in Babylon, another Gubaru.92 The significance of Darius the Mede for Daniel is first that he represents the beginning of the fulfillment of Belshazzar’s portent regarding the destiny of Belshazzar’s empire; 5:28; 6:28 [29] will bring a second stage. In the perspective of the stories as a whole, he is the third of the four rulers of Babylon envisaged by Nebuchadnezzar’s dream (see on ch. 2). Read in light of subsequent visions, he will become the embodiment of the second of Daniel’s four empires.93 The precision of “sixty-­t wo” makes it unlikely that Daniel is merely indicating that Darius was rather old and therefore reigned only a short time. Sixty-­t wo years takes us back to the beginning of the exile, so the reference might suggest that the seeds of the downfall of Nebuchadnezzar’s dynasty were sown even then.94 More likely sixty-­t wo relates to the omen. If the mina is the mina comprising sixty sheqels (not the more usual mina comprising fifty sheqels), then a mina, a sheqel and (two) halves (of a sheqel) come to 62 sheqels.95 The years attributed to Darius “sum up” another aspect of the omen’s meaning: he is the person who brings its fulfillment upon Belshazzar.

Explanation 1–4 Belshazzar’s story begins like Nebuchadnezzar’s, with a flourishing monarchy in royal majesty. But there was an ambiguity about this description of Nebuchadnezzar’s success. The description of things going so well, which did not mention God, already hinted that catastrophe might be imminent. There is a similar ambiguity about the story of Belshazzar’s state banquet. A banquet is a sign of honor appropriate to a king (1 Kgs 3:15), but the temperate streak in Jewish thinking is reserved about such occasions. They can bode ill. Things tend to go wrong at royal banquets (Gen 40:20–22; Esth 1; Mark 6:21–28). A further contrast with the previous chapter likewise bodes ill. The story of Nebuchadnezzar’s humiliation was prefaced by a testimony that revealed in anticipation that all turned out well in the end. Belshazzar’s story has no such preface. We are not getting Belshazzar’s testimony but a narrator’s story about

91 Shea (see Pericope Bibliography) is the most painstaking advocate of this view, though he had a brief flirtation with Cyrus (“Darius the Mede in His Persian-Babylonian Setting”). 92 So Whitcomb, Darius the Mede. 93 Koch, “Dareios, der Meder.” 94 Ashley, “The Book of Daniel Chapters 1–6,” on the passage; cf. Ps-Saadia and Rashi in ‫ מקראות גדולות‬on the passage. 95 So Lister, “‘Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin’”; Galling, “Die 62 Jahre des Meders Darius in Dan 6 1.”

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him. And the story begins with a scene that can be read as one of ostentation, decadence, carousing, coarseness, wantonness, and self-­indulgence, a scene that might have been designed to illustrate the warnings in Proverbs about power, sex, and drink (e.g., Prov 23:29–35).96 From self-­indulgence issue sacrilege and blasphemy. What is wrong with the banquet is not the event itself but where it leads. Daniel will in due course explicitly locate Belshazzar’s wrongdoing in his attitude to God and in his position before God (vv. 22–23). We are not told why Belshazzar sent for these particular vessels. Perhaps they are assumed to be the most valuable he possessed. Theologically, they certainly were. To a pagan, drinking the customary libations with the vessels might mitigate any suggestion of sacrilege involved in utilizing temple vessels at a palace banquet. Like saying grace, it sets the celebration in the context of faith; it signifies that people know they were having their celebration before God. It might thus be seen as a way of honoring the deity. But these vessels are sacred to one who hates idolatry and they are being used for libations to idols, which compounds the offense instead. The exile might be thought to have established the power of Babylon’s gods over the God of Israel; therefore the exile produces all the stronger affirmations of this God’s sole authority and power and of the powerlessness of idols (Isa 40–41; 44). To offer libations to them in this way is to slight the deity of God. “Belshazzar’s blasphemy consisted in taking what belonged to the true and living God and using it for his own corrupt and decadent purposes in a context of contempt for God’s assumed powerlessness.”97 It is a “reckless gesture.”98 The extra note in v. 3 that avoids the description being simple repetition underlines the point.99 The story is one of the many that indicate that the Bible comes from a multi-­faith context; Daniel’s approach to multi-­faith questions is among the ones that reflection on these questions has to take into account. Belshazzar’s “father” had captured the temple articles and had learned to honor the God to whom they belonged, as has just been pointed out (4:37); Belshazzar remembers the one fact, but not the other. Belshazzar’s actual father, Nabonidus, had likewise learned to repent of his attachment to gods of gold, silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone, according to the Prayer of Nabonidus (4QPrNab). In a sense, what Belshazzar does is in keeping with what Nebuchadnezzar did with them (1:2), but as far as we know Nebuchadnezzar simply left the articles laid up in the treasury; he did nothing of this kind with them.100 In bringing them out and using them at his banquet Belshazzar is going one better than his father.101 96 Wallace, The Lord Is King, on the passage. 97 Wright, Hearing the Message of Daniel, 101. 98 Hill, “Daniel,” 103. 99 Nolan Fewell, Circle of Sovereignty, 84. 100 Cf. Calvin, Daniel 1–6, 207. 101 Cf. Lucas, Daniel, 138.

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The temple articles’ presence in Babylon is a reminder of something significant that had happened a few decades before in political history, but asserting the authority of Babylon and its gods over the exiles and their God succeeds in provoking the exiles’ God to send Belshazzar a portent that only an exile can interpret for him. It will prove that the God who is treated as powerless has power, and it will expose the gods who are manifestly powerless for what they are (cf. Ps 115:1–8 and, in the context of Babylonian exile, Isa 40:12–31; 41:1–7; 44:6–20).102 Belshazzar’s action is a mad gesture, and the story perhaps hints that it would only have taken place under the influence of alcohol (v. 2). 5–9 To the listener, it is clear enough that there must be some divine response to the enormity that has been described. It comes instantly, like the judgment on Nebuchadnezzar (4:31 [28]) and that on Herod (Acts 12:23), to make its significance clear. Whether or not he recognizes it, Belshazzar and in him the whole Babylonian Empire has issued a challenge that God must accept. There thus follows an item that did not appear on the program for the evening, yet one that had been wished into being by Belshazzar’s act; his worship of lifeless gods provokes a hidden theophany in the form of a living hand. Commentators like to observe that it is the hand that wrote at Sinai (Exod 31:18) but that now inscribes a more sinister message,103 though it is noteworthy that the story makes a point of calling it a human hand. It is manifestly preternatural but not manifestly divine, like the dream messages of chs. 2 and 4, and it lacks the self-­evident clarity of a direct prophetic message. God brings his clear message via an interpreter such as Daniel. Yet the combination of preternatural omen and clear message may have more chance of finding a hearing. Although the narrative may imply that everyone could see the inscription, its message will concern Belshazzar more than the people he represents, and perhaps the hand, which appeared for the sake of one man, was visible to him alone. “The reader is placed in the position of the king, who knows neither where the hand came from nor what the writing says.”104 If Belshazzar alone could see the inscription, it would heighten the parallel with ch. 2, where the experts needed to be able to say what the king’s dream was as well as interpreting it.105 Initially it is Belshazzar who is devastated by a portent that replaces any sense of confidence and security by shaking and terror. Its content is not yet stated, but its implications are clear. As in ch. 2, the king now gives a double task to his multiform experts. They must declare what the portent said then explain what it meant or referred to—­ and, no doubt, what measures could be taken to evade its fulfillment. Whoever 102 De Bruyn (“Daniel 5, Elohim and Marduk”) sees Dan 5 as “the final battle” between the God of Israel and Marduk, on the latter’s territory. 103 E.g., Hippolytus, Daniel 3.14. 104 Collins, Daniel, 246. 105 Cf. Segal, “Rereading the Writing on the Wall.”

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can fulfill this commission will receive a share in the king’s royal prestige and power in Babylon. Of course none of them can do so—­not “of course” for Belshazzar, but “of course” for the hearer, who is familiar with this feature of previous chapters. Motifs in the stories recur to drive key points home more forcefully:106 alien expertise is helpless when God intervenes to speak and act. The king’s alarm deepens, and extends to the lords at his banquet. 10–12 It is from within his own court that a witness to the God of the exiles comes to Belshazzar. This motif, too, parallels chs. 1 and 2: the power of God at work among the exiles is clear enough for the king’s aides and family to see, even if the king cannot see it. The queen’s description of Daniel is yet more laudatory than statements about him in previous chapters. The extraordinary insight required to interpret dreams and portents comes through being subject to supernatural influence, and Daniel has proved himself as someone to whose mind God has access. The Bible sometimes envisages the spirit of God working through the human spirit by means of the ordinary analytic functioning of the human mind, but it more characteristically associates the spirit of God with the receiving of extraordinary insights that one might rather associate with intuition, creative imagination, or second sight. It assumes that such inspiration is not an everyday event, but that it does occur periodically, and it is then testimony to the activity of God through a particular person. It is capable of being described both theologically and anthropologically, as divine inspiration or as intuitive imagination, as a matter of the spirit of God being present (v. 11) or as a matter of having a remarkable spirit (v. 12). 13–16 Belshazzar’s words to Daniel refer back beyond Nebuchadnezzar’s recognition of him to Nebuchadnezzar’s having brought him from Judah in the first place. The mighty Babylonian kings acknowledge a Judahite exile as the one in whom the supreme God is active and in whom supreme discernment is found. The difference is that Nebuchadnezzar knows or acknowledges it (4:9 [6]), whereas Belshazzar has only heard tell of it.107 17–24 Perhaps “Daniel has not missed the slight” in those words,108 and he is annoyed. But in any case he responds to the king like a prophet (and prophets do get annoyed), not like a mere adviser, with the same tone he had used to Nebuchadnezzar in ch. 4. There he offered a word of advice for which he had not been asked; here he preaches a sermon for which he had not been asked.109 Being financially dependent on one’s listeners threatens constraints upon a speaker; Daniel refuses to allow any prospect of rewards to influence the nature of his message, and maybe the disappearance of that consideration

106 Anderson, Signs and Wonders, on the passage. 107 Hebbard, Reading Daniel, 136. 108 Longman, Daniel, 140. 109 Cf. Berrigan, Daniel, 82.

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makes it unnecessary for him to resist the recognition that comes later (v. 29). He is characteristically confident that he can read and interpret the inscription and be direct in his confronting of the king, like Nathan before David, or Jonah at Nineveh. As in these cases, it is through a prophetic figure that God exercises his kingship, manifesting before the human king that God is king. As in these cases, the prophet issues no demand for repentance and offers no prospect of averting the disaster. Yet this omission does not mean God is not offering his grace to Belshazzar, any more than Nathan was to David or Jonah was to Nineveh; Daniel is still fulfilling “the pastoral office of the church.”110 David and the people of Nineveh did repent, and they found mitigation or cancellation of the threatened punishment. This path would be open to Belshazzar. It will not be taken, and Daniel’s words already hint at the fact, as does the absence of the invitation to repentance that Daniel had extended to Nebuchadnezzar (4:27). Belshazzar has shown that he was unwilling to learn from his father’s experience. He is unlikely, therefore, to respond to the preaching of his father’s counselor (cf. the argument of Heb 6:4–8). The act of interpretation that Daniel undertakes is twofold: “firstly, he interprets the heart of Belshazzar, and secondly, he interprets the handwriting on the wall.”111 He begins (vv. 18–21) by recalling the powerful position occupied by Nebuchadnezzar, though he does so in such a way as to underline the ambiguity of that position. Nebuchadnezzar possessed royal authority and glorious splendor: the terms correspond particularly closely to the description of God in 1 Chr 29:11; compare Dan 4:36 [33]; 2:37 (and the Explanation). Within his realm he had a power of life and death, of ennoblement and disgrace, which is also quasi-­d ivine (cf. Deut 32:39; 1 Sam 2:6–7; Ps 75:7 [8]; also Dan 2:21; 4:17 [14]). In reminding Belshazzar of Nebuchadnezzar’s experience, however, Daniel begins by drawing attention to the derivative nature of Nebuchadnezzar’s authority. The chapter had begun from what Nebuchadnezzar “took” (v. 2), which would be the way Belshazzar spoke. Daniel invites him to think in terms of what Nebuchadnezzar “was given,” by one whose own royal authority and glorious splendor are a fortiori greater. All human authority and power is an echo and a servant of that divine authority and power from which it derives and on which it depends.112 Further, to attribute to Nebuchadnezzar a quasi-­divine power over the people within his realm is to draw attention to the temptation with which people in power live. There is a link and a contrast between Nebuchadnezzar’s great power and his great fall. It was his area of strength that became his area of vulnerability. His power became his weakness. His power then had to become actual weakness before it could be restored. 110 Lüthi, The Church to Come, 75. 111 Hebbert, Reading Daniel, 137. 112 Lacocque, Daniel, on the passage.

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Daniel makes Belshazzar the subject of a series of strong verbs: “You knew, you ignored, you exalted yourself, you desecrated, you committed idolatry, you disregarded” (vv. 22–23). Daniel emphasizes Belshazzar’s responsibility for his attitudes and actions. His willful blindness makes him brazenly proud, just like his father (the same words are used), in the very presence of the one who is actually Lord of the heavens. This phrase comes only here; both elements in it suggest the almightiness of the one Belshazzar disdains. His willful blindness makes him sacrilegiously contemptuous of the sacred possessions of this God, who entrusted them to his father. The vessels that should have reminded him of the God who gave them into Nebuchadnezzar’s power (1:2) become the means of his self-­indulgence. It makes him grotesquely idolatrous in worshiping senseless objects and ignoring the God who has power over his destiny; he fails to take God seriously, like his father—­but with less excuse, because his father’s story has made clear to him that God has this power. Historically, Belshazzar may have fallen because he could not handle a political and military crisis; in this story, more profoundly he fell because of his irresponsibility before God.113 He has despised the riches of God’s kindness, forbearance, and longsuffering (Rom 2:4) as he has seen them extended to Nebuchadnezzar; hence the psalm’s exhortation not to harden your hearts when you hear God’s voice (Ps 95:7–8).114 25–28 Daniel recognizes that on the surface the inscription records the assessment of something in terms of monetary weights: “counted at a mina, a sheqel, and halves.” The three nouns also reflect three verbal roots (as the English words “pound” and “halve” can be verbs as well as nouns). Under the surface of the inscription Daniel sees in these verbs a message for Belshazzar. They hint at three moments in God’s dealings with him as king, the past moment when he appointed him, the present moment when he is evaluating his performance, and the coming moment when he breaks off his dynasty because of its failure. All three are past from the perspective of the pronouncement; like many OT prophecies, it speaks of coming events as already actual, on the basis of God’s decision that they should take place. Belshazzar’s wrongdoing has exceeded Nebuchadnezzar’s, and so will his fall, a fall not merely to banishment in humiliation but to death and to the end of his dynasty, without finding repentance.115 Belshazzar is a “lightweight interpreter”116 and a lightweight king. At first sight, to say that Belshazzar’s days were numbered from the beginning of his reign suggests that the nature of his reign and the coming of judgment upon it were irreversibly predestined. If Daniel says that Belshazzar’s

113 Joubert, “Power and Responsibility in the Book of Daniel,” on the passage. 114 Theodoret, Daniel, 150–53. 115 Joubert, “Power and Responsibility in the Book of Daniel,” on the passage. 116 Hebbard, Reading Daniel, 125.

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reign has been evaluated and found deficient, however, he implies that Belshazzar has not been an automaton; he is responsible for the way he has exercised his sovereign authority. Perhaps Daniel indicates that the “counting out” of Belshazzar’s reign had a provisional nature, establishing how long he could reign; in the event, his reign is to end earlier than it should. Or perhaps Daniel presupposes the alternative perspective that God’s being able to foresee the nature of Belshazzar’s reign also enables him to predetermine its length, without implying that Belshazzar’s responsibility is reduced or his judgment imposed independently of his character and actions. “All is foreseen, but freedom of choice is given” (m. ’Abot 3:16).117 God’s sovereignty and human responsibility are both factors in history. Both are real. God’s judgment also at first sight involves his acting in sovereign independence of ordinary processes of cause and effect rather than through them. Yet a historical study of the course of events would likely be able to describe them in terms of ordinary processes of cause and effect, as is the case with a process such as Babylon’s yielding to Persia. God’s purpose needs to be seen at work behind the ordinary process of cause and effect that the historian seeks to trace.118 Belshazzar’s story further suggests that revolutionary or military violence is a means through which God works in history. Yet what it effects is not the final rule of God but the rule of Darius the Mede to replace that of Belshazzar the Babylonian.119 The fall of Belshazzar is a major historical turning point, which comes about because the Babylonian king fails to recognize the God of the Judahite exiles, the God whose agents the Babylonians have unwittingly been. The worldly empire has had its opportunity and has missed it. And elsewhere in the OT the fall of Babylon is not merely the end of an era but one realization of the day of Yahweh. Daniel is interested in that day, though he does not use the expression, but he does not see the fall of Babylon in this light. It is just the moment when power passes from one dynasty to another. The story warns against overestimating the significance of history and politics. Yet it also indicates that when God casts off one ruler for his arrogance, he does not thereby dissociate himself from all world events and exercise of power.120 29–31 If ch. 5 were centrally concerned with Belshazzar’s personal relationship with God, as some readers may be inclined to assume, Belshazzar’s response to Daniel’s words would appear bizarre. Does Belshazzar refuse to accept an implicit invitation to repentance, or perhaps on the contrary accept God’s judgment upon him and therefore accept the death coming to him?121 117 cf. Russell, The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic, 232. 118 The emphasis of K. Koch, “Gibt es ein Vergeltungsdogma im AT?” ET “Is There a Doctrine of Retribution in the OT.” 119 Collins, Daniel with an Introduction to Apocalyptic Literature, 70. 120 Atzerodt, “Weltgeschichte und Reich Gottes im Buch Daniel,” 246. 121 Lacocque, Daniel, on the passage.

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301

Yet the story offers no comment on Belshazzar’s response. It omits reference to his relationship with God (contrast Josephus, Ant. 10.10.4 [10.204]) because its concerns focus on the public vindication of Daniel and of his God. Belshazzar’s response parallels that of Nebuchadnezzar in 2:46–48, where similar considerations obtain. Belshazzar acknowledges Daniel, though not his God; but the story comes to a climax with the fulfillment of prophecy, not with the exaltation of Daniel. Belshazzar’s story does show that for every person there is a sense in which “the limitation of human life” by birth and death is “a trace of the divine world-­governance.”122 In the case of a Belshazzar, the fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy comes with that common Middle Eastern phenomenon, a coup d’état involving the assassination of the present ruler—­the process whereby Belshazzar’s actual father, Nabonidus, came to power. The historical and human factors that brought this revolution, and the means by which it was effected, are again ignored. Belshazzar was killed, by whom we are not told. Is it in effect by God? Certainly the sovereign purpose of God in the event is alone of interest in this story. When people act with violence, the story encourages us to believe that God can effect his purpose through them and that we can trust him to fulfill his just purpose in events one way or another. Worldly empires are shown to be subject to the God of the Judahite exiles. The impression encouraged by Belshazzar at the beginning of the story, that Nebuchadnezzar was lord of history and that the God of Jerusalem was powerless, is controverted by the way the story ends. God brings calamity to the conquerors he once used (cf. Isa 10; Jer 25).123 Worldly power is real, but it is subservient to the will of God.124 As the portent came while Belshazzar was yet committing his act of idolatry, the end comes the same night, to make explicit the sovereign power of Daniel’s God and the authority of his expert. “In a single night the brilliant revel is changed, first into terror and bewilderment, and then into disaster and death”;125 compare the warnings of Amos 6; Matt 24:38–39.126 The moment when God says “You fool” (Luke 12:20) is one that all have to fear, but it is a moment that leaders especially have to fear. They may seem to be the embodiment of order, destiny, power, and divinity. Yet death comes to them, too, an incontrovertible proof of their pretension to power and significance.127 Both ch. 4 and ch. 5 tell of a portent and a personal calamity, but one 122 Barth, CD iii, 3:235. 123 Barr, “Daniel,” on the passage. 124 Joubert, “Power and Responsibility in the Book of Daniel,” on the passage. 125 Driver, Daniel, on the passage. 126 Rupert of Deutz, De Trinitate: in Danielem prophetam, on the passage. 127 See Aukerman’s comments (Darkening Valley, 119) on the implications of J. F. Kennedy’s death; and Gammie’s comments (Daniel, on the passage) on the Shah’s fabulous banquet at Persepolis in 1971 that opened a decade in which the Shah lost first his empire and then his life.

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story ends reasonably happily, the other unhappily. “Whereas the fulfillment in chapter 4 occupied ten verses, in this chapter it is one short and dramatic sentence”128—­which also contrasts with the way suspense has been allowed to build up in the leisured narrative that leads to this climax. One is comedy, the other tragedy. One reveals the divine mercy, the other the divine judgment. Even in the heathen world can be perceived God’s election of some to a positive place in his purpose, of others to a negative one (Rom 9:13–14). In everyday events and in political affairs some find life, others find death. Human responsibility is real, and every experience tests by eliciting a response that either draws people towards God and his blessing, or draws them in the opposite direction. Behind the whole is the purpose of God, whose wisdom and sovereign acts are deep and mysterious (Rom 9:33) but ultimately trustworthy.129 Psalm 2 talks about God laughing when nations and governments assert themselves against him and his purpose. He knows they always end up falling into the pit they dug. Hearing God’s laughter is important for the Belshazzars of the world; it is a way God may get through to them.130 It is important for their subjects, who can afford to sit lighter to them than they sometimes realize and who may be able to stand up to them better when they do realize it. Daniel 5 is not just about a one-­t ime event in the sixth century; it is a theological reflection on divine justice in the history of the world and it contains a parable about a scale in which God weighs oppressors.131

128 Gowan, Daniel, on the chapter. 129 Wallace, The Lord Is King, on the passage. 130 See Aukerman, Darkening Valley, 102–8. 131 Cf. Dobberahn, “Daniel 5.25.”

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VI. God Vindicates His Power When Daniel Chooses the Lion Pit Rather Than Compromise (6:1–28 [2–29]) As noted in connection with ch. 5, I follow Luther’s chapter division. References in square brackets correspond to the medieval chapter division that appears in printed Hebrew Bibles, which treats 5:31 as the first verse of ch. 6. In both versions the chapter break at the end of ch. 6 corresponds to the petuchah in the MT.

Pericope Bibliography Arnold, B. T. “Wordplay and Narrative Techniques in Daniel 5 and 6.” Bentzen, A. “Daniel 6.” Boogaart, T. A. “Daniel 6.” Boutflower, C. “The Historical Value of Daniel v and vi.” Cassin, E. “Daniel dans la ‘fosse’ aux lions.” Davies, P. R. “Daniel in the Lion’s Den.” Derrett, J. D. M. “Daniel and Salvation-­History.” Donaldson, T. L. “Royal Sympathizers in Jewish Narrative.” Dulaey, M. “Daniel dans la fosse aux lions.” Helms, D. Konfliktfelder der Diaspora und die Löwengrube. Levinger, J. “‫דניאל בגוב האריות‬.” Mayer, R. “Iranischer Beitrag zu Problemen des Daniel-­und Esther-­Buches.” Montgomery, J. A. “The ‘Two Youths’ in the LXX to Dan. 6.” Paul, S. M. “Dan 6,8.” —­—­—­. “Daniel 6:20.” Prinsloo, G. T. M. “Two Poems in a Sea of Prose.” Schmidt, N. “Daniel and Androcles.” Shea, W. H. “A Further Note on Daniel 6.” Smith-­C hristopher, D. L. “Gandhi on Daniel 6.” Sörries, R. Daniel in der Löwengrube. Van der Toorn, K. “In the Lions’ Den.” —­—­—­. “Scholars at the Oriental Court,” in Collins/Flint (eds.), The Book of Daniel 1:37–54. Van der Woude, A. S. “Zu Daniel 6,11.” Van Deventer, H. J. M. “Literary Lions with Real Bite.” Van Henten, J. W. “Daniel 3 and 6 in Early Christian Literature,” in Collins/Flint (eds.), The Book of Daniel 1:149–69. —­—­—­. “The Reception of Daniel 3 and 6 and the Maccabean Martyrdoms in Hebrews 11:33–38.” Walton, J. H. “The Decree of Darius the Mede in Daniel 6.” Xeravits, G. G. “The Figure of Daniel in Late Antique Synangogue Art.” —­—­—­. “A Possible Greek Bible Source for Late Antique Synagogue Art.” Zissu, B. “Daniel in the Lion’s Den (?) at Tel Lavnin.”

On Darius the Mede, see also ch. 5 Pericope Bibliography.

Translation It seemed good to Dareyaweš to put satraps over his realm, 120 to be spread through the whole realm, 2and to put above them three heads,a Daniyye’l being one of them, to whom these satraps would be accountable, so that the king would not be troubled.b 3aThis man Daniyye’l distinguished himself above the other heads and satraps because of his remarkable spirit, and the king was minded b to put him over the whole realm. 4a The heads and the satraps looked for grounds for indictment of Daniyye’l in 1

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connection with the affairs of the realm, but they could not find any grounds for indictment on the basis of corruption,b because he was trustworthy. So no negligence or corruption was found in him. 5These men said, “We shall not find any grounds for indictment of this Daniyye’l unless we find a them against him in connection with the law b of his God.” 6 These heads and satraps mustered a to see the king, and said to him, “Long live King Dareyaweš! 7All the heads of the realm, the governors, the satraps, the advisers, and the commissioners, are of the opinion that the king  a should issue a statute and enforce an injunction that for thirty days anyone who petitions any god or man except you, your majesty, will be thrown into a lion pit? 8Now, your majesty, issue this injunction and sign a the written regulation, so that as a law of Maday and Paras which shall not pass away, it can in no way b be changed.” 9Accordingly, King Dareyaweš signed the written injunction. 10 But Daniyye’l, when he got to know that the document had been signed, went home, where he had a room on the top of the house with windows facing toward Yerušalem. Three times a day he would kneel a in prayer and thanksgiving before his God because b he had been doing so previously. 11 These men mustered and found Daniyye’l petitioning and seeking favor before his God. 12They approached the king and spoke before him aabout the royal injunction: a “You signed an injunction, didn’t you, that for thirty days anyone who petitioned any god or man except you, your majesty, would be thrown into a lion pit.” The king replied, “Yes, that decision stands absolute as a law of Maday and Paras, which shall not pass away.” 13 They declared before the king, “Daniyye’l, one of the Yehudite exiles, has not taken any notice of you or of the injunction you signed, your majesty. Three times a day he makes his petition.” 14When the king heard of this, it seemed very disagreeable to him.a and he applied his mind to delivering Daniyye’l and worked on rescuing him until sundown.b 15 These men mustered to see the king and said to the king, “Your majesty must recognize that it is a law of Maday and Paras that any statutory injunction that the king issues cannot be changed.” 16The king said to fetch Daniyye’l and throw him into the lion pit.a The king declared to Daniyye’l, “Your God, whom you honor so consistently, he must b deliver you.” 17A rock was brought and put over the mouth of the pit, and the king sealed it with his signet and with those a of his nobles, so that what was intended b for Daniyye’l might not be changed. 18The king went off to his palace and spent the night without food; a nothing b was brought into his presence. But sleep eluded him. 19aWhen morning came,a the king got up b aat sunrise a and went back in agitation c to the lion pit. 20On approaching the pit he called to Daniyye’l in an anguished voice. The king averred to Daniyye’l, “Daniyye’l, servant of the living God, could your God, whom you honor so consistently, deliver you from the lions?” 21Daniyye’l spoke to a the king, “Long live the king! 22My God sent his aide and shut the lions’ mouths, and they have not injured me, because aI was found innocent a before him—­as also before you, your majesty, I have done nothing injurious.” 23The king—­it seemed very good to him, and he said to lift Daniyye’l out of the pit. Daniyye’l was lifted out of the pit, and no injury was found on him, in that he had trusted a in his God. 24The king said to fetch a those

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Notes

305

men who had attacked Daniyye’l and throw them into the lion pit, they, their children, and their wives. They had not reached the floor of the pit whenb the lions were on top of them and had ctorn their bodies to pieces.c 25 King Dareyaweš wrote: a “To the people of all races, nations, and languages who live in the entire world.b May your well-­being abound! 26I am giving notice that in the entire a realm over which I am king, people are to tremble with fear before the God of Daniyye’l, in that b He is the living God; he endures through the ages. His realm will suffer no injury; his rule will persist to the end. 27 He delivers and rescues; he performs signs and wonders in the heavens and on the earth. He delivered Daniyye’l from the power of the lions.”

So this Daniyye’l flourished during the reign of Dareyaweš and a during the reign of Koreš the Parsite. 28

Notes 2.a. ‫( סרכין‬OP); apparently not a technical term. 2.b. EVV generally refer ‫ נזק‬to a financial, military, or political burden, but Akk. nazaˉ qu suggests “troubled/worried” (CAD; H. L. Ginsberg, “Lexicographical Notes,” HW 81); cf. Th. ἐνοχλήται; NJPS. One can also read other passages (Ezra 4:13, 15, 22; Esth 7:4) either way. 3.a. The verse begins ‫( אדין‬EVV “then”) and the chapter uses both ‫ באדין‬and ‫אדין‬ as linking particles, hardly requiring translation (cf. n. 5:3a). 3.b. ‫ עשית‬is passive (cf. Ehrlich “was inclined”). 4.a. It is not clear how the clause(s) in v. 4 fit together; EVV vary. Th. lacks the last sentence. 4.b. Literally “grounds [for indictment] and corruption.” 5.a. Perfect verb in an exceptive clause (cf. GKC 163c). 5.b. ‫ דת‬comes to signify “religion,” viewed as the keeping of a God-­g iven rule of life (DTT; cf. NEB, GNB). But the parallelism with state law (vv. 8, 12, 15) suggests that this is not the meaning here, or at least that we should keep the translation “law” to point up the link and parallelism (Newsom, Daniel, 188–89). Rendtorff (“Esra und das ‘Gesetz,’ ” 166–69) questions whether ‫ דת‬is ever a synonym of ‫תורה‬. 6.a. ‫( רגש‬cf. vv. 11, 15) has troubled translators since the ancient versions (cf. BHS). Montgomery notes that it occurs in parallelism with ‫“ סוד‬counsel/council” in Pss 55:14 [15]; 64:2 [3] (also with ‫“ המה‬growl/murmur” in Ps 2:1) and translates “acted in harmony.” But ‫ סוד‬also appears alongside ‫“ המה‬growl/bustle” in Ps 83:2–3 [3–4] (cf. ‫ המה‬in 46:4, 7; ‫ סוד‬in Jer 6:11; 15:17); cf. BDB “came thronging” for ‫רגש‬.

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The objection that thronging is inappropriate to court etiquette (vv. 6 and 15) and to catching a man unawares (v. 11) misses the point that Daniel’s accusers do act in a peremptory way (vv. 7, ?12, 15; also v. 6, cf. v. 15, where they speak to the king, not before him as court etiquette generally requires) and that Daniel’s commitment to his faith was open enough not to require espionage. The verb suggests a group acting by agreement but with the bustle that a crowd inevitably makes. But a different meaning might be required in v. 11 from vv. 6 and 15 (cf. G, Syr., Vulg.). The author of Daniel likes homonyms/paronomasia. 7.a. Taking ‫ מלכא‬as the subject of the verb, with MT accents. Th. links it with the preceding noun, “about the issuing of a royal statute,” or about issuing a royal statute, if the passage suggests a peremptory attitude on the part of the group (cf. n. 6.a). 8.a. Or perhaps ‫ תרשם‬denotes “put your seal to.” 8.b. ‫ לא‬rather than ‫ אין‬with the inf. is emphatic (TTH 202). 10.a. ‫ הּוא‬probably needs repointing ‫( ֲהוָ א‬NEB, BL 81q); BHS reads ‫הוָ ה‬, ֲ with some medieval mss. Van der Woude (“Zu Daniel 6,11”) argues for linking ‫ הּוא‬with ‫“ יומא‬that day,” which gives good sense, but this adjectival use is unparalleled in BA. 10.b. EVV “as” (cf. BL 109n); but BA nowhere else uses ‫ כל קבל די‬in the weakened sense (cf. Bevan). 12.a–­a. Cf. NJPS; not “about the injunction: ‘Your majesty . . .’ ” (EVV), which would require emphatic ‫אסרא‬, not the absolute/construct ‫( אסר‬Hartman/Di Lella). G, Syr. take ‫ מלכא‬as vocative, but they omit ‫( על אסר‬cf. BHS). Omiting the phrase as a gloss reduces the jerkiness of v. 13a, though one need not do so merely to make the conspirators’ speech begin in a less peremptory way (cf. n. 6.a). Syr. adds the common “Long live the king” (cf. 3:9) with that effect (Taylor, Peshitt·a, 180). 14.a. BA/BH ‫ באש‬more naturally means “displeased” (cf. also BH ‫רעע‬, e.g., Jonah 4:1 [BDB]) than “distressed” (EVV, cf. 1QapGen 21.7). 14.b. “High noon” is etymologically possible and would make good sense, leaving time for the events in vv. 16–19 to take place in the afternoon (Mayer, “Iranischer Beitrag,” 128–29); but ‫ מעלי שמשא‬regularly means “sunset” (DTT). 16.a. On the understanding as purpose clauses, see BL 106e. 16.b. Hartman/Di Lella, noting, however, that ‫ ישיזבנך‬must be parsed as imperfect not jussive, otherwise the ‍‫ נ‬would be elided (cf. GBA 108, 175). NJPS takes the verb as future, but this understanding ill fits Darius’s agitation in vv. 14, 18–20, and some modal sense (could/might?) is appropriate; cf. 3:15. 17.a. ‫;עזְ ָקת‬ ִ but many medieval mss, Th. point as s. ‫עזְ ַקת‬. ִ 17.b. ‫ צבו‬seems to keep its original meaning “purpose” (cf. BDB). 18.a. Not “fasting” in a religious sense, for which the word is ‫ צום‬not ‫טות‬. 18.b. ‫( דחון‬Eastern Q ‫ )דהון‬is a puzzle. Ps-­Saadia understands it to mean “girls,” perhaps relating it to ‫( לחנה‬cf. 5:2; Marti emends to ‫)לחנן‬. This meaning has been supported by connecting the word with the root ‫“ דחה‬push (down),” which in Arabic eventually produces a noun meaning “woman” (hence NEB?). Haphel ‫ הנעל‬suggests a personal object (Plöger). But this tertiary sense of ‫ דחה‬in Arabic is not otherwise known in Aramaic or Hebrew (Bevan). Ibn Ezra takes it in another sense derived from ‫דחה‬, “music” (cf. RV), but this also seems forced (Driver), though it is said that at night 300 concubines were available to watch over the king with music and song by lamplight (see Cook, Persian Empire, 136): either of these meanings fits that picture. Related words denote revelry, feasting, and feast tables (DTT; cf. Saadia). Th., Syr. understand it to mean food; the clause thus expands on “spent the night without food.” The Elamite root dahyu might suggest “servant” (cf. Gershevitch, “Amber at Persepolis,” 180); OP dahyav “land” could suggest “countrymen” or “vassals” (cf. Mayer, “Iranischer Beitrag,” 129–30).

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Form/Structure/Setting

307

19.a–­a. Perhaps one of these expressions is a gloss, though the second, ‫בנגהא‬, is slightly more specific than the first, ‫בשפרפרא‬. See further Paul, “Daniel 6:20.” 19.b. ‫ יקום‬is imperfect, perhaps as following ‫( באדין‬cf. BH usage after ‫)אז‬ (Montgomery); but the perfect is used elsewhere, and more likely the imperfect is used to throw emphasis on the main verb ‫( אזל‬BL 78q). 19.c. Not merely “in haste” (RSV): see n. 2:25.a. 21.a. Not “with,” as if suggesting a conversation; the word for “with” is used for speaking “to” in Syriac (Bevan). 22.a–­a. Lit., “innocence was found for me”: ‫ זכו‬comes to mean “deserve” and thus to imply “blessing/success” (DTT, cf. NEB mg.). 23.a. ‫הימן‬: practically, “had stood firm in his confidence” (cf. Wildberger, “Glauben”; A. Jepsen in ThWAT on ‫)אמן‬. 24.a. See n. 16.a. 24.b. ‫עד די‬: see BL 79i. 24.c–­c. Hartman/Di Lella’s translation of ‫“ כל גרמיהון הדקו‬smashed all their bones.” Cf. the use of both ‫ גרם‬and ‫ עצם‬in BH (see BDB). NEB “crunched them up, bones and all” highlights the piquant spirit of this story. 25.a. I follow Bentzen in treating the whole of v. 26 as part of Darius’s letter, after the editorial ‫כתב‬ . . . ‫[( באדין‬then] . . . wrote); the phraseology following this introduction is identical with that of Nebuchadnezzar’s words at the opening of the letter in v. 1. 25.b. Wilson (“Darius the Mede,” 190) and Whitcomb (Darius the Mede, 38–39) translate ‫“ ארעא‬land” and refer it to Babylon, over which a ruler of Babylon under Cyrus could be reckoned to rule (see Comment); cf. v. 1. 26.a. ‫ ;בכל‬Th. has “in every,” highlighting the hyperbolic nature of the command. 26.b. MT’s maqqeph links ‫ די‬with what follows, but this understanding makes for an implausible opening to the poetic lines, and cf. ‫ הוא‬in the poetic lines in 2:21–22. 28.a. NIV mg. “that is” takes the ‫ ו‬as explicative. For other examples, see 1:3; 4:13 [10]; 7:1; 8:10, 24; 11:38 (and notes): see Erlandsson, “Na˙gra exempel pa˙ waw explicativum”; Baker, “Further Examples of the waw explicativum.” See Comment.

Form/Structure/Setting Form Like Dan 3, ch. 6 is a tale of court conflict and intrigue; more specifically, it is a story about the fall and rehabilitation of a minister of state, a common folkloric plot.1 A certain man has achieved prominence in the imperial administration and favor with the king. The other ministers of state plot to engineer his downfall by getting the king to issue a statute that he will not obey but that carries a capital sentence. They watch for his disobedience, report it to the king, and insist that the death penalty be exacted. But he survives, and his accusers and their families are killed instead. The motifs of the story are larger than life: the thronging plotters, the implausible statute, the inexorable law, the extraordinary escape, the monumental requital. The story thus entertains, 1

Barton, “The Story of Ah·ikar”; Collins, Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel, 49–54; Krappe, “Is the Story of Ah·ikar the Wise of Indian Origin?”

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but it also reflects a desire to teach.2 Its characters, like ones in Esther and Ahiqar, “exemplify the traditional wisdom-­triangle: the powerful, but witless dupe—­the righteous wise—­the conniving schemer.”3 Jealous conspirators attack a man of uprightness and insight; they are clever enough to fool a stupid king, but in the end they pay the penalty for their own wicked folly while the man of insight triumphs (Prov 6:12–19; 14:30, 32, 35; 24:16; 29:12). The hero is not only a man of insight and uprightness but a man of a remarkable spirit (a God-­g iven spirit: cf. 5:11–12), a man of faithfulness to God in life and in prayer, and of trust in God in danger. His persecutors see where his vulnerability lies: he believes in obeying God rather than human beings when these obligations are made to conflict. For his insistence he will pay with his life. The court tale is thus also a confessor legend (though there is no confrontation between confessor and king or accusers). His fate is (literally) sealed; there is no escape. Even the king cannot rescue him. Yet the king is open to the possibility that God may do so; he spends the night anxiously wondering what Daniel’s fate will be and prepares us for Daniel’s own testimony to God’s miraculous and complete deliverance, which turns the legend into an aretalogy. The wonder of his deliverance is underlined by the contrasting fate of his persecutors. The king enjoins his whole empire to recognize Daniel’s wonder-­working God. Darius’s injunction takes the form of a royal encyclical. It begins precisely like that at 4:1–3 [3:31–33] (see ch. 4 Form), and its content is also similar. Like that example, however, the form is tailored to the context and thus dovetailed into the narrative (see n. 25a). The form and content soon become those of hymnic praise (vv. 26b–27a) and confessional praise (v. 27b). The hymnic praise comprises three lines, of which the last is a tricolon; the confessional praise then comprises one bicolon. It is again a form utilized in a literary context and designed to bring the narrative itself to a climax, so that the confession relates to what God has done to a third party, not to the speaker himself. Earlier in the chapter, there are also reflections of the forms of petition, accusation, and petitionary prayer (vv. 6–8, 12–13, 16).4 The chapter has intertextual or midrashic aspects. In addition to illustrating aphorisms in Proverbs, the story about descent into a pit and about being threatened by lions illustrates experiences described metaphorically in these terms in Pss 22:13, 21 [14, 22]; 57: 4–6 [5–7]; 91:10–13, and later 1QH 5.1–19, the Qumran Thanksgiving Psalms;5 other OT passages about lions such as Ezek 19 seem less relevant. While there are parallels with mythical accounts 2 3

Joubert, “Power and Responsibility in the Book of Daniel,” 114–15. Talmon, “‘Wisdom’ in the Book of Esther,” 441; cf. Rosenthal, “Die Josephsgeschichte mit den Büchern Ester und Daniel verglichen”; ———, “Nochmals der Vergleich Ester, Joseph, Daniel.” 4 Collins, Daniel with an Introduction to Apocalyptic Literature, 72. 5 See further Van Deventer, “Literary Lions.”

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of a hero’s/god’s descent to and escape from Sheol and between the lions’ refusal to eat Daniel and folk-­tales,6 any links likely come via the appropriation of such motifs in the Psalms. Babylonian texts (not least Ludlul Be¯l Ne¯meqi: see ch. 4 Form) also speak metaphorically about being attacked by lions.7 Like ch. 3, the story thus combines traditional motifs and factual allusions. Its historical background corresponds to aspects of the circumstances of the Babylonian period (lions kept in captivity, Jewish faith under pressure) and the Greek period (divinization of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid kings, cf. Jdt 3:8). But it predominantly suggests the Persian period: the bureaucratic organization of the empire to avoid loss to the king (cf. Ezra 4:13–14), satrapies, the possibility of Jews being in responsible positions in the empire (cf. Nehemiah), the strict law of the Persians. The Babylonian name Belteshazzar is no longer used. At the same time, the story contains a number of historical difficulties. Satraps are most familiar as the governors of between twenty and thirty of the provinces into which the empire was organized by Darius I. The three “heads” (n. 2.a) are an otherwise unknown office. The content of the injunction, the treatment of Daniel and his accusers, and the requirement that the whole world worship Daniel’s God correspond ill with what we otherwise know of the liberal early Persian period, and it is difficult to envisage a pit big enough to contain the five hundred or more people apparently envisaged by v. 24. In general the grounds for rehabilitating Darius as a historical figure probably make him viceroy of Babylon (see Comment on 5:31 [6:1]), whereas in this story he has the autocratic power and instinct of a later Persian emperor such as Darius I. Combined with the use of narrative forms associated more with fiction than fact, these features suggest that the chapter does not present itself to the hearer as history. It may still have its ultimate origin in some amazing deliverance; it is perhaps implausible that such stories were created out of nothing. But some of the story’s apparently factual allusions may only give color to the fiction. The injunction is a means of lampooning the pagan powers and their religious pretension, which also makes it possible to portray a dispersion Jew under pressure to abandon his characteristic religious practice and to portray the faithfulness and vindication of God that were confessed in Israel’s history, experienced in personal ways in the exile, and trusted even when current experience did not witness to them.

Structure The story follows a straightforward narrative sequence; there are sixteen occurrences of ‫“( ]ב[אדין‬then,” omitted in the translation); cf. BH ‫ו‬. But its structure can be expressed chiastically: 6 7

See Bentzen, “Daniel 6”; Gunkel, Das Märchen im AT, 33 (ET 53). See Van der Toorn, “In the Lions’ Den”; more broadly, “Scholars at the Oriental Court”; more broadly still, Strawn, What is Stronger than a Lion?

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God Vindicates His Power 1–3  introduction: Daniel’s success 4–10  Darius signs an injunction but Daniel takes his stand. 11–15  Daniel’s colleagues plan his death. 16–18  Darius hopes for his deliverance. 19–23  Darius witnesses his deliverance. 24  Daniel’s colleagues meet with their death. 25–27  Darius signs a decree and takes his stand. 28  conclusion: Daniel’s success

The chiastic structure draws attention to the hope and the fact of Daniel’s deliverance, at its center, and at the end to the flourishing of Daniel, which both compares and contrasts with the beginning. Introduction and conclusion in simple narrative form locate the story’s starting point in Daniel’s life, which is also its finishing point, though the intention declared in v. 3 is not resumed—­which reflects the fact that it is merely background. Verses 4–10 have Daniel’s colleagues getting Darius to sign the injunction that sets up the point of tension for the drama; vv. 25–27 have Darius signing the decree that brings the drama to its climax. In both sections narrative is the framework for speech, though speech of varying kinds: that in vv. 4–10 is entirely the scheming words of the plotters, that in vv. 25–27 begins as the formal speech of a royal decree then turns abruptly into the lyric parallelism of a psalm which in content arguably forms the chapter’s climax.8 Verses 11–15 and 24 are narrative, with dialogue in vv. 11–15; death in a lion pit is first envisaged by the plotters then experienced by them. The middle two sections concern Darius and Daniel. The focus is first on Darius’s final words to Daniel, with their ambiguity, and then on his sleepless night, with its ambiguity. We are told nothing of Daniel’s words or feelings. With Darius we return to the pit to discover what has happened; with Darius we learn from Daniel’s words the answer to the question about Daniel’s fate, when for the only time Daniel speaks; there is no direct description of the event. The story offers three different studies in characterization. Daniel’s colleagues appear as simply (in both senses of the word) plotters. Most of the speech in the story is theirs, and they condemn themselves out of their own mouths. Every word they utter, as well as every move they make, concerns intrigue, manipulation, treachery, duplicity, and scheming. They have the arrogant boldness of a crowd bolstered by each other into bravado and folly. To “muster” (‫ )רגש‬is their distinctive style (vv. 6, 11, 15). They care nothing for truth, for the state, for the king, for religion, for law. Everything is subordinate to their desire to get rid of Daniel. Together they plot, but together they die. Daniel himself is labeled adjectivally in passing (vv. 3, 4), then described in a telling verse of narrative (v. 10) whose witness is summarized by the king 8

So Prinsloo, “Two Poems in a Sea of Prose,” 104.

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himself (vv. 16, 20). The story says nothing about his experience or feelings as he approaches the lion pit, and he is mostly silent. The narrative reserves his words for the climax in v. 22; even here his words concern God’s act and his own innocence rather than his faith or his feelings. The king is caught between the conspirators and the confessor. He is the unspeaking victim of manipulation, opening his mouth only to confirm that he is their victim (v. 12). In relation to Daniel, however, he is the mouthpiece of unqualified recognition but ambiguous hope, renouncing indulgence and losing sleep, hurrying back to the execution scene in anxious agitation, rejoicing to lift Daniel to life, quick to send his assailants to their death, and finally fervent in his confession of Daniel’s God. Some points in the story are underlined by the words used. It concerns obedience to God’s law or to state law (‫דת‬, vv. 5, 8). Daniel has done nothing injurious, he suffers no injury, and this shows that God’s realm will never suffer injury (‫חבל‬, vv. 22, 26). The satraps are to take notice of Daniel, they accuse Daniel of taking no notice of the king, the king gives notice that all peoples are to revere Daniel’s God (‫טעם‬, vv. 2, 13, 26). Things seem very disagreeable to the king, then very good (‫ באש‬and its antonym ‫טאב‬, vv. 14, 23). The king goes off to the palace and comes back next morning (‫אזל‬, vv. 18, 19; cf. 2:17, 24). The conspirators can find nothing against Daniel until they find him praying, but he is found innocent before God and found unharmed by the lions (‫שכח‬, vv. 4, 5, 11, 22, 23). They go in a crowd to see the king, to catch Daniel, and to tell the king he must impose execution (‫רגש‬, vv. 6, 11, 15]). While the chapter does not repeat phrases such as the lists of officers and instruments in the companion narrative, ch. 3, it does repeat key words (king, Daniel, realm, seek/petition and find, lion, pit),9 and it includes a set of instances of hendiadys (vv. 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 15; cf. ‫בנגהא‬ . . . ‫“ בשפרפרא‬when morning came . . . at sunrise,” v. 19). OG again represents a different form of the chapter.10

Setting The story contains no concrete pointers toward the Maccabean period; neither the motivation and aims of Daniel’s enemies, nor the harshness of Darius’s edict, nor his concern for Daniel suggest it. Observance of the Sabbath law and of Jewish feasts was proscribed in the second century BC; private prayer was not. Darius’s insistence that petitions be made to him alone does 9

Cf. Di Lella, Daniel, 121. On seek/find, see Arnold, “Wordplay and Narrative Techniques in Daniel 5 and 6,” 482–85. 10 See Meadowcroft, Aramaic Daniel and Greek Daniel, 85–121, for the differences in narrative technique (the way motive is conveyed, the pace of the stories, and the functioning of irony and suspense) and in theological emphasis; more recently Helms, Konfliktfelder der Diaspora und die Löwengrube; also Albertz, Der Gott des Daniel. Collins (Daniel, 262–63) notes that OG is less hyperbolic.

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not correspond to the irreligious actions of Antiochus depicted in 11:36–39; in a dispersion context, private prayer of the kind described here is important. The story might belong to any time in the Persian or Greek period. As with previous chapters, scholars have formulated varying hypotheses regarding earlier forms of the story and stages by which it reached the shape that we know,11 though in this case one of the scholars interested in such hypotheses has commented that “there is little point trying to identify earlier forms of the story.”12 The chapter takes up from ch. 5, illustrating how Daniel continues to function during the reigns of the Median and Persian kings who succeed Belshazzar (5:28; cf. 5:31; 6:1, 28 [6:1, 2, 29]). But its special relationship is with ch. 3, which in a parallel way combines features of court-­conflict tale, confessor legend, aretalogy, and midrash, and holds together factual allusions, traditional motifs, and historical implausibilities. Both chapters are tales of two decrees. Both involve introduction, accusation, sentence, deliverance, and confession. Many words recur: ‫“ אכל קרציהון‬attack,” ‫“ טעם‬notice,” ‫“ שלו‬negligence,” ‫“ שיזב‬deliver,” ‫“ צלח‬flourish,” ‫“ בהתבהלה‬in agitation,” ‫שלט‬ “overpower.” In both, Judahite exiles who have reached positions of authority in the empire are put in a position where a royal edict requires them to abandon a fundamental public concrete expression of their faith. In both, jealous colleagues gather to indict them for their stand, accuse them of slighting the king’s authority, and insist that he implement the unpleasant capital sanction required by the edict. In both, the king does so, ensuring that there is no way they can escape. In both, there is ambiguous talk of the possibility that God may deliver then a description of the king rising in agitation to perceive that God has acted, as the Psalms promise in the context of such experiences, because of the confessors’ trust in him; he has sent one of his heavenly servants into the place of execution, so that the confessors are quite unharmed. In both, the king orders them to be released, and others die in their place. In both, the king declares that all peoples are to recognize the unique power of their God, and the story closes by noting how they continue to flourish. The stories are bracketed together in Heb 11:33–34. Chapter 6 by no means simply repeats ch. 3. The setting is Persian, not Babylonian; Darius’s edict results from his being manipulated, not from his own initiative; Daniel’s accusers are other officials, not other experts; Daniel’s loyalty to the state is emphasized; Daniel’s area of testing is personal prayer, not public religion; it concerns what is forbidden, not what is required; his danger comes from the lion pit, not the furnace; Darius is concerned for Daniel, not enraged; he accepts Daniel’s religious practice instead of seeking to persuade him; he allows for the possibility of God s delivering Daniel rather 11 See e.g., Schlenke, Gottes Reich und Königs Macht. 12 Collins, Daniel, 263.

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313

than excluding it; Daniel makes no statement of his faith; Darius learns of what happens from Daniel rather than witnessing it; he orders the punishment of Daniel’s attackers; he requires empire-­w ide worship of Daniel’s God rather than mere tolerance of the Jews’ religion. Thus some motifs are heightened, some appear in varied form, some are reduced. The correlation between the two stories compares with that between the two cola in a line in OT poetry. Similarities and differences enable us to perceive aspects of the stories’ respective significances. Recurring features may suggest recurring experiences, pressures, challenges, insights, and promises. As well as reflecting the diverse forms these recurrent features may take, distinctive features may highlight important themes: the exiles are to be willing both to maintain their “no” to public practices that are incompatible with their commitment to God and to maintain their “yes” to personal practices that are essential to their commitment to God. Daniel’s deliverance from death prefaces the promise of deliverance after death at the end of the vision sequence (ch. 12), and Darius’s confession recapitulates the affirmations that bring earlier stories to a climax (2:44; 3:28; 4:3, 34).13 Bringing the stories in Dan 1–6 to a close, the chapter offers a final example of the varying behavior of pagan kings, of the varied testing of God’s man, and of the wonderful deeds of his God. But the comparison and contrast with ch. 3 also makes clear that it does not bring the sequence to an unequivocal and positive climax. The pattern of the six chapters suggests that “harmonious resolution is forever provisional. . . . Conflict and resolution are thus cyclic.”14

Comment 1–2 Appointing satraps was apparently an aspect of Darius I’s organization of the realm at the beginning of his reign (522–485), but there were then twenty to twenty-­nine satraps/provinces (so Herodotus, Histories 3.89, Darius’s inscriptions, and the inscription on his tomb). The number 120 compares with the 127 provinces in the time of Darius’s successor, Xerxes (485–465), mentioned in Esth 1:1; 1 Esd 3:2 (to which OG assimilates Dan 6:1). In Darius’s time the satraps were the king’s viceroys in each of the provinces, responsible for security and for the collecting of tribute; “satrap” means “protector of the realm.” But here “satraps” must denote officials in a looser sense, perhaps government officials generally. When control of Babylon passed to Cyrus’s governor Gobryas, most officials in the administration retained the posts they had held under the Babylonians. In Xenophon the word refers to officials appointed by Cyrus and to other rulers who were not satraps in the strict sense 13 Cf. Towner, Daniel, 87. 14 Davies, “Daniel in the Lion’s Den,” 164.

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(e.g., Cyropaedia. 8.11; Hellenica 3.1.10–12).15 It has already been used in Dan 3:2 with reference to the Babylonian period. The form of the word (‫)אחשדרפניא‬ is closer to Median kšatrapan than OP kšas´apawan, which might suggest that it, with the office it denoted, was familiar in Aramaic before the Persian period.16 There is no known parallel to the three “heads,” though compare 1 Esd 3:9; Dan 5:7; also the seven counselors/princes of, e.g., Ezra 7:14; Esth 1:14; Herodotus, Histories 3.71, 76, 83–84.17 As checks on the satraps, Darius I appointed two other officials in each province, a commandant and a civil servant, who reported to the king (Herodotus, Histories 3.128); he also had personal advisers at court.18 3–9 Daniel’s “remarkable spirit” is assumed to be of supernatural origin (see on 4:8 [5]). No doubt the schemers’ claim to represent the entire administration (v. 7) compares with the claim of politicians to represent the consensus of the entire American people.19 To put it more briskly, “the men are lying, of course.”20 An injunction of the kind proposed is otherwise unknown. In Persia the king was not regarded as divine in the Egyptian sense, though in court ceremonial people did obeisance before him as one would to a god, and the general idea that the king is a manifestation or representative of deity and a key mediator with deity appears in Persian writings, as in Mesopotamian and Hellenistic ones (and, in a sense, Israelite ones).21 The injunction satirizes the link that many of Israel’s pagan overlords claimed between their monarchy and the godhead.22 The mockery compares with the disdain shown in Isa 14:13–14; 36–37 toward that link as claimed by Babylon and Assyria, and with the lampooning of the images of Babylonian gods in Isa 40–55, taking the implications of their manufacture to their ridiculous logical conclusion. Daniel lampoons the heads and satraps, too, in his repeated description of them “crashing on and off stage.”23 The satirical form of the story involves a mimicry or mockery that renders the empire ambivalent, and undermines it.24 “Pit” (‫גב‬, v. 7) is an ordinary word for an underground cistern, used for water storage or as a prison—­or for keeping lions.25 Hunting continued to 15 Cf. Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East 2:689; and on satrapies, 689–92, also Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander, 63–67. 16 Cf. Cook, Persian Empire, 242; more generally 77–85, 167–82, etc. 17 Cook sees them as judges rather than ministers (The Persian Empire, 144–45, 167–70). 18 Cook, Persian Empire, 71. 19 Seow, Daniel, 89–90. 20 Nolan Fewell, Circle of Sovereignty, 109. 21 See Widengren, “The Sacral Kingship of Iran”; Frye, Heritage of Persia, 95–97. 22 Walton (“The Decree of Darius the Mede in Daniel 6”) suggests that prayers must be made via the king so that he may ensure that they are offered to Ahura Mazda. 23 Meadowcroft, Aramaic Daniel and Greek Daniel, 97. 24 Frisch, The Danielic Discourse on Empire, 81, following Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 122. 25 See Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia, 46; Keil, Biblischer Kommentar, on the passage; and 2:38 Comment.

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315

be a royal pastime in the Persian period.26 Access to the pit was by the top, into which people would be lowered and from which they would be lifted out (v. 23; cf. Jer 38:6–13). There is no need to suppose that the pit would have a door in the side, like the furnace of ch. 3. The Persian kings were recognized to have the power of life and death and known for their “almost exquisitely horrible” forms of execution.27 The satire continues with the appeal to the permanence of Medo-­Persian law (v. 8), on which compare Esth 1:19; 8:8.28 The law of the state was designed to be proof against evasion or subversion by the king’s subordinates; here Darius will be portrayed as being unable to evade it himself. For the motif, compare the story of Darius III unable to undo the sentence of death on a man who turned out to be innocent (Diodorus 17.30; or is he unable to undo the actual execution?).29 “The one who is put on a (semi-­)divine pedestal is at the same time shown to be naïve and conceited, and therefore open to manipulation by his courtiers.”30 Indeed, “While the officials seem to be concentrating all power in [the] king’s hands, the king . . . is actually falling into the power of the officials.”31 But “a weak, ineffective king—­even a friendly one—­can be as threatening as Nebuchadnezzar.”32 10–15 The torah does not expect a person to pray publicly three times a day. Daniel could easily have found a basis for not doing so. But this law is one that tells him how he cannot worship God.33 “At one level, this story is about the competing demands on Daniel of the ‘law of his God’ . . . and the ‘law of the Medes and Persians.’ ”34 Daniel 6 provides a model of Jewish religious and political resistance.35 The talk of God’s law introduces a new note into Daniel,36 a note that will become increasingly important in connection with the vulnerability of the Jewish people to gentile hostility, issuing from their being “different.” Having an attic that could be used for a private meeting, for guests, or for prayer would be unusual, suggesting a well-­to-­do-­ness that is a sign of Daniel’s status (Judg 3:20; 2 Kgs 1:2; 4:8–11; Jer 22:14; Luke 22:12; Acts 1:13; 9:37, 39;

26 Cook, Persian Empire, 142; for lions, 249 and plate 33. 27 Cook, Persian Empire, 132, 142. 28 On Darius I as a law-giver, see the varying estimates in Olmstead, Persian Empire, 119–34; Frye, Heritage of Persia 104–6; Cook, Persian Empire, 72–73. 29 See Cook, Persian Empire, 132; he also speaks of the venality, corruption, and treachery of the court. 30 Lucas, Daniel, 149. On the position of the king and his relationship with his court that is implicitly satirized, see Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East 2:676–89; Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander, 165–354. 31 Nolan Fewell, Circle of Sovereignty, 110. 32 Pace, Daniel, 195. 33 Gowan, Daniel, on the passage. 34 Lucas, Daniel, 153. 35 Cf. Levinger, “‫דניאל בגוב האריות‬.” 36 Smith-Christopher, “Daniel,” 89.

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20:8). Ordinary people would have a makeshift shelter on the roof for these purposes (1 Sam 9:25; 1 Kgs 17:19; Jdt 8:5; Acts 10:9). Daniel’s practice of prayer is unusual not only for its bravery and its symbolic nature as an expression of commitment. We have no other reference to praying three times a day (Ps 55:17 is surely no more a guide to anyone’s regular practice than is the “seven times” of Ps 119:164) until Didache 8 and m. Ber. 4:1. The times of morning and evening offerings were regular hours for prayer (1 Chr 23:30, cf. Exod 29:38–39; also twice-­daily prayer in 1QS 10.1–3), especially the evening offering (Ps 141:2; Dan 9:21; Ezra 9:5; Jdt 9:1; Acts 3:1; 10:3, 30). Facing the land, the city, and the temple during prayer is emphasized throughout Solomon’s prayer in 1 Kgs 8 but it is referred to rarely elsewhere (Ps 5:7 [8] [in the temple court!]; 1 Esd 4:58; cf. Tob 3:11). Daniel’s praying toward Jerusalem and thus toward the temple at the times when sacrifices were offered is another indication of the book’s emphasis on the temple and its worship.37 In expressions such as ‫“ בעא ומתחנן‬petitioning and seeking favor,” the first verb is a general one for (formal, liturgical) prayer, the second specifies the kind of prayer, a casting oneself on someone’s grace (‫ )חן‬and a pleading (see n. 9:3.b). Further, whereas standing is the regular posture for prayer (1 Chr 23:30; Neh 9; Matt 6:5; Mark 11:25; Luke 18:11, 13), Daniel’s kneeling, which implies prostration, indicates a marked self-­lowering, which elsewhere suggests circumstances of particular solemnity or need (1 Kgs 8:54; Ezra 9:5; Luke 22:41; Acts 7:60; 9:40; 20:36; 21:5). “Before his God” also suggests meekness in the presence of authority: it is the term used for addressing the king (e.g., 2:9, 10, 11), though at the same time it indicates a literal standing in a real person’s presence. “Deliver” and “rescue” are verbs of which God is the usual subject, so it is not surprising that Darius cannot “deliver” or “rescue” Daniel.38 16–24 Kings and others commonly authenticated documents by a signet or other seal (v. 17; 1 Kgs 21:8; Esth 3:12; 8:8, 10).39 Here, apparently cord or cloth was fastened across the rock with clay, which was then impressed with the seals (Herodotus, Histories 1.195).40 We are told nothing of what happened in the lion pit. In parallel with the story in ch. 3 and in contrast with the story of Bel and the Snake, the narrative does not follow Daniel into the lion pit but follows the king.41 There is also a contrast between the restraint of Daniel’s story and the extravagance of (e.g.) the second-­century AD Acts of Paul and Thecla 8–9.42 There is no suggestion that Daniel is exercising lordship over the animal creation in accordance with the purpose envisaged in Gen 1 and that 37 Vogel, “Cultic Motifs and Themes in the Book of Daniel,” 26–27; cf. his more extensive discussion in The Cultic Motif in the Book of Daniel, 113–45. 38 Pace, Daniel, 207. 39 Cf. Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia, 281–82; Olmstead, Persian Empire, 177–78. 40 Cf. Jeffery, “Daniel,” on the passage; Nolan Fewell, Circle of Sovereignty, 110. 41 Cf. Newsom, Daniel, 198. 42 See Hennecke, NT Apocrypha 2:322–90.

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promised in Isa 11:6–9; 65:25. Nor is there any suggestion that the animals had more sense than their master (cf. Num 22:26–33; 1 Sam 6:12) or lacked spirit (like some animals that Ignatius speaks of, To the Romans 5). It is God’s act via his agent that the story relates, not Daniel’s or the lions’. Once again an angel plays a key role in the story.43 The narrative has implied that all the heads and satraps associated themselves with the attack on Daniel, so all 122 (plus wives and children) are apparently killed (v. 24). This feature of the story raises logistical problems, among others: “there were hardly enough lions for such a shopful of meat.”44 Thus OG executes only the two heads,45 a characteristic realistic scaling-­down of the story, but the narrative itself has rather declared that everyone was against Daniel (see vv. 1–7), and the MT’s account at this point corresponds to that earlier emphasis. 25–28 It might be possible to make these affirmations without being “converted” and abandoning the acknowledgment of heathen gods,46 but people listening to the story should not miss the significance of Darius’s confession. It goes far beyond the one at the end of ch. 3 in acknowledging the living, enduring, secure, and active power of Daniel’s God (cf. 4:1–3, 34–37).

Explanation 1–9 A state requires an administration if it is to hold together and if its various parts are to be required to contribute to the expenses of government, and the administration needs internal checks if it is to be protected from the very fissiparous and dishonest tendencies it is designed to safeguard against. Positions within the administration give people the opportunity to reveal their capacity for even higher responsibility. They also give those who reveal this capacity the opportunity to incur the sullen opposition of those who do not. If these malcontents then want to put the others down, a way to do so is to suggest that they are unfaithful or disloyal in their work. It is the more incumbent on them to be blameless in the exercise of their responsibility. One slip gives a hostage to fortune. “Wherever a Daniel comes to the palace of a king and gets honour, there is danger in the air”: the danger of incurring hostility but also the danger of compromise. In fact, “king’s palaces are far more dangerous for Daniel than lions’ dens.”47 Thus the deliverance in the

43 Cf. Alomía, Daniel 2:163–74; and Alomía, Lesser Gods of the Ancient Near East, 439–58. 44 Calvin, Daniel 1–6, 269. He also goes on to discuss the moral issue raised by the king’s action (Daniel 1–6, 270–71). 45 Cf. Young’s declaration that the plot was the work of only a few men (Daniel, on the pssage). 46 Cf. Keil, Biblischer Kommentar, on the passage. On “models” of the way kings come to acknowledge the truth about God and about the Jewish people in Dan 6 and elsewhere, see Donaldson, “Royal Sympathizers in Jewish Narrative.” 47 Lüthi, The Church To Come, 83.

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lion pit is actually the third miracle in the story. The first is his protection from compromise in the palace, and second his protection from compromise in his house.48 Daniel has nothing to fear from his colleagues’ close probing of how he executes his office. Why they decide to subvert his position is not explained. There is a hint of professional jealousy and/or resentment at their being unable to use their office to indulge their own rapacity. There is behind that possibility a hint of what we would now call anti-­Semitism, developed in v. 13. There is behind that phenomenon the mysterious, perverse antagonism toward what is good that people sometimes manifest.49 These are realities already illustrated in the Joseph story, and they will subsequently find mature expression in the cross and in the holocaust. Daniel’s colleagues cannot catch him out, until they perceive that his vulnerability lies in his commitment to God. Daniel’s distinction derives from his remarkable spirit, which reflects God’s involvement in his life and in the shaping of the person he was (5:11–12). At one level there is nothing intrinsically religious about his colleagues’ hostility. The key factor is simply that religion is of key significance to Daniel, and therefore it constitutes his weak point. At another level the possibility of conflict over Daniel’s religious commitment is inherent in his position as a minister of state, for the state characteristically assumes it has quasi-­divine significance. One can see this propensity in the Marxist state and in its opposition to religion, which invites people to accept a higher commitment than that to the state. It can be as real if more subtle in a “Christian” democracy. One can see it in the ancient monarchies’ inclination to claim varying forms of sacral significance. To put Daniel out of the way, jealousy, resentment, anti-­Semitism, and the mystery of human hostility to the good plot to utilize the state’s inclination to deify itself and the believer’s obligation to confess no god but God. The law of Daniel’s God (v. 5) and the law of the Medes and Persians (v. 8) are deliberately brought into conflict. God’s law makes an absolute demand. So does the king’s law, for he contributes to the state’s stability and to the authority of his own position by insisting on the irrevocability of his injunctions: once his decision is declared, it cannot be undone. Such firmness adds strength to good decisions but compounds the weakness of poor ones. In Daniel “imperium is bound up with the individual figure of the monarch; . . . the conduct and character of the king both determines and is determined by the ‘kingdom.’ ”50 Darius’s civil servants’ words and actions imply that their calculating cynicism cares nothing for state, God, or truth. The empire does not know what is in its own interests: fancy stopping people praying, when 48 Lüthi, The Church To Come, 82–88. 49 Cf. Wallace, The Lord Is King, on the passage. 50 Davies, “Daniel in the Lion’s Den,” 162.

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the prayer of the saints is designed to release God’s peace and blessing in the world. Whether they are conscious of it or not, their mad edict contemns and blasphemes God more boldly and dangerously than Belshazzar’s libations did.51 The godless arrogance of the Assyrian king’s field commander and that of the Babylonian king himself (2 Kgs 18–19; Isa 14:13–14; cf. Jdt 3:8; 6:2) reappear in the next of the Middle East’s succession of empires. How much of all this dynamic Darius is assumed to perceive, the story leaves open. Perhaps he is the victim of his own vanity,52 or perhaps he colludes with his ministers because he realizes the advantages to the state of its having quasi-­divine authority, or perhaps he is initially unaware of being manipulated as a puppet by his civil servants in a way which denies the divinity they overtly attribute to him.53 All three possibilities become actual in politics at one time or another. 10 Circumstantial evidence suggests that living in dispersion put pressure on distinctive Jewish practices such as observance of the Sabbath, adherence to the food laws, and the rite of circumcision. In Daniel, the specific emphasis is on a public disavowal of idolatry (ch. 3) and sacrilege (ch. 5) and a personal commitment to purity (ch. 1) and prayer (2:17–23; 6:10; 9:3–20).54 Individual prayer is also prominent in other postexilic writings such as Chronicles-­Ezra-­ Nehemiah and the Psalter, which no doubt reflects the prayer life of post-­exilic Judaism even where individual psalms are of earlier date. Daniel’s response to the prohibition on prayer is to continue praying. There is no fuss or rush about his stand, such as characterizes every action of his assailants. Nor is he a man who has lost his true human freedom. He retains that freedom, while neither civil servants nor king behave as free men. He cannot hide the fact that he prays. When prayer is fashionable, it is time to pray in secret (Matt 6:5–6), but when prayer is under pressure, to pray in secret is to give the appearance of fearing the king more than God: one must render to Caesar, but also render to God (Matt 22:21; cf. Acts 4:18–20; 5:29).55 In OG and Vulg. Daniel opens windows at this point, which makes his prayer more explicitly a deliberate act of active but peaceful resistance,56 though maybe the MT implies the same assumption in drawing attention to the fact that his windows were in the upper floor of his house.57 Either way, Daniel’s “seemingly innocuous act” was “more . . . revolutionary than outright rebellion would have been. Rebellion simply acknowledges the absoluteness 51 Cf. Calvin, Daniel 1–6, 245, 247. 52 Anderson, Signs and Wonders, on the passage. 53 Lacocque, Daniel, on the passage. 54 Lacocque, Daniel, on the passage. 55 Hippolytus, Daniel 3.22. 56 Cf. Smith-Christopher, “Gandhi on Daniel 6” and “Daniel,” 94–95; and for further references, Breed, “History of Reception,” 207–9. 57 So Thodoret, Daniel, 162–63. OG makes motives explicit at a number of points in the chapter, whereas MT is more allusive (Meadowcroft, Aramaic Daniel and Greek Daniel, 90–91).

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and ultimacy of the emperor’s power, and attempts to seize it. Prayer denies that ultimacy altogether by acknowledging a higher power.”58 Daniel assumes that awe for God is the beginning and the essence of insight (Prov 1:7).59 He is prepared to pay “the cost of discipleship.”60 Daniel’s prayer follows his customary practice, but it is a practice that marks him out. People did not commonly have a special prayer room facing Jerusalem, or pray as frequently as Daniel, or adopt the prostrate posture he adopted. He is presumably set forward as a model to which, in at least some of these respects, other people might aspire. They too belong to another city (despite Jer 29), and they need outward ways of demonstrating that they live as strangers among the Babylonians and Persians, whether they feel secure or insecure there.61 The NT points to an application of this principle to the Christian community: see, e.g., Phil 3:20; Heb 13:14. “Prayer and thanksgiving” suggests two major aspects of praying (cf. Phil 4:6). Daniel’s prayer might include intercession for the state in which he lives in exile, as commissioned by Jer 29:7, as well as prayer for Israel itself in exile (cf. Dan 9), also implied by Jer 29:11–14,62 and prayer on his own behalf in his situation of need (cf. Dan 2:17–23). The psalmist who prays three times a day (Ps 55:17 [18]) does so because of the urgency of personal need, interweaving plea with testimony to the conviction that God hears and answers. It is presumably this characteristic confession of the Psalms that is indicated by the “thanksgiving” with which Daniel’s prayer is accompanied (cf. Dan 2:17–23). Daniel is confident that the living God knows his situation and his peril and that he has already determined how he will preserve him through it. It is not unreasonable that Daniel becomes a model of prayer for Jews and Christians.63 11–15 So Daniel is discovered petitioning God when he is allowed to petition the king alone, and he is duly denounced. The accusation includes reference to Daniel’s Judahite origin (cf. 3:12 in a similar context, though also 2:25; 5:13). The other ministers may imply that as a foreigner he cannot really be trusted or that as an exile his maintaining his alien religious practices is a political act, an act of rebellion; but the hint of anti-­Semitism may be stronger here than it was in vv. 4–5. “Kings are powerful persons, but courtiers are skilled at controlling and manipulating royal power.”64 The king is now displeased: perhaps with Daniel, 58 Wink, Naming the Powers, 110–11. 59 Haag, Daniel, 52. 60 Longman, Daniel, 167. 61 Cf. Calvin, Daniel 1–6, 249. 62 Cf. Lederach, Daniel, 132. 63 Cf. Dulaey, “Daniel dans la fosse aux lions,” 39–40; Zissu, “Daniel in the Lion’s Den (?) at Tel Lavnin”; Xeravits, “A Possible Greek Bible Source for Late Antique Synagogue Art”; ———, “The Figure of Daniel in Late Antique Synagogue Art” (but he suggests that Susanna is at least as important an influence). 64 Newsom, Daniel, 197.

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for ignoring his injunction; perhaps with the ministers, for engineering his downfall; perhaps with himself, for being manipulated by them into becoming the victim of his own power and authority; perhaps with the situation in general into which he is now cornered (cf. Herod, Mark 6:26). But the law is the law is the law. If the king accepts it, he has to accept unacceptable constraints and unfairness when the law is an ass; if he suspends it, he risks the collapse of the social order, and ultimately of the state itself.65 16–23 There are parallels and contrasts between the words that take Daniel’s three friends to the furnace (3:15–18) and those that take Daniel to the lion pit. There the king asked, “Who ever is the god who could deliver you from my power?” Here the king declares, “Your God, whom you honor so consistently, he must deliver you” (compare his acknowledgment of “the living God” in v. 20). There, the king’s challenge requires a response and draws forth a magnificent confession from the three men. Here the king has said all that needs to be said, and it is his prayer that resounds in our ears until Daniel testifies to God’s saving power the next day (v. 22). Thus Darius is the one who comes into focus at this point in the story, not Daniel. Yet both confessions manifest ambiguities. Even if it is right that the friends themselves believe that their God can and will rescue them (in 3:17–18), they nevertheless have to grant that only events will demonstrate whether God will. Darius, in turn, uses a form of the verb that leaves open whether God must, will, may, or can rescue Daniel (see n. 16.b). Like other ambiguities in Daniel, the lack of clarity over whether Darius offers a challenge to God, or a statement of faith, or a wistful hope functions to invite the hearer to decide what he or she would mean in a situation of this kind. On the other hand, perhaps “the royal prayer is revealed for what it is—­a washing of hands. Poor divided man!”66 Daniel’s fate is sealed. He is destined for a night in a five-­star lion pit.67 It will neither be possible for his friends to feed the lions or engineer his survival in some other way, nor for his enemies to kill him if the lions do not.68 Further, there is a deeper matter at issue than the conflict between Daniel’s foes and his friends. The king has spoken of the possibility of God’s delivering Daniel, and the sealing will make it necessary for God to prove himself in an extraordinary way if he is to act at all. “In testing Daniel, the king knows . . . that he is testing God.”69 Darius is unable to eat, relax, or sleep as he awaits the outcome of the action forced on him. Perhaps he is even praying against the effectiveness of

65 Cf. Calvin’s worries, Daniel 1–6, 246. 66 Berrigan, Daniel, 104. 67 Alomía, Daniel 2:157. 68 Cf Rashi in ‫ מקראות גדולות‬on the passage. 69 Lacocque, Daniel, on the passage.

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his action70 or expressing his penitence for his foolish injunction.71 Perhaps we are to recall the Babylonian custom whereby a prisoner who was tortured but survived overnight was then pardoned.72 When daylight comes, Darius returns to the lion pit in turmoil and trepidation instead of in the stately dignity and composure of a monarch. By addressing Daniel so as to ask whether he has survived the ordeal, he builds up our expectation that actually he has done so. By inquiring whether the “living God” has been able to preserve Daniel, he speaks of that God in terms that contain the seeds of the answer to his question: this rich OT title for God suggests not merely that God is alive rather than dead but that he is active and powerful, awesome and almighty, involved in bringing judgment and blessing. The title is appealed to when human beings are inclined to slight him or to doubt him in situations of pressure and weakness (Deut 5:26; Josh 3:10; 1 Sam 17:26; 2 Kgs 19:4; Jer 10:10; 23:36; Hos 1:10 [2:1]; Ps 42:2 [3]; 84:2 [3]; oaths are taken “by the living God”—­that is, at the risk of his intervening in case of default). So Darius’s confession of “the living God” also builds up our expectation regarding what we are about to discover. Daniel’s calm and polite reply, observing courtly protocol, underlines by contrast the king’s anxiety and agitation. At the same time his “Long live the king” strikingly affirms Darius’s kingship. It is the first time the phrase has occurred on the lips of Daniel or his friends (cf. Neh 2:3). If to be the living God implies activity and power, to be the living king implies having a share in God’s life and power.73 Daniel’s prayer that Darius may do so both honors and relativizes Darius’s kingship by the interweaving of references to the living God with those to the living king (vv. 6, 20, 21, 26), as have his earlier affirmations of Nebuchadnezzar’s kingship as God given (2:37; 5:18). As Daniel’s friends were not preserved from the furnace, so Daniel has not been preserved from the lion pit; as the divine aide entered the furnace to stand with Daniel’s friends, so God has sent his aide into the pit to stand with Daniel; as Daniel’s friends were preserved in the furnace, so is Daniel in the lion pit. The first generation of Christian believers sometimes had similar experiences. They refused to obey human beings rather than God and found themselves in prison: but the Lord’s aide opened the prison doors and released them (Acts 4:18–20; 5:19–20; 12:1–10; 16:19–26). So “what happens when a state executes those who are praying for it?” Even if God does not rescue them, it is “demonstrating the emperor’s powerlessness to impose his will even by death. The final sanction had been publicly robbed of its power. Even as the lions lapped the blood of the saints, Caesar was stripped of his arms 70 71 72 73

So Plöger, Daniel, on the passage. So Delcor, Daniel, on the passage. Cf. Lacocque, Daniel, on the passage. Cf. de Boer, “‘Vive le roi!’” On the significance of the title, see further, Lederach, Daniel, 142–44.

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and led captive in Christ’s triumphal procession. His authority was shown to be only penultimate after all.”74 Daniel 6 is “a tale of two empires.” But in this tale, evening stands for the sun setting on Persian dominion, night is a time of trial, and sunrise stands for the rising of God’s dominion.75 One might indeed see the casting into a lion pit (like the casting into the furnace in ch. 3) as a trial by ordeal rather than a simple execution.76 The message of Dan 6 is not that the innocent, believing confessor can always expect to be saved from martyrdom. “On occasion, and for a time only, and even then rarely, the just are protected from suffering and death at the hands of a brigand authority.”77 Although the promise of Ps 91:10–13 generalizes the experience of Daniel, and/or although “Daniel’s reply is a commentary on Psalm 91:9–13,”78 the psalmist and the author of Daniel know that life often does not turn out thus. The promise may more often hold in a metaphorical sense (cf. Pss 22:13, 21 [24, 22]; 124:6; Rom 8:36–37; 2 Tim 4:17), and the listeners are no doubt entitled to rejoice in the story’s implicit promise of such divine protection. God does grant a victory of life over death, of innocence over guilt, of justice over enmity, of hope over fear. People who lose their life will save it. In Daniel’s day, in that of the early Christians, and in our own, the lions that are set upon the children of God often do devour them. They experience not only the pit (and are rescued from death) but the Pit itself. Thus in closing one of his lectures on Dan 6, Calvin prays, “Grant, Almighty God, . . . that we may be prepared to live and to die for you and not seek anything else than to maintain the pure and sincere service of your Godhead.”79 For Jews and Christians, the stories of Daniel and his friends who were prepared to go to martyrdom have been important to faithful confessors who did go to martyrdom.80 The story affirms that occasional experiences of divine intervention are more important than regular experiences of divine non-­ intervention. That affirmation invites us to a more God-­centered perspective: the fulfilling of God’s purpose, whether by my deliverance or by my death, is what matters, not the fulfilling of what is most comfortable to me (cf. Phil 1:12–20). The story recognizes, however, that our deliverance matters to us. We are not expected to manifest a heroism that cares nothing for our own destiny. The book of Daniel sets the individual’s experience of attack by wild beasts and of being thrown into the pit into a wider and at first more threatening context, but one that is then comforting. In Dan 7 a lion-­like animal will be 74 Wink, Naming the Powers, 111. 75 Boogaart, “Daniel 6,” 107, 111. 76 Cf. Longman, Daniel, 162–63. 77 Berrigan, Daniel, 91. 78 Lederach, Daniel, 136. 79 Calvin, Daniel 1–6, 269. 80 See e.g., Lederach, Daniel, 144–47; and this theme in the early centuries of the church as illustrated in iconography (see Sörries, Daniel in der Löwengrube).

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the first to typify the gentile world powers, more threatening now than they were pictured in ch. 2, but destined for defeat. Daniel 12 then encourages us to look to deliverance after death if not before it, and Christ’s resurrection is the proof that such a deliverance is not fanciful hope (thus Phil 1:21–26 continues Paul’s reflection). Daniel’s deliverance from the pit in this age anticipates and promises a more general deliverance from the pit into a new age; there, too, God’s aide comes to deliver those who have obeyed God rather than Caesar, so that they may yet look in triumph on their attackers and testify to the power of the living God.81 But the story also witnesses to the reality that the powers of the age to come can be operating now.82 Even though its form invites us not to take it as a straightforward narrative of historical events, its logic requires that some concrete experience of God acting in marvelous ways in this age underlies it, and its implication is that we may occasionally look for such experiences in this age. Daniel’s adversaries have attempted to make it impossible for him to remain innocent before God and loyal to the state, but they have failed. He has obeyed God rather than the human king, but he has done no injury to the state. He has not been guilty of rebellion or treachery. By putting loyalty to God above loyalty to the state he has been loyal to the truth and thus more loyal to the state than those who make of it more than it is—­and certainly than those who use it to serve their own ends, as his adversaries have. It is appropriate for the king to be glad that his attempt at execution has failed. Darius’s state of mind has been in focus for some while. We have not been told what Daniel was feeling. Lest we had not assumed it, however, we are assured that Daniel’s ability to shut the lions’ mouths derived from his standing firm in his trust in God (Heb 11:33). He himself prefers to speak of God shutting their mouths; and we should not even assume that God is limited to delivering those who are innocent and trusting.83 That assumption would mean falling into an error akin to that of Job’s friends. Daniel’s trust in God did not imply that he was confident of a miraculous deliverance; his trust will have been like Job’s and like that of his three friends (3:17–18).84 24 That Daniel’s adversaries should be executed in his place is in keeping with Deut 19:16–21; Prov 19:5, 9; 21:28; Esth 7:10. It is more broadly in keeping with the prophetic promise that as Israel is saved, her oppressors will be turned upon themselves and annihilated (Isa 41:11–12; 49:25–26). That their families should suffer with them is in keeping with Num 16:27–33; Josh 7:24–25; Esth 9:25; Isa 13:15–16; though it contrasts with Deut 24:16; 2 Kgs 14:6. “Are we to

81 82 83 84

Cf. Hippolytus, Daniel 3.29–31. Cf. Philip, By the Rivers of Babylon, on the passage. Cf. Towner, Daniel, on the passage. Cf. Calvin, Daniel 1–6, 268.

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applaud the deaths of the innocent in this passage, or, as at the traditional Passover seder, do we set aside a moment to remember the death of innocent Egyptians in the liberation of Israel?”85 We may of course do so, though the instinct of Jews and Christians at this point differs from that of the text. The MT is more interested in the way judgment is the other side of the coin of deliverance (as is regularly the case),86 and in the promise that wickedness gets its comeuppance. It recognizes that the destiny and the fate of families is tied up for good and for ill with that of the head of the family and that guilt and innocence are not simply individual matters. Perhaps the story implies no moral judgment on the event beyond the implication that “life is like that (so watch it).” It very well illustrates maxims in Proverbs (see especially 26:27; 28:10; cf. Pss 7:15 [16]; 9:15 [16]; 57:6 [7]). Perhaps we need again to recall that this narrative is not a piece of history but a dramatized warning and promise of God’s judgment on wickedness. Josephus has Daniel’s accusers saying that the lions fail to eat Daniel because they have been fed; the lions’ appetite for their subsequent victims then proves that Daniel’s escape was a miracle (Ant. 10.11.6 [10.262]). 25–28 From the beginning, Darius has been more sympathetic to Daniel and his faith than Nebuchadnezzar was to Daniel’s friends; at the end, he acknowledges Daniel’s God more fully. Through his entire empire, Daniel’s God is not merely to be tolerated but to be worshiped with reverence and awe. The other side to the vision of the Prophets comes true (Isa 42:1–12; 49:1–7; Zech 2:15 [11]; 8:20–23); Daniel has himself functioned as a light to enlighten the gentiles.87 While heathen powers suffer if they oppose God and his servants, they do have the opportunity to find God through his servants and themselves to serve God. Nations were created by God (cf. Gen 10, at the end of the creation story), they rebelled against him as the individual men and women did (Gen 11), but they are destined to worship (Rev 15:4; 21:26; 22:26). The worship called for here is an anticipation of that which they will give at the end—­even though in the meantime rebellion will more often characterize them.88 The pagan king brings the story to its climax as he expresses the wonder to which the hearers are invited as they enter into Daniel’s story. The chapter is the story of two decrees:89 Darius revokes his irrevocable decree and replaces it by another. Perhaps his second decree is as foolish as his earlier injunction and his order to kill Daniel’s adversaries. Compulsion or violence cannot be effective on God’s behalf any more than in opposition to him.90 Daniel has 85 Smith-Christopher, “Daniel,” 93. 86 Cf. Haag, Daniel, 55. 87 Gammie, Daniel, on the passage. 88 Wink, Naming the Powers, 97–99. Frisch considers further the role of Gen 10 as a foil in Dan 1–6 (The Danielic Discourse on Empire in Second Temple Literature, 107–12). 89 Anderson, Signs and Wonders, on the passage. 90 Cf. Kennedy, “Daniel,” on the passage.

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“an explicit yet sophisticated ideology of empire and a philosophy of history” but an ideology that is “characterized by ambivalence.”91 This ambivalence is illustrated by the subtle two-­way implications of Darius’s encyclical. On one hand, like Nebuchadnezzar’s encyclical, Darius’s encyclical presupposes and expresses Darius’s own authority. “Subversion of imperial power in the name of divine power, far from demonstrating their incompatibility, in fact helps secure the continued vitality of imperial power. Darius may be made to give voice to the subversive notion that his power is evanescent, but he does so only in the context of a robust exercise of his own power.”92 “God is reduced to an ordinance.”93 Daniel 6 describes the conflict of two systems of worship. The false worship of the state abolishes the true worship of God by enforcing exclusive worship of the state as embodied in the emperor. Daniel maintains fidelity to the true worship, with its ties to the Jerusalem temple and its liturgy, and so is forced to recapitulate in himself the experience of the psalmist. However, the result is that the true worship is endorsed and promoted by the very head of the false worship, the emperor himself.94 Such considerations highlight the symbolic significance of each of these elements in the story. They witness to the fact that pagan powers do put believers under pressure but that these powers are destined to be defeated and ultimately to bow before the name that is above every name (Isa 45:23; Phil 2:10–11). Daniel 6 is not merely a story about a miraculous escape from martyrdom but about all human claims to immutability yielding to God’s abiding law and will (there is simply no contest between the two) and about the miracle of the king himself acknowledging the fact.95 The encyclical does underline the higher authority of the one to whom it bears witness. The world powers testify to the sovereign authority of God, which they have seen at work. Once more the familiar affirmations of Israel’s hymns issue from unexpected lips and express a new message. The impossible legal requirement that people tremble with fear before Daniel’s God gains part of its significance from the fact that its author is the person before whom people have earlier trembled with fear (5:19). Something similar happens when Darius once again describes God as the living God and testifies to his being the one who endures for ever. Daniel has just greeted him with that standard wish “Long live the king” (literally, “May the king live forever”): the courtly homage is relativized by the royal confession. To be living is to be active and powerful: the living God is enthroned as King forever (Pss 10:16; 29:10), and he can therefore also be his people’s savior. Even if the divine victory that the chapter portrays will be consistently demonstrated only in the age to come, the story portrays God 91 Davies, “Daniel in the Lion’s Den,” 160, 161. 92 Polaski, “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin,” 668. 93 Nolan Fewell, Circle of Sovereignty, 118. 94 Bergsma, “Cultic Kingdoms in Conflict,” 56. 95 Towner, Daniel, on the passage.

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demonstrating his power in this age, and on this basis Darius acknowledges a power that persists through the ages. And Daniel, far from being put out of the way, is established in a position that he retains through Darius’s reign and into the next. As dynasties pass (Babylonian, Median, Persian), the Judahite presence persists and grows in importance. Darius’s earlier plan to give Daniel a special position is more than fulfilled. It is possible for the faithful Judahite not only to survive but to triumph. The story as a whole has a series of motifs parallel to Ps 2. Heathen rulers have mustered and devised their plot, but God has acted on behalf of his servant, giving him the power to have them torn to pieces, to rule over their realm, and to compel them to serve God with trembling fear. They are to heed the decree of which his servant speaks, to learn a wisdom they do not yet possess, and to put their trust where he puts his. The first Christians saw this psalm recapitulated in the story of Jesus (Acts 4:26–28), and they might also have seen Daniel’s experience recapitulated there.96 Jesus, too, is the victim of conspiracy and betrayal by people whose position is threatened by him and who seek occasion to manipulate higher authorities into executing him, professing that they have no king but Caesar. They, too, will eventually pay for their hostility, along with their children. He, too, is arrested at his customary place of prayer. These higher authorities, too, find no fault in him and labor to free him but are reminded that the law forbids it. He, too, has to rely on God to deliver him as his tomb is sealed. Indeed, he actually dies, and injury can be found on him after he comes back from the dead: more extraordinary is it, then, that very early, at sunrise, he is discovered to be alive after all, too. Daniel is a new kind of Jewish hero.97 At the conclusion of the stories, we might look back and sum up the picture of their hero that we have been given. He is one who: • acts with conviction (1:8–14), • is given “knowledge and skill” from God, in literature and insight (1:17), • is exceptionally wise and understanding (1:20), • can speak with “prudence and discretion” (2:14), • turns to God when confronted with difficulty (2:18), • attributes to God not to his own insight his receipt of revelation (2:30), • is recognized by Nebuchadnezzar as “endowed with a spirit of the holy, divine gods” (4:8, 18), • is willing to speak truth to power even when the prospect distresses and terrifies him (4:19–26), 96 So Derrett, “Daniel”; for the comparison, see Aphrahat, Demonstration 21.18 (NPNF 2/13:399). 97 See Langlois, “Loin des yeux, non du coeur.”

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• counsels Nebuchadnezzar to break off his wrongdoing by doing right (4:27), • is possessed of “an excellent spirit” according to the queen mother (5:12), • has a reputation for enlightenment, understanding, and insight (5:14), • refuses to accept rewards for his interpretive work (5:17), • is distinguished in his work in Darius’s government because he has “an excellent spirit” (6:3), • is beyond reproach in terms of his work: neither negligent nor corrupt (6:4), • values prayer more highly than obedience to the (civil) law (6:10), • and trusts in God (6:23).98

98 Adapted from Briggs, “‘I Perceived in the Books.’” 115–16.

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VII. God On High Reveals the World’s Destiny to Daniel (7:1–28) Pericope Bibliography Abbott, E. A. “The Son of Man.” Altpeter, G. Textlinguistische Exegese alttestamentlicher Literatur. Angel, A. “The Sea in 4Q541 7.3 and in Daniel 7:2.” Aspinwall, W. An Explication and Application of the Seventh Chapter of Daniel. Baeck, L. “Der ‘Menschensohn.’ ” Balz, H. R. Methodische Probleme der neutestamentlichen Christologie, 48–112. Barrett, C. K. “The Background of Mark 10:45.” Beasley-­Murray, G. R. Jesus and the Kingdom of God. —­—­—­. “The Interpretation of Daniel 7.” Beek, M. A. “Zeit, Zeiten und eine halbe Zeit.” Bentzen, A. Messias— ­Moses redivivus— ­Menschensohn. —­—­—­. “King Ideology—­‘Urmensch’—­‘Troonbestijgingsfeest.’  ” Beyerle, S. “ ‘Der mit den Wolken des Himmels kommt,’ ” in Gottessohn und Menschensohn, 1–52. Bietenhard, H. “ ‘Der Menschensohn.’ ” Black, M. “The ‘Son of Man’ in the Old Biblical Literature.” —­—­—­. “Die Apotheose Israels: Eine neue Interpretation des danielischen ‘Menschensohns’ ” —­—­—­. “The ‘Parables’ of Enoch (1 En 37–71) and the ‘Son of Man.’ ” —­—­—­. “The Throne-­Theophany Prophetic Commission and the ‘Son of Man.’ ” Blasius, A. “Antiochus IV Epiphanes and the Ptolemaic Triad.” Borsch, F. H. The Son of Man in Myth and History. Bousset, W. Die Religion des Judentums. Bowker, J. “The Son of Man.” Bowman, J. “The Background of the Term ‘Son of Man.’ ” Boyarin, D. “Daniel 7, Intertextuality, and the History of Israel’s Cult.” Brekelmans, C. H. W. “The Saints of the Most High and Their Kingdom.” Bruce, F. F. “The Background to the Son of Man Sayings.” Buchanan, G. W. “The Son of Man in Daniel and Enoch,” in To the Hebrews, 42–48. Burnier-­Genton,  J. Le rêve subversif d’un sage. Buzy, D. “Les symbols de Daniel.” Campbell, J. Y. “The Origin and Meaning of the Term ‘Son of Man.’ ” Caquot, A. “Sur les quatre bêtes de Daniel vii.” —­—­—­. “Les quatre bêtes et le ‘Fils d’homme’ (Daniel 7).” Caragounis, C. C. “Greek Culture and Jewish Piety: The Clash and the Fourth Beast of Daniel 7.” —­—­—­. “History and Supra-­ History,” in van der Woude (ed.), The Book of Daniel, 387–97. —­—­—­. “The Interpretation of the Ten Horns of Daniel 7.” —­—­—­. The Son of Man. Carpzov, J. B. De Filio Hominis ad antiquum dierum delato. Casey, [P.] M. “The Corporate Interpretation of ‘One Like a Son of Man’ (Dan. vii 13) at the Time of Jesus.” —­—­—­. Son of Man. —­—­—­. The Solution to the “Son of Man” Problem. —­—­—­. “The Use of the Term ‘Son of Man’ in the Similitudes of Enoch.” Caspari, W. “Die Gottesgestalt in Daniel.” Cheyne, T. K. Bible Problems and the New Material for Their Solution, 213–35. Collins, J. J. “The Danielic Son of Man.” —­—­—­. “The Son of Man and the Saints of the Most High in the Book of Daniel.” —­—­—­. “Stirring up the Great Sea.” Colpe, C. “ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου.” —­—­—­. “Der Begriff ‘Menschensohn.’ ” —­—­—­. “Neue Untersuchungen zum Menschensohn-­ Problem.” —­—­—­. “Kearns, Rollin: Vorfragen zur Christologie. I.” Coppens, J. “Le chapitre vii de Daniel.” —­—­—­. “Dan., vii, 1–18—note additionnelle.” —­—­—­. “Daniel vii, un rituel d’intronisation?” —­—­—­. “Le Fils d’homme daniélique et les relectures de Dan., vii, 13.” —­—­—­. “Le Fils d’homme daniélique, vizir céleste?” —­—­—­. “L’interprétation collective du Fils d’homme daniélique.” —­—­—­. “Le messianisme sapiential et les origines littéraires du Fils de l’homme daniélique.” —­—­—­. “Un nouvel essai d’interpréter Dan., vii.” —­—­—­. “L’origine du symbole du ‘Fils d’homme.’ ” —­—­—­. “Les origines du symbole du Fils d’homme en Dan., vii.” —­—­—­. La relève

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apocalyptique du messianisme royal 2: Le Fils d’homme vétéro-­et intertestamentaire. —­—­—­. “Les Saints du Très-­Haut sont-­ils à identifier avec les milices célestes?” —­—­—­. “Le Serviteur de Yahvé et le Fils d’homme daniélique sont ils des figures messianiques?” —­—­—­. “La vision daniélique du Fils d’homme.” —­—­—­. “La vision du Très-­Haut en Dan., vii et Hén. éthiop. xiv.” Creed, J. M. “The Heavenly Man.” Dalman, G. H. Die Worte Jesu, 191–219 (ET 234–67). Day, J. God’s Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea. Deissler, A. “Der ‘Menschensohn’ und ‘das Volk der Heiligen des Höchsten’ in Dan 7.” Delcor, M. “Les sources du chapitre vii de Daniel.” Dequeker, L. “Daniel vii et les Saints du Très-­Haut.” —­—­—­. “Les qedôšîm du Ps. lxxxix à la lumière des croyances sèmitiques.” —­—­—­. “The ‘Saints of the Most High’ in Qumran and Daniel.” [Ps-­] Dexter, F. L. In prophetiam Danielis de quatuor animalibus. Dhanis, E. “De filio hominis in VT et in Judaismo.” Dodd, C. H. According to the Scriptures. Donahue, J. R. “Recent Studies on the Origin of ‘Son of Man’ in the Gospels.” Dumbrell, W. J. “Daniel 7 and the Function of OT Apocalyptic.” Eggler, J. Influences and Traditions Underlying the Vision of Daniel 7:2–14. Emerton, J. A. “The Origin of the Son of Man Imagery.” Engnell, I. “E. Sjöberg, Der Menschensohn im äthiopischen Henochbuch.” —­—­—­. “Die Urmenschvorstellung und das AT.” —­—­—­. “Människosonen” (ET “The Son of Man”). Ferch, A. J. The Son of Man in Daniel 7. Feuillet, A. “Le Fils de l’homme de Daniel et la tradition biblique.” Fiebig, P. Der Menschensohn. Fitzmyer, J. A. “The NT Title ‘Son of Man’ Philologically Considered.” —­—­—­. “Another View of the ‘Son of Man’ Debate.” Fletcher-­L ouis, C. H. T. “The High Priest as Divine Mediator in the Hebrew Bible.” Frank, R. M. “The Description of the ‘Bear’ in Dn 7,5.” Gall, A. G. von. Βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ. Gardner, A. E. “Daniel 7,2–14: Another Look at Its Mythic Pattern.” —­—­—­. “Decoding Daniel: The Case of Dan 7,5.” —­—­—­. “The Great Sea of Dan. vii 2.” Gaster, M. “The Son of Man and the Theophany in Daniel, ch. vii.” Gaston, L. “The Son of Man.” Gelston, A. “A Sidelight on the ‘Son of Man.’ ” Gerlemann, G. Der Menschensohn. Gese, H. “Der Messias” (ET “The Messiah”). —­—­—­. “Die Weisheit, der Menschensohn und die Ursprünge der Christologie” (ET “Wisdom, Son of Man, and the Origins of Christology”). Ginsberg, H. L. “ ‘King of Kings’ and ‘Lord of Kingdoms.’ ” Glasson, T. F. The Second Advent. —­—­—­. “The Son of Man Imagery.” Goldingay, J. “ ‘Holy Ones on High’ in Daniel 7:18.” Graham, E. A. “The Heavenly Man.” Gray, J. The Biblical Doctrine of the Reign of God. Grelot, P. “Daniel vii, 9–10 et le livre d’Hénoch.” Gressmann, H. Der Messias, 343–414. —­—­—­. Der Ursprung der israelitisch-­ jüdischen Eschatologie, 334–49. Gross, H. “Der Messias im AT.” Gulley, N. R. “Why the Danielic Little Horn Is Not Antiochus IV Epiphanes,” in Merling (ed.), To Understand the Scriptures, 191–97. Haag, E. “Der Menschensohn und die Heiligen (des) Höchsten,” in van der Woude (ed.), The Book of Daniel, 137–185. —­—­—­. “Psalm 80 und der Menschensohn.” Haller, M. “Das Alter von Daniel 7.” Hanhart, K. “The Four Beasts of Daniel’s Vision in the Night in the Light of Rev. 13.2.” Hanhart, R. “Die Heiligen des Höchsten.” Hardt, H. von der. Danielis quatuor animalia. Hasel, G. F. “The First and Third Years of Belshazzar.” —­—­—­. “The Identity of ‘the Saints of the Most High.’ ” Haupt, P. “The Son of Man.” —­—­—­. “Hidalgo and filius hominis.” Hertlein, E. Die Menschensohnfrage im letzten Stadium. —­—­—­. “Die Wolken des ‘Menschensohns.’ ” Herzfeld, E. Zoroaster and His World. Higgins, A. J. B. “Son of Man-­Forschung since ‘The Teaching of Jesus.’ ” Hill, D. “ ‘Son of Man’ in Psalm 80 v. 17.” Hofius, O. “Der Septuaginta-­Text von Daniel 7, 13–14.” Hommel, F. “The Apocalyptic Origin of the Expression ‘Son of Man.’ ” Hooker, M. D. The Son of Man in Mark. Horbury, W. “The Messianic Associations of ‘the Son of Man.’ ” Kearns, R. Vorfragen zur Christologie. Keel, O. “Die Tiere und die Mensch in Daniel 7,” in Delgado et al. (eds.), Europa, Tausendjähriges Reich und Neue Welt, 37–65. Keel, O., and U. Staub, Hellenismus und Judentum. Kim, D. “Biblical Interpretation in the Book of Daniel,”

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186–249. Kim, S. “The ‘Son of Man’ ” as the Son of God. Kobelski, P. J. Melchizedek and Melchireša‘. Koch, K. “Der ‘Menschensohn’ in Daniel.” —­—­—­. “Das Reich der Heiligen und des Menschensohns.” Koep, L. Das himmlische Buch im Antike und Christentum. König, E. “Der Menschensohn im Danielbuche.” Korner, R. J. “ The ‘Exilic’ Prophecy of Daniel 7.” K raeling, C. H. Anthropos and Son of Man. Kraeling, E. G. H. “Some Babylonian and Iranian Mythology in the Seventh Chapter of Daniel.” Kristensen, W. B. “De term ‘Zoon des Menschen.’ ” Kruse, H. “Compositio Libri Danielis et idea Filii Hominis.” Kvanvig, H. S. “An Akkadian Vision as Background for Dan 7.” —­—­—­. “Henoch und der Menschensohn.” —­—­—­. Roots of Apocalyptic. —­—­—­. “Struktur und Geschichte in Dan 7,1–14.” Lacocque, A. “Allusions to Creation in Daniel 7,” in Collins/Flint (eds.), The Book of Daniel 1:114–31. —­—­—­. “The Vision of the Eagle in 4 Esdras, a Rereading of Daniel 7.” Lamberigts, S. “Le sens de de ‫ קדושים‬dans les textes de Qumrân.” Lenchak, T. A. “Puzzling Passages.” Lopez, K. M. “Standing Before the Throne of God.” Lucas, E. C. “The Source of Daniel’s Animal Imagery.” Lust, J. “Daniel 7, 13 and the Septuagint.” Luther, M. Heerpredigt wider den Türken. Macumber, H. “A Monster without a Name.” Maddox, R. “The Quest for Valid Methods in ‘Son of Man’ Research.” Manson, T. W. “The Son of Man in Daniel, Enoch, and the Gospels.” Marlow, R. “The Son of Man in Recent Journal Literature.” Marsch, E. Biblische Prophetie und chronographische Dichtung: Stoff -­und Wirkungsgeschichte der Vision des Propheten Daniel nach Dan. vii. Marshall, I. H. “The Son of Man in Contemporary Debate.” Mastin, B. A. “A Feature of the Dates in the Aramaic Portions of Ezra and Daniel.” Meadowcroft, T. J. “ ‘One Like a Son of Man’ in the Court of the Foreign King.” Müller, K. “Beobachtungen zur Entwicklung der Menschensohnvorstellung in den Bilderreden des Henoch und im Buche Daniel.” —­—­—­. “Menschensohn und Messias.” —­—­—­. “Der Menschensohn im Danielzyklus.” Moloney, F. J. “The End of the Son of Man?” More, J. A Trumpet Sounded: or, The Great Mystery of the Two Little Horns Unfolded. Morenz, S. “Das Tier mit den Hörnern.” Morgenstern, J. “Jesus as the ‘Son of Man.’ ” —­—­—­. “The ‘Son of Man’ of Daniel 7 13f.” Mosca, P. G. “Ugarit and Daniel 7.” Moule, C. F. D. “From Defendant to Judge—­ and Deliverer”. —­—­—­. “Neglected Features in the Problem of ‘the Son of Man.’ ” Mowinckel, S. He That Cometh. —­—­—­. “Urmensch und ‘Königsideologie.’ ” Muilenburg, J. “The Son of Man in Daniel and the Ethiopic Apocalypse of Enoch.” Müller, U. B. Messias und Menschensohn in jüdischen Apokalypsen und in der Offenbarung des Johannes. Munnich, O. “Retouches rédactionnelles au texte proto-­massorétique.” Niditch, S. The Symbolic Vision in Biblical Tradition, 177–215. Noth, M. “Zur Komposition des Buches Daniel.” —­—­—­. “Die Heiligen des Höchsten” (ET “The Holy Ones of the Most High”). Orrieux,  L.-­M . “Le problème du Fils de l’Homme dans la littérature apocalyptique.” Owen, J. “Concerning the Kingdom of Christ, and the Power of the Civil Magistrate about the Things of the Worship of God.” Patterson, R. D. “The Key Role of Daniel 7.” Perrin, N. “The Son of Man in Ancient Judaism and Primitive Christianity.” —­—­—­. “The Interpretation of a Biblical Symbol.” Porter, P. A. Metaphors and Monsters. Poythress, V. S. “The Holy Ones of the Most High in Daniel vii.” Procksch, O. “Die Berufungsvision Hesekiels.” —­—­—­. “Christus im AT.” Proudman, C. L. J. “Remarks on the ‘Son of Man.’ ” Raabe, P. R. “Daniel 7.” Rhodes, A. B. “The Kingdoms of Men and the Kingdom of God.” Rimbach, J. A. “Bears or Bees? Sefire I A 31 and Daniel 7.” Rost, L. “Zur Deutung des Menschensohnes in Daniel 7.” Rowe, R. D. “Is Daniel’s ‘Son of Man’ Messianic?” Roxas, A. de. Commentarii in Apocalypsin, et in cap. iv. Zachariae, et vii. Danielis, 526–42. Sahlin, H. “Wie wurde ursprünglich die Benennung ‘Der Menschensohn’ verstanden?” Schaberg, J. “Daniel 7, 12 and the NT Passion-­ R esurrection Predictions.” Scheifler, J. R. “El hijo del hombre en Daniel.” Schmid, H. “Daniel, der Menschensohn.” Schmidt, N. “The ‘Son of Man’ in the Book of Daniel.” Schweizer, E.

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“The Son of Man Again.” Scolnic, B. “Antiochus IV and the Three Horns in Daniel 7.” Scott, R. B. Y. “Behold, He Cometh with Clouds.” Setio, R. “Fantasy in Apocalyptic Daniel 7.” Shea, W. H. “The Neo-­Babylonian Historical Setting for Daniel 7.” —­—­—­. “Judgment in Daniel 7,” in Shea, Selected Studies, 111–53. Shepherd, M. B. “Daniel 7:13 and the NT Son of Man.” Sjöberg, E. “‫ בן אדם‬und ‫ בר אנש‬im Hebräischen und Aramäischen.” Smith, M. S. “The ‘Son of Man’ in Ugaritic.” Sokoloff, M. “ ‘a˘mar ne˘qe¯’, ‘Lamb’s Wool’ (Dan 7:9).” Stahl, R. “ ‘Eine Zeit, Zeiten und die Hälfte der Zeit,’ ” in van der Woude (ed.), The Book of Daniel, 480–94. Staub, U. “Das Tier mit den Hörnern.” Stokes, R. E. “The Throne Visions of Daniel 7, 1 Enoch 14, and the Qumran Book of Giants (4Q530).” Stott, W. “ ‘Son of Man’—­ a Title of Abasement.” Stuckenbruck, L. T. “ ‘One like a Son of Man as the Ancient of Days.’ ” —­—­—­. “The Throne Theophany of the Book of Giants: Some New Light on the Background of Daniel 7.” Süring, M. L. “The Horn-­motifs of the Bible and the Ancient Near East.” Theisohn, J. Der auserwählte Richter. Tillmann, F. “Der Menschensohn.” Towner, W. S. “Were the English Puritans ‘the Saints of the Most High’?” Tuckett, C. “Recent Work on the Son of Man.” Van Henten, J. W. “Antiochus IV as a Typhonic Figure in Daniel 7,” in van der Woude (ed.), The Book of Daniel, 223–43. Vermes, G. Jesus the Jew, 160–91. —­—­—­. “The Present State of the ‘Son of Man’ Debate.” —­—­—­ “The Use of ‫בר נשא‬/ ‫ בר נש‬in Jewish Aramaic.” Viviano, B. T. “The Trinity in the OT: From Daniel 7:13–14 to Matt 28:19.” Völter, D. “Der Menschensohn in Dan 7, 13.” Wade, L. “ ‘Son of Man’ Comes to the Judgment in Daniel 7:13.” Wagner, M. “Der Menschensohn.” Walker, W. O. “Daniel 7:13–14.” Walton, J. H. “The Anzu Myth as Relevant Background for Daniel 7?” in Collins/Flint (eds.), The Book of Daniel 1:69–89. —­—­—­. “The Four Kingdoms of Daniel.” Waterman, L. “A Gloss on Darius the Mede in Daniel 7 5.” Weimar, P. “Daniel 7.” Wifall, W. “Son of Man—­a Pre-­Davidic Social Class?” —­—­—­. “David—­P rototype of Israel’s Future?” Wilson, F. M. “The Son of Man in Jewish Apocalyptic Literature.” Wilson, R. R. “Creation and New Creation: The Role of Creation Imagery in the Book of Daniel.” Wittstruck, T. “The Influence of Treaty Curse Imagery on the Beast Imagery of Daniel 7.” Young, E. J. Daniel’s Vision of the Son of Man. Zevit, Z. “The Structure and Individual Elements of Daniel 7.”

On the four kingdoms, see also the ch. 2 Pericope Bibliography.

Translation In the first year of Bel’šas· s· ar,a king of Babel, Daniyye’l had a dream, ba vision that came into his head as he lay in bed.b He wrote the dream down. cThe beginning of the account.c 2Daniel averred: a I watched in my vision during b the night, and there before me were the four winds of the heavens stirring upc the Great Sea, 3and four huge animals coming up out of the sea, each differing from the others. 4The first was like a lion, but it had the wings of an eagle.a I watched as its wings were plucked off; it was raised b from the ground cand lifted upd on etwo feet e like a man, and a man’s mind was given to it.c 5Then there before me was a second animal, a different a one, resembling a bear, but it was lifted up b on one side.c d It had three ribse in its mouth, between its teeth. It was told, “Get up, eat lots of meat.”d 6 After that I watched and there before me was another a like a leopard, but it had four bird’s wings on its back.b The animal also had four heads, and authority was given to it. 1

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Translation 333 After that, as I watched in the vision during the night, there before me was a fourth animal, fearful and terrifying,a extraordinarily strong and with big iron teeth,b eating and crushing and trampling underfoot what was left: it behaved differently c from all the animals before it. It also had ten horns. 8As I looked at the horns, there before me another, small horn came up a among them, and three of the first horns were uprooted b before it. And there in this horn were eyes c like a man’s and a mouth dmaking great statements.d 7

I watched as thrones were aset in place a and one advanced in years b took his seat. His clothing was clike white snow,c the hair on his head like lamb’sd wool. His throne was flashes of flame, his rings e a blazing flame. 10 A stream of flame was surging forth, issuing from his presence. Thousand upon thousand would minister to him, myriad upon myriad would stand in attendance on him. The court sat and books were opened. 9

I watched then from the time when I heard the sound a of the great statements that the horn was making, watched as the animal was killed and its body destroyed; it was put binto fire for burning,b 12The rest of the animals—­they had a their authority taken away, but they were a given an extensionb to their lives for a set period of time. 13 As I watched in the vision by night: 11a

There before me among  a the clouds of the heavens one in human likeness b was coming. He went to c the one advanced in years and was presented before him. 14 To him was given glorious kingly authority so that people of all races, nations, and languages would honor a him. His authority would last for ever and not pass away, and his kingship would not be destroyed.

I, Daniyye’l—­a bmy spirit was disturbed within b at this. The visions that came into my head alarmed me. 16I approached one of those who stood in attendance so I might ask a him the actual meaning of all this, and he told me he would explain a to me the interpretation of the matter. 17 “These huge animals of which there were four: four kings a will arise from the world, 18 but holy ones on high a will acquire the kingship. They will take hold of the kingship for ever, until the very end.” 15

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Then I wanted to know the actual meaning of the fourth animal which differed from all the others, being extraordinarily fearful, with its iron teeth and bronze claws, eating, crushing, and trampling underfoot what was left; 20and of the ten horns on its head and the other one that came up and three fell a before it, that horn that had eyes and a mouth making great statements, and that looked bigger b than its companions. 21 I watched a while that horn was making war on holy beings and overcoming them, 22 as the one advanced in years came and judgment was given a for b holy ones on high, when the time came for holy ones to take hold of the kingship.23He said, 19

The fourth animal: There will be a fourth kingship in the world; it will differ from a all the other kingships. It will consume the whole world, trample it down and crush it. 24 The ten horns: From that   a kingship ten kings will arise, but another will arise after them. He will differ from the ones before him; he will lay low three kings. 25 He will make statements hostile to the One On High and oppress a holy ones on high. He will try to change b times set by edict b and they c will be given into his control for a period, periods,d and half a period. 26 But the court will sit and his authority will be taken away, to be completely and permanently destroyed. 27 The mighty kingly authority of the kingships under the whole heavens Will have been given a to a holy people on high,b its kingship one that stands for ever. To it every authority will give honor and show obedience.”

That is the end of the account. “I, Daniyye’l—­I was very alarmed in my thinking, and my face turned pale, but I kept this matter in my own mind.” a 28

Notes 1.a. The spelling is as in 5:30. The form of the date using the preposition ‫ ל‬is a Hebraism (Mastin, “A Feature of the Dates in the Aramaic Portions of Ezra and Daniel”). 1.b–­b. Waw explicative (see n. 6:28.a). The double description of the dream vision is characteristic of Danielic style (Plöger deletes the whole phrase); cf. esp. 4:5 [2].

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Notes 335 Hartman/Di Lella adds the verb ‫“( יבהלנה‬alarmed him”), comparing 4:5, 22 [2, 19]; 7:15; but in those verses the references to the visionary being disturbed by his dream are also repeated, whereas there are no such references in 7:1. Dramatically, Daniel’s response is reserved for v. 15. On pl. ‫“ חזוי‬visions” see n. 2:1.a. 1.c–­c. ‫ ראש מלין‬and the equivalent phrase in v. 28a open and close Daniel’s account of the dream (cf. JB). Thus the phrase does not mean “a summary of matters” (cf. OG). ‫“ אמר‬he said” that follows may be a gloss (G lacks), perhaps presupposing the alternative meaning of ‫( ראש מלין‬cf. RV); or perhaps its redundancy relates to problems in v. 2 (see n. 2.a). Th. omits the whole phrase here but has the subscription in v. 28; 4QDanb may not have enough room for the phrase (see e.g., Collins). 2.a. NEB omits ‫ ענה‬and ‫ ואמר‬and follows Th. (cf. OG); but the Aramaic flavor of this phrase may suggest it is original (Montgomery). 2.b. Perhaps “through”: cf. ‫ עם‬in 4:3, 34 [3:33; 4:31]; Ps 72:5. 2.c. BDB, 1127 takes ‫ מגיחן‬as intransitive (cf. RV); more likely it is transitive (cf. instances of the qal in BH) and ‫ ל‬is the sign of the object, as often in BA (for “upon,” ‫ על‬would be more natural). 4.a. Perhaps “vulture” (Driver), but see BDB, 676–77. 4.b. See Rowley, “Composition of the Book of Daniel,” 274–76, against Ginsberg; also DTT. 4.c–­c. Ginsberg moves these clauses to v. 5 to follow “it had lifted up one side.” Cf. n. 5.d–­d. 4.d. The form ‫ימת‬ ַ ‫ ֳה ִק‬is surprising (cf. GBA 140); it may be a mixed form, the first vowel suggesting hophal, the ‫ י‬suggesting haphel (?impersonal); the translation is unaffected. It corresponds to the Arabic equivalent to hophal (BL 28s), but it would be the only such form in Daniel (Ginsberg, 2–3: he emends). 4.e–­e. Whereas ‫“ גַ ִּפין‬wings” was pointed as pl., ‫“ ַרגְ ַל יִ ן‬feet” is pointed as dual; in v. 7 so are ‫“ ִׁשּנַ יִ ן‬teeth” (the reference being to two jaws) and ‫“ ַק ְרנַ יִ ן‬horns” (because they usually come in pairs). In later Aramaic and Syriac the dual disappears, which has perhaps affected MT pointing in Daniel—­t hat is, some MT plurals will originally have been dual. 5.a. Cf. JB (and the BH usage, BDB, 29). If ‫ אחרי‬simply means “another,” either it or ‫תנינה‬ “second” looks redundant; G, Syr. have equivalents to only one of the two words. Perhaps MT conflates (Charles). For the translation that follows, cf. Muraoka, Reader, 64–65. 5.b. Ben Chayyim’s edition of MT (cf. BDB) points ‫( ֱה ִק ַמת‬haphel); but this involves taking ‫“ לשטר חד‬on one side” as direct object, whereas ‫ ל‬can hardly be object marker since the noun is absolute. L’s ‫ ֳה ִק ַמת‬is apparently another mixed form (cf. n. 4.d.): hophal is easier, since here the verb cannot be impersonal. Cf. G ἐστάθη; but Syr. has qmt (peal), Vulg. stetit. As in v. 4, the verb must be taken in an aorist (or pluperfect) sense; it does not mean “it was in a state of having been lifted up” (see BL 83b). 5.c. For ‫ׂשטר‬, RV mg. “dominion” presupposes ‫( ׁשטר‬cf. BH ‫ ;)מׁשטר‬cf. Waterman, “A Gloss on Darius the Mede in Daniel 7 5.” It is doubtful if ‫ ׂשטר‬can mean “end,” suggesting the bear lifting itself up on its hind legs (Hartman/Di Lella). 5.d–­d. Ginsberg moves to v. 4 (cf. n. 4.c–­c); if this move “improves” the picture, that consideration does not make it original. The similarity between Ginsberg’s text and Rev 13:1 (Hartman/Di Lella) is not so marked that Revelation must presuppose Ginsberg’s text; the similarity reflects the fact that both are more naturalistic than Dan 7:4–5 MT (Coppens, La relève apocalyptique 2:29–30). 5.e. For ‫עלעין‬, NJPS “fangs” follows Vulg. ordines “rows [of teeth],” Ps-­Saadia, and Arabic usage (and cf. BH ‫ ;)מתלעות‬see Frank, “The Description of the ‘Bear.’ ” But would ‫ עלעין‬have been understood here as “fangs,” given the usual meaning “ribs” in Aramaic (cf. BH ‫צלע‬, and Saadia)?

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6.a. Perhaps add ‫“ חיוה‬animal” (Kallarakkal, 72, following G, Syr.). 6.b. Perhaps Q ‫ גבה‬is s. and means “back,” K ‫ גביה‬pl. and means “sides” (cf. JB). But Q regularly spells pl. suffixes defectively (cf. ‫גפיה‬/‫“ גפה‬its wings” in v. 4, ‫שניה‬/‫“ שנה‬its teeth” in v. 5); thus ‫ גבה‬could also mean “sides.” 7.a. RV “powerful” implies a dubious Arabic etymology for the reading ‫אמתני‬ instead of ‫( אימתני‬for which cf. BH ‫( )אים‬Montgomery). 7.b. Dual: see n. 4.e–­e. 7.c. ‫( משניה‬pael: cf. Montgomery). Form and meaning are the same whether parsed as active or passive (GBA 67; DTT, 1605–6). 8.a. ‫ ִס ְל ָקת‬seems to be a mixed form, a cross between perfect ‫( ִס ְל ַקת‬read by some medieval mss) and participle ‫ס ְל ָקה‬. ָ Participle appears in v. 3 and might have been expected after ‫“ אלו‬there before me,” but perfect verb comes in v. 20, and the following verb is also perfect; an original perfect might have been influenced by the participle in v. 3. 8.b. ‫אתעקרו‬: see n. 5:5.a. 8.c. ‫ עינין‬is pointed as pl. not dual, which might indicate that the horn had many eyes (cf. Ezekiel’s chariot wheels); but see n. 4.e–­e. 8.d–­d. ‫( ממלל רברבן‬cf. v. 20) is not explicitly negative, as EVV imply (contrast Th., Vulg.). OG adds an explicative phrase here, but MT withholds the explication until v. 21 for dramatic effect. 9.a–­a . RV mg. “cast down” follows the more common meaning of ‫( רמא‬cf. Ps-­ Saadia); but reference to the casting down of the animals’ thrones is out of place here. See BDB for the meaning “set.” 9.b. Lit., “days.” The phrase is a fairly straightforward one for someone of great age; cf. ‫“ עתק‬advance” in Job 21:7, ‫“ בא בימים‬gone [on] in days” in Gen 24:1, and the descriptions of God in Ps 9:7 [8]; 29:10; 90:2; also Sir 25:4. Thus Saadia has prosaically “an old man” (and later “young man” for the “one in human likeness” in v. 13), while Yephet translates more literally; both take the figure to be an angel. 9.c–­c. Following MT accents and OG (contrast EVV “white as snow” [cf. Th.]; next colon ‫ כעמר נקא‬MT, G “clean as wool”). Cf. also the final two cola in v. 9, which lack ‍‫כ‬ “like/as” but are similar in structure. 9.d. Deriving ‫ נקא‬from ‫נקי‬/‫ נקא‬ii (DTT) with Sokoloff, “ ‘a˘mar ne˘qe¯’ ”; “clean” (‫נקי‬/ ‫ נקא‬i) (EVV) would be a Hebraism (though cf. 1 En. 106:2; Rev 1:14; and Hebraisms are not out of place in Dan 7). See also n. 9.c–­c. 9.e. ‫גלגלוהי‬: whereas EVV have “its wheels,” in descriptions of God’s fiery throne the motif of the sun has a natural place (cf. 1 En. 14:8–22); cf. Grelot, “Daniel vii, 9–10 et le livre d’Hénoch,” 80–81; Kearns, Vorfragen 3:179–81. But OTP 1:21 has “wheels” in 1 En. 14, and Stokes (“The Throne Visions,” 341) has “wheels” in both texts. 11.a–­a ‫ חזה הוית באדין מן קל‬raises three problems. (i) ‫“ חזה הוית‬I was watching” is repeated later in v. 11; G lacks the repetition, but not Vulg., and cf. the resumptive repetition in 9:1–2 (Driver notes also Lev 17:5; Judg 11:31; Zech 8:23). (ii) Elsewhere in BA ‫“ באדין‬then” always appears at the beginning of a sentence—­t hough cf. 1QapGen 22.2 (Casey). (iii) ‫ מן‬could mean “from” (cf. JB) or “because of” (NRSV). But ‫מן אדין‬ “from that time” does occur once in BA, in Ezra 5:16, not at the beginning of the sentence, and followed by ‫“ עד‬until.” Apparently ‫ באדין מן‬here, followed by ‫( עד‬in this context translated “as”) has a similar meaning; cf. Montgomery’s comparison with BH ‫מאז‬. The clause as a whole is thus unusual, but the text need not be questioned. Syr. omits v. 11a (homoioarkton?): see Kallarakkal, 52–53. 11.b–­b. ‫ליקדת אשא‬: “the burning of fire,” not, strictly, “burning fire.” Cf. Isa 64:11 [10] ‫לשרפת אש‬. 12.a. The first verb (NIV) or the second (Calvin) or both (Plöger) have been taken to be pluperfect, but this involves reading back from the interpretive vision or from the assumed historical reference.

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Notes 337 12.b. ‫ארכה‬: perhaps “limit” (Tg. Gen 6:3). 13.a. Cf. Th.; Mark 14:62; Rev 1:7. ‫ עם‬could mean “in,” as in v. 2 (cf. Mark 13:26; Luke 21:27). OG, Matt 24:30; 26:64 have “on”: Yahweh can be spoken of as “in” or “on” the clouds, so this hardly proves an original ‫­—על‬translations anyway vary in their rendering of prepositions and they are poor grounds for emendation. See Scott, “Behold, He Cometh with Clouds,” 128 (and for discussion, Meadowcroft, Aramaic Daniel and Greek Daniel, 224–28). Scott further (129–31) takes this phrase as qualifying “there before me” and thus as denoting the location of the whole scene described in vv. 13–14 (cf. Ezek 1); he notes that ‫ ארו‬is elsewhere followed directly by its predicate (cf. vv. 2, 5, 6, 7). On his own interpretation, however, v. 13 is still unique, in following ‫ ארו‬with this qualifying phrase, which is not a predicate and hangs in the air. It is easier to understand “among the clouds of the heavens” as relating to the next clause which describes the coming of the one in human likeness. 13.b. ‫[“ כבר אנש‬one] like a son of man.” The BH equivalent ‫ בן אדם‬appears in poetic passages in parallelism with some other word for “man” (e.g., Ps 80:17 [18]; Job 16:21), but most commonly in Ezek to denote mere man (e.g., 2:1, cf. Dan 8:17). In later Aramaic ‫ בר אנש‬is a more prosaic term for “a man,” an alternative to ‫( אנש‬v. 4), though in a poetic context such as this verse it might add solemnity (Sjöberg, “‫ בן אדם‬und ‫בר אנש‬,” 105). It might originally have meant “a son of somebody,” i.e., a significant person (Haupt, “Hidalgo and filius hominis”); Kearns connects it with a different Semitic word for a vassal landowner, later provided with a false etymology (Vorfragen, Teil 1). Gerlemann’s proposal (Menschensohn, 1–13) that ‫בר‬ here means not “son of” but “set apart from [humanity]” seems implausibly imaginative. 13.c. Two of the three mss of OG have ὡς “as” not ἕως (cf. Rahlfs; contrast Ziegler/ Munnich, which has ἕως; see The First Greek Translation of Daniel in the Introduction to this commentary). This reading suggests an identification of the human figure and the one advanced in years. The reading has been seen simply as a slip (e.g., Montgomery, Collins) or as a pre-­M T Hebrew text (e.g., Lust, “Daniel 7, 13 and the Septuagint”: but this makes poor sense of vv. 9–14 as a whole) or as OG midrash (e.g., Bruce, “The Oldest Greek Version of Daniel,” 25–26) or theological interpretation (e.g., Stuckenbruck, “ ‘One Like a Son of Man as the Ancient of Days’ ”), perhaps subsequent to the main translation as a whole since OG elsewhere does not suggest that the human figure is divine (Pace, OG Text, 257–60). Hofius (“Der Septuaginta-­Text von Daniel 7, 13–14”) rather understands “as one advanced in years” to be a resumptive description of the senior of the two figures, not a description of the humanlike figure. 14.a. Elsewhere BA ‫ פלח‬refers only to revering God, but outside the OT it denotes service more generally (HALOT, DTT). 15.a. The seer mentions himself as he comes to himself (Montgomery): cf. 7:28; 8:15, 27. Lit., “My spirit was disturbed, I, Daniel”: the pronoun referring back to the suffix is emphatic. 15.b– ­b. ‫בגוא נדנה‬ . . . ‫“ אתכרית רוחי‬my spirit was disturbed in the midst of the sheath.” ‫ נִ ְד נֶ ה‬could be repointed ‫( נִ ְד נַ ּה‬Brockington); cf. the form of the phrase in 1QapGen 2.10, whose occurrence makes other proposed emendations (cf. BHS) less plausible. 16.a. Taking imperfect ‫ אבעא‬and ‫ יהודענני‬as not merely temporally consecutive in relation to the preceding verbs but as indicating purpose and indirect speech respectively. 17.a. ‫ ;מלכין‬the kings stand for their kingdoms (cf. NIV; 2:38; 7:23; 8:20–22). There is hardly need to emend the text to make the point explicit (against BHS, following G). 18.a. Cf. Calvin, Lacocque; GKC 124q for the use of a second pl. when the expression as a whole is pl. (and indeterminate: Ginsberg, 71); against the usual view

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that ‫ עליונין‬is pl. of majesty (see Goldingay, “ ‘Holy Ones on High’ ”). For “holy ones of the One On High” one would expect ‫ קדישי עליון‬as in CD 20.8 (DSS 1:578); cf. the use of s. ‫ עליא‬for “the One On High” in v. 25. Burnier-­G enton (Le rêve subversif d’un sage) suggests “holy ones of the most high places.” The Hebraism occurs only in this phrase (cf. vv. 22, 25, 27); perhaps it is an expression used among those for whom the book is written. 20.a. ‫נפלו‬: see n. 5:5.a. 20.b. ‫“ חזוה רב‬its appearance [was] greater”: cf. expressions in 4:11, 20 [8, 17]. 21.a. ‫ ;חזה הוית‬JB “I had watched” reflects the fact that this detail might have been expected to come earlier (thus some scholars see vv. 21–22 as later expansion). But it is a standard phrase that more likely has its standard meaning. 22.a. ‫יְ ִהב‬: BHS reports a variant reading ‫“ יְ ַהב‬he gave,” reflected in G, Syr., Vulg. 22.b. ‫ ;ל‬not “to” (G). The holy ones, whether supernatural beings or the people of God, do elsewhere share in judgment with God (cf. the allusion in Rev 20:4), but here the judgment is given on their behalf rather than exercised by them. God is the judge (vv. 9–14). Ewald suggested that two words had been omitted and that the text should read ‫“ ודינא יתב ושלטנא יהב‬the court sat [cf. v. 10] and authority was given [cf. v. 27]”; cf. BHS). 23.a. ‫ ;תשנא‬Th. has ὓπερέξει “excel” as if from a different verb ‫( שנא‬see Emerton, “The Meaning of še¯naˉ ’ ”); more likely the verb is ‫“ שנא‬change” as in v. 7 (also vv. 3, 19, among others). 24.a. For this significance of the pronominal suffix, see BL 74a. 25.a. ‫( בלא‬lit., “wear out”), cf. BH ‫ בלה‬in 1 Chr 17:9. There is thus no need to posit another ‫ בלא‬related to an Arabic verb “offend” (against Noth, “Die Heiligen,” 286 [ET 224–25]). 25.b–­b. Taking ‫“ זמנין ודת‬times and edict” as a hendiadys, a frequent device in ch. 7. On ‫דת‬, see n. 6:5.b (there translated “law”). 25.c. Presumably the times (so G), not the holy ones: the former is the antecedent and this understanding makes entire sense (see Comment). 25.d. ‫ עדנין‬should presumably here be taken as dual (see n. 4.e–­e). 27.a. ‫ ;יהיבת‬cf. Bevan for the future perfect translation, comparing ‫“ נעשתה‬will have been achieved” in 11:36. 27.b. Taking the construct chain as epexegetical throughout (“a people consisting in holy ones who are on high”) rather than possessive throughout (“a people that belongs to holy ones who belong to the One On High”—­so that the One On High is then the possessor of kingship and the object of honor and obedience): see Comment. 28.a. ‫ בלבי‬suggests “to myself” (JB), the implication of the equivalent expression in T. Levi 6.2; 8.19 (and Luke 2:19?).

Form/Structure/Setting Form Daniel 7 is the report of a dream or nocturnal vision (cf. ch. 2 Form). Characteristic expressions are verbs for “watch” (‫חזה‬, ‫)שכל‬, followed by temporal expressions such as ‫( עד די‬lit., “until”) or ‫“ באדן מן‬from the time when” or by the particle ‫ואלו‬/‫“ וארו‬and there before me” and the preposition ‍‫“ כ‬like.” The opening half recounts a symbolic dream, set in a standard brief narrative context recording the date at the beginning and the dreamer’s troubled response

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Form/Structure/Setting 339 at the end (vv. 1, 15). An introduction using mythic motifs leads into a vision of four hybrid animals (vv. 2–8, partly recapitulated and expanded in vv. 19–21; the interpretation in v. 17 will make explicit that it constitutes an allegorical periodization of history). It goes on to a judgment scene (vv. 9–14), which incorporates descriptions of someone seated on a divine throne (vv. 9–10) and of the appearing of a second heavenly figure (vv. 13–14).1 The significance of vv. 9–10, 13–14 is emphasized and their effect is heightened through their rhythmic, elevated style, with instances of the parallelism that characterizes OT poetry, and of simile and metaphor. The pattern of vv. 8–11 (presentation of wrongdoing, judgment scene, implementation of punishment) recalls that of the secular/prophetic lawsuit.2 The second half reports the interpretation of the symbolic dream. A standard brief narrative context tells of how the subject sought the interpretation (v. 16) and of how he reacted to it (v. 28). The initial interpretation is brief (vv. 17–18); in response to the subject’s supplementary request (vv. 19–22), a more detailed explanation of part of the symbolism follows (vv. 23–27). Rhythm and parallelism reappear here at another key point in the chapter, though with less consistency and less heightened effect than in vv. 9–10, 13–14 (perhaps because of the more prosaic subject matter), and some interpreters treat vv. 23–27 as prose. Rhythm, parallelism, and other rhetorical devices appear elsewhere in Dan 7;3 a division between poetic prose and prosaic poetry is hard to make. The interpretation of the symbolic dream takes place within the context of the dream. In this respect the vision compares with the nocturnal visions in Zech 1–6 and 2 Esd 11–13 (though there the interpreter is God himself) and with the vision in Dan 8. It contrasts with the visions in Dan 2; 4, where a human interpreter explains the dreams after they are over. And there, the stories in which the dream reports are set have significance in their own right that far exceeds that of the simple narrative framework of ch. 7; here the dream is everything. The interpretation takes the form of political prophecies (vv. 17, 23–25) that lead into prophecies about the final implementation of God’s reign (vv. 18, 26–27). The combination of forms parallels that in the Animal Apocalypse, 1 En. 85–90, which addresses the Maccabean crisis.4 Such parallels suggest that the political prophecies are quasi-­predictions, not actual ones (see further chs. 10–12 Form). The self-­presentation formula “I, Daniel” supports this view; it is characteristically a formula of self-­presentation by someone who cannot be seen or who speaks through someone else (e.g., a prophet who says “I am Yahweh,” or a messenger, or a medium). While the chapter as a whole 1

See Black, “The Throne-Theophany Prophetic Commission,” on the “throne-theophany” form. 2 Niditch, The Symbolic Vision in Biblical Tradition, 202. 3 Niditch, The Symbolic Vision in Biblical Tradition, 189–93. 4 See Porter, Metaphors and Monsters, 43–60.

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has then been taken to be a literary creation, not the report of an actual dream,5 this inference need not follow.6 The dream involves myth, symbol, allegory, scriptural allusion, and revelation concerning things above and things future. It both reveals and conceals, by the interpretation (e.g., v. 25b) as well as by the symbolic dream. The response it twice attributes to Daniel (vv. 15, 28) is the response these elements seek to evoke in the reader. Daniel 7 uses symbolism in varied ways.7 Its symbols have been viewed as a code: e.g., lion = Babylon, leopard = Persia or Greece, small horn = Antiochus or some other historical or future person. Such identities can then be substituted for their ciphers without losing anything except a slight air of mystery, which might have enabled the author to escape the attention of the authorities. This view is an oversimple one.8 The symbols are not a random allegorical code speaking of realities that could just as adequately be referred to directly; they contribute to the text’s meaning. When vv. 17–27 add a God-­g iven interpretation to the God-­g iven revelation in vv. 2–14, some of the symbolism thus remains (e.g., v. 26), and even where symbols are in some way interpreted by other terms, these “explanatory” terms may still not be straightforward (e.g., “holy ones”). Allusiveness remains. Part of the symbols’ significance is that they function like similes. The entities described have features of the symbol: thus a horn suggests strength. There may be significance in the interrelationships of the symbols: for example, in the movement between the animal and the human. Beyond those features, individual symbols belong to systems and thus call to mind “numerous ideas, images, sentiments, values and stereotypes” that are (selectively) projected on the entity symbolized.9 They are symbols not merely signs,10 or they are tensive symbols not steno-­symbols11 or ciphers. Further, they are symbols and not merely metaphors. The figures come from public usage rather than being an individual poet’s new minting, so that they bring with them the resonances and the hallowing of tradition, the more so where they come from the community’s sacred Scriptures. They gain a further level of affect when they are mythic symbols that make it possible to refer to transcendent realities. A number of influences and traditions may underlie the dream.12 5 6 7 8

E.g., Murdock, “History and Revelation,” 181–82. Cf. Gaston, “The Son of Man,” 377–78. See Reynolds, “Between Symbolism and Realism.” Cf. Setio, “Fantasy in Apocalyptic Daniel 7,” 190–91; he thinks of them as fantasy, like that of a dream, though he then does not want to reduce fantasy to symbol or metaphor. 9 Porter, Metaphors and Monsters, 5, following Black, Models and Metaphors. Porter suggests that the “root metaphor” of the shepherd underlies Dan 7 and 8 as a whole, though shepherds are never mentioned. 10 In Ricoeur’s terminology: see e.g., The Symbolism of Evil. 11 In Wheelwright’s terminology: see Metaphor and Reality (cf. Perrin, Jesus and the Language of the Kingdom, 29–31). 12 See Eggler, Influences and Traditions Underlying the Vision of Daniel 7:2–14.

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Form/Structure/Setting 341 a. Earlier chapters of Daniel. The motif of the symbolic dream goes back to Dan 2 and 4; the four kings/regimes motif takes up that of ch. 2. The description of the first animal parallels that of Nebuchadnezzar in ch. 4; the descriptions of the third and fourth animal parallel those of the corresponding regimes in ch. 2. Since the lion represents Babylon, the lion’s being the most “human” of the creatures corresponds to the Babylonian king’s position as world ruler in chs. 2, 4, and 5, while the power given to the humanlike figure in relation to the power exercised by the animals is the power ascribed to the Babylonian king over the animals in 2:37–38; cf. 5:18–19.13 For particular phrases, see 2:1 (v. 1, the date formula); 2:28; 4:5 [2]; 5:19 (v. 14, people of all nations, races, and languages); 2:44; 4:3, 34; 6:26 (vv. 14, 26–27, the lasting reign); 2:1; 4:5 [2], 19; 5:6, 9, 10 (vv. 15–16, 28); 2:9, 21 (v. 25, times set by decree); 4:16, 23, 25 [13, 20, 22] (v. 25, 3 1/2 periods). b. Other parts of the OT. Animals feature throughout the OT in metaphor, simile, and allegory to portray God, Israel, leaders or nobles, and other nations. The particular sequence in this chapter recalls Hos 13:7–8 and Jer 5:6. The former likens Yahweh to a lion, a leopard, a bear, a lion (though see BHS), and finally “the creature of the wild”—­unidentified, as in Dan 7.14 Jer 5:6 warns Judah of ravaging by a lion, a wolf (‫זאב‬, Aramaic ‫“ ;דב‬bear” in Dan 7:5 is ‫דב‬, suggesting a paronomasia to Gen. Rab. 99: see DTT), and a leopard. The characterization of Babylon as lion-­eagle recalls Jer 49:19–22, though lion-­eagle-­human beings also parallels three of the creatures supporting God’s throne in Ezek 1:10. More systematic animal allegories appear in Ezek 17; 19; 29; 32. Lion and horn are common metaphors for violent and aggressive strength, exercised by Yahweh, by Israel, or by their enemies: Dan 7 pictures the gentile predators attacking God’s flock in light of psalms that protest such attacks (e.g., Pss 22; 75), and it envisages the imminent fulfillment of the promise of deliverance from these creatures that features in psalms and prophets. The portrayal of the nations as hybrids, which transgress nature’s laws and threaten nature’s harmony, and as predators who are as such unclean, has part of its background in the Torah’s categorization of the animal world and its concern with preserving distinctions between species.15 The broadest OT parallels to Dan 7 lie in Ps 2 with its account of nations and kings striving in rebellion against Yahweh and his anointed, and then of Yahweh calmly rebuking them and affirming the king’s 13 Porter, Metaphors and Monsters, 111–12. 14 To Hos 13:7–8, Gardner adds Isa 13:5 and other passages (“Decoding Daniel”). 15 See Porter, Metaphors and Monsters, 63–86, 95–118, 121; Massyngberde Ford, “Jewish Law and Animal Symbolism,” 204–6; more broadly Lucas, “The Source of Daniel’s Animal Imagery.”

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God on High Reveals the World’s Destiny to Daniel destiny to crush them and/or rule over them (cf. Ps 110). Behind such psalms with their theology of kingship is an understanding of the king as one who represents the people as a whole, embodies their destiny yet also mediates God’s rule to them.16 Daniel 7 has more general parallels with other psalms that describe the nations attacking Israel, their kings flaunting their power, their apparent certainty of victory but then their defeat as God appears in order to overthrow them (e.g., Ps 48). It also has parallels with psalms calling for judgment on oppressors that are depicted as lions and horned animals (e.g., Pss 22; 75; 74, which have in common with Daniel reference to a ‫“ חיה‬animal,” to the devastation of the sanctuary, to blasphemy, and other motifs). Some of these psalms reassert affirmations of God’s victory over the powers of disorder represented by the sea or the sea monster, which God destroys (e.g., Pss 9; 29; 46; 93) or recall such affirmations in contexts like that of Dan 7 when the oppression of enemies made them questionable (e.g., Pss 74; 89).17 If the psalms reflect a festal celebration of Yahweh’s kingship and of the king’s triumph, then this festival lies further behind Daniel’s vision. Nearer to its day and to its purpose, however, is the reappropriating of such motifs in Israelite prophecy. This reappropriation sometimes explicitly addresses particular contexts where the chaotic sea (/monster) is embodied in historical realities; it sometimes more explicitly relates it to the day of Yahweh (e.g., Isa 17:12–14; 27:1; 29; 51:9–10; Ezek 29:3; 38–39; Joel 3 [4]; Zech 12–14; cf. also Job 26:12–13; 41:1–34 [40:25–41:26]; the rare verb ‫גוח‬/‫ גיח‬meaning “stir up,” which appears in v. 2, appears in related contexts in Ezek 32:2; Job 38:8; 40:23). Like some of these prophets, Dan 7 functions as an answer to the appeal in such psalms for deliverance and vindication.18 The mythic pattern of God’s victory in conflict with the powers of disorder, which had been used to interpret Israel’s experience at the exodus and in the exile, is appropriated once again in the context of an equivalent experience of order collapsing.19 The vision of God enthroned parallels especially Ezek 1:20 the stormy wind, the cloud, the four animal-­like creatures with four faces and four wings emerging from them alongside the wheels with rims full of eyes, a mighty sound (see also Deut 33:2; 1 Kgs 22:19; Isa 6; Jer 49:38; Ps 50; and for the background to the books that are opened, see Comment). The phrase used to denote the humanlike figure in v. 13, ‫( בר אנש‬BH

16 17 18 19

See Heaton, Daniel, on the passage. See Gillingham, “Psalmody and Apocalyptic.” See Porteous, Daniel, on the passage. See Collins, “The Mythology of Holy War,” 596–600; Bentzen, Messias, 71–74 (ET 73–75); Engnell, review of Sjöberg’s Der Menschensohn, 191–92; ———, “Die Urmenschvorstellung und das AT,” 288. 20 On the background of Dan 7 in Ezek 1–3, see Kim, “Biblical Interpretation in the Book of Daniel,” 186–249.

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Form/Structure/Setting 343 ‫ )בן אדם‬is familiar from various OT contexts. Most commonly, it simply denotes a human being, especially when it is the term by which God addresses Ezekiel. In Ps 8 it suggests humanity as both weak and unimpressive, a common connotation, yet as endowed with splendor, honor, and authority in relation to the animal creation (cf. Gen 1:27–28, and Gen 1–3 as a whole, though the term ‫ בן אדם‬itself does not appear). In Ps 80 it comes in the context of a description of Yahweh’s people as a vine ravaged by wild animals; it refers to Israel in general or to the king in particular (cf. Ps 146:3), who may be seen as the embodiment of humanity (as also in Mic 5?).21 God himself is described as humanlike (‫ )דמות כמראה אדם‬in Ezek 1:26; the manlike person in Ezek 8:2 (‫דמות כמראה איש‬,22 however, may be a separate heavenly figure).23 The clouds that accompany the humanlike figure’s epiphany recall OT descriptions of God’s own coming (see BDB on ‫)ענן‬. The nations’ acknowledgment of the humanlike figure and the holy ones corresponds to their acknowledgment of Israel in Isa 49:23; 60. c. Other Jewish writings. The animal allegory in 1 En. 85–90 also features predators symbolizing rulers or kingdoms, an animal transformed into a man, animals with horns of extraordinary size, a throne set up for God to sit in judgment as books are opened before him, and animals being destroyed by fire. In ch. 14 Enoch is carried by winds and clouds into the heavens, where he sees a throne from which flaming fire issues and on which God sits in a gown whiter than snow, surrounded by myriad upon myriad of attendants. Chapters 46–48 and 71 also have parallels with the throne scene and the humanlike figure in Dan 7. There is disagreement over whether different parallels suggest Dan 7 is dependent on 1 Enoch24 or vice versa,25 or whether both are dependent on other sources.26 d. Other Middle Eastern religions. The existence of a wide and detailed Jewish background to Dan 7, near home for author and audience, makes appeal to foreign influence questionable where the material

21 See Bentzen, Messias, 37–42 (ET 39–44); Wifall, “David—Prototype of Israel’s Future?” 103–7; Haag, “Psalm 80 und der Menschensohn.” 22 If one follows the text as emended by BHS in light of LXX. 23 See Zimmerli, Ezechiel on the passage; on the Ezekiel material as possible background to the humanlike figure, see Procksch, “Die Berufungsvision Hesekiels”; Feuillet, “Le Fils de l’homme de Daniel” (he also adds as background the hypostatized Wisdom of Prov 8); Black, “The Throne-Theophany Prophetic Commission and the ‘Son of Man,” 60; cf. Balz, Methodische Probleme der NT Christologie, 80–89. 24 E.g., Grelot, “Daniel vii, 9–10 et le livre d’Hénoch”; Kvanvig, “Henoch und der Menschensohn”; ———, Roots of Apocalyptic; Müller, “Beobachtungen zur Entwicklung der Menschensohnvorstellung, 253–61; Rowland, The Open Heaven, 255–58. 25 E.g., Emerton, “The Origin of the Son of Man Imagery,” 226; Casey, “The Use of the Term ‘Son of Man’ in the Similitudes of Enoch,” 20–22. 26 E.g., Coppens, “La vision du Très-Haut en Dan., vii et Hén. éthiop. xiv”; Müller, “Menschensohn und Messias,” 175–79.

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God on High Reveals the World’s Destiny to Daniel has Jewish parallels. Nevertheless, over the past century scholars have studied parallels between Dan 7 and material from Egypt, Phoenicia, Iran, Babylon, and Canaan.27 Egyptian influence has been seen in the parallels between the relationship of Atum and Re with that of the one advanced in years and the humanlike figure in Dan 7 and in the portrait of Antiochus as foe of godly order,28 but the evidence is hardly compelling. Nor is Morgenstern’s hypothesis of the influence of an equivalent Tyrian myth, which even he later abandoned.29 Nor is the more common belief that there is a connection between Daniel’s humanlike figure and Iranian figures who are the embodiment of humanity, who form one root of Near Eastern kingship ideology and thus relate to OT ideas of humanity noted above.30 Daniel’s allusive reference to a humanlike figure hardly justifies or requires such connections, and neither do parallels such as the stream of fire; it is in any case a problem that the Persian material is difficult to date, and parallels are rarely specific to Persia. The fourfold historical scheme (see ch. 2 Form) is the most plausible instance of Iranian influence on Dan 7.31 Parallels between the Babylonian Adapa myth and the humanlike figure32 are again not compelling; nor are the incidental parallels between Dan 7 and an Akkadian dream-­v ision about hybrid beings.33 When the Babylonian myth Enuma Elish tells of rebellious monsters born from the primordial ocean, of the destruction of the sea monster, the embodiment of disorder, who is burst by the winds, and of the elevation of its destroyer as king and lord of heaven and earth,34 the points of connection with Dan 7 look more than coincidental. They are paralleled in the equivalent Ugaritic combat myth Baal, which has more links with Dan 7 and may be the less indirect background to it.35 Here, similarly, Sea tries to usurp the place of Baal, the son of the highest god, the venerable, gray-­headed, and gray-­bearded El. One of his titles,

27 28 29 30 31

Cf. the survey in Collins, Daniel, 280–94. See Gressmann, Der Messias, 403–9; Lebram, “König Antiochus,” 743–50. See Morgenstern, “The ‘Son of Man’ of Daniel 7 13f”; ———, “Jesus as the ‘Son of Man.’” See the systematic exposition in Borsch, Son of Man, 55–106. See the survey in Hultgård “Das Judentum in der hellenistisch-römischen Zeit und die iranische Religion,” 515–36. 32 See ANET, 102; cf. Gunkel, Schöpfung und Chaos, 148 (ET 98, 325); Hommel, “The Apocalyptic Origin of the Expression ‘Son of Man.’” 33 ANET, 109–10; see Kvanvig, “An Akkadian Vision as Background for Dan 7”; Roots of Apocalyptic. 34 ANET, 60–72, 501–3; see Gunkel, Schöpfung und Chaos, 323–35 (ET 205–7); Kraeling, “Some Babylonian and Iranian Mythology in the Seventh Chapter of Daniel”; Gardner, “Daniel 7,2–14.” 35 See e.g., Lacocque, “Allusions to Creation in Daniel 7”; Walton notes also the Anzu myth (“The Anzu Myth as Relevant Background for Daniel 7?”).

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Form/Structure/Setting 345 ’b snm, might mean “father of years” and correspond to ‫“ עתיק יומין‬one advanced in days.”36 Before the assembly of the holy ones, Baal, rider on the clouds, is declared to be destined for an eternal kingship, and he duly kills Sea (Yam)—­later characterized as Leviathan, the seven-­ headed dragon. In due course El agrees to a temple being built as a palace for Baal, where he takes his seat as king over the earth. He is then overcome by Death (Mot), but Death is eventually defeated. In the OT, Yahweh effectively combines the positions of El and Baal, except in Dan 7, where the humanlike figure takes Baal’s position. In recapitulating this old pattern, Dan 7 may have its own links with these ancient myths, via learned circles in Judaism rather than because they lived on in the worship of the temple.37 e. Other aspects of Middle Eastern life. The animals in Dan 7 have been likened to Babylonian engravings, sculptures, and reliefs or to the sphinxes (see, e.g., ANEP 644–53),38 but the parallels are not close. The same applies to warnings in treaties of attacks by animals;39 though in any case these documents would surely have influenced Daniel only via passages such as Hos 13:7–8.40 Parallels with the animals in the zodiac41 are also imprecise.42 Mesopotamian divination offers more promising background to vv. 4–6. Divination was interested in anomalous human and animal births that might offer portents concerning the future of individuals or the state. The series Šumma izbu43 includes sheep born with some resemblance to a wolf, a lion, a fox, a tiger, or a human being, and animals with deformations such as a raised shoulder, lungs in its mouth, extra horns, multiple heads, or displaced eyes. These portend events such as a royal death, an enemy attack, conflict among rulers, or a king enjoying a long and peaceful reign. Not all details in the omens are interpreted, and not all details in the interpretations connect with 36 But see the careful discussion in Kearns, Vorfragen zur Christologie 2:173–74; Collins, “Stirring up the Great Sea.” 37 See ANET, 129–42; Driver/Gibson, Canaanite Myths and Legends; Eissfeldt, Baal Zaphon, 25–30; Emerton, “The Origin of the Son of Man Imagery”; Rost, Studien zum AT, 72–75; Colpe, “ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου”; Hanson, Dawn of Apocalyptic, 292–324, 369–401, for parallels in Zechariah; Kearns, Vorfragen zur Christologie 2:83–194; Collins, Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel, 95–106; Day, God’s Conflict with the Dragon; critique in Casey, Son of Man, 34–38; Coppens, “Les origines du symbole du Fils d’homme; Ferch, Son of Man, 54–77; Mosca, “Ugarit and Daniel 7.” 38 Cf. Steinmann, Daniel, 85. 39 Wittstruck, “The Influence of Treaty Curse Imagery on the Beast Imagery of Daniel 7”; but see Rimbach, “Bears or Bees?” 40 Hillers, Treaty Curses and the OT Prophets, 56. 41 Caquot, “Sur les quatre bêtes de Daniel vii.” 42 See Coppens, “Un nouvel essai d’interpréter Dan., vii”; Day, God’s Conflict with the Dragon, 154–55. 43 See on 1:3–5; also Porter, Metaphors and Monsters, 15–29.

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specific aspects of the omen. Also interesting is the custom of describing a king as having characteristics of various animals.44 In the Hellenistic period, on his coins Alexander wears a headpiece much like an elephant head, Antiochus III uses the elephant as a state emblem, and Hellenistic monarchs generally are often pictured as possessing horns, a common Semitic symbol for power: all this may lie behind the figure of the fourth animal.45 It is possible to link characteristics of individual creatures to those of empires they represent: for instance, the Medes might be seen as fierce and destructive (v. 5; cf. Isa 13:17–18)—­though it is not clear that they were more so than others. f. Greek historiography. The notion of a succession of world empires appears in Herodotus and Ctesias, and this feature arguably has more substantial parallels with the substance of the four-­empire scheme in Daniel than the links in terms of symbolism that Daniel has in common with Middle Eastern material. The scheme sees the sequence of empires as Assyria, Media, Persia, and Greece, and thus in distinguishing between Media and Persia it corresponds to Daniel’s scheme.46 g. Conclusions. Tracing the development of ideas and motifs in a text does not in itself explain their significance there, but it can add to our historical insight on the development of Israelite faith and thought, enable us to perceive more of the meaning and resonances that ideas and motifs had for author and audience, and explain tensions or other apparent problems in the text. Thus it is illuminating to imagine the author of Dan 7 combining the combat myth as adopted in the OT and as known in the learned tradition with the four-­regimes scheme and the form of the dream from ch. 2 and developing these in light of second-­century experience into a portrayal of Antiochus as the doomed embodiment of disorder and rebellion.47 Yet such pictures are hypothetical, and it remains difficult to evaluate the significance of parallels identified in connection with tracing the tradition-­history behind Dan 7. When the evidence cannot prove a direct link, this shortfall does not mean there was no link. In other cases, the parallels are close enough to make a direct link seem likely, but coincidence is not impossible. Even where there are historical links, it is difficult to know how far the author was aware of the material’s original meaning or was influenced by it: we must beware of reading into Daniel too much of what went before 44 Cf. ANET, 585–86; see Porter, Metaphors and Monsters, 84–85. 45 Morenz, “Das Tier mit den Hörnern”; Staub, “Das Tier mit den Hörnern.” 46 See Momigliano, “The Origins of Universal History”; ———“Daniel and Imperial Succession”; Niskanen, The Human and the Divine in History, 27–43. Keel (“Die Tiere und der Mensch in Daniel 7,” in Keel/Staub, Hellenismus und Judentum, 1–35) urges attention to other aspects of Greek background to the chapter. 47 E.g., Beasley-Murray, “The Interpretation of Daniel 7.”

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Form/Structure/Setting 347 or what came after.48 Even when the author was aware of the material’s background, the picture as a whole is not one received from existent sources; it is creative, imaginative, and original.49 Further, the significance of motifs in Dan 7 is their significance in its context, which may even contradict the significance they brought to it. Investigating the background to the chapter may chiefly help to draw attention to what is different about Dan 7 itself; this process may enable us to perceive important aspects of the chapter even if the hypotheses that lead to these perceptions turn out to be mistaken. The framework of intertextuality may thus contribute more than the framework of background and development to the utilization of comparisons. The intertextual relationship between Daniel and the Middle Eastern texts is the kind of relationship that issues from readers putting texts together that may have had no direct link rather than the kind that issued from one author directly relating to the work of another.50 For us as readers, putting the texts alongside each other helps us to see the significance of the texts. Thus, in Enuma Elish, the winds restrain the sea and its monsters; here they churn it up and generate the sea monsters. In Ezek 1 the animals support God’s throne and serve his kingship; here they serve themselves and are judged.51 In Ps 2 the one enthroned is an actual king, whose people are unmentioned; here the bestowing of God’s rule is projected onto the future, and the one on whom it is bestowed explicitly represents a people; the dethronement of evil belongs not to the beginning or to ever-­repeated events in history but to the End.52 Nevertheless, the sea and the animals stand here not for otherworldly cosmic or cosmogonic forces of disorder but for historical ones; yet the animals stand not for forces ruling through all history, as in 1 Enoch, but only for the rulers of the Second Temple period. Whereas Marduk fought and killed the beasts, as does the humanlike figure in 2 Esdras, here there is no battle—­all is determined by the word of God;53 the difference compares with that between Gen 1 and earlier myths. The humanlike figure has no explicit connection with creation, nor does he undergo suffering, or enter into conflict with the senior figure, or die, as Baal is commonly held to have done. Whatever temple background the chapter has, and despite the presence of the temple theme in Enuma Elish, it is striking that ch. 7 makes no mention of the temple. 48 Cf. Heaton, Daniel, on the chapter. 49 Cf. Plöger, Daniel, on the chapter. 50 Cf. Newsom, Daniel, 217–20. 51 Rowe, “Is Daniel’s ‘Son of Man’ Messianic?” 84–85. 52 Cf. Plöger, Daniel, on the passage. 53 Gressmann, Der Messias, 346.

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Structure The chapter may be outlined as follows:54 1–2a introduction 1a  narrative preface 1b  commencing formula 2a  narrative opening 2b–14  vision report 2b–3  four creatures appear 4–6  the first three creatures 7  the fourth creature with its ten horns 8  a small horn on the fourth 9–10  a throne scene 11a  the small horn 11b  the fourth creature 12  the first three creatures 13–14  a manlike figure appears 15  visionary’s response 16–18  initial interpretation 16  visionary’s request for interpretation 17–18  framework for interpretation 17  the animals are kings 18  the new kingship 19–20  request for further interpretation 19  the fourth creature 20  the horns 21–22  further vision report 21  the small horn’s behavior 22a  the judgment 22b  the new kingship 23–27  detailed interpretation 23  the fourth kingship’s behavior 24–25  the new king’s behavior 26  his judgment 27  the new kingship 28 conclusion 28a  closing formula 28b  the visionary’s response 54 This understanding combines insights from Ferch (Son of Man, 136–37) and Kvanvig (“Struktur und Geschichte in Dan 7,1–14,” 101–2). The larger chiasm Ferch finds in Dan 7 as a whole (Son of Man, 142; cf. Raabe, “Daniel 7,” 267–68) seems more forced.

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Form/Structure/Setting 349 At a number of points, aspects of the vision are introduced by formulae: v. 2: “as I watched in my vision during the night, there before me . . .” v. 4b: “I watched as . . .” (cf. vv. 9, 21–22; also 2:34) v. 5: “then there before me . . .” (cf. v. 8b) v. 6: “after that I watched and there before me . . .” v. 7: “after that, as I watched in the vision by night, there before me . . .” v. 8: “as I looked . . . there before me . . .” v. 11: “I watched then . . . I watched as . . .” v. 13: “as I watched in the vision by night, there before me . . .” The formulae comprise stock phrases used in varying combinations; further variants appear in 2:31 (= 4:10 [7]); 4:13 [10]; and (in Heb.) 8:3, 5, 15. The phrases ending with the conjunctive expression ‫“ עד די‬as” are naturally followed by a verbal clause; they introduce an event. The phrases ending with the particles ‫אלו‬/‫“ ארו‬there before me” are generally followed by a noun clause; they introduce a new scene. There are partial exceptions in vv. 8 and 13, where the particles introduce new scenes; but these involve events, expressed in verbal clauses (cf. the mixture of verbal and noun clauses in a comparable context after ‫“ והנה‬there before me” in Joseph’s dream report, Gen 37:6–9). The formulae introduce each element in the vision report in vv. 2b–14 (and 21–22), except that vv. 4 and 12 (both relating to the first three creatures) lack formulae, while a formula does appear in v. 4b; some of the variation is of rhetorical significance. The vision report appropriately opens with a long formula, and the fourth creature is advertised to be of special significance by a particularly long and resumptive formula (v. 7). The same effect is achieved for the small horn by the use of a different and stronger verb and a different particle, which is repeated (v. 8). As the judgment presaged by vv. 9–10 is awaited, v. 11 uses a complex repetitive/resumptive version of the formula to heighten suspense. The final climax of the vision is marked by a further long and resumptive formula (v. 13). The variation in the use of formulae in vv. 2–6 seems to be stylistic. Here and elsewhere the vision builds drama and impact through a number of other devices. The description of the first three creatures is heightened by the use of simile and concrete characterization. To us it is allusive and mysterious, and it may have been so for its original listeners. The relatively less colorful description of the third creature is counterbalanced by the use of one of the longer formulae to introduce it. The centerpiece and the final climax of the symbolic vision are marked by the use of poetic parallelism and rhythm, repetition, assonance, and hendiadys (vv. 9–10, 13–14; see esp. the close parallelism in vv. 9b, 9c, 10b, 10c, 14b). Considered in isolation, vv. 9–10 at least might be seen as a self-­contained piece of poetry,55 but in the context of Dan 7 as a whole with 55 So Niditch, The Symbolic Vision in Biblical Tradition, on the passage.

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its movement into and out of a more rhythmic and poetic prosody, these verses represent one end of a spectrum of more poetic and more prosaic language. In vv. 13–14 the creatures coming from the sea are balanced by the human figure coming with the clouds of heaven; the two correspond to the characteristic OT and ancient Near Eastern antithesis between tumultuous waters/ kings and heavens/Yahweh’s anointed. The gifts of humanness and authority (vv. 4, 6) reach mature though transformed expression in the humanness and authority of the heavenly figure. After this high point, the account of Daniel’s reaction and his request for interpretation increases suspense and focuses attention on what follows. This effect is furthered first by the provision of the merest framework of interpretation, silent on the details that most concern people in the second century (vv. 17–18); then by the request for more interpretation, which itself unexpectedly provides further information on the symbolic vision itself (the bronze claws, v. 19; the small horn’s larger appearance, v. 20); then by a further vision report adding more such information (vv. 21–22). The final section of the interpretive vision, vv. 23–27, brings another climax with its most detailed and explicit portrayal of Antiochus and of the kingship of the holy ones, and it draws attention to its significance by using language elaborately rather than economically. It employs strings of terms of synonymous or overlapping meaning, and partly rhyming verbs (v. 23), nouns (v. 27), and purpose clauses (v. 26). In addition, it builds up a rhythm by sequences of clauses of parallel imagery, syntax, or language (vv. 25a, 27b).56 Thus here, too, the lines can be laid out as poetry. The vision’s contents and meaning are repeated four times, in vv. 2–14 (symbolic vision), 17–18 (framework of interpretation), 19–22 (further symbolic vision material), and 23–27 (interpretation of that detail). Synoptically, they comprise the following elements: A

four animals/kings lion-­eagle-­man bear four-­headed winged leopard monster B ten horns/kings C small horn/another king D divine judgment E fourth animal destroyed F small horn punished G first three animals deposed H human figure appears I new kingship of holy ones

2b–3 17 4 5 6 7ab 7c 8 (11a) 9–10 11b

19 20a 20–21 22a

23 24a 24–25 26a 26

12 13 14

18

22b

27

56 Niditch, The Symbolic Vision in Biblical Tradition, 189–92.

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Form/Structure/Setting 351 Despite the repetition, there is no interpretive comment on the first three animals, and no representation in the symbolic vision of the horn’s punishment. There is more symbolism than interpretation and more interpretation than symbolism; each stands on its own as a revelation. At the same time, the repetition and the elaboration show what the chapter regards as important, namely, the suffering and triumph of the holy ones:57 the four-­empire scheme is there because of its traditional importance, and it is omitted in ch. 8. A major tradition of scholarship, mainly European, has taken the view that the elements in the above pattern have accumulated through a more or less complex process of growth.58 While its representatives work out this approach in different ways, two tendencies characterize their work. One is to date material later the further right one moves across the columns: most, if not all, of the interpretation material is regarded as later than most of the vision material. The tendency is also (though less consistently) to date material later the further one moves down the columns, because dating follows the material’s historical reference. Thus A (vv. 2b–7ab, at least) can be fourth century or earlier.59 BE (vv. 7c, 11b) can be pre-­A ntiochene, and BE or ABE then handles the question of how long the fourth kingship will last. Verses 9–10, 13 (?14) may also belong to one of these stages, giving a more transcendent explanation of the expected act of judgment. C and the rest of the material in D, F, and I reflect the Antiochene crisis and may represent several stages in its development: e.g., vv. 8, 11a its beginnings (c. 168 BC); vv. 21–22, increasing pressures and hopes (c. 166 BC); and vv. 25–27, the depths of oppression and urgent need. Expressions used in the introduction and conclusion (vv. 1–2a, 28) and within the vision (e.g., vv. 4b, 14, 25) parallel expressions used in chs. 1–6 and 8–12 (cf. Form), and these links might suggest the further possibility of recensional work on the chapter designed to connect it with this broader context.60 Scholars in this tradition ground their argument for the separate origin of different parts of the material on a number of literary, linguistic, and material features such as the varied introductory formulae and verbal forms, the movement into and out of more poetic form, and the chapter’s general lack of straightforwardness and its repetitions. An alternative tradition of approach maintains the chapter’s unity, except perhaps for seeing vv. 21–22 as an addition from later in the Antiochene period.61 The chapter’s stylistic and rhetorical features with their variations 57 Casey, review of Collins, Daniel with an Introduction to Apocalyptic Literature, 480–81. 58 E.g., Coppens, Dequeker, Haag, Haller, Kearns, Kvanvig, K. Müller, Noth, Weimar (see Pericope Bibliography); also Ginsberg, Studies in Daniel; Hölscher, “Die Entstehung des Buches Daniel.” 59 Cf. Kruse, “Compositio Libri Danielis et idea Filii Hominis.” 60 E.g., Weimar, “Daniel 7,” 15–25; Hölscher, “Die Entstehung des Buches Daniel,” 120–21. 61 E.g., Rowley, “Composition of the Book of Daniel,” Collins, Daniel, 278–80; Casey, Son of Man; Ferch, Son of Man; Munnich, “Retouches rédactionnelles au texte proto-massorétique”; Beyerle, “‘Der mit den Wolken des Himmels kommt,’” 1–52. Miller (“The Redaction of

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and unevennesses contribute to a coherent whole, and the view that repetition, unevenness, variation, and clumsiness of expression likely reflect the work of more than one hand is unargued. Even where variation does not function rhetorically, it may reflect random variation or variation for literary effect on the part of one hand; it is paralleled in other texts. A single author may construct the work in an awkward, uneven, or jerky way, perhaps to aid the rhetorical effect, or may modify the presentation by means of an afterthought in the course of proceeding.62 In the history of forms, the simple often develop from the complex, and in the history of the text, emendations are usually designed to remove unevenness rather than to create it. So the simplified versions of a passage such as Dan 7 which source and redaction critics have offered are as likely to be secondary editions as to be primary ones.

Setting While Dan 7 presents itself as a dream experienced by Daniel in about 550, the beginning of the co-­regency of Nabonidus and Belshazzar, its formal characteristics suggest that it derives from the period on which it focuses and to which it is especially relevant, the time of the king symbolized by the small horn. It presupposes actions by Antiochus IV against Jerusalem such as 1 Macc 1:29–40 describes, but it does not refer to the introduction of offensive forms of worship in the temple (contrast 8:13; 9:27; 11:31), and it implies that Jewish deliverance is still future. Its date is thus mid-167. Unlike earlier parts of the book, the vision’s implicit social setting is not that of a minority community in a foreign country tempted to surrender faith and commitment in order to survive and succeed, but a people religiously affronted, threatened, and oppressed in their own land. Unlike groups that were open to cooperation with the Hellenistic world of which Jerusalem was now part, the Danielic group was a sect in the sense of a “self-­distinguishing protest movement”63—­though it was protesting against Antiochus in particular, not against Hellenism as such.64 Such movements may take a variety of attitudes to what is required in light of the institutions they confront: a change in human hearts; a revolutionary, transforming act of God; a withdrawal from the world (cf. Qumran); a new way of looking at the world; miraculous experiences; effort to reform the way the world works; revolutionary action to establish a new order.65 The last is the response adopted wholeheartedly by Daniel”) sees vv 1–2a a redactional joint to unite what were earlier two separate blocks of material. 62 Boyarin, (“Daniel 7, Intertextuality, and the History of Israel’s Cult”) offers a distinctive version of this approach. 63 Wilson, Magic and the Millennium, 12. 64 The nature of Antiochus’s action and the dynamic of Jewish resistance is a controverted question: see recently Collins/Manning, Revolt and Resistance in the Ancient Classical World and the Near East. 65 I adapt the typology from Wilson, Magic and the Millennium, 18–30.

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Form/Structure/Setting 353 the Maccabees; Daniel’s stance is closer to the supernaturalist/revolutionary response.66 The response is one that looks to the somewhat distant past and to the hoped-­for future as the contexts of meaningful revelation, of experienced deliverance, and of political power. Deliverance and power are not present realities, as they are in the stories. We do not know what connection there was between the circles in which Dan 7 emerged and the circles that had generated the stories some time earlier. There is no specific reason to suppose that the connection is other than a literary one. The vision’s setting in the book of Daniel makes it the book’s central hinge.67 The chapter is in Aramaic, so that in language it belongs with the preceding chapters. In its account of the empires, it uses the language of the empire (see further the comments on ch. 2 Structure on the transition from Hebrew to Aramaic at 2:4). Structurally it rounds off a chiasm begun in ch. 2: 2  A vision of four kingdoms and their end (Nebuchadnezzar) 3  Faithfulness and a miraculous rescue (the three friends) 4  Judgment presaged and experienced (Nebuchadnezzar) 5  Judgment presaged and experienced (Belshazzar) 6  Faithfulness and a miraculous rescue (Daniel) 7  A vision of four kingdoms and their end (Daniel)68 This first vision of Daniel comes in a dream, which fits the chapter’s “pivotal position.”69 There are many works in the OT and later Jewish works comprising stories (e.g., Ruth and Esther) or dominated by visions (e.g., Zechariah); a work that combines the two is unique. So is a work that attributes visions to someone who is not a scriptural figure such as Enoch, Moses, Isaiah, or Ezra.70 In the case of the book of Daniel, the starting point of the visions in chs. 7–12 is the vision attributed to Daniel in ch. 2—which might easily go back to a “real” Daniel. Its rhetoric continues to work not by arguing its point but by simply declaring that it comes by revelation and by describing the seer’s response to the revelation.71 Like ch. 2, ch. 7 relates a symbolic dream and interprets it as referring to four diverse regimes. The first regime is particularly impressive, the second is less so, the third has parallels to the first, being endowed with special authority. Most attention is given to the violent fourth regime. It has an ironlike 66 Reid, “Sociological Setting of the Historical Apocalypses,” 162–63; Enoch and Daniel, 89–91. 67 See e.g., Meadowcroft, “‘One Like a Son of Man’ in the Court of the Foreign King”; Tanner, “Literary Structure of the Book of Daniel”; Patterson, “The Key Role of Daniel 7”; David, Composition and Structure, 97–180. 68 See Lenglet, “Structure littéraire de Daniel 2–7”; Weimar, “Daniel 7,” 33–34. 69 Husser, Dreams and Dream Narratives, 122. 70 Cf. Newsom, Daniel, 19. 71 Cf. Newsom, Daniel, 18.

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strength (‫ )פרזל‬and crushing power (‫)דקק‬, though it suffers from division and conflict. It is destined to be destroyed from the heavens; its power will be taken over by a regime instituted by God and destined to last forever. The chapters differ in that Dan 2 relates a dream of the foreign king (when the Babylonian Empire is at its height) whose interest focuses on the regimes themselves, while Dan 7 relates a dream of the Judahite counselor (when the Babylonian empire is declining) that is specifically interested in the suffering of his people and in their destiny to share God’s rule. In Dan 2 Daniel is actively involved as interpreter, providing his God-­g iven insight; in Dan 7 he is a mere passive recipient of revelation, needing to be given his symbolic dream’s interpretation. Daniel 2 sees the fourth regime as weak but not as wicked, so that its destruction would be an act of judgment—­a s is the destruction in Dan 7. Whereas Dan 2 implicitly stresses God’s power in replacing the regimes by his own, Dan 7 at this point implicitly stresses God’s justice. The imagery of Dan 2 is simpler and relatively stately, that of Dan 7 more complex and fantastic. The outward impressiveness of the humanlike statue contrasts with the dangerous yet merely animalic sequence of creatures; the unimpressive rock that destroys the statue contrasts with the stately figure whose word brings the creatures’ judgment and the humanlike being whose rule replaces theirs. Further, Dan 7 has a different philosophy of empire. It thinks not in terms of one imperial reality but of a multiplicity of empires.72 The features distinguishing Dan 7 from Dan 2 reflect the portrayal of empires in the intervening chapters.73 Daniel 2 offers world rulers a vision of their position as a God-­g iven calling. Daniel 3–6 portrays them as inclined to make themselves into God; they are thus also inclined to put mortal pressure on those who are committed to God (chs. 3; 6), but they are themselves on the way to catastrophe (chs. 4; 5). These motifs are taken up and taken further in ch. 7. The tension between the human and the bestial in chs. 4 and 6 becomes a key motif: bestiality is turned on God himself,74 but God puts an end to the reign of the creature and gives authority to a humanlike figure.75 As the real statue of ch. 3 follows on the dream statue of ch. 2, the dream animals of ch. 7 follow on the real animals of ch. 6. As people of all races, nations, and languages were called to bow before the statue (3:4; cf. 5:19), so now they honor the human figure of Daniel’s vision (7:14). Once Nebuchadnezzar testified to God’s lasting power (4:3, 34 [3:33; 4:31]; cf. 6:26); now Daniel’s human figure has this power (7:14). Once Nebuchadnezzar’s humiliation was limited to seven periods of time (4:16 [13]); now the humiliation of the heavenly

72 Frisch, The Danielic Discourse on Empire, 82. 73 Plöger, Daniel, on the passage. 74 Cf. Barr, “Daniel,” on the passage. 75 Cf. Lacocque, Daniel, on the passage.

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Form/Structure/Setting 355 ones will be limited to 3 1/2 such periods (7:25). Once God demonstrated in history that as ruler in the earthly realm he could give royal authority to the most ordinary of human beings (4:17 [14]); now he gives it to a humanlike being at the end of the story of earthly kingdoms (7:13–14). Once Darius took hold of power (5:31); now the heavenly ones do so (7:18). Once Darius acknowledged that God’s rule would persist until the end (‫( )עד סופא‬6:26); now the king symbolized by the small horn has his authority destroyed permanently (‫( )עד סופא‬7:26). Dan 2–6 have affirmed that God controlled times and epochs, his decree being victorious over the decrees of kings (2:9, 13, 15, 21; 6:5, 8, 12, 15); now a king who thinks to control times set by decree will lose all power (7:25–26). Chapters 3–6 indicate why the sequence of earthly regimes is destined to be brought to an end in the way ch. 2 describes. Chapter 7 combines the thrust of the preceding chapters as a whole and puts them in a new perspective. Their theme of the history of the kingdoms and their appointed time and destiny is brought to its climax—­though they still stand, and the chapters set before second-­century readers implicit challenges and promises regarding their own lives.76 They are called not just to a passive, secret waiting for the End, but to an active, courageous, expectant, faithful, direct self-­application.77 As the hinge of the book of Daniel, ch. 7 also opens the way to the following chapters. With its concern for God’s reign it provides the broad context for their narrower focus; they provide further interpretation and detail in regard to its allusiveness and its broad brush strokes. Its opening verse begins a new chronological sequence, which will run through the visions, as an earlier chronological sequence ran through chs. 1–6. Its closing verse opens the way to further material, which will elaborate on and clarify the sometimes mysterious contents of ch. 7. This series of Daniel’s further first-­person visions will in different ways focus more sharply on the crisis that the fourth creature and its small horn bring to the people of God and their sanctuary. Chapter 7 brings not a change in attitudes to gentiles78 but a change in attitudes to empires. It “turns the theological/ideological direction of the book as a whole in a dramatic, and darker, direction” with its talk of struggle, warfare, and the exposure of the empires’ nature as beasts that arose out of chaos and evil.79 “Apocalyptic pulls away the façade of apparent benevolence that human governments like to construct and exposes the depths of evil, lies, corruption, and violence that lies behind the façade.”80

76 Towner, Daniel, e.g., 114–15. 77 On the links between Dan 7 and the other stories, see further Meadowcroft, Aramaic Daniel and Greek Daniel, 234–43. 78 See Sumner, “Daniel,” 159. 79 Smith-Christopher, “Daniel,” 100. 80 Wright, Hearing the Message of Daniel, 163.

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Comment 1 Historically, Belshazzar’s first year will have been the first year of his regency in Babylon during the ten years Nabonidus spent in Tema (see Nabonidus’s Harran stelae, ANET, 562–63; cf. ch. 4 Form). This period would have begun in 550/549, the year of Cyrus’s decisive victory over Astyages, king of Media.81 Babylonian documents were not dated by Belshazzar’s reign but by Nabonidus’s, but Belshazzar had had the kingship in Babylon entrusted to him and it is natural enough for a Jewish story to be dated by his years. Suggestively, the visions in chs. 7 and 8 come from the beginning of that ten-­year rule that ends with the portent in ch. 5; Belshazzar is a king whose judgment foreshadows that of the fourth empire.82 But the structure of the book emphasizes rather the link between ch. 5 and the other narratives and the link between chs. 7 and 8 and the other visions. 2–3 Talk of four winds, heaving sea, and huge animals calls to mind mythic material from Babylon and Canaan reflected in earlier parts of the OT (see Form). For the mythic Sea, the OT elsewhere uses the more general term “the sea” (e.g., Isa 5:30; 27:1; Jer 51:42; Pss 74:13; 89:9 [10]; Job 26:12; Rev 21:1) or “the [Great] Deep” ([‫( )תהום ]רבה‬e.g., Gen 7:11; Isa 51:10; Amos 7:4). “The Great Sea” is a standard title for the Mediterranean (see BDB, 410; in Aram., 1QapGen 21.16). But the Qumran Levi Apocryphon is an exception,83 and this vision trades on both possible significances: the Mediterranean becomes a symbol for the tumultuous mythic sea. 4–8 The four creatures emerge from the ocean consecutively, not concurrently, though this in itself hardly excludes the possibility of understanding the kings they represent as contemporaries, with the consecutiveness being merely a feature of the presentation. Nor does it exclude the possibility of associating one creature with each point of the compass. Each animal is fierce and dangerous. Each is also ominous in a narrower sense. The first three, at least, are anomalous creatures, resembling one species but also having features belonging to another or being deformed in some other way. In Babylonian lore such actual or theoretical anomalies were believed to portend specific historical events.84 In the context of the Torah, such hybrids imply a contravention of the prohibition on mating members of different species, behind which lies the emphasis in Gen 1 on species being created “after their kind.” In Hellenistic Judea, hybrid creatures on charms and amulets symbolize demonic forces.85 While it is possible to link char81 Hasel, “The First and Third Years of Belshazzar.” 82 Newsom, Daniel, 220. 83 DSS 2:1080–81; see Angel, “The Sea in 4Q541 7.3 and in Daniel 7:2”; also Gardner, “The Great Sea of Dan. vii 2.” 84 See Porter, Metaphors and Monsters, 15–29. 85 Cf. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, vol. 1; cf. Massyngberde Ford, “Jewish Law and Animal Symbolism,” 209

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Comment 357 acteristics of each of the creatures with features of the kingdoms they may represent, the text does not point to such connections. It would make little difference to the vision’s meaning if bear and leopard exchanged positions in the vision or if the third creature were likened to a wolf rather than a leopard. 4 The features of a lion to which the OT appeals are ferocity, strength, destructiveness, courage, rapacity, and fearsomeness; it can be used as a simile or metaphor for any nation or individual with such characteristics, and in particular to suggest kingship.86 The eagle’s key characteristics are speed and rapacity (Hab 1:8; Lam 4:19). The bird referred to is perhaps strictly the large and majestic, high-­f lying and swooping griffon vulture.87 Lion and eagle appear together to characterize Saul and Jonathan in 2 Sam 1:23, the unnamed northern foe in Jer 4:7, 13, and Nebuchadnezzar in particular in Jer 49:19, 22. Neither has a distinctive association with Babylon or with Nebuchadnezzar, though winged lions in relief decorated the Processional Way in Babylon.88 Lions and eagles are the leading animals and birds symbolizing the nations in 1 En. 89–90. They appropriately symbolize the first king, whoever is referred to, like the gold in ch. 2. In isolation, what happens to the lion-­eagle might be read negatively: it is reduced from being able to soar above the earth to experiencing the limitations of mere humanness. The removal of the eagle’s wings, reducing the creature to a four-­legged animal, could be an act of judgment paralleling the one Nebuchadnezzar experienced in ch. 4. There, however, coming to share the appearance of an eagle is an act of judgment; it accompanies coming to share the life of an animal as an aspect of Nebuchadnezzar’s being deprived of his humanity before he has his human sanity restored. More likely, having one’s feathered wings removed, being stood on one’s feet like a human being, and being given a human mind are all blessings, not deprivations. The movement from animal to human in ch. 7 compares positively with the movement in the Nebuchadnezzar story from human to animal and back to human.89 Verse 4 might then imply a positive assessment of the destroyer Nebuchadnezzar’s being succeeded by Nabonidus: Babylonian rule is humanized.90 The lion-­eagle that becomes humanlike even anticipates or foreshadows the judgment of the creatures and the bestowal of their authority on the humanlike figure of v. 13.91 The positive description of the lion-­eagle corresponds with the descriptions of the bear (which is encouraged to eat) and the leopard (which is given authority). But this first of the creatures is the most human, not necessarily in the sense that it behaves in a more human way, but in the sense that God 86 See G. J. Botterweck in ThWAT on ‫ארי‬. 87 See Alon, Natural History of the Land of the Bible, 220–21. 88 Saggs, The Greatness That Was Babylon, 479–80; plate 53. 89 Cf. Keel, “Die Tiere und die Mensch in Daniel 7.” 90 Cf. Caquot, review of Delcor, Le livre de Daniel, 114. 91 Kvanvig, “Struktur und Geschichte in Dan 7,1–14,” 103; Porter, Metaphors and Monsters, 112.

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appoints it to a humanlike position of honor, authority, responsibility, and care for the world (cf. 2:38; 4:20–22 [17–19]). It is given a role in the world with a significance like that of a symbolic human figure—­which might imply a celestial being, as 1 En. 89 portrays Noah’s becoming a man to undertake a supernatural task in building the ark.92 5 The second, bearlike, creature is introduced with the briefest of formulae (‫וארו‬, “and there!”), which could point toward a close association with the first creature; but there is no other indication of close association, so it is best taken as a mere stylistic variation. Its size and strength make it a source of fear to human beings second only to the lion: see 1 Sam 17:34–37; Amos 5:19; Prov 28:15. Indeed, it comes before the lion in Lam 3:10; see also 2 Sam 17:8; Isa 11:7; Hos 13:8; Prov 17:2; and for a vivid instance of its dangerousness, 2 Kgs 2:24. The bear would be a fit simile for any king or empire; nothing specific associates it with any particular king or empire. Both text and grammar (see Notes) and meaning and reference in its description are problematic. Being lifted up on one side might suggest that it was rearing up on its back legs, perhaps implying that it was half-­human,93 or had one paw raised ready to strike, or was half-­crouching ready to spring. The language might refer to Media as the referent of the bear: perhaps Media’s remoteness or the Medes’ perceived lack of historical achievements, which could be suggested by the bear’s clumsiness.94 More likely the description may point to the bear’s possessing a physical anomaly (cf. the parallels in Šumma izbu 14.10–11).95 One might less speculatively explain details in the vision from within Daniel: the one side (or ruler: see n. 5.c) could be Darius, the sole Median mentioned in the book.96 But the language is allusive. If the bear had a large mouthful of ribs through having bitten them from a victim, one might expect it to be told to eat up and then take some more rather than simply being told to eat lots of meat. More likely this description, too, refers to an anomaly: the ribs are growing in the bear’s mouth. Šumma izbu 17.16 is a near parallel, referring to lungs in the mouth.97 The allusion to a deformity would follow on from the description of the bear’s being distorted on one side. Alternatively or additionally, the three ribs could be Babylonian kings (e.g., Nebuchadnezzar, Ewil-­merodak, and Belshazzar) or other conquered kings98 or earlier empires99 or conquered 92 Porter, Metaphors and Monsters, 53. 93 Lebram, “Apokalyptik und Hellenismus,” 517–18. 94 See Torrey, “‘Medes and Persians,’” 11–12; Plöger, Daniel, on the verse. 95 Porter, Metaphors and Monsters, 17. 96 Waterman, “A Gloss on Darius the Mede”; Hartman/Di Lella, Daniel, on the verse. 97 Porter, Metaphors and Monsters, 17. 98 Cf. Cant. Rab. 3:3, Esth. Rab. 3; possibly the three subordinate kings of Jer 51:27 (Gurney, God in Control, on the verse). 99 So Hippolytus, Daniel, 4.3

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Comment 359 cities100 or conquered peoples.101 If the three ‫ עלעין‬are rather tusks or fangs (see n. 5.e), the description would lead well into the exhortation to eat lots of meat, and the three could represent Median kings (e.g., Cyaxares I, Darius the Mede, and Cyaxares II).102 6 The leopard appears with the lion and other animals as a fearsome predator (Isa 11:6; Jer 5:6; Hos 13:7; Song 4:8). Its distinctive features are its spots (Jer 13:23) and its speed (Hab 1:8). The Persians and the Greeks had speedy armies (Isa 41:3; Dan 8:5), but the text does not specify such an allusion. The four wings and four heads indicate that this creature, too, is not a real or ordinary leopard but a heraldic figure or more likely another anomaly. As a winged predator it resembles the first creature. While four wings or heads could denote the four Persian kings of 11:2 or the fourfold Greek Empire of 8:8; 11:4, four is a frequent indicator of totality or universal activity and extension (cf. Ezek 1:5–6), and the point here may simply be that the leopard can see and move quickly in any direction. 7 The fourth animal is described without being named, like many of the anomalies in Šumma izbu.103 It has none of the dragon-­or serpent-­like attributes of Leviathan (the distinction between the dragon and the fourfold hybrid is still preserved in Rev 13:1–4). If it represents Greece (see v. 17 Comment), then circumstantial factors suggest it is an elephant. The battle elephant was brought west by the Greeks and the elephant came to be a symbol for Alexander and for Antiochus III (see Form). Antiochus IV’s use of elephants was well known (e.g., 1 Macc 1:17; 3:34; cf. 6:28–47). The reason for its not being named is hardly to conceal the vision’s message from the authorities:104 it would hardly have done so. Nor is it because this withholding would have made it difficult to introduce the ten horns:105 the vision readily ascribes anomalous features to named animals. In not identifying the fourth animal, Dan 7 compares with Hos 13:5–6,106 and it is part of the difference in representation from that of the first three. The dream report has described them, in terms of their form and appearance, and it has reported what happens to them, by means of passive verbs. The use of these verbs implicitly put the emphasis on what God does to the animals, says to them, and gives to them, though it also “renders the divine grammatically invisible as the doer of the action and thus somewhat elusive as an agent within human history.”107 In a double contrast with the first three animals, the report does not describe the 100 So Ibn Ezra in ‫ מקראות גדולות‬on the verse. 101 So Young, Daniel, on the verse. 102 So Torrey, “‘Medes and Persians,’” 12. 103 Porter, Metaphors and Monsters, 28. 104 Against Staub, “Das Tier mit den Hörnern; Hanhart, “The Four Beasts of Daniel’s Vision in the Night,” 577. 105 Against Coppens, “Dan., vii, 1–18.” 106 Day, God’s Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea, 156–57. 107 Merrill Willis, Dissonance and the Drama of Divine Sovereignty in the Book of Daniel, 70–71.

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fourth animal’s form and appearance, which has the effect of giving it a touch of mystery and of suggesting that it is even less a mere earthly creature than its lionlike, bearlike, and leopardlike predecessors. And it characterizes the animal by means of active verbs, putting the emphasis on its own deeds; the report thus prepares the way for the action of God that directly confronts its self-­initiated action. The bear’s one side and three ribs/tusks and the leopard’s four wings and four heads are capped by the fourth creature’s ten horns. While there was a violent and destructive aspect to Alexander’s achievements, the portrayal here reflects the oppressiveness of subsequent Hellenistic rulers. Horns suggest strength for defense or attack; they are a symbol for a king, who needs to have strength in both connections (cf. v. 24). Ten is a standard round number, here suggesting fullness.108 While the number might also take up the toes of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream statue (2:41–42), its having ten toes is not mentioned there. As likely is a connection with the ten generations/kings mentioned in other apocalypses in connection with four empires (e.g., Sib. Or. 4).109 8 While ten horns thus might not imply a literal number, there is less ground for taking “three horns” non-­literally. Their being uprooted before it does not imply that the small horn uprooted them; the passive again suggests the action of God (as in vv. 4, 5, 6), who clears the way for the small horn by removing three others. Like the first animal, the fourth animal’s small horn has an appearance suggesting it is more than a mere animal. Its human features point toward the right and responsibility to rule over God’s creation (see v. 4 Comment). Reference to the look of the eyes can suggest people’s desires, their generosity or meanness, or their awareness (see BDB, 744). The most suggestive parallels are passages where the look of the eyes reveals a person’s self-­estimate, the pride and arrogance (or humility) located in the inner person (in the “heart”): see Isa 2:11; 5:15; Pss 18:27 [28]; 101:5; 131:1; Job 22:29; Prov 21:4; 30:13, 17. People’s talk also reveals the pride and arrogance (or humility) located in the inner person (1 Sam 2:3; Ezek 35:1; Obad 12; Ps 17:10). Pride and arrogance express themselves in deceit and flattery: so in Ps 12:3–4 [4–5], where the phrase ‫“ מדברת גדולות‬making great statements” occurs (cf. Ps 31:18 [19]). An arrogant look and a lying tongue head the list of Yahweh’s seven hates in Prov 6:16–19. More significantly, arrogance of look and word characterized the king of Assyria (Isa 10:12–13),110 who had raised his voice and eyes against the Holy One of Israel (Isa 37:23) and who is also Daniel’s model for the northern king in 11:36–45. But the small horn is not here said to be arrogant in look

108 Brongers, “Die Zehnzahl in der Bibel und ihrer Umwelt.”; TWNT. 109 See Flusser, “The Four Empires in the Fourth Sibyl and in the Book of Daniel,” 162–65; J. J. Collins, OTP 1:381–89. 110 Cf. Lester, Daniel Evokes Isaiah, 85–89.

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Comment 361 and word, only to look like a man and to speak impressively. The wickedness of the looks and words will become explicit only in v. 25 (cf. 8:23; 11:36; 1 Macc 1:24; Rev 13:5–6). 9–10 A number of descriptions of God on his throne of fire surrounded by numerous attendants locate the scene in the heavens: see 1 Kgs 22:19–22; Ps 82; 1 En. 14:18–22; 40:1; 60:1–2; 71; 91:15–16; Rev 4–5. Where it is specifically a matter of God judging, however, the scene is normally on earth: see Jer 49:38; Joel 3 [4]:1–2, 12; Zech 14:1–5; Pss 50; 96:10–13; 1 En. 1:3–9; 25:3; 90:20–27.111 In Dan 7 Daniel has been watching a scene on earth, and the account gives no indication that the scene has changed. Rather, the opening phrase of v. 9 implies a continuity of perspective: Daniel continues to look in the direction he had been looking. Setting up the thrones suggests an earthly location (in the heavens they are already set up), as does the later talk of the one advanced in years coming (v. 22).112 Plural “thrones” is unusual in the OT unless there are a number of kings to sit on them (Isa 14:9; Ezek 26:16). Psalm 122:5 may use the plural for emphasis (see GKC 124def), to suggest David’s exalted, glorious throne, and here the plural could suggest “a huge throne.”113 Yet throne scenes in Middle Eastern myths portray a number of gods seated in counsel to make decisions about future events (e.g., Enuma Elish 1.33–34, 151–57; 2.126–27; 3.8–10 [ANET, 61–64]), and the NT makes a number of reference to thrones (Matt 19:28; Col 1:16; Rev 4:2; 20:4).114 Nevertheless, here plural thrones seem to be merely part of the furniture of the scene. When the court sits, it is only the one advanced in years who sits enthroned. All the focus is on him. His heavenly attendants stand; they do not sit on thrones. The creatures are visually animals, but it will be explained to Daniel that they stand for kings and their domains (v. 17), and this significance has exercised a retroactive influence on their portrayal as animals (e.g., vv. 4b, 8). Similarly, the one advanced in years is visually a human being, but he stands for God; this significance, too, exercises a retroactive influence on the portrayal in the vision. Picturing him as an old man suggests someone august, venerable and respected, judicious and wise. There is perhaps an allusion to the notion of God’s existing from eternity (Isa 41:4; Pss 90:2; 93:2; 102:24–27 [25–28]; Job 36:26). The description of God as a senior figure, almost grandfatherly rather than fatherly, also fits the description of God in chs. 1–6 as wise as well as authoritative.115 Whereas it is sometimes said that ideas of God 111 Cf. Pace, Daniel, 238; and see further the comparison with the vision of a divine throne and judgment scene in the Qumran Book of Giants (4Q530) as well as 1 Enoch, in Newsom, Daniel, 227–28; also Stuckenbruck, “The Throne Theophany of the Book of Giants.” 112 Cf. Lopez, “Standing Before the Throne of God,” 147; Beasley-Murray, “The Interpretation of Daniel 7,” 49. 113 Cf. Kearns, Vorfragen zur Christologie 3:178. 114 Cf. Collins, Daniel, 301. 115 Cf. McEntire, “The Graying of God in Daniel 1–7.”

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become more spiritualized during the OT period, the particularly explicit picturing of God in human fashion comes here in the latest work within the OT, and paradoxically, it is the human portrayal of God that captures God’s divine incomparability as a just and absolute ruler in contrast to the animal forms of the earthly kings/kingdoms.116 Whereas white clothing (and hair) could suggest purity (cf. 11:35; 12:10; Isa 1:18; Ps 51:7 [9]),117 in the context, with its description of the flaming throne, more likely ‫ חור‬has its more basic meaning of brightness and luminosity, thus nobility and splendor (cf. the related description in 1 En. 14:20; the use of ‫ חור‬in connection with royal clothing in Esth 1:6; 8:15; also Dan 10:5–6; Ps 104:1–2; 2 Esd 2:39–40; Matt 28:3; Mark 9:3).118 There is an ambiguity about the OT’s frequent association of fire with God.119 While fire can be an encouraging image, associated with light, protection, and guidance, more commonly it suggests something transcendent and absolute, awesome and dangerous, mysterious and destructive. The imagery derived from a violent storm, which can be used to describe God’s appearing, often includes lightning that flashes with fire from the heavens: so in the Sinai story (Exod 19:16–18; 20:18; 24:17; Deut 4:36) and more generally in the apprehension of nature (Ps 104:4; 148:8). God’s splendor can also naturally be expressed by the fiery brightness of the sun: so the visions of Ezekiel (1:4, 13, 27; 8:2; 10:2, 6, 7) and 1 Enoch (14.8–22); compare also Dan 10:5–6. The sensation of dazzling light or fire is a frequent aspect of visionary experience, which will have encouraged this more worrisome association. The destructiveness of fire makes it a natural symbol of judgment (Deut 4:24; Pss 18:8–13 [9–14]; 21:9 [10]; 50:3; 97:3). “The unapproachable holiness and terrifying power” of God made Israel see “as the appropriate symbol and speaking likeness of the divine nature that element distinguished above all others for the suddenness of its outbreaks and for the mockery which it makes of all human defences.”120 The thousands and myriads of courtiers attend upon the one advanced in years (cf. Deut 33:2; 1 Kgs 22:19; Ps 68:17 [18]).121 It is not they who are to be judged (cf. also 1 En. 1:9).122 They are God’s heavenly army, though their military role is not in focus here. The notion of books being consulted again has its background in the life of the royal court, which necessarily keeps records of events and decisions (Ezra 4:15; Esth 6:1). This feature of court practice is naturally included when the royal-­court image is used to picture the workings of 116 Cf. Merrill Willis, “Heavenly Bodies,” 16–17, 36. 117 Cf. Saadia, Daniel, 543. 118 See Brenner, Colour Terms in the OT, 90, 93, 133. 119 On which see V. Hamp in ThWAT on ‫ ;אש‬Eichrodt, Theologie des AT 2:1–4 (ET 16–20). 120 Eichrodt, Theologie des AT 2:2 (ET 18). 121 Sumner (“Daniel,” 172) notes a multiplicity of link with Ps 68 in this chapter. 122 Against Jeffery, “Daniel,” on the passage.

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Comment 363 heaven.123 God’s books sometimes record God’s purposes regarding the final issues of history or regarding particular segments of history (cf. the sealed books of 8:26; 9:24; 10:21; 12:4, 9). They sometimes record God’s expectations of human conduct and his intentions regarding the judgment of humanity in light of how far they fulfill these expectations, or fail to do so (e.g., 1 En. 81; 93:1–3; 103:2; Jub. 5:12–19; 16:9; 23:32). Any of these significances might be relevant in the present context; the idea of books that contain a citizen list, a list of the people who belong to God (12:1), or that record people’s deeds and afflictions seems less relevant here. The people whose names would be in God’s book have not yet come into focus in the vision, while the deeds that are to be judged are the ones before our eyes in the vision, not ones recorded in books. The scene is not a “great assize” when judgment is passed on all human beings individually.124 11–12 Execution by burning was a familiar idea (Gen 38:24; Lev 20:14; 21:9; Josh 7:15, 25; also Dan 3) and a common way of describing divine punishment (e.g., Isa 30:33; Ezek 28:18; 38:22; Ps 11:6). Other passages that speak of victory over the sea/dragon (e.g., Isa 27:1; 51:9–10) use different imagery to describe the same judgment as is executed here. The destructive fire seems not to be identified with the theophanic flame of vv. 9–10: the words are different, the stress there being on brightness. More comparable is a detailed judgment scene in 1 En. 90:20–27, of parallel significance to Dan 7; it describes wicked stars, shepherds, and sheep being thrown into a fiery abyss. As with the books of v. 10, a motif in Daniel is thus worked out in more detail in other apocalypses. While these parallels may help to illumine the allusion, their detail should not be read into it. As the whole statue is destroyed at once in ch. 2, all four creatures lose authority together, though v. 12b adds a nuance. The extension of their lives has been interpreted historically of Babylon, Media, and Persia keeping their identity within succeeding empires down to the Greek period, or being expected to regain independence on the dissolution of the Greek Empire.125 But understanding the words in this way is to allegorize. More likely, the vision is making a theological point, taken up in vv. 14 and 27: the kingdoms submit to God and his people either in receiving judgment or in doing honor. It would be in keeping with vv. 26–27 if the three are allowed to survive in order to serve the people of God, in accordance with promises in Isa 14:1–2; 49:22–23; 60:12,126 but the point is not explicit. 13–14 The lengthy opening formula advertises that we are by no means yet through the awesome scenes in the vision. The formula resembles the 123 Se Koep, Das himmlische Buch, 1–39. 124 Against Murdock, “History and Revelation.” 125 Rowley, Darius the Mede and the Four World Empires, 123–24; Ginsberg (Studies in Daniel, 6–11) relates v 12b to specific decades within the Greek period. 126 Cf. Heaton, Daniel, on the verse.

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ones in vv. 2 and 7, which introduced the four animals and then the fourth in particular; the scene we are about to witness balances both.127 Independently of their context in Dan 7, vv. 13–14 might describe an ascent from earth to heaven, as in 1 En. 14; 4 Ezra 13, or a movement within the heavens in which the whole scene is then set, as in the Baal myth; but in their context in Dan 7, they describe a movement from the heavens to the earth. The phrase “among the clouds of the heavens” is brought to the front of its clause despite its thereby separating ‫ ארו‬from its predicate. The phrase thus draws our attention away from earth where the vision has been located so far128 and toward the heavens, the position of the figure who is about to be described and who now moves toward the court. The description compares with the coming of God to earth in, e.g., Isa 19:1; Ps 18:9–12 [10–13].129 But the figure who comes is “one in human likeness.” As ‫ בן אדם‬literally means “a human being” (cf. 8:17), ‫“ בן עולה‬a wicked person,” and ‫“ יד אנש‬a human hand,” ‫ בר אנש‬literally means “a human being.”130 “Son of man” is a literalistic Semitism.131 ‫ בר אנש‬and ‫ בן אדם‬are always anarthrous in the OT: in other words, the term “the human being” (the son-­of-­man) does not occur. It does come to be a title for a particular individual in 1 En. 37–71, 4 Ezra 13, the NT, and rabbinic writings. These works use the motif in varying ways, and even there it is doubtful whether we should think in terms of a “Son of Man concept” in Judaism. Still less is there evidence that in the second century BC the phrase is used as a title or alludes to a well-­k nown concept.132 Nor is there indication of this idea in Dan 7:13–14, any more than is the case with expressions such as “a lion”—­or “a man”—­in v. 4, “a leopard” in v. 6, or even “one advanced in years” in v. 9. In each case the terms are anarthrous; contrast “the Great Sea” in v. 2, and “the One On High” in v. 25. ‫ בר אנש‬is qualified by ‍‫“ כ‬like”: hence “one in human likeness,” or more literally “one like a human being.” The phrase “like a human being” formally compares with the earlier phrases “like a lion,” “resembling a bear,” and “like a leopard” (vv. 4, 5, 6). Each of those phrases, however, was followed by a clause that qualified the description and explained how the creatures were “like” but not identical with these animals. In the case of the “one like a human being” there is no such qualification, unless it lies in the preceding phrase “among the clouds of the heavens.” The expression rather parallels the varied, though 127 Kvanvig, “Struktur und Geschichte in Dan 7,1–14,” 101–2. 128 Cf. Ferch, Son of Man; Casey, Son of Man; on the verse. 129 Cf. Sabourin, “The Biblical Cloud,” 304, following Luzarraga, Las tradiciones de la nube en la biblia y en el judaismo. 130 Smith notes an occurrence in Ugaritic (“The ‘Son of Man’ in Ugaritic”). 131 Stevanovic (“The Use of the Aramaic Word bar (“son”) as a Noun of Relation in the Book of Daniel”) notes that bar means son in only two of its eight occurrences in Daniel. 132 Angel (Chaos and Son of Man) argues that the vision presupposes an already existent link between a humanlike figure and the theme of God as the victor over disorder.

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Comment 365 more complex, ‍‫ כ‬phrases in 8:15; 10:16, 18. Like the figures who appear there, the one here entirely resembles a human being; it is not partly animal, like the sphinxes in Ezek 1.133 The ‍‫ כ‬does add mystery to the description, in a way appropriate to a vision.134 In Dan 7 the four creatures together, the fourth creature, and the one advanced in years are described without ‍‫ ;כ‬there is comparable variation within Ezek 1, and it would be hazardous to infer that this was more than a matter of stylistic flexibility. The idea is not that the creatures and the one advanced in years exist, in a sense in which the human being does not, though it might be that the preposition clarified that the “human being” is not actually human.135 What are the implications of describing the figure as humanlike? Earlier verses in Dan 7 have used the motif of being human over against being animal to denote having a position of authority. That position was granted to the first animal and grasped for by the small horn (vv. 4, 8). This connotation continues in vv. 13–14. If there is a link with extrabiblical connotations of the description, it is that in some contexts both ‫ בר אנש‬and ‫ בן אדם‬can be lofty terms, to mean a “Somebody.”136 There are no grounds within Dan 7 for linking the humanlike figure with primal humanity concepts known from elsewhere (see Form). But ‫ בר אנש‬may—­perhaps subconsciously—­reflect the ‫ בן אדם‬of Pss 8:4–6 [5–7]; 80:17 [18]; Job 25:6, texts that overlap theologically with Dan 7:13–14, though the evidence is not compelling. Describing the figure as humanlike does not in itself indicate that it is a figure representing humanity coming to be enthroned as king of the universe. Yet the humanlike figure does come in order to be invested as king (v. 14). The sovereignty he is given is like God’s own (cf. 4:3; 6:26), the rule described in the first symbolic dream (2:44–45). He is given the power Nebuchadnezzar once exercised (2:37; 5:19; cf. 6:25). In serving him, people indirectly serve God, like the foreigners pictured as serving Israel in Isa 60:7, 10; 61:6.137 In other contexts “a humanlike figure” could rather suggest the frailty of mere humanity (e.g., Pss 144:3–4; 146:3). A feeble human then stands over against the horned creature. The NT may have drawn the inference that the humanlike figure is himself someone who suffers, partly by associating the humanlike figure with the servant of Isa 52:13–53:12, but the inference is not drawn in Dan 7. The four creatures do not attack the humanlike figure, and the logic that has them do so is the logic of allegory. The picture is of conflict and victory rather than affliction and deliverance.138 The verses describe the 133 134 135 136

So Mowinckel, He That Cometh, 352; against Kraeling, Anthropos and Son of Man, 142–44. Cf. Volz, Eschatologie, 11–12; Gressmann, Ursprung der israelitisch-jüdischen Eschatologie, 342. So Coppens, “Le Fils d’homme daniélique et les relectures,” 12. Cf. Herzfeld, Zoroaster and His World, 835–40; Caquot, “Les quatre bêtes et le ‘Fils d’homme,’” 68; Wifall, “Son of Man.” 137 Feuillet, Etudes d’exégèse et de théologie biblique, 454. 138 Bruce, “The Background to the Son of Man Sayings,” 58; Casey, Son of Man.

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appearing, presentation, and investiture of someone notable and imposing, not the exaltation of a previously lowly figure. So the humanlike figure is a symbol for some entity given authority by God. But whom does he represent? What is the referent of the symbol? The symbolic vision does not make the answer explicit. This lack arises partly from the nature of such a vision. Part of the point about a symbolic vision is to engage its recipients so as to draw them into the significances and value judgments it attaches to its referents while discouraging them from overtly focusing on what the referents are, and therefore perhaps resisting the vision’s message. It will be the interpretive vision that reveals the referents of the symbols. In studying the symbolic vision, a preoccupation with identifying the referents is to miss its point. Nevertheless, a wide range of suggestions has been offered regarding the figure’s identity. The expression “a human being” can denote a person such as Ezekiel or Daniel. Like Ezekiel, Daniel is addressed as ‫ בן אדם‬in 8:17, and in 1 Enoch the visionary is identified by an equivalent to this phrase. Yet these data are hardly enough to make it natural to read 7:13–14 as referring to Daniel.139 As the animals stand for gentile kings who also represent their peoples, the humanlike figure could refer to a leader of Israel who at the same time represents Israel as a whole, as happens in some other OT passages (see Form). On the basis of Deut 32:1–4, the figure has been identified as Moses, implying a promise that Moses will return to redeem Israel; but the pointers are scanty.140 The figure has been seen as a symbol for the Maccabean leaders on the way to the Davidic throne: compare the association of God’s kingship and those who are committed to him (‫ )חסידים‬in Pss 145; 149 (cf. 1 Macc 2:42).141 More specifically, the figure has been identified as Israel’s actual leader whose rule followed that of Antiochus, Judas Maccabeus; the vision would thus mark God’s approval of the Maccabean victory.142 But this view presupposes that Daniel was written after the temple restoration; and there are no specific pointers to Judas, while in general the book’s sympathies within loyal Judaism are usually thought to be more with the strand that was looking for God to act than with the active resistance of the Maccabees (cf. 11:34?). Jewish and Christian tradition has commonly understood the humanlike figure to be the hoped-­for future Davidic king of Israel who would fulfill the hopes expressed in OT prophecy—­the Messiah.143 One of the thrones mentioned in v. 9 might then be meant for him, so that the scene parallels 139 140 141 142

Against Schmid, “Daniel, der Menschensohn.” Against Gaster, “The Son of Man.” Klein, “Über das Buch Daniel,” 239. Cf. Haupt, “The Son of Man,” 130; Sahlin, “Antiochus IV Epiphanes und Judas Mackabäus”; Buchanan, To the Hebrews, 42–48. 143 See Breed, “History of Reception,” 245–52; so e.g., Yephet Daniel, 36; recently, e.g., Shepherd, “Daniel 7:13 and the NT Son of Man”; Alomía, Daniel 2:177–256.

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Comment 367 Ps 110:1; cf. 80:17 [18].144 For the Messiah to be a heavenly figure would be a novel idea; by definition, he is an earthly descendant of David. But the portrayal of him coming with the clouds of the heavens might simply signify that he comes by God’s initiative and as his gift, without suggesting that he is other than human. Psalm 2 describes the anointed king as begotten by God and installed by God without implying he is other than human. Nevertheless, if the humanlike figure is the messiah, he has a transcendent dimension. If the idea of the Messiah moves between a God pole and a human pole, this humanlike figure is at the former.145 Seeing the humanlike figure as the fulfillment of Israel’s hopes of a coming king draws attention to links between Dan 7 and Dan 1–6 in the latter’s focus on God’s reign. As the one whom God commissions to exercise his kingly authority, the humanlike figure fulfills the role of the anointed one, whether or not he is an earthly Davidide. Daniel 7 is concerned with God’s reign in the world rather than with God’s temple in Jerusalem—­a concern of chs. 8–9. Whether or not the human figure is royal, he is not priestly.146 But the grounds for identifying the humanlike figure as the Davidic anointed are circumstantial. There are no direct pointers to this idea in the text. While Daniel later refers to an anointed leader (‫נגיד‬, 9:25 ‫משיח‬, cf. 26), that anointed leader is not a “Messiah” (see Comment). The subsequent implied identification of the humanlike figure with the holy ones on high (v. 18) leads to the alternative proposal that the humanlike figure denotes not the Davidic ruler in particular but the Israelite people as a whole. A British tradition of approach to Dan 7, chiefly among NT scholars, then associates this possibility with the motif of the attacks on the holy beings in vv. 21–22, 25. These attacks signify the persecution of conservative Jews by Antiochus. The humanlike figure thus stands for the frail, afflicted, but faithful element within Israel, to be vindicated and given lasting kingly power.147 This people’s coming among the clouds would then suggest its coming by God’s initiative. The humanlike figure is a symbolic abstraction, like John Bull as a symbol of the English people.148 Some OT references to a human figure (‫ )בן אדם‬may refer either to Israel or to the Israelite king: Ps 80 pictures the nations behaving like animals and prays for God to support and restore the human figure at God’s right hand.149 In Dan 7, where the humanlike figure balances the creatures, it would not be surprising if it had both individual and

144 So Rowe, “Is Daniel’s ‘Son of Man’ Messianic?” 95–96; cf. Mowinckel, He That Cometh, 352. 145 Gross, “Der Messias im AT,” 167–69. 146 Against Lacocque (Daniel, on the passage), who identifies him as the true high priest to hold civil, military, and religious authority in place of the Antiochene Jason; Lacocque’s view is taken up by Fletcher-Louis, “The High Priest as Divine Mediator in the Hebrew Bible.” 147 So, e.g., Moule, Essays in NT Interpretation, 77, 79. 148 Barrett, “The Background of Mark 10:45,” 17. 149 Hooker, Son of Man, 19

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corporate reference, like them (in connection with a vision, there is no need for appeal to the idea of corporate personality in this connection).150 Describing the figure as humanlike implies a contrast over against the four animals, but it need not imply that the figure is human, still less that its extra-­v isionary referent is human, any more than the animal figures refer to animals. In isolation from the context, v. 13a would most naturally denote God himself: he characteristically appears with the clouds of the heavens (Baal’s entourage in myths) and characteristically appears humanlike (cf. Ezek 1:26). Thus the humanlike figure has been taken as a hypostatized manifestation of God like the figure of Wisdom in Prov 8,151 or as taking up the portrayal of God as humanlike in Ezek 1, a hypostatized image of God, embodying his lordship,152 or as a heavenly being with honors and powers normally predicated of God,153 or as standing for a divine figure who suggests the deification of Israel at the End.154 But it is a long step from a belief in a renewed and celestial Israel, such as the interpretive vision may envisage, to the deification of Israel, and given that the one advanced in years stands for God, it is difficult to attribute divine significance to this second figure. The scene’s pointers toward the unlikely conclusion that it envisages two divine beings155 reflect its background in mythic material concerning the installation of a junior god by a senior god,156 and the OT often pictures the heavens as having the same hierarchy as the ancient Near Eastern material but with the place of lesser gods being taken by the one God’s heavenly but nondivine aides. Further, humanlike figures are regularly celestial beings in subsequent visions in Daniel (8:15–16; 9:21; 10:5 [?], 16, 18; 12:6–7). Human beings over against animals in apocalypses such as 1 En. 89–90, too, suggest supernatural (but not divine) beings over against human beings. To speak of a scheme of symbolism in the apocalypses, whereby God is represented by light, fire, and cloud, celestial beings by stars or human beings, the righteous by clean animals, the wicked by unclean animals and predators, demons by hybrids,157 is to overschematize the presentation.158 But the parallels are suggestive, and they add to hints that the humanlike figure has a celestial rather than a human referent. Celestial beings other than God do not appear in or on the clouds of the heavens elsewhere in the OT; only God comes on the

150 Against Coppens, “Le Fils d’homme daniélique et les relectures,” 17; in criticism of this notion, see, e.g., Rogerson, “The Hebrew Conception of Corporate Personality.” 151 So Feuillet, Etudes d’exégèse et de théologie biblique, 435–93. 152 So Procksch, “Die Berufungsvision Hesekiels,” 148–49; “Christus im AT,” 80–81. 153 So Caragounis, Son of Man. 154 So Black, “Die Apotheose Israels”; ———. “The Throne-Theophany Prophetic Commission and the ‘Son of Man,’” 60–62. 155 Cf. Segal, Dreams, Riddles, and Visions, ch. 5. 156 Day, God’s Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea, 162. 157 Massyngberde Ford, “Jewish Law and Animal Symbolism,” 204. 158 Cf. Hooker, Son of Man, 15.

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Comment 369 clouds (Isa 19:1; Ps 104:3). But it may then be significant that the humanlike figure comes with/among them, not on them. Moses enters the theophanic cloud in Exod 24:18, and the cloud comes to collect Moses in Josephus (Ant 4.4.48 [4.326]; cf. b. Yoma 4a; Pesiq. Rab. 20:4), to collect Jesus in Acts 1:9, to collect believers in 1 Thess 4:17, and to carry Israel in targums to Exod 19:4.159 The humanlike figure might thus be a celestial being who represents Israel in the heavens.160 Elsewhere in Dan 7 celestial beings appear simply as attendants and interpreters (vv. 10, 16), but in v. 13 one of them might have a more substantial function. Chapters 8–12 portray celestial beings fulfilling various roles, and they offer several possibilities regarding the identification of the humanlike figure. He might be equated with the further unnamed awesome and mysterious man dressed in linen of 10:5–12:13, who is also described in quasi-­divine terms, linking him with Michael and the Metatron of 1 Enoch,161 though this identification seems to explain one enigma by another. A less opaque possibility is Gabriel, though he is supremely the heavenly interpreter (8:16–26; 9:21–27), and if he appears in ch. 7, it is as the one who fulfills this role in vv. 16–23.162 The “coming” (‫ )אתה‬of the humanlike figure might be compared with that of the heavenly lookout in 4:13–17 [10–14],163 though again the significance of the two comings—­in the chapters as we know them—­is rather different. The role of the humanlike figure is closer to that of Michael himself in 10:13, 21; 12:1. Michael (‫מיכאל‬, “who is like God”) is an ordinary OT name (e.g., Ezra 8:8), but Michael, like Gabriel, is one of the senior celestial beings in 1 Enoch (e.g., 9.1; 20.5; 71.9). In Dan 10–12 he is one of the supreme celestial leaders who is especially identified with Israel and is committed to standing by them and standing firm on their behalf against celestial leaders identified with other peoples.164 The authority he exercises in the heavens parallels that bestowed on the humanlike figure in 7:14, who appears at a similar moment to the one when Michael appears in ch. 12, the moment when evil power overreaches itself and God’s final intervention comes.165 The Qumran War Scroll (1QM 17.5–8) promises the overthrow of the leader of the wicked kingdom as the kingdom of Michael is exalted in the midst of the gods and the realm 159 Vermes, Jesus the Jew, 170, 186. 160 Koch, “Der ‘Menschensohn’ in Daniel”; ———, “Das Reich der Heiligen und des Menschensohns.” Cf. Collins, Daniel, 304–10. 161 Cf. Coppens, “Le Fils d’homme daniélique, vizir céleste?”; Stier, Gott und sein Engel im AT, 96–104 162 Day, God’s Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea, 171–72, against Zevit, “The Structure and Individual Elements of Daniel 7”; ———,”The Exegetical Implications of Daniel viii 1, ix 21”; see on 9:21. 163 See Müller, “Der Menschensohn im Danielzyklus,” 47–48. 164 Cf. Stier, Gott und sein Engel im AT. 165 See Schmidt, “The ‘Son of Man,’” 26–27; Collins, Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel, 123–52; Sahlin, “Wie wurde ursprünglich die Benennung ‘Der Menschensohn’ verstanden?” 147–50.

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of Israel is exalted in the midst of all flesh,166 though the humanlike figure is not a combatant in Dan 7 as Michael is in chs. 10–12.167 But this difference may reflect the fact that the present scene takes place on earth; Michael’s battles take place in the heavens. That the same celestial person could have different roles in different contexts, as would be envisaged for Michael, is indicated by the portrait of Melchizedeq in 11QMelchizedeq.168 If the figure is Michael, or Gabriel, or any other specific individual, it is odd that he appears only here and not in vv. 18, 22, and 27. Indeed, the humanlike figure’s failure to appear in the interpretive section of the vision might indicate that it is not a particularly important feature of the chapter.169 The suggestion that an earlier form of v. 13 did name a particular celestial being170 highlights the lack of a name in ch. 7 as we know it. The figure (like the interpreter of v. 16) is unidentified; this facet of the chapter is one that interpretation has to preserve. Here, too, later chapters must not be read back into this one.171 “The interpreting angel . . . does not show any interest in identifying the humanlike one with any specific leader of the holy ones” (or with anyone else). “Even if the humanlike one is originally a collective symbol for the angels, the subsequent visions in Daniel reinterpret this figure with increasing specificity, as leader of the host (8:11) and as Michael (10:21; 12:1).”172 Perhaps the people with whom the vision was shared had information that enabled them to discern this (or some other) reference of the image. Nevertheless, ch. 7 invites them to focus on the humanlike figure’s role rather than its identity. 15–16 While troubled perplexity is a response to which the chapter genuinely invites its audience, accounts of a symbolic vision commonly involve another being who explains the vision, as well as the visionary himself. This was so in ch. 2, where Nebuchadnezzar’s response on waking after his symbolic dream was described in terms similar to the ones used here of Daniel. Chapter 7 relates a mysterious vision that combines ominous and encouraging features yet is not of wholly patent meaning, and it thus creates a suspense that is heightened by the separation of symbolic vision and explanation. Alarm and encouragement are invited, but the basis for them is withheld. It will come with more force when revealed. So rhetorically it is not so strange that the expert reader has become the baffled reader.173 Chapter 7 resumes the pattern of symbolic visions elsewhere in the OT, the pattern where the interpretation is given within the vision. For preexilic 166 Müller, Messias und Menschensohn, 7–8. 167 Caquot, “Les quatre bêtes et le ‘Fils d’homme,’” 59–60. 168 See, e.g., de Jonge and van der Woude, “11Q Melchizedek and the NT,” 302–6. 169 So Porteous, Daniel, on the passage. 170 Müller, “Der Menschensohn im Danielzyklus,” 49. 171 Against Collins, Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel, 123–52. 172 Newsom, Daniel, 238: cf. Merrill Willis, Dissonance and the Drama of Divine Sovereignty in the Book of Daniel, 77. 173 See Pyper, “Reading in the Dark,” 491.

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Comment 371 prophets, God is the interpreter (Amos 7–8; Jer 1). In Ezek 40–48; Zech 1–6 God again appears, but his aides plays the major interpretive role. In Dan 7 Daniel instinctively turns to one of the celestial attendants within his vision (apparently identified as Gabriel in 8:16). In Dan 8–12 interpretive revelations are given on heavenly initiative. The source of the interpretation guarantees that it comes from heaven, not from mere human insight. 17 The initial interpretation of the vision in vv. 17–18 is brief. It puts a focus on the central fact of a heavenly kingdom to succeed the earthly ones. It also increases suspense; by its omissions it draws attention to aspects of the symbolic vision that remain unexplained. The Great Sea in the symbolic vision stands for the world (etymologically, the “Mediterranean” is the sea in “the middle of the world”—­though the name dates only from medieval times). The idea that the forces of disorder symbolized by crashing waters are embodied in the turbulent history of the nations perhaps underlies Isa 17:12–13; Jer 46:7–8; and the interpretation of the Great Sea here. The four kings stand for their kingdoms (cf. v. 23). Reference to both kings and kingdoms has already alternated in 2:37–45, and the animals in 8:20–22 will denote two entire lines of kings, while the buck’s large horn denotes one individual king. The identity of the kingdoms is only partly explained in 8:20–22, and it is not at all explained here. Rhetorically, then, the interpretive situation parallels that regarding the humanlike figure. The four kingdoms could be taken as the four powers that divided Alexander’s empire among themselves.174 That the animals emerge from the sea one by one need not in itself rule out the kingdoms’ being concurrent, as the ten horns of v. 7 appear together yet represent consecutive kings; the simultaneity is simply a feature of the visionary presentation to Daniel, like the fact that all four are pictured as future. The fourfold Greek empire does appear in connection with the four winds of the heavens (cf. v. 2) in 8:8; 11:4. They could alternatively be taken as four second-­century powers looked at from an eastern Mediterranean perspective (cf. v. 2), Egypt in the south, Parthia in the east, Rome in the west, and Syria in the north.175 The major obstacle to these theories is that they involve taking ch. 7 in isolation both from Dan 1–6 and from Dan 8–12. The four-­empire scheme of ch. 7 need not be identical to that of ch. 2,176 but it does link with it in some way: ch. 2 explicitly refers to a sequence of kings beginning with Nebuchadnezzar, and the portrayal of the first animal in 7:4 takes up the portrayal of Nebuchadnezzar. Similarly, there may be differences of detail between chs. 8–12 and ch. 7, but these visions again link with each other, 174 So Gressmann, Der Messias, 344, 366; Bright, Kingdom of God, 184; cf. also Wittstruck, “The Influence of Treaty Curse Imagery on the Beast Imagery of Daniel 7.” 175 So Hanhart, “The Four Beasts of Daniel’s Vision in the Night.” 176 See e.g., Fröhlich, “Time and Times and Half a Time,” 69–76, against e.g., Montgomery, Daniel; Hartman/Di Lella, Daniel, on the passage.

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and each of the visions in chs. 8–12 begins in Daniel’s own time and offers a perspective on history from the Babylonian/early Persian period to the Antiochene period. When the interpreter in ch. 7 speaks as if Babylon as much as the succeeding empires is still future, the effect is to distance even the (implied) sixth-­century reader from the sixth-­century context: we stand back from the total history of the kingdoms and survey it as a whole. If we are to attempt to identify the four regimes in ch. 2, I have suggested that they are the regimes of the four kings who appear in Dan 1–6: Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Darius, and Cyrus. Nothing specific points to this understanding of ch. 7. If we are to attempt to identify the four empires in this chapter, its omitting to give any indication of their identity would permit the fourth empire to be Rome, as traditional Jewish and Christian interpretation has held.177 But the succeeding visions suggest that the four kingdoms span the period from Daniel’s lifetime to the Greek period, so one would expect the fourth kingdom in ch. 7 to be Greece, which fits the chapter just as well. Indeed, the portrait of the small horn in v. 8 (cf. vv. 20–21, 24–25) matches the portrait in 8:9–14, 23–25, which unequivocally denotes Antiochus. In ch. 7 the small horn seeks to behave in an impressive and humanlike way, comes to look bigger than the others, makes war on holy beings and prevails over them, makes statements hostile to God, and plans to change times set by decree, which are given into its control for a time limited to “three and a half periods” until its authority is taken away by God’s judgment.178 In ch. 8 the small horn grows in several directions, attacks the celestial army and overthrows some of it, grows within reach of the army commander, attacks the sanctuary itself and is given control of the daily offerings, for a time limited to 2300 evenings and mornings, until it is broken by supernatural power. The interpretation further emphasizes the king’s trickery, power, and destructiveness. The features of the two portraits are similar: the small horn’s size and strength, its partially successful attack on the holy/celestial beings, its interference with God’s own realm, and the assurance that a limit is set to its power. The different images and details complement each other. In ch. 8 the small horn emerges after the appearance of four earlier horns (8:8; contrast the ten here): in other words, it is given a connection with a group of four kings, not a group of ten. In ch. 8 it grows from one of the four existent horns, without harming any of them or increasing their number, whereas in ch. 7 it grows as an additional horn among the ten, three of which are uprooted. This difference follows directly from the focus in ch. 7 on the king’s relationship to other kings in his line, whereas ch. 8 focuses on the king’s relationship to the four “parent” post-­A lexander kingdoms. The differences between the two 177 Cf. recently Gruenwald, “Jewish Apocalyptic Literature,” 90. 178 But Caragounis (“Greek Culture and Jewish Piety”) suggests that the vision is concerned especially with the baneful influence of Greek culture.

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Comment 373 chapters do not make the portraits of the small horn incompatible. While they could denote different kings, when they are juxtaposed in the same book this understanding is not the natural one. The small horn in ch. 8 is Antiochus. The parallels just considered suggest that he is also the last king in ch. 7; within the OT period, he alone fits the portrait in v. 8.179 Further, in 8:17 Daniel is told that his vision of the small horn relates to the time of the end; the Greek Empire is the last empire. A similar perspective emerges in Dan 10–12. Daniel could hardly be told so if he had already received a vision that looked beyond the Greek period to another historical era, that of Rome.180 Antiochus’s being the small horn that appears after the others and displaces some of them (see on v. 24) refers to his not being in line for the throne, being a younger son of Antiochus III (cf. 11:21). The oldest allusion to Dan 7, in Sib. Or. 3.388–400, presupposes this same understanding. Possibly the main oracle there originally referred to Alexander,181 but vv. 396–400 at least allude to Antiochus IV in terms that correspond to Dan 7:7–8 (ten horns and an extra horn). These verses presumably come from the second century, perhaps c. 140.182 Their understanding of Dan 7 is also presupposed by 2 Esd 12:10–12. It reappears in Porphyry (AD 233–304), in the fourth-­century Syrian writers Aphrahat and Ephrem, and in later writings representing the “Syrian tradition.”183 Sibylline Oracles 4 also assumes a four-­empire scheme culminating with the Greeks, but it adds Rome to the sequence without explicitly bringing it into the scheme as a fifth empire.184 Dionysius of Halicarnassus (first century BC) treats Rome as the fifth in the traditional scheme, following Assyria, Media, Persia, and Greece,185 and Rome does feature in Daniel as a power rising in the west in the second century (11:30). In the context of contemporary expectation that Rome was destined to be the fifth empire (cf. Appian, Civil Wars 8.19 [132]), Daniel may be covertly denying it such a status. Daniel gives Rome no place in the scheme of empires. Subsequently, Rome comes to be incorporated into the scheme in a different way, as the fourth and climactic power in the four-­empire sequence.186 The small horn is then assumed to be Vespasian187 179 Korner (“The ‘Exilic’ Prophecy of Daniel 7”) argues for Ptolemy I Soter in ch. 7 but not in ch. 8. 180 Bevan, Daniel, 66. 181 So J. J. Collins, OTP 1:359. 182 So Casey, Son of Man, 119. 183 Casey, Son of Man, 51–70; see Daniel in the Church 100–500 in the Introduction to this commentary. 184 See Flusser, “The Four Empires in the Fourth Sibyl and in the Book of Daniel”; J. J. Collins, OTP 1:381–89. 185 Walton (“The Four Kingdoms of Daniel”) sees the four as Assyria, Media, Medo-Perisa, and Greece. 186 See e.g., Casey, Son of Man, 71–73. 187 So at the beginning of the twentieth century, Hertlein, Die Menschensohnfrage im letzten Stadium; he dated Daniel in the first century AD.

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or, more commonly, Titus. That the Roman interpretation is a novel one unknown to Daniel is explicit in 2 Esd 12:10–12 (c. AD 90). Here God explains a vision that “Ezra” has seen: “the eagle you saw rising from the sea represents the fourth kingdom in the vision seen by your brother Daniel. But he was not given the interpretation which I am now giving you or have given you . . .” (God goes on to describe the Romans). If we are to identify the empires in Dan 7, the first is Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon, the fourth is Greece. There is less certainty about the second and third kingdoms. Reading them in light of ch. 2 would suggest that they are the two regimes on which the stories focused after Nebuchadnezzar, those of Belshazzar and Darius.188 The description of the second creature with its voracious appetite then takes up the banquet theme of ch. 5, and the description of the third as given domain follows that of the worldwide authority attributed to Darius in ch. 6. Porphyry understood them as Medo-­Persia and Alexander’s Greek Empire, the fourth creature then representing the Seleucid kingdom in particular.189 But Dan 7 sees the fourth empire as stronger and more violent than the third: this estimate of the Seleucids in relation to Alexander is not the one generally suggested by historians or the one indicated by 8:22; 11:3–4.190 Further, Dan 8 seems to see the Seleucid monarchy as part of the Greek Empire.191 The “Syrian tradition” generally takes the intermediate empires to be Media and Persia, in line with the traditional scheme; so also nearly all critical scholars. Admittedly, Media and Persia are treated as two parts of one empire in ch. 8; compare the references to the [one] law of the Medo-­Persian Empire in 6:8, 12, 15 [9, 13, 16] and the prophecy that Belshazzar’s kingdom will be given to the Medes and Persians in 5:28. On the other hand, earlier chapters have portrayed the Babylonian empire giving way to rule by a Mede and then by a Persian (5:31; 6:28 [29]; cf. 9:1; 10:1), and historically Cyrus’s Persian Empire possessed an authority that Darius’ Median rule did not (cf. 7:5–6). Indeed, before Cyrus’s time Media had become the power in the Middle East.192 There is little evidence to take into account in identifying the second and third kingdoms, and each interpretation gives a slightly artificial result. This reflects two facts. First, Daniel is not very interested in the second and third kingdoms and perhaps had no opinion regarding their identity. Second, the four-­empire scheme as a whole is more important than the identification of its parts. Daniel 7 is applying a well-­k nown scheme to a period that has to begin with the Babylonian period and end with the Antiochene crisis. As is 188 So Van Hoonacker, “The Four Empires of the Book of Daniel.” 189 So also, e.g., Lagrange, “Les prophéties messianiques de Daniel”; Buzy, “Les symbols de Daniel.” 190 CF. Keil, Biblischer Kommentar, on the passage. 191 Gruenthaner, “The Four Empires of Daniel,” 210. 192 See Caragounis, “History and Supra-History,” 390–94; and more broadly on the Persians and Medes, Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East 2:652–61; Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander, 13–28.

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Comment 375 the case with Paul’s horticultural analogy in Rom 11 (grafting branches out of a tree and then grafting them back), utilizing the four-­empire scheme involves squeezing historical and theological material into a pre-­existent mold that was not designed for it. We should not therefore allegorize the details. The phenomenon will recur with the 490-year scheme of Dan 9. 18 Those who will “acquire the kingship” (‫קבל מלכותא‬, the ordinary term for succeeding to the throne, used in 5:31 [6:1]), when the regular sequence of kingdoms has run its course, will take over the same kingship held by the four preceding regimes. There is only one kingship, and this kingship, which succeeds those other kingships, is presumably a rule exercised in the world, like theirs, as in earlier chapters. Yet it is a rule derived from heaven. As much has been implied by the earlier symbolism of the humanlike figure coming among the clouds of the heavens, but it is now explicit in the description of those who exercise this rule, ‫“( קדישי עליונין‬holy ones on high”: see n. 18.a). This phrase appears only in Dan 7:18, 22, 25, 28, though a near-­equivalent in Hebrew, ‫“ קדושי עליון‬holy ones of the One On High” occurs in CD 20.8. The word conventionally translated holy, ‫קדוש‬, is not a moral term; it denotes the distinctive, absolute, transcendence of deity, though because Yahweh is the holy one and Yahweh is centrally characterized by moral qualities such as faithfulness and compassion, the word holy comes to have moral connotations. By extension, the term holy applies to other supernatural beings, to earthly entities associated with deity, such as sanctuaries and their personnel, and to Israel as the people distinctively set apart by God. Further, the status of being ‫ קדוש‬implies a commitment to be ‫ קדוש‬in the way one lives. So the Israelites were holy people by virtue of being set apart by God; but in addition there would be people within Israel who were ‫ קדושים‬in the sense that they had accepted this commitment, and others who had not and were not. In principle, then, BA ‫ קדישין‬could denote supernatural beings, or the Israelites as a whole, or people within Israel who were faithful to God, or a sacral group within Israel such as the priesthood. In the OT ‫ קדושים‬most commonly denotes heavenly beings.193 This reference is clearest in Ps 89:5, 7 [6, 8]; Job 5:1; 15:15; see also Deut 33:2–3; Hos 12:1; Zech 14:5; Ps 16:3; Prov 9:10; 30:3. The usage is also common in other Jewish writings (e.g., Sir 42:17; Wis 10:10; Jub. 17:11; T. Levi 3:3; 1 En. 12:2; 14:23; 1QapGen 2.1; 1QM 15.14). In the OT, only in Ps 34:9 [10] does the noun ‫ קדושים‬clearly refer to human beings (though the adjective has this reference in Lev 19:2; Num 16:3). In other Jewish writings that usage is more common (e.g., Tob 12:15; 1 Macc 1:46; T. Levi 18:11, 14; T. Iss. 5:4; 1 En. 93:6 [OTP has a misprint here]; 1QM 3.4–5; 10.10). It can denote Israelites in general, the righteous on earth, or believers kept safe after death.194 193 Collins (Daniel, 313–17) argues for this meaning here. 194 Brekelmans, “The Saints of the Most High and Their Kingdom,” gives a list of references, though he includes many from 1 En. 37–82 whose date is likely to be significantly later than Daniel.

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Many passages in the OT and in other Jewish writings are of uncertain reference. Some of this ambiguity may reflect a close association between the earthly people of God and God’s servants in the heavens. A suggestive passage is 1QM 12.8–9: “You, O God, are awesome in your kingly glory, and the congregation of your holy ones is among us for eternal help. We despise kings, we mock and scorn the warriors, for a holy one, the Lord, the glorious King is with us, a people of [‫עם‬: ַ but should it be pointed ‫עם‬, ִ ‘with’?] holy war195 riors, and an army of aides is among our levy. The Mighty Warrior is in our congregation and the army of his spirits is with our infantry and horsemen.” In Dan 7, then, general Jewish usage would thus permit a reference either to supernatural or to earthly beings. Whoever the holy ones are, the notion of their receiving permanent royal authority on earth is a new one in the OT, though not one without antecedents. Prophets envisage the world bowing down to Israel (e.g., Isa 14:2; 60:12), and this idea appears in later Jewish writings (cf. 1QM 1.5; 12.14–16 = 19.7–8). Wisdom 3:8 speaks of the righteous ruling over nations after their death (cf. 5:6; 6:20–21). Supernatural beings rule individual nations according to Deut 32:8 in 4QDeut and LXX (cf. Ps 82), while 1QM 17.6–8 refers to the princely authority exercised by Michael, though this is an authority in the heavenly realm. Within Daniel itself, ‫קדוש‬/‫ קדיש‬regularly denotes a heavenly being (seven times in chs. 4–5, also 8:13; 8:24 corresponds to the use of the expression in ch. 7 [esp. v. 27] and its interpretation will follow from the interpretation of that occurrence). Conversely, the book has so far made no allusion to Israel and its destiny. Daniel 2:34, 44–45 envisages a kingdom set up by God; Israel is not referred to. And to refer to the “saints,” to Israel or to the faithful within Israel, the author has available the term ‫( חסיד‬h· asid), familiar from the OT (Pss 30:4 [5]; 31:23 [24]) and in use in the second century (cf. 1 Macc 2:42; 7:13), or other expressions used in chs. 10–12. On the other hand, references given above indicate that several documents (e.g., 1 Enoch, 1QM) use terms such as ‫קדישין‬ to refer both to heavenly and to earthly beings, in different contexts. The use of ‫ קדושים‬to denote heavenly beings elsewhere in Daniel need not determine its meaning in ch. 7 (‫ עם קדש‬in 12:7 presumably denotes an earthly people). Similar considerations arise when we move on to consider the word that qualifies ‫קדישין‬, ‫[“( עליונין‬on] high”; see n. 18.a). ‫“ עליון‬high” refers to Israel (as ‫עם קדש‬, “a holy people”) in comparison with other nations in Deut 26:19; cf. 28:1; to the human ruler in Ps 89:27 [28], compare perhaps ‫“ בני עליון‬sons of the One On High” in Ps 82:6; and to the temple in 1 Kgs 9:8. Plural ‫עליונים‬, however, commonly denotes heavenly beings in later Hebrew (so DTT: e.g., Lev. Rab. 9). The compound expression could grammatically mean “the most holy ones among those on high” and thus designate a particular category of heavenly beings (cf. 1 En. 14:23), but Daniel gives no indication elsewhere of thinking 195 See the comment on v. 27 below.

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Comment 377 in terms of various groups of heavenly beings. Nor is there specific reason to understand the phrase to denote Israel or the faithful within Israel when they have been transformed into heavenly beings after death and join other supernatural beings, in rest in heaven or in ruling on earth, as in 1 En. 90:38 and in later apocalypses (cf. 1 En. 39; T. Dan 5:11–12).196 The conclusion we reach regarding the “holy ones on high” is similar to our conclusion regarding the humanlike figure that this expression explains: the phrase is allusive, though marginally more likely to denote celestial beings than earthly ones.197 Again, however, we need a caveat: whereas v. 17 explicitly indicates that the four creatures stand for four kings, v. 18 does not explicitly say that the humanlike figure stands for the holy ones on high.198 Further the dichotomy between earthly and supernatural may be false. In 1QM celestial beings and glorified Israelites mingle, which suggests that ‫ קדישין‬in Dan 7 could embrace both.199 Admittedly, the double reference is rarer than either of the individual references and may be thought to have the advantage of neither, and if the heirs of God’s kingdom are to be a body that includes both celestial beings and faithful Israelites, this point ought to be stated somewhere clearly.200 But the trouble with Dan 7 is that it does not say anything unequivocally about the holy ones’ identity: it is on this account that there is a scholarly argument over the expression. As is the case with the humanlike figure, Dan 7 is too allusive to enable us to decide with certainty whether the holy ones are celestial beings, earthly beings, or both. The effect is at least to make clear that the vision does not imply that a supernatural people quite separate from Israel is to rule the world, an expectation that might not be an irrelevant one:201 it is an intelligible answer to questions about theodicy raised by the Antiochene crisis. But neither does the vision simply promise that the earthly Israel to which visionary and audience belong is to rule the world: that understanding underplays the supernatural overtones of “holy ones on high.” If v. 18 refers to Israel at all, it is to Israel as a supernatural people. The vision hardly suggests a purely this-­worldly, historical victory of a purely this-­worldly, historical Israel over its purely this-­ worldly, historical enemies. Its hope is based on the fact that the attacks of Antiochus have as their object more than a merely earthly people. God’s own

196 Against Charles, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary, on the passage. 197 With Procksch, Noth, Dequeker, Coppens, Collins; against Brekelmans, Hanhart, Deissler, Hasel, Poythress, Casey (see Pericope Bibliography). 198 Young, “Daniel’s Vision of the Son of Man,” 9; Ferch (Son of Man, 175–80) stresses the differences between the humanlike figure and the holy ones (cf. Hasel, “The Identity of ‘the Saints of the Most High’ in Daniel 7”; Shea, “Judgment in Daniel 7”). 199 See Collins (Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel, 123–52); cf. Lamberigts, “Le sens de ‫ קדושים‬dans les textes de Qumrân; and see Mertens, Das Buch Daniel, 145–65. 200 See Poythress, “The Holy Ones of the Most High”; Beasley-Murray, “The Interpretation of Daniel 7,” 54–55. 201 Against Hartman/Di Lella, Daniel, on the passage.

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people, purpose, and authority are involved. He will see that a more-­than-­ earthly victory is achieved in a situation where there can be no earthly hope. But the vision leaves unclear whether the holy ones who are destined to rule are Israel’s celestial protagonists, or their protagonists mingling among Israel, or Israelites who are dead but glorified, or living Israelites viewed as having supernatural significance now. Perhaps the visionary did not know. Subsequent verses ask for and receive clarification on aspects of the outline interpretation in vv. 17–18, but v. 17 is elaborated more than v. 18. In focusing our attention on the clarification of v. 18, we divert from the vision’s agenda. 19–22 The recapitulated description of the fourth creature in vv. 19–20 adds that it had bronze claws, like the Babylonian sirussu, and that the small horn eventually looked bigger than its companions. In vv. 21–22 a more significant elaboration of vv. 9–14 is signaled by the return to the report of the symbolic vision, with the resumptive ‫“ חזה הוית‬I watched.” The wickedness of the small horn becomes explicit. Can the small horn really be described as attacking and overcoming the holy ones if they are celestial beings?202 Yet this possibility is in keeping with 8:10–12, 24 (cf. earlier Isa 14:12–15), and the war imagery, not least in relation to celestial beings, is developed further in chs. 10–12. Normally supernatural forces protected the temple; Antiochus’s violation of it implied that he had overwhelmed them.203 23–25 The further interpretation in vv. 23–27 again largely repeats motifs from vv. 7–14, 17–18, and 19–22. We cannot with certainty identify the ten kings arising from the fourth kingship or the three who are overthrown. On the assumption that the chapter is fundamentally a unity (see Structure), the ten must be predecessors of the king symbolized by the small horn, and the three must be among the ten, not additional to them (cf. vv. 7–8, 20). These assumptions exclude a number of theories. Ten might well be a round number that should not be pressed; three looks a more precise figure. The person responsible for overthrowing them seems to be Antiochus (see on v. 17). We cannot press the symbolism of vv. 7–8 to signify that the ten kings must be contemporaries on the basis that the small horn appears among the ten horns as if they had grown simultaneously, any more than we can press the symbolism of ch. 2 to indicate that its four empires were contemporary on the basis that the four metals appear simultaneously. Various rulers might be seen as “uprooted” (v. 8), “fallen” (v. 20), and “laid low” (v. 24) before Antiochus IV, including a number of foreign rulers, but v. 8 seems to point to people who can be seen as Antiochus’s predecessors. Among these, the following have been suggested.204 202 Cf. Noth “Die Heiligen des Höchsten,” 286–90 (ET 225–28). 203 Newsom, Daniel, 239. 204 See, e.g., Porphyry as reported in Jerome, Daniel, 77; Ginsberg, Studies in Daniel; Goldstein, 1 Maccabees, 42; Buchanan To the Hebrews, 42–48; Caragounis, “The Interpretation of the Ten Horns of Daniel 7.”

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Comment 379 a. His father Antiochus III (223–187) met a violent end (Dan 11:19), and Antiochus IV may have been thought to have been in some way responsible. He was in Rome at the time. b. Antiochus IV’s elder brother and predecessor, Seleucus IV (187–175), was murdered by his prime minister, Heliodorus. There is no evidence that Antiochus was behind the assassination (he was now in Athens), though he may have been behind it or may have been thought to have been behind it; certainly Seleucus’s murder opened the way to the throne for Antiochus. c. Seleucus IV’s eldest son Demetrius I (who later ruled 162–150) was displaced by Antiochus in 175. He was in Rome as a hostage, having replaced his uncle Antiochus there. d. Seleucus’s younger son Antiochus was proclaimed king and acted as co-­regent with Antiochus IV for five years but was eventually killed, allegedly at Antiochus’s instigation.205 e. Heliodorus had aspirations to the kingship and apparently hoped to rule the empire via the young Antiochus as puppet king; he was displaced by Antiochus IV. f. Ptolemy VI, ruler of Egypt 181–146, was Antiochus IV’s uncle and had some claim to the Seleucid throne; Cleopatra II and Ptolemy VIII apparently ruled jointly with him for a period beginning in 170.206Antiochus might be seen as having displaced him or them. Seleucus IV, Demetrius, and the young Antiochus seem most likely to be the three referred to in vv. 8 and 24:207 Antiochus III’s death is very distant to be relevant, Heliodorus was neither heir nor actual king, Ptolemy VI was not permanently displaced from his throne in Egypt nor certainly displaced from the Seleucid throne, to which he had less claim than Antiochus IV. But we do not know what precise information about events earlier in the century would have been available to an audience in the 160s and thus how they could have been expected to understand the allusion. As for the ten kings, by Antiochus IV’s time many more than ten kings had arisen within the kingdoms into which Alexander’s empire had fragmented (see ch. 11 Comment). Which ten might v. 24 denote? a. Dan 11 refers altogether to twelve Seleucid and Ptolemaic kings who are there treated as relevant to the history of Judea. This would be near enough to ten as a round number, but only two of the twelve (Seleucus IV and Ptolemy VI) could in any sense be described as overthrown by Antiochus. 205 See Sachs/Wiseman, “A Babylonian King-List of the Hellenistic Period,” 208. 206 Blasius, “Antiochus IV Epiphanes and the Ptolemaic Triad.” 207 See further Scolnic, “Antiochus IV and the Three Horns in Daniel 7.”

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b. It is possible to compile alternative lists of ten Seleucid and Ptolemaic kings who were relevant to the history of Judea as rulers or would-­be rulers there, and to include three overthrown by Antiochus, but it is impossible to know whether any one of these lists corresponds with the one envisaged by Dan 7. c. Five Ptolemies and two Seleucids ruled Judea from 323 to 200 and after 200 respectively. The list includes Antiochus III and Seleucus IV. The list can become ten adding by (e.g.) Demetrius, the young Antiochus, and Ptolemy VI or Heliodorus, or by adding Alexander at the beginning and (e.g.) Demetrius and the young Antiochus at the end. d. Sibylline Oracles 3.388–400 assumes that the ten are the Seleucid line, the most powerful continuing embodiment of a Greek empire in the second century,208 and this continues to be the most popular scholarly view. Again, Antiochus then had seven Seleucid predecessors, including Antiochus III and Seleucus IV, so that the list becomes ten by one of the devices just listed, or by adding Alexander I and Alexander II at the beginning and (e.g.) the young Antiochus or Demetrius at the end. Antiochus’s distinctiveness (v. 24) presumably lies in what is symbolized by the eyes and mouth of the small horn (vv. 8, 20), which vv. 24b and 25 go on to interpret. The eyes suggest the covetousness and arrogance that issue in Antiochus’s forcing his way to the throne and in his attacks on the holy ones, while the great statements that come from his mouth now explicitly constitute expressions of enmity to God himself (see further on 8:10–12; 11:30–39). The times set by edict (‫ )זמנין ודת‬that Antiochus will attempt to change might refer to an attempt to replace the 364-day solar calendar by a 360-day lunar calendar. Calendrical questions were important in various circles in this period,209 but more detailed accounts of Antiochus’s interfering with Jewish religious affairs (8:11–14; 11:31–38; 1 Macc 1–4; 2 Macc 4–6) do not refer to calendrical changes, and it would be strange if in contrast Dan 7 should single out this offence as the sole feature of Antiochus’s religious policy. More likely, “changing the times” has the same significance as in 2:21 (cf. also 2:9): it denotes taking decisions regarding how human history unfolds and in particular how one regime follows another. These are fixed by edict—­ God’s, not a human being’s (cf. the use of the word in 2:9, 13, 15).210 In forcing his way to the throne and bulldozing his way through history, Antiochus has defied the shaping of history otherwise laid out. The question implicitly raised back at the end of v. 7 is “How long will these

208 Rowley, Darius the Mede and the Four World Empires, 103–5 209 See, e.g., VanderKam, “Origin, Character, and Early History of the 364-Day Calendar”; “2 Maccabees 6, 7a and Calendrical Change in Jerusalem”; see further on 12:11–12. 210 Cf. Barr, “Daniel,” on the passage.

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Comment 381 things be allowed to go on?” (cf. the question “How long?” in the Psalms).211 The divine passive reappears; it “makes the divine the catalyst for history (though an invisible one) and reveals to the reading community that the little horn’s autonomy is more apparent than real.”212 The answer to the implicit question comes in the last words of v. 25: Antiochus will be allowed to control events for a period, periods, and half a period. This answer has been taken as a cryptic way of saying 3 1/2 years (cf. the NJPS footnote). The time from the desecration of the temple on 15 Kislev in the 145th year of the Seleucids, 167 BC (1 Macc 1:54) to its rededication on 25 Kislev in the 148th year, 164 (1 Macc 4:52) was three years and ten days. The time of oppression is closer to 3 1/2 years if it is reckoned to begin with events earlier in the 145th year (see 1 Macc 1:20, 29–53) or if its end is reckoned to involve Antiochus’s death, which took place in the 149th year (see 1 Macc 6:16). But such observations rest on a mistaken premise. “A period, periods, and half a period” is not a cryptic way of saying 3 1/2 years, whatever the significance of later time references in 8:14; 9:27; 12:7, 11, 12. “Period” (‫ )עדן‬is not simply a substitute for “year” (‫( )שנה‬G has καιρός, not ἔτος). A period could be a year long, but it need not be (see v. 12, also n. 4:16.a). Nor is “a period, periods, and half a period” simply a convoluted way of saying 3 1/2 periods. It suggests a time that threatens to extend itself longer: one period, then a double period, then a quadruple period . . . but the anticipated sequence suddenly breaks off, so that the seven periods (in effect an eternity) that were threatened are unexpectedly halved.213 The king symbolized by the small horn has his time allotted; it is not without end. He himself is under control. The period he rules is a long one, but it is brought to a sudden termination. This way of speaking carried no implications for the chronological length of time that would correspond to these periods. Verse 25 is not an “attempt to calculate a definite period of time.”214 If the earlier part of v. 25 alludes more generally to the reign of Antiochus rather than to events after 168 in particular, the periods denoted here as likely began with his appropriation of the throne in 175, his encouragement of the Hellenistic reforms of Jason, who was his appointee as high priest, or his first desecration of the temple in 169 (1 Macc 1:10–28). Both the temple rededication and Antiochus’s death a few months later would constitute partial fulfillments of what is promised for the end of the time in vv. 26–27. 26 The death and destruction of the fourth creature (v. 11) is effected through the utter destruction of the authority of the king symbolized by the creature’s small horn. 211 Beek, “Zeit, Zeiten und eine halbe Zeit,” 19–20. 212 Merrill Willis, Dissonance and the Drama of Divine Sovereignty in the Bookof Daniel, 85. 213 Cf. Keil, Biblischer Kommentar, on the passage; cf. Stahl, “‘Eine Zeit, Zeiten und die Hälfte der Zeit,’” 484 (he takes the numbers in chs. 8–12 as attempts to give precision to the symbolic figure here). 214 Cf. Collins, “The Meaning of ‘The End’ in the Book of Daniel,” 158.

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27 Earlier references to a humanlike figure (v. 13) and to holy ones (vv. 18, 21, 22, 25) permit and perhaps point to the conclusion that the holy ones are in some way celestial yet are closely associated with earthly Israel. The same conclusion emerges from this last allusion. While “people” (‫ )עם‬may refer to a celestial army in 1QH 3.21,215 most editors understand there ‫ִעם‬ “with” not ‫“ ַעם‬people.”216 Similar uncertainty obtains with regard to 1QM 12.8. Even there, if ‫ עם‬means “people,” the construct may be possessive rather than epexegetical. And if that allusion fails, there is no passage in the OT or in the Qumran literature that uses ‫ עם‬to refer to celestial beings. In Dan 12:1, 7 Israel is described as “your [Daniel’s] people” and as “the holy people” (cf. 8:24, though the reference there is less clear); compare the description of Israel in 1QM 10.10 as ‫“ עם קדושי ברית‬the people of the holy ones of the covenant.” The holy people stands on earth; the earthly ones shine in heaven (12:1, 3, 7).217 Grammatically, the phrase could mean “a people of holy ones on high” (see n. 27.b) and be taken to refer to Israel as the people associated with the celestial beings. As Michael can be described as Israel’s lord (10:21), so Israel could be described as the supernatural beings’ people.218 But such an allusive, sudden reference in the last verses of the chapter would be odd; more likely all three varied expressions in vv. 18, 21, 22, 25, and 27 have the same reference. As the description of the humanlike figure (vv. 13–14) did not point toward the idea that it stood for a hoped-­for king, nothing in vv. 17–27 suggests an individual messianic figure. There is messianic and non-­messianic expectation in the OT, and Dan 7 is an instance of the latter. If anything, Dan 7 moves “from the Davidic to the Adamic.”219 28 For the closing formula, compare Jer 51:64; Qoh 12:13. The interpretive vision has not resolved the anxieties provoked by the symbolic vision (v. 15); it leaves Daniel still concerned to discover what it meant.

Explanation 1 The nature of the Daniel scroll changes from exciting stories to esoteric visions. It has been said that “the stories of the first half of Daniel have more appeal to lay people, while the visions of the second half are more intriguing to scholars.” 220 The difference would reflect the more “scholarly” nature of the visions.221 To understand them, then, the layperson has to become a scholar.222

215 Cf. Noth, “Die Heiligen des Höchsten.” 280, 284–85 (ET 219–20, 223–24). 216 See, e.g., Brekelmans, “The Saints of the Most High and Their Kingdom,” 321. 217 Hanhart, “Die Heiligen des Höchsten,” 99–101. 218 Collins, Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel, 143. 219 Lacocque, Daniel in His Time, 143. 220 Davies, Daniel, 12. 221 Knibb, “The Book of Daniel in Its Context,” 17. 222 Cf. Hebbard, Reading Daniel, 160.

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Explanation 383 Yet the visions are not simply an exercise in scholarly theology, and studying them is not a mere academic pursuit. “In 167 BC when to be a practicing Jew meant that one might die under torture, that message became more than a philosophy of history.”223 And over recent decades, as considerations such as the interest in narrative have generated more scholarly interest in the stories, the Left Behind series of novels have sold 65 million copies and evidence widespread interest in “apocalyptic” thinking. The book takes us back in the reign of Belshazzar, indeed to its beginning, which is also “the beginning of the end of the Babylonian Empire.”224 It thus takes us back to a point from which we can get a broader perspective on the disturbing tale of the abominations of Belshazzar in his last year, the apparent ousting of Daniel himself from the court circle, the portent that speaks of Belshazzar’s Babylonian regime yielding not to an Israelite kingdom but to a Medo-­Persian one, and the realization of that yielding in the feeble but dangerous person of Darius. Chapter 7 offers a retrospective context for understanding those strange events, as ch. 2 offers a prospective one for the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. A perspective on history set in the reign of Belshazzar and following on the stories in chs. 3–6 might be expected to have a more somber tone and to offer a gloomier picture of the world powers than the perspective suggested by ch. 2 at the beginning of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign. If the year when Belshazzar became regent was about 550, it was also the year that Cyrus, king of Anshan, took over the Median empire and signaled the chain of events that would lead historically to Belshazzar’s death and Babylon’s fall. In Isa 40–48 that development is proclaimed as good news. The perspective of Daniel’s vision is more like that of the book of Ezekiel, whose dates refer to slightly earlier years in the sixth century but whose prospect includes a further crisis beyond the restoration of the Judahites to their land (see Ezek 38–39). History will continue to resemble a troubled sea. But God stills the roaring of the sea (Ps 65:8; cf. 93:4), and in the new heavens and the new earth there is no sea.225 Daniel’s notional audience continues to be Judahites living in the early years of the Persian empire, but the message for them now comes not from the recent past and from Daniel’s experiences at court but from the broad span of the future. For the book’s implied audience in the second century, the message no longer comes simply from the distant past but from a past that anticipated their present and from their own actual future. It speaks not only of survival despite pressure but of deliverance from pressure; not only of life in history but of life at the end of history; not only of God’s past interventions 223 Gowan, Daniel, on the chapter. 224 Seow, Daniel, 101. 225 Di Lella, Daniel, 140.

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but of his one final intervention; not only of past rebukes of human power but of a final numbering of its days. Whence comes the visions’ perspective on the significance of the nations and the relationship of international politics to the rule of God? It reflects the imaginative intuition and insight of a visionary. “The figure of Daniel as expert, developed in the narratives, is used explicitly as a foil in the apocalypses, where the expert appears repeatedly baffled. Esotericism replaces expertise as the model of knowledge. Its otherworldly quality is emphasized . . . through the media of dream visions and angelic interpreters, as well as through the physically devastating effects of revelation.”226 Daniel has a dream, but his dream is given by God. His insight is received by revelation. This origin is even more explicit with regard to the dream’s explanation. How does imagination operate, how is revelation mediated? The dream’s content hints that it operates through earlier Scriptures, through the acts of God they reflect, through other traditions and imagery that the visionary is familiar with, and through the kind of experiences previous chapters have described. The point is clearer when we look at the dream in its second-­ century context, which implies that the dream is in part the fruit of reflection on events from the sixth to the second centuries. This history has become a means of revelation cast in the form of prophecy. Empire after empire has risen and fallen. If Antiochus rises higher, it will mean he falls harder. History did not have to be read that way. The second-­century crisis was unprecedented, and imagination and faith had to undertake a quantum leap in order to express what the vision declares. History becomes revelatory when it is viewed in light of the tradition of what God has said and done in the past and in light of the word he is speaking now, both being suggestive of God’s promise about history which hope is invited to grasp despite the extent to which it contrasts with present experience.227 It looks in the face the realities of history since the Babylonian period and the darker realities of the second century but insists on also gazing steadily at how the future must be, given who God is. In this sense, the vision’s perspective is the gift of revelation received by faith, which accepts the risk of its being the fruit of fantasy received in wishful thinking.228 The outrages of the present make it morally necessary for there to be judgment and reversal in the future: otherwise everything that people know about God and about Israel’s relationship to him is put in question. A crisis can deepen faith in the power of God rather than destroying it. Earlier on, Judahites could hold out under the pressures of living under the Babylonians or the Persians or the Greeks. They could see (or envisage)

226 Newsom, The Self As Symbolic Space, 44 (her emphasis); cf. Perrin, The Dynamics of Dream-Vision Revelation, 235. 227 Moltmann, Theologie der Hoffnung, 92–95 (ET 102–6). 228 Walker, “Daniel 7:13–14,” 180.

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Explanation 385 God acting and making it possible for them to survive and even to triumph. They could believe that God’s sovereignty could be working through the sovereignty of gentile monarchs. The pressures of living under Antiochus were of a different order. The enormity of his acts made it impossible to believe that God’s sovereignty was working through him. It required another understanding of the relationship between human sovereignty and divine sovereignty. The former would need to be replaced by the latter rather than being the means of implementing the latter.229 For the first time in the book, a vision is written down. From time to time the OT speaks of the messages of prophets being put into writing (Isa 8:1, 16; 30:8; Jer 30:2; 36:2; 51:60; Ezek 43:11; Hab 2:2). While the ministry of prophets was characteristically oral, writing made a prophecy more solid, concrete, and certain of fulfillment. Indeed, putting something into writing initiated its fulfillment. It also made prophecy, prophet, and God open to vindication: the written word was fixed and could be tested by events. A related conviction, which could even survive apparent disconfirmation by events, was the belief of a prophet and his associates that a particular prophecy was a word from God that needed to be preserved to allow it to continue to speak. Writing was intrinsic to revelations such as the ones in Dan 7–12 (cf. 8:26; 12:4, 9; 1 En. 33:3–4; T. Mos. 1:16; 2 Esd 14:42). While the same considerations apply as are relevant for prophecy, writing down was also logically necessary if the message set in the sixth century was to reach the audience whom it especially concerned four centuries later. The literary and historical context of the story of Belshazzar in Dan 5–7 and in the sixth century BC are only one level of what the chapter refers to, and (it will turn out) they are not the most significant context. The chapters have most to say concerning events centuries ahead to a people yet unborn. In the literary form of a quasi-­prediction, writing it down is the link between the named seer and his actual audience (thus writing things down in Rev 1:11, 19; 21:5 is rather different—­in fact, it is as much like prophets writing things or Paul writing letters). Theologically, narrating history as if it were prophecy affirms that the events that unfold have been within the control and purview of God: “all things past, present and to come are present unto God.”230 Beyond that device, the chapter achieves much of its effect by its use of symbolism (see Form). Even the later sections that “explain” the opening part of the vision still use symbols. The symbols make possible a way of speaking that communicates without removing all allusiveness; Dan 7 is the most allusive chapter in the book, and our explanation must preserve that feature rather than resolving it by reference to other chapters. Referring to historical realities by means of ciphers hints that they express something not quite straightforward, 229 Cf. Newsom, Daniel, 211. 230 Mayer, Commentary upon All the Prophets, 547.

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something mysterious. Representing them by means of metaphor and simile points indirectly to aspects of their inner meaning and of their transcendent significance without quite making meaning and significance overt. Describing them by means of such figures of speech that are familiar from tradition and that interrelate within tradition (not least the sacred tradition embodied in Israel’s Scriptures) brings to them resonances and power that newly minted simile and metaphor do not have. Portraying them by means of ancient mythical motifs that identify them as contemporary embodiments of primordial forces expresses and adds to their horrific aspect yet also conveys the sense that they represent nothing novel or immune from judgment. Mythic motifs also make it possible to speak of realities that by their very nature cannot be depicted in another, more straightforward way. The vision’s coming by night also adds to its impact, though it does not in itself make it something terrifying, a nightmare: visions often happen at night (cf. the revelation in 2:19). 2–3, 17 Churning winds, heaving sea, and huge animals suggest supernatural forces: the power of God effecting his will (cf. Gen 1:2), the dense concentration of energy that threatens to disrupt and overwhelm order, the embodiment of this threatening energy in particular beings (cf. Rev 13:1–7; 17:8). Four winds and four creatures suggest the world-­encompassing totality of divine power and disorderly energy (cf. the fourfold stream of Gen 2:10). Four winds also more prosaically suggest winds coming from the four points of the compass (8:8; 11:4; cf. Zech 2:6 [10]; 6:5; 2 Esd 13:5, a passage related to Dan 7), and the sea they churn up could suggest the Mediterranean. Daniel’s vision invites its readers to stand with him near the shore of the Mediterranean at a spot such as the promontory at Yafo where the waters crash onto the Rock of Andromeda. A well-­k nown voyage from this port ended in Yahweh’s hurling a great wind into the sea, causing a mighty tempest, and eventually bringing about an encounter with a bizarre monster (Jonah 1). In Daniel’s vision not merely one wind but gales from every direction whirlwind over the water and arouse it into a turbulent swell. The sea is an embodiment of tumultuous forces exerted against God. The animals are not four similar embodiments of one hostile basic substance; they are explicitly varied. They correspond to the four metals of ch. 2, which the author of Dan 7 (at least) takes to denote four earthly empires; it was a recognized convention to symbolize nations by creatures from the animal world. The point will become explicit in v. 17, which understands the sea and its animals to denote the world and four of its kings. As with the winds, four suggests totality. Each compass point spawns an animal. While the vision concerns a particular segment of history, not the entirety of history, it concerns that segment as a whole, with the totality of earthly forces that dominate the people of God over this period (cf. the four horns/smiths of Zech 1:18, 21 [2:1, 4]), and it suggests the idea that this segment of history embodies history as a whole. Mythic motifs lie behind the vision rather than

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Explanation 387 on its surface, but their resonances carry through, adding depth and force to statements about history that are the text’s direct concern (as in Isa 17:12–13; 51:10). A world-­transcending or world-­encompassing scheme is adapted to communicate a perspective not on the cosmos as a whole, nor on history as a whole, but on the segment of history that directly concerns the visionary and the readers. In themselves, wind, sea, and animals need not imply anything supernatural or alarming. But the collocation of supernatural winds, agitated sea, and huge animals suggests that the vision portrays more than an ordinary storm in the Mediterranean. The sea stands for the world, the interpreter will tell us; the huge animals represent the grimness of history. The first three animals, at least, are not explicitly evil, though they are grotesque, fierce, dangerous, and frightening. Further, the cosmic storm recalls motifs from myth that are already taken up in Gen 1:1–2. The story of the beginning spoke first of God’s creative activity, then of the existence of formless waste, then of a supernatural wind/breath/spirit sweeping over it preparatory to God’s uttering his life-­g iving word.231 The Red Sea story, too, long ago demonstrated that the operating of God’s wind/breath/spirit on the sea had been known in Israel’s history as well as at the creation (Exod 15:10; cf. 14:21). In Job 40–41 Yahweh affirms that he controls the heaving and thrashing of those huge creatures that symbolize forces of disorder and rebellion asserting themselves against order and meaning. Daniel’s vision combines the cosmic perspective of Gen 1, the broad perspective on human history and experience in Job, and the Israelite perspective of Exod 14–15: the totality of the winds of the heavens generates the totality of the events of history in which Israel’s own story unfolds. Here the powers of disorder are not natural forces but historical forces. The taming of the rebellious powers has not yet taken place, either at the beginning, or at the exodus, or ever-­repeatedly in history. We are already prepared for a vision of wider significance than that of ch. 2, yet it is the Mediterranean that the cosmic gale stirs up and from which the animals emerge onto the shore. Like the prophets, Daniel believes that God is lord of historical events and can achieve his own purpose through them. Like them he recognizes that the process of history is nevertheless unsavory, unnatural, dark, and unreassuring despite God’s ultimately being lord of it—­in a sense, the more so because of that fact. If Dan 7 takes up such motifs from myths, the assumption that one God rules in the heavens and on the earth carries with it the implication that even the upheavals of history somehow derive from him or are permitted by him, not from a clash of wills in the heavens that mirrors the clash of wills on earth. God’s original creative work on the formless Deep does not mean he exorcised from it all potential forces of disorder. Within history there 231 See further Wilson, “Creation and New Creation.”

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continue to emerge entities embodying that disorder. Perhaps Daniel implies that they are called forth by God himself, that behind the fourfold wind we may see the Holy Spirit acting “to bring forth those forms and frames of rule which he will make use of,”232 though there are no possible examples of the divine passive in these verses (as there are in vv. 4–6). Creation had involved bringing sovereign order to a situation that was otherwise formless at best, turbulent at worst. It seems not to have achieved this ordering once and for all. Formlessness and turbulence remains, but God’s sovereignty also remains and God will reassert order in a final way.233 It is on this basis that lament psalms can utter their characteristic “How long?” (e.g., 74:10; 80:4 [5]), which Daniel’s visions in effect (and perhaps actually) answer. The use of animal symbols already suggests that it is the history of nations that unfolds before us; specifically, the animals signify the kings who rule the nations (v. 17). Israelite clans were symbolized by animals such as ox, lion, and wolf (Gen 49; Deut 33), modern nations are symbolized by eagle, bear, bull, and springbok, and modern tribal societies use the same symbolism.234 None of this symbolism implies there is anything “bestial” about the nations’ character or behavior. But the unfolding vision will picture something higher than the animal as the nations’ destiny, aspiration, and successor (vv. 4, 8, 13). If the animals stand for the totality of the nations, their origin both in the initiative of the heavens and in the turmoil of the deep suggests something of their ambiguity. It is they that embody the disorder of the formless deep, its energy uncontrolled by any desire to serve God or humanity. Evil is not a unity. Earlier chapters have made clear that the nations stand under the sign of Rom 13; ch. 7 adds that they stand under the sign of Rev 13, too.235 Their ambiguity is also that of Gen 10–11. Modern nations symbolized by animals, such as the ones listed above, also stand under both these signs, as do international entities such as the European Community, the United Nations, and NATO. 4–8, 19–21, 23–25 First there emerges a lion: king of animals, symbol of strength, courage, ferocity, destructiveness, voracity, and fearsomeness. It also has the wings of an eagle or vulture, king of birds, large and majestic, high flying and deep swooping, symbol of speed and rapacity. It represents a large, powerful, and expansionist nation, a mortal threat to smaller peoples. We are reminded of the power and authority given to the first of the four regimes in ch. 2, that of Nebuchadnezzar. The respective distinguishing characteristics of an animal and a bird are that it walks on four feet and that it flies. The lion-­ eagle is relieved of both these characteristics: its wings are removed and it is set on two feet. It is enabled to behave and think like a human being. That change

232 Owen, “Concerning the Kingdom of Christ,” 369. 233 Cf. Wilson, “Creation and New Creation,” 202–3. 234 Gammie, Daniel, on the passage. 235 Cf. Lucas, Daniel, 195.

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Explanation 389 reminds us of Nebuchadnezzar’s restoration in ch. 4, and it underlines the present vision’s affirmation of the nation symbolized by the first animal. When animals symbolize nations, human beings often symbolize heavenly beings. This nation occupies a godlike position of honor, responsibility, and caring for the world, like humanity itself in Gen 1–2 (cf. Dan 2:38; 4:20–22 [17–19]). Nations have their origin in dark forces, aggressive impulses, and defensive fears, but they can sometimes become means of heaven’s will being effected. The second animal to emerge onto the shore is a bear, a huge, ungainly, strong, and fearsome creature, not normally a predator, but here encouraged to indulge its appetite. Is it God who does the encouraging? If so, the greedy expansionism of nations can have a place within God’s purpose. The bear’s distinctive characteristics may link with features of a specific people, but they are rather allusive. The third animal is another fearsome predator whose natural speed is enhanced by an unnatural capacity to see and swoop in any direction. A powerful, energetic nation is given a wide-­reaching dominion. Then something new is heralded. The fourth animal to come from the sea is the one of most pressing importance. It is the most explicitly fearsome of the four and the most explicitly destructive. It is likened to no species and it retains a touch of mystery over its identity. It might make people think of the elephant, a fit symbol for the Greek empire and for the Seleucids in particular. But it would be unwise to be too prosaic in identifying it. The fourth animal is a monster, like Typhon in Greek myth,236 or like Dracula or Frankenstein’s monster, horrifying and frightening, dangerous and threatening, disgusting yet strangely fascinating, partly because such entities compromise the boundary between the human and the supernatural.237 The portrayal as a monster might be seen as designed to encourage violent rebellion238 or to discourage it.239 It is given authority to rule. The line of animals as a whole represents the empires of the Middle East from Nebuchadnezzar to the Seleucids, the totality of powers that dominated Judahite history from the end of the monarchy in 587 to its revival in the second century BC. It is this sequence of world empires that Daniel’s vision affirms to have been summoned up from the primeval and formless depths by the activity of the heavens themselves, so that it manifests something of the purpose of God for responsible government of his world, but also something of the instinct of humanity for self-­aggrandizement and destructiveness. The last of the four empires is the most destructive and—­we will soon discover—­the most arrogant and godless, but these characteristics do not in

236 237 238 239

See Van Henten, “Antiochus IV as a Typhonic Figure in Daniel 7.” See Macumber, “A Monster without a Name”; cf. Lenchak, “Puzzling Passages.” Cf. Van Henten, “Antiochus IV as a Typhonic Figure in Daniel 7,” 242. So Macumber, “A Monster without a Name,” 25.

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themselves imply that all history is degenerating rather than progressing. The animals represent history as a whole as it was experienced by Judahites up to the second century BC. History had been consistently threatening, but it now becomes consumingly so. The artistic or intellectual achievements of Greek civilization do not feature in the vision’s portrayal of the fourth animal. It is distinguished from its predecessors chiefly by being more bellicose. There is perhaps a reflection here of Judah’s experience of being fought over by rival Greek empires during two centuries (cf. ch. 11). Like the first three animals, the fourth has an anomalous feature, ten horns, suggesting a comprehensive totality of royal strength. The horns symbolize Hellenistic kings, though we cannot refer them with certainty to ten specific kings; perhaps the author did not have ten specific kings in mind. Likewise, a number of historical persons could be more or less plausibly identified as the three displaced kings. The small horn that emerges among the ten, however, we can identify as Antiochus IV, the Seleucid king who precipitated the greatest crisis in the history of the Judahites between the fall of Jerusalem in 587 and the events of the first century AD. As with the Greek Empire in general, much could be said about the positive stature of Antiochus IV, but it is irrelevant to the religious perspective of Dan 7. Antiochus sought to bring order to Judah, but it met resistance as a pseudo-­ order. Because it was the only order he was prepared to envisage, he had to impose it by force. Pseudo-­order soon exposed itself as a masked embodiment of disorder, not a bulwark against disorder. The principalities and powers in theory undergird and protect human life, but in reality they easily threaten it.240 It is only with the fourth empire that this reality surfaces, but what does then surface is the inner nature of all the empires, because it reflects their origin in the tumultuous disorder of the primeval deep. “Imperial beings present themselves as normal; more as virtuous, benign.”241 But Tacitus attributes to a Caledonian general a telling description of Rome: “plundering, slaughtering, stealing—­t hey call it the empire, falsely, and they call it peace when they make a wasteland” (Agricola 30.5).242 The description applies to any superpower. Like the first animal, the small horn on the fourth animal has certain human features. It looks and speaks like a human being. If the animal symbolizes the human and the human symbolizes the supernatural, Antiochus sees himself as having the power of a heavenly being and speaks accordingly. But he is not given such a position by God, as the first three animals were given their different commissions. Gradually it becomes apparent that Antiochus is someone of arrogant look and tongue whose person and activity constitute 240 Aukerman, Darkening Valley, 76–77. 241 Berrigan, Daniel, 112. 242 Cf. Frisch, The Danielic Discourse on Empire, 1.

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Explanation 391 a challenge to the heavens themselves, like the challenge of the Babylonian king in Isa 14:12–15. The first three animals were under control. The fourth decides for itself what to do. It was brought into being by God, but it overreaches itself. Instead of playing the part that God’s purpose had designed for him (the times set by decree), the eleventh king grasps the rudder of history. And he is able to take charge of the process of history. So it goes on for a time, and for a longer time, and for yet more time. . . . But the promise is that a limit is set to it. It will not go on for ever. “For God to come in half the allotted time is to say that he will come ‘with all deliberate speed.’ His coming may seem to tarry (a time and then times) but its final arrival will be sudden (a time cut off). . . . God’s time can arrive only on time.”243 Antiochus thinks he controls history, but there is a stronger hand on its rudder. It is possible to make out a plausible case for identifying Rome as the fourth animal (see Comment); whether one finds later identifications (the Turks, Islam, the church, the pope, Nazism, communism, capitalism, the European Community, the United States, the World Council of Churches, the Islamic State) more or less plausible depends on one’s political and ecclesial commitments as much as on anything else. The use of symbolism in the vision and its omitting to name names (even in the interpretation) enables its reapplication to later embodiments of the same dark forces as Antiochus, initially Rome (cf. 2 Esd 12; Rev 13).244 There is no indication that the visionary intended thus to open up the possibility of reapplying its reference to subsequent situations where there is a reappearance of the pattern seen in the events of the second century BC, a pattern itself known from earlier situations and here being reworked. But its reticence over such naming unwittingly permitted such a reapplication, which was in keeping with its own reworking of earlier expositions of the pattern. And the reapplication of Daniel’s animal images to later empires reflects international history’s continuing to be a process in which “one ethnic group, then another, becomes through rampaging expansion a monstrous coherence of power and peoples.”245 Another tradition of interpretation identifies the small horn with antichrist.246 Antiochus could, indeed, be seen as a kind of anti-­messiah, a royal figure who realizes the opposite of the messianic ideal, a negative to which the humanlike figure of vv. 13–14 is the corresponding positive, one who aspires to the authority of the heavens themselves. But Antiochus is not a mere anticipation of something still to come. He is an actual, unpleasant reality in the life of the people of God. It is his reality that makes it possible for later 243 Sumner, “Daniel,” 174. 244 Cf. Koch, “Vom profetischen zum apokalyptischen Visionsbericht,” 439. 245 Aukerman, Darkening Valley, 79. 246 See e.g., Jerome, Daniel, 80; recently Gulley, “Why the Danielic Little Horn is not Antiochus IV Epiphanes.”

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generations to take him as a model for their portrayal of evil. Indeed he is more an anti-­Yahweh.247 9–12, 26 The four animals have appeared and their characteristics have emerged. The first three are worryingly fearsome, but their instincts are ones that God could use; compare the description of God himself in Hos 13:7–8. With the fourth, assertiveness against God and his glory is becoming overt. A nation threatens to make itself God, and God decides to act. In Ezek 1, the animals support God’s throne; in Dan 7 the fourth, at least, has sought to subvert it, and it is now judged before it.248 The very act of portraying Antiochus’s attack on God as a reenactment of the primordial battle offers an understanding of the earthly events involved and offers a promise that matters will again turn out all right. The stories of Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar have illustrated God’s judging activity within the course of the history of the nations. Here a final judgment is to be executed, not upon the deeds of individuals but upon the life of an empire. History has been allowed to unfold enough. It is time for action from heaven finally to terminate the pretension of this human power. The victory of order over disorder that creation stories associate with the beginning is both brought into history and associated with the End.249 The world itself has to be understood not merely in light of the story of its beginning but in light of the story of its End, for only then is the story of its beginning completed. There is a sense in which the whole of history can be foreseen by God, as is presupposed by the vision’s predictive form, and is even predetermined by God, since the animals emerge from the sea at the heavens’ prompting. Yet the bulk of history proceeds in a way that suggests no pattern or meaning, and no salvation history. The nations are “themselves,” not automatons; and God’s judgment is a response to actions by the king symbolized by the small horn.250 Daniel 7 is “a study in contrasts.”251 Even while Antiochus is making his big statements and mouthing his arrogance (vv. 8, 11 either side of vv. 9–10), a court is being calmly set up, and a judge is serenely taking his seat. God then began to seat himself, as he had previously appeared to be passive, and not to exercise justice in the world. For when things are disturbed and mingled with much darkness, who can say, “God reigns”? God seems to be shut up in heaven, when things are discomposed and turbulent upon earth. On the other hand, he is said to ascend his tribunal when he assumes to himself the office of a judge, and openly demonstrates 247 So Haag, Daniel, 13. 248 Cf. Rowe, “Is Daniel’s ‘Son of Man’ Messianic?” 84–85. 249 Moltmann, Theologie der Hoffnung, 123–24 (ET 137). 250 Daniel thus suggests insights belonging to various theologies of history distinguished by Towner, Daniel, 110–12. 251 Wade, “‘Son of Man’ Comes to the Judgment in Daniel 7:13,” 278.

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Explanation 393 that he is neither asleep nor absent, although he has hid from human perception.252

The affirmation that God reigns and judges (e.g., Ps 93; 96–99) becomes reality—­though still in vision. While there was struggle and warfare during the sovereignty of the animals, “almost as soon as the Ancient of Days arrives, the judgment is settled.” There is no lengthy battle.253 The collocation of reigning and judging deserves comment. Western democracies commonly separate branches of government such as the executive, the judiciary, and the legislature. The OT does not divide the exercise of power with the aid of such categories. When it uses words that are translated into English by terms such as “ justice,” the OT has in mind the exercise of authority of the kind that the king possesses, and when it speaks of the king acting in judgment, it is thinking of the king exercising authority in order to implement justice in his realm. The fundamental significance of God’s acting in judgment is not the judicial punishment of people who have broken the law but the overthrowing of other authorities and the implementing of justice for the people they have wronged. As is regularly the case in the OT, “ judgment” in Dan 7 is not to be understood in a Western sense. It denotes the exercise of authority by a person in power who is in a position to make and impose decisions, put down forces of disorder, and thus support and if necessary restore order in the world and in society.254 The judge in Dan 7 is not one who is merely granted human (= heavenly) features or who aspires to them. Indeed, he not merely is human (= heavenly). He possesses the dignity, grandeur, and honor of an elder, bright and splendid in his appearance. The heavenliness, indeed divinity, symbolized by his venerable humanity is suggested by the fire that issues from his transcendent, awe-­inspiring presence, representing also the dangerous power he embodies when he acts to implement his judgment. As in any king’s court, he is served and honored by countless courtiers, his counselors, and executives; and as in any king’s court, he has available written records of the regime’s policy decisions, his purposes with regard to the final issues of history, including the punishment of evil and the implementing of his rule on earth, his plans regarding specific segments of history such as the permitting but the delimiting of particular periods of oppression and his expectations regarding how humanity is to conduct itself and how he will judge the fulfillment or otherwise of his expectations. The visionary has stood in suspense awaiting the judgment that the small horn’s arrogance must incur. The court’s coming to a verdict is implicit, not stated: we move straight from the horn’s words to the creature’s execution. 252 Calvin, Daniel 2:33. 253 Smith-Christopher, “Daniel,” 103. 254 Cf. Lacocque, “Allusions to Creation in Daniel 7,” 114.

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“The loquacity of the little horn has been judged by the mute language of the heavenly books.”255 Who kills the creature is also unstated, but the passive verb again implies it is God or his agent. The vision offers no mandate for the belief that God commissions human beings to act to destroy the old order and bring in the new, as many seventeenth-­century revolutionaries believed.256 Although the vision looks at the history of the empires as a whole, they rule successively, receiving and surrendering authority one by one. For the first three, a time comes within God’s purpose when they cease to exercise authority, but the animals that represent them are not killed. It is not clear whether they simply retire to a home for displaced monarchies; v. 27 will rather imply that they end up joining in the service of God and his people, honoring the new kingship of which we shall read there.257 Again, the ambiguity of human empires is implied. Not all are condemned: there is an exercise of power that is relatively responsible. Yet all are subject to constraint: no empire lasts. The alternative destinies of these nations correspond to the alternatives in Isa 40–55, which sometimes describes the nations as receiving enlightenment, sometimes as experiencing destruction. Nations either submit to God and his purpose in the way they govern their affairs and relate to his people and in the way they acknowledge his new kingdom; or they assert themselves against him and his purpose in the way they govern their affairs and relate to his people, and they experience his asserting himself over them in judgment. 13–14, 18, 22, 27 After the death of one animal and the dismissal of the others, the vision reaches another climax. A further humanlike figure appears, his heavenly nature underlined by his coming with the clouds of the heavens. He is presented before the enthroned judge and given the authority taken from the animals—­and a much greater and more lasting authority. They appeared as a result of a heavenly initiative, and they are within the purview and control of the heavens, but they emerged from the sea, which suggests their disorderly, threatening nature. The humanlike figure who answers to them comes unequivocally from the heavens, and as a human figure he is also implicitly destined to exercise authority over the animals (Gen 1; cf. Jer 27:6; Dan 2:38; 4:20–22 [17–19]). In contrast to the eagle-­lion become human, this figure is inherently humanlike. In contrast to the leopard, the authority it is given is lasting, royal, and glorious. In contrast to the small horn, its humanlike-­ness is genuine, not contrived, and its heavenly glory is given, not seized. Of the figure’s identity, the vision initially offers no indication beyond declaring its heavenly origin. The point about it is the good news its coming implies. History neither continues as the distressing tale of terror at best, blasphemy at worst, nor does it simply break off in judgment and cataclysm. 255 Ferch, Son of Man, 153. 256 Towner, “Were the English Puritans ‘the Saints of the Most High’?” 257 Newsom, Daniel, 233.

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Explanation 395 The pretense to heavenly authority yields to the reality of heavenly authority. The grasping of the king symbolized by the small horn has paved the way for an endowment of supernatural power to be exercised on earth and recognized on earth. The realization of God’s creation ideal comes not through the world’s becoming more human but through God’s gift of this humanlike person. There is no doubt a biblical imperative to make the world more human, but it is not expressed here. Nations and governments are inclined to see themselves as the embodiments of order, but the best they can really do is restrain disorder. They act as lawgivers or police officers, but easily end up running a police state. The real order is not that of the earthly kingdoms but that which comes from heaven.258 People of all races, nations, and languages had acknowledged Nebuchadnezzar (5:19), and he had acknowledged that God alone possessed lasting authority (4:3, 34 [3:33; 4:31]; these motifs also come in Darius’s story, 6:25–26 [26–27]). Now people of all races, nations, and languages acknowledge that this authority is given to the humanlike figure who takes the place of Nebuchadnezzar and succeeding empires. Whereas God had given delegated authority to the empires for a while, as is presupposed by the stories, God is now taking back that authority.259 The interpretive vision is less than completely clear on the elements in the symbolic vision that it professes to explain. While the interpretation might have been clear to author and original audience but unclear to readers out of their context, its allusiveness makes it at least as likely that an element of mystery is built into the vision (cf. vv. 15–16, 28). While the animals clearly enough portray the rise and fall of worldly kingdoms, what would replace them is less transparent; the animals are closer to being steno-­symbols, while the judgment scene and the humanlike figure are more tensive symbols (see Form). They affirm that the worldly kingdoms will be replaced by God’s kingdom; they do not make explicit how it will happen. With the four creatures, their historical reference is primary, though they are then portrayed theologically. With the judgment scene and the humanlike figure, their metahistorical or theological reference is primary; they represent ultimate events and realities that will come, but that are not yet present, and that therefore cannot be described straightforwardly like the kingdoms the animals represent.260 It is of a piece with this dynamic that Daniel’s requests for interpretation, and the content of the interpretation he receives, relate more to the most important of the symbols that has historical reference, even though it hardly requires explanation, than to the humanlike figure, which remains enigmatic. In time we learn that the humanlike figure stands for holy ones on high;

258 Koch, “Spätisraelitische Geschichtsdenken,” 24. 259 Newsom, Daniel, 219. 260 See Niditch, The Symbolic Vision in Biblical Tradition, 209–15; against Hartman/Di Lella, Daniel, 93.

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they receive his kingship. If the holy ones are Israelites, the vision’s significance for its readers is clear: it promises the great reversal that scatters the proud and dethrones princes and that gives aid to Israel and exalts the lowly. That promise may have a worrying aspect for subsequent readers. There is little evidence that Israelites or Christians make less oppressive rulers than Babylonians or Greeks. (I write in a week of harsh Israeli suppression of resistance to their occupation of Gaza, but Christian nations have too long a history of oppression for them to act superior with regard to such events.) It is characteristic of the chosen people to take on the characteristics of the world. The reapplication of Daniel’s picture of the fourth animal to post-­Constantinian Rome or to the modern Christian democracies of Europe or the United States is quite plausible. The humanlike figure can become merely another animal. The point cannot be safeguarded by declaring that the vision depends on the emergence of a faithful group within Israel who can be trusted with the kingship; the chapter offers no such reason for the kingdom being given to the holy ones. It contains no exhortation to faithfulness, no exhortation to any form of resistance to Antiochus, and no hint that acts on earth bring about the kingdom of God. It is not concerned with the conflict between the faithful and the state but with the development of the kingdoms and their appointed time261 and with the promise that Antiochus does not have the last word; God will see to it. The violence is his; the unquestioned sovereignty will then be theirs. Even the humanlike figure takes no active role in the drama. He does not fight, like Marduk, or like the Messiah; he is simply invested. He receives without acting or striving. The vision does not picture humanity coming to save humanity.262 Likewise, the holy ones do not fight—­at least, not successfully. It is their defeat that brings their attacker’s downfall (God will disarm principalities and powers through Jesus’s being crucified: Col 2:15). If the chapter implies a safeguard regarding the worry that human recipients of the new sovereignty will likely only turn it into a fifth empire, it is the fact that the humanlike figure comes from the heavens. The ones who fulfill this vision will be those who come from God and can be perceived to share God’s priorities. Perhaps they have not yet been born. But it is not clear that the holy ones who receive the sovereignty are earthly figures. They may be celestial beings. For the audience, what would be the significance of the information that celestial beings will be given a kingdom? The second-­century crisis brought not only physical suffering but a crisis of faith. Though there is no talk of the humanlike figure’s having been under attack, the small horn is said to have attacked and overcome the holy ones. Antiochus has threatened, assailed, and even overcome the heavens themselves (ch. 8 will take these ideas further). Israel is not alone in being 261 Koch, “Spätisraelitische Geschichtsdenken,” 12. 262 Feuillet, “Le Fils de l’homme de Daniel,” 177.

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Explanation 397 threatened, assailed, and even overcome by atheistic arrogance. The heavens themselves are part of that creation that is included in the suffering of the last days.263 This perspective brings consolation to those on earth who suffer, not least because it compounds the necessity for the small horn’s judgment. It also further explains the reason for the different treatment of the first three animals. Not all nations and kings actively oppose the glory of God and the concerns of the heavens. The heavenly realm has been despised and attacked, but it will have the final word. The holy ones do not destroy the fourth animal, but their suffering is the cause of its destruction. The cosmic significance attached to Antiochus becomes especially illuminating in the nuclear age. Humanity now has the power to destroy itself and the world in which it lives. There is something unprecedented about this situation, and something theologically novel. God has allowed humanity to discover how to bring to an end the story he began.264 The prospect is “apocalyptic,” and it is in an apocalypse such as Dan 7 that we may find the scriptural resources for formulating what faith and hope could mean in such a context.265 What is extravagance in Daniel’s visions is now reality. Precisely in its extravagance, then, Daniel’s vision helps us. It imagines the unimaginable. It looks in the face the possibility of human power and arrogance toppling the rule of the heavens over the world. It affirms that the powers of the heavens may be assailed and hurt but that God will still reserve the last word. It might be tempting to infer that human efforts for peace are therefore unnecessary; bringing about world peace is God’s business. We may again recall that Dan 7 makes no suggestions regarding the human conduct that is appropriate in the Antiochene crisis. It is God’s act that counts. Yet the Daniel whose visions we are considering is the man of political commitment and religious faithfulness portrayed in chs. 1–6; his is no privatized faith. And the inference that human efforts are unnecessary if peace must be God’s achievement parallels the inference that righteousness is unnecessary if our relationship with God must be his gift (Rom 6:1). Paul’s response to this inference is not to qualify his affirmation that everything depends on grace; it is to recall the objector to the fact that righteousness is an end, not a means. Similarly we seek peace because it is the God-­like thing to do, not because God is necessarily dependent on our doing so. But as we do so, who knows, he may choose to utilize our peace-­seeking to bring about his peace. What happens when we consider the humanlike figure in light of the coming of Jesus? The familiar title “the Son of Man” is a literalistic rendering of the phrase in v. 13. Such links between OT and NT are more formal than substantial. Yet Jesus is indeed the one who came in human likeness from the 263 Moltmann, Theologie der Hoffnung, 124 (ET 137). 264 Cf. Garrison, The Darkness of God; Schell, The Fate of the Earth. 265 Hanson, “Biblical Apocalypticism,” 10–14; Bauckham, “Theology after Hiroshima.”

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heavens and the one who is still to come in human likeness on the clouds of the heavens to receive a kingdom and to accept the honor of all nations. The rule of God on earth is implemented through one who is himself from the heavens. Along with figures such as the prophet and priest, the supernatural aide is one of Jesus’s role models: he fulfills a place analogous to each of these figures.266 In the view of theologians such as John and Paul, he is so heavenly that he must share God’s own divinity: the similarity of judge and humanlike figure becomes a similarity of Father and Son.267 The indications in Dan 7 of thought in terms of more than one power in the heavens express an awareness of the complexity within the Godhead which in light of Jesus’s coming and the pouring out of his Spirit is taken further in the Christian awareness of God being in some sense three yet also one.268 Jesus’s coming implements in the most far-­reaching way the reign of God on earth that Dan 7 promises. It brings that unveiling of the mystery of God’s plan for the world (Eph 3:1–12) that is spoken of here as the opening of the books (v. 10). According to b. Sanh. 98a, if the Jews deserve it the Messiah will come “with the clouds of the heavens,” if not he will come “lowly and riding upon an ass.” Jesus spoke of the Son of Man coming “not to be served but to serve” (Mark 10:45) and may imply a similar deliberate contrast with Dan 7:13–14.269 Talk of the holy ones’ being oppressed, however, could easily be transferred to the humanlike figure himself, even though our text does not make the transfer; and when Jesus goes on to speak of the Son of Man’s calling to give his life as a ransom for many, the suffering of the holy ones may have been one of the motifs in his mind. Jesus’s proclamation of the coming of God’s reign (Mark 1:15) also reflects Daniel’s description of the holy ones’ receiving the kingdom.270 He is to be the one to whom every knee bows, but only after accepting the form of a servant and the humiliation of the cross (Phil 2:5–11). The one who stands in the midst of the throne and of the four animals is a lamb bearing the marks of slaughter (Rev 5:6). The power of the Seleucid monarchy was not broken in the 160s BC. But Jews under the domination of Rome who identified Rome as the fourth empire in the context of the pressures of their own time were not simply trying to solve the difficulty that the reign of God did not come in fullness in the years that followed this vision. They were seeking to discern how God might speak to them to their context in a way analogous to the way he had spoken in that comparable context.271 They model interpretation for subsequent readers who 266 267 268 269

Sahlin, “Wie wurde ursprünglich die Benennung ‘Der Menschensohn’ verstanden?” 173–74. Cf. Procksch, “Christus im AT,” 81–83. See Viviano, “The Trinity in the OT: from Daniel 7:13–14 to Matt 28:19.” Barrett, “The Background of Mark 10:45,” 8–9; cf. Stuhlmacher, “Existenzstellvertretung für die Vielen,” 419–20. 270 Dodd, According to the Scriptures, 69. 271 See Gowan, Daniel, on the chapter.

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Explanation 399 know that the power of Rome was not broken in the century of Jesus’s coming, either. Our longing for God’s reign continues to be frustrated, though we do see evil’s power circumscribed and at such moments rebuked, and those experiences buttress our conviction that we will see God’s dominion endure and triumph. Further, the affliction and the glory of Jesus are not just consecutive. The affliction manifests a peculiar form of glory; the glory has the marks of the cross about it. Perhaps the same is true for the holy ones: not just affliction (v. 21) then glory (v. 22), but a rule exercised in a strange, crosslike way. “Away, then, with the fable about a millennium!” Jerome commented.272 Yet Avravanel was right that the reign of the holy ones is to be exercised on earth, yet Calvin was right that this reign could be effected only through Jesus.273 15–16, 28 The end of the vision account is surprising.274 Each of the earlier stories ended in a positive fashion, with the success of Daniel and his friends (chs. 1; 2; 3; 5) or the worship of the king (chs. 4; 6). Whereas the stories invited their listeners into a confident hope, the accounts of this vision and the next one (ch. 8) implicitly identify with the listeners in their sense of trouble and in their puzzlement over the meaning of much of what they have heard and what its fulfillment might mean. They have to keep thinking and keep listening. To put it conversely, a distressed Daniel leads to a distressed reader.275 And further, “the expression of Daniel’s perplexity . . . encourages the reader to expect more to come, the clarify things further.”276 Daniel is a scholar, but he is not a cool and uninvolved scholar engaged in a disengaged academic pursuit, like the average scholarly interpreter of Daniel. When the symbolic vision comes to an end, and even after it has been “explained,” and even in light of the coming of Jesus, the response that the vision invites is alarm and openness. It does not encourage us to assume that we have yet reached understanding. When God acts, it is commonly in ways other than his people anticipate. Jesus’s birth, ministry, and death were not what people expected of God’s redeemer. Here, the visionary does not seem to know what the giving of kingship to a holy people on high will look like. In the manner of Jacob confronted by Joseph’s dream (Gen 37:11), Daniel is mystified and confused, but hopeful and open to surprise. “Daniel 7 is as much a story about a man who saw a vision and its interpretation, as a report of the vision and the interpretation given.”277 This man is determined not to discount the dream and not to miss anything, so he is going to keep thinking about it and looking for further revelation.278 272 Daniel, 81. 273 See Calvin, Daniel 2:74–75, responding to Avravanel, ‫מעיני הישועה‬. 274 Cf. Seow, Daniel, 113. 275 Hebbard, Reading Daniel, 176. 276 Lucas, Daniel, 194. 277 Meadowcroft, Aramaic Daniel and Greek Daniel, 210. 278 Brueggemann, Genesis, 303.

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Although Daniel never knows the time of God’s destruction of evil in the world, the angel’s message is consistent: wait for the everlasting kingdom of the holy ones of the Most High. With this paradigm, the author presents a moving perspective of steadfastness, for despite terrible persecutions from their foreign oppressors and internal conflict within the community, the visions show that God has set up a universe where good triumphs. Having many fears and only limited knowledge, the ancient audience of the Hellenistic era is like Daniel, as they are encouraged to hope in God’s ultimate plan, to pray, and to wait while continuing to live lives of holiness. In times of persecution and community upheaval, these acts become heroic and perhaps subversive.279

The report of Daniel’s disquiet encourages the hearers to reflect and to read on in the chapters that follow, and it has the same significance for later readers as we find ourselves in some perplexity over key aspects of it. If we thought we had a clear and certain understanding, it would be a sign that we had misunderstood. The visions in Daniel were not given so that people could engage in academic speculation280 but to drive home two themes. First, “the kingdoms of earth (the superpowers of that time and our own), persecutors and killers of the faithful—­these are unmasked; more, they are declared redundant to God’s grand design. They will have an end. The end is judgment. Time is granted the empires; the sense is of a more or less reluctant, temporary allowance, a doling out of a lifeline of time—­this together with a stern watchfulness, their works of terror lying under the scrutiny of God.” And second, in that meantime, “the saints are summoned to stand firm in faith and endurance.”281 If fear and pride are key emotions in Daniel,282 it is this chapter that especially brings them together. Hence we pray, Grant, Almighty God, since thou provest our faith and constancy by many trials . . . that we may not give way to the many attacks by which we are tossed about. . . . May we look forward to the advent of thy only-­begotten Son, not only when he shall appear at the last day, but also whenever it shall please thee for him to assist thy Church, and to raise it out of its miserable afflictions. And even if we must endure our distresses, may our courage never fail us, until at length we are gathered into that holy rest, which has been obtained for us through the blood of the same, thine only-­begotten Son.283

279 Pace, Daniel, 223. 280 Cf. Mayer, Commentary upon All the Prophets, 547. 281 Berrigan, Daniel, 111. 282 So Mermelstein, “Constructing Fear and Pride in the Book of Daniel.” 283 Calvin, Daniel 2:58–59.

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VIII. Gabriel Explains Daniel’s Vision of the Breaking of the Greek Empire (8:1–27) Pericope Bibliography Allen,  S. “On Schedl’s Attempt to Count the Days of Daniel.” Blasius,  A. “Antiochus IV Epiphanes and the Ptolemaic Triad.” Cumont, F. “La pius ancienne géographie astrologique.” Davidson, R. M. “The Meaning of Nis· daq in Daniel 8:14.” Finkelstein,  J. J. “ ‘Mesopotamia.’ ” Gzella,  H. Cosmic Battle and Political Conflict. Hasel, G. F. “The First and Third Years of Belshazzar.” Hasslberger, B. Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis: Eine formkritische Untersuchung zu Daniel 8 und 10–12. Köbert, R. “Eine alte Erklärung von ‘palmoni’ (Dan. 8, 13).” Koch, K. “Vom profetischen zum apokalyptischen Visionsbericht,” in Hellholm (ed.), Apocalypticism, 413–46. Krauss, S. “Some Remarks on Daniel 8. 5ff.” Lust, J. “Cult and Sacrifice in Daniel,” in Collins/ Flint (eds.), The Book of Daniel 2:671–88. Merrill Willis, A. C. “Myth and History in Daniel 8.” Miller, P. D. “Animal Names as Designations in Ugaritic and Hebrew.” Moore, G. F. “Daniel viii. 9–14.” Nestle, E. “Zu Daniel.” Niditch, S. The Symbolic Vision in Biblical Tradition, 215–33. Nuñez, S. “Narrative Structure of Daniel 8.” Porter, P. A. Metaphors and Monsters. Pröbstle, M. T. “A Linguistic Analysis of Daniel, 8:11, 12.” Schedl,  C. “Mystische Arithmetik oder geschichtliche Zahlen?” Schwantes,  S. J. “ ‘Ereb bo ̄qer of Daniel 8:14 Re-­examined.” Shea, W. H. “Why Antiochus IV Is Not the Little Horn of Daniel 8,” in Selected Studies, 30–66. Waterman, L. “A Note on Daniel 8 2.” Zevit, Z. “The Exegetical Implications of Daniel viii 1, ix 21.” Zuiddam, B. A. “The Shock Factor of Divine Revelation.”

Translation In the third year of the reign of King Belš’as· s· ar,a a vision appeared to me, Daniyye’l, b following onb the one that had appeared c to me earlier,d 2and aI looked at the vision.a a As I looked,a I was in Šušan, the fortress-­city b in the province of Elam. aI looked at the vision,a and I was at cUlay Gate.c 3I lifted my eyes and looked,a band there: a ram b standing in front of the gate. It had ctwo horns. Both horns were long,c but one was longer than the other, though the longer one came up later.d 4I watched the ram charging west a and north and south; no animal could stand b against it, and there was no one who could rescue things from its power. cActing as it pleased, it did big things.c 5 As I myself was looking on,a there: ba male goat b coming from the west over the face of the whole earth, without c touching the ground. The goat had da conspicuous horn d between its eyes. 6It came toward the ram with the two horns that I had seen standing in front of the gate and ran at it in mighty fury. 7aI saw it close in on the ram and rage at it, attack the ram, and smash its two horns.a The ram had no strength to stand against it. It threw it to the ground and trampled on it; no one could rescue the ram 1

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Gabriel Explains Daniel’s Vision

from its power. 8The male goat agrew very big.a bThen just as it had become so strong,b the big horn broke; but cfour came up in its place toward the four winds of the heavens. 9 Out of  aone of them a b small c horn came up.a It dgrew extremely bigd southward and eastward eand toward the fairest.e 10It grew big a within reach of the heavenly army and threw to earth some of that army (bsome of the stars) and trampled on them. 11He grew big a to within reach of the leader of the army; bby him the daily offering was removed and chis sacred place c dand an armyd were overthrown.b 12aIt will be set over the daily offering in an act of rebellion,a and bit will throw truth to the ground. It will succeed in whatever it does.b 13 Then I heard one a holy one speaking, and another holy one saying b to the individual who had spoken,c “How long will the vision last—­the daily offeringd and the desolatinge rebellion, the surrendering f of both g a sacred place and an army h to be trampled down?” 14He said to me,a “For 2300 evenings and mornings. Then a sacred place bwill emerge in the right.” b 15a As I, Daniyye’l, was watching the vision and seeking a understanding of it, there: standing in front of me was someone of manb-­like appearance, 16and I heard a human voice aamidst Ulay a which called out, “Gabri’el, explain the revelation to this man.” 17 He came near the place where I stood. When he came, I was overwhelmed a and I fell down on my face. He said to me, “You must understand, mortal man, that b the vision relates to the time of the end.” 18While he was speaking to me, I fell into a trance a as I lay face down on the ground, but he touched me and stood me up in my place, 19He said, “Here am I, about to tell you what is going to happen as awrath draws to a close,a because bat a set moment an end will come.b 20 The ram you saw, which had two horns, is a the kings b of Media and Persia. 21The buck (the he-­goat) a is the king b of Greece,c and the big horn between its eyes is the first king.b 21The one that broke and the four which arose a in its place: four bkingdoms will arise b from its midst,c but without its strength. As their kingship draws to a close,a when the rebels b reach full measure,c A fierce-­looking king will arise, expert at enigmas.d 24 His strength will be mighty a (but without its strength).a b He will cause astounding devastation,b and succeed in whatever he does. He will devastate mighty ones, c a people of holy ones,c 25awith his skill.a He will succeed in deceit by his power, b by his courage b he will do big things; With ease c he will devastate many, and he will stand against a leader supreme; then he will break without being touched. 23a

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Notes 403 The revelation of evening and morning that has been related is trustworthy. But you are to close up the vision, for it relates to distant days.” 27 I, Daniyye’l, afell ill a for some days, then I got up and dealt with the king’s business. But I was overcome by the revelation and bI could not understand it.b 26

Notes 1.a. On the spelling, see n. 5:30.a. 1.b–­b. ‫ אחרי‬hardly denotes merely the redundant observation that this vision came after the earlier one but that it was different yet related to it in form and content (cf. Ehrlich). 1.c. ‫ הנראה‬is pointed as perfect, but GKC 138k sees this as a Masoretic repointing of a participle. 1.d. Etymologically ‫ חלל‬suggests “[at the] beginning,” but in usage ‫ בתחלה‬can mean simply “previously,” like ‫( בראשונה‬with which it appears in Gen 13:3–4; Isa 1:26). This meaning fits better here, given that it would be odd to refer to the immediately preceding chapter as “at the beginning” (against Zevit, “The Exegetical Implications of Daniel viii 1, ix 21,” 489). Cf. 9:21. 2.a–­a. ‫“ = ב ראה‬to look [at]” (see BDB). Of the three occurrences of this verb in v. 2 in connection with Daniel’s looking at the visions, OG omits the third, Th. the first two, Syr. the second. Whereas OG (through its paraphrase) and Th. give the impression that Daniel was physically in Susa (cf. Josephus, Ant. 10.11.7. [10.269]), MT’s cumbersome repetitions are perhaps intended to underline that Susa was only the setting of the vision (see e.g., Haag, Daniel, 63). 2.b. ‫ הבירה‬is in apposition to ‫“ שושן‬Šušan” and thus does not refer to a fortress within the city (against BDB) but denotes Susa as a fortress-­c ity (cf. Neh 1:1; Esth 1:2). 2.c–­c. Gate is ‫אובל‬, which occurs here only in the OT. EVV “canal/river” identifies it with ‫יובל‬, but the variation is odd, as would be the expression “before the river” (vv. 3, 6). OG πύλη, Syr. ‘bwl, Vulg. porta suggest it rather derives from Akk. abullu “city-­gate” (Th. transliterates, but Theodoret recognizes that the word means gate); cf. later Hebrew/Aramaic ‫( ]א[בול‬DTT). Waterman (“A Note on Daniel 8 2”) objects that the word should refer to the (main) gate of (the city of) Ulay: but see Ginsberg, Studies, 84. ‫( אבל‬as in vv. 3, 6) is perhaps original here; it may have been confused by association with ‫ אולי‬or with ‫יובל‬. And/or perhaps ‫ ]א[בול‬is a gloss, so that Daniel is at the bank of the Ulay. For ‫“ אולי‬Ulay,” OG has Ωλαμ (or a variant); Th. omits. In Hebrew, ‫“ אולי‬perhaps” is an expression of hope or fear, reflecting an acceptance of the uncertainty of what God may do (e.g., Gen 16:2), which would be an appropriate feeling in the context (Lacocque), but the suggestion of paronomasia is rather subtle. 3.a. ‫“ ואשא עיני ואראה‬I lifted my eyes and looked”: see n. 4:34.a. A common phrase not distinctive of visions (Hasslberger, Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis ). 3.b ‫והנה איל אחד‬, as in Gen 22:13 according to many textual witnesses there; but the parallel does not seem significant. On ‫“ = אחד‬a,” see GKC 125b; Charles translates “a single.” 4QDanab have ‫ דולג‬after ‫( אחד‬so Gzella). 3.c–­c. ‫קרנים והקרנים גבהות‬: NAB omits ‫ והקרנים‬as dittog., following G; 4QDanab add an extra ‫קרנים‬. 3.d. NEB “behind,” but this is a rarer meaning of ‫באחרנה‬, and if the phrase were intended to indicate that the two horns were one behind each other rather than

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Gabriel Explains Daniel’s Vision

alongside each other as usual, one might have expected this point to come earlier in the sentence. OG connects ‫ באחרנה‬with the next sentence, but elsewhere it comes after the phrase it qualifies; it thus regularly appears at the end of a sentence. 4.a. 4QDana adds ‫“( ומזרח‬and east”); OG has the order east, north, west, south. The Persians did extend their territory eastward, but for MT Persia itself is perhaps eastward enough for anything further to be ignored. 4.b. ‫יעמדו‬: on dislike of the 3rd pl. f., see GKC 145pu. 4.c– ­c. ‫ והגריל‬. . . ‫ועשה‬: frequentative waw consecutives only loosely related to preceding clauses (GKC 112dd). ‫( הגדיל‬cf. vv. 8, 11, 25) is an inwardly transitive or declarative hiphil (“manifest bigness”; cf. GKC 53def). More abstract translations (“grew big”/”magnified itself,” EVV) are less likely in this context: see vv. 8–11 and n. 8.a–­a. 5.a. ‫מבין‬: hardly an Aramaism (against Hartman/Di Lella); see BDB, 106. 5.b–­b. ‫צפיר העזים‬: BHS deletes ‫ ה‬to make the phrase more regularly indeterminate (“a he-­goat of she-­goats”); but this is too easy a simplifying of an anomalous expression. For indeterminate construct followed by determinate absolute, see GKC 127e. Jeffrey has “a buck of the goats,” i.e., the proud leader of the herd; but there are comparable idiomatic phrases such as ‫ עזים עזים‬,‫( שעיר יגד‬BDB, 777). I rather take the whole phrase as determinate, denoting “the he-­goat (who is already in a sense well known and is about to be described)”: see GKC 126qr; cf. Marti. 5.c. ‫ ואין‬has come virtually to mean ‫ ולא‬here and in v. 27; see Carmignac, “La négation ‫אין‬,” 410–11. Shortening of ‫ ואיננו‬by haplog. could explain one occurrence, but not two. 5.d–­d. ‫“ קרן חזות‬a horn of visibility.” ‫ חזות‬is missing from G but not from Vulg.; OG suggests ‫“ אחת‬one,” but the unusual nature of ‫ חזות‬suggests it is original, and a word indicating the notable size of the horn seems appropriate (cf. v. 8). ‫ מראה‬in 2 Sam 23:21 is comparable, but there are also textual problems there. 7.a–­a. Perhaps ‫ וראיתיו‬is waw consecutive and the meaning is thus past imperfect; more likely this is simple waw, further illustrating the dissolution of waw consecutive. But the three following waw consecutives plus imperfect may continue the participial construction begun by ‫“ מגיע‬close in” (cf. GKC 116x). 8.a– ­a. ‫הגדיל עד מאד‬. The verb which occurred first in v. 4 reappears in each of vv. 8–11, the forms of expression working towards a climax: simple ‫“( הגדיל‬he did big things,” v. 4); ‫“( הגדיל עד מאד‬he grew very big,” v. 8); ‫“( ותגדל יתר‬it grew extremely big,” v. 9), cf. Isa 56:12; ‫“( ותגדל עד צבא השמים‬it grew big to within reach of the heavenly army,” v. 10); ‫“( ועד שר הצבא הגדיל‬he grew big to within reach of the leader of the army,” v. 11). The more abstract translation “grew big” is appropriate here in v. 8 (contrast v. 4). Verses 8, 11 use hiphil, vv. 9, 10 qal; the difference is stylistic, ‫ גדל‬being one of a number of verbs that can be used in qal and hiphil with similar meanings (cf. ‫“ רשע‬be faithless,” 9:5, 15; ‫“ חזק‬be strong,” 11:5, 7; ‫“ צלח‬be successful,” 11:27, 36). Translations such as “grew arrogant” (GNB) and “made a show of its strength” (NEB) are not justified, perhaps not even for hithpael ‫ התגדל‬in 11:36, 37, though there the preposition changes from ‫ עד‬to the more pejorative ‫( על‬cf. Ezek 35:13). Here, any value judgments emerge from the context in which the verb is set. See further n. 25.b–­b. 8.b–­b. ‫ וכצצמו‬is the better attested and more difficult reading than ‫( ובעצמו‬C and others). ‍‫ כ‬can be temporal, expressing an exact point of time (virtually “as soon as”; cf. 10:9, 19; 11:4), though NEB takes it concessively (cf. HS 258, 262, 505). 8.c. MT includes ‫“ חזות‬visibility” here as in v. 5, but it is more difficult grammatically (since it precedes “four”), textually (Th. omits it; OG ἔτερα suggests it read it as ‫אחרות‬ [cf. NAB], but this, too, should follow the numeral, and OG seems to be simplifying the text as in v. 5), and contextually (since the four were not notable, as the one was;

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Notes 405 cf. v. 22; 11:4). It looks like an intrusion from v. 5 (Ehrlich). Hartman/Di Lella sees an Aramaizing passive participle ‫חזיות‬. 9.a–­a. [f.] ‫[ אחת קרן‬m.] ‫[ יצא‬m.] ‫[ מהם‬f.] ‫האחת‬: on the genders see GKC 135o, 145o. 9.b. Taking ‫ אחת‬as an Aramaism; NEB “one” takes it in the Heb. sense. 9.c. ‫מצעירה‬, apparently “[a horn] from smallness.” BDB does not note this occurrence of the noun, but the real problem is the preposition. Perhaps repoint to the hypothetical noun ‫( ִמ ְצ יָ ָר ה‬Hartman/Di Lella) or ‫( ַמ ְצ ִע ָיר ה‬Brockington) (“[a horn of] smallness” = “a small horn”) or emend to ‫“( צעירה אחרת‬another small [horn],” cf. 7:8), which might have become assimilated to ‫ אחת מהם‬in the preceding line (Bevan). 9.d. See n. 8.a–­a. 9.e. Syr. omits ‫“ ואל הצבי‬and to the [embodiment of] beauty,” which may be a gloss, but there is no reason to assume that ‫“( ארץ צביה‬the land of beauty,” 11:16, 41) is the original expression and ‫ הצבי‬is an abbreviation (against BHS); see Comment. 10.a. See n. 8.a–­a. 10.b. Explicative waw (see n. 6:28.a); the phrase it introduces may be a gloss. 11.a. See n. 8.a–­a. 11.b–­b. The verbs in v. 11b may be read as passive (‫ הורם‬Q, ‫ וְ ֻה ְׁש ַל ְך‬cf. G) or as active (‫ הרים‬K, ‫ וְ ַה ְׁש ֵל ְך‬as in v. 12, suggested by Syr., Vulg.); ‫ ממנו‬means “by him” (BDB, 580a) or “from him” correspondingly. The evidence is closely balanced, the meaning similar. Goldstein (“The Persecution of the Jews by Antiochus IV,” 142–43) connects ‫ וממנו‬with what precedes and translates “and beyond him” (cf. Gen 48:19). The s. verb could have a pl. subject, as required if ‫ וצבא‬is linked with v. 11: see n. 11.d–­d and GKC 145o. 11.c–­c. ‫ מכון מקדשו‬comes only here, but cf. compounds such as ‫“( מכון שבתו‬the place of his dwelling,” e.g., Ps 33:14); ‫“( מכון כסאו‬the place of his throne,” e.g., Ps 97:2). 11.d–­d. Taking ‫וצבא‬, the first word of v. 12, with v. 11: so G (cf. BHS); cf. n. 12.a–­a. Sanctuary and army are linked in v. 13. 12.a–­a. The most plausible translation of MT ‫ וצבא תנתן על התמיד בפשע‬is “thus an army will be set over the daily offering in an act of rebellion.” ‫ נתן על‬regularly means “set over” (BDB, 680), and the two words can hardly be interpreted independently (against, e.g., NIV). ‫ צבא‬must surely still mean “army,” not change its meaning to “warfare” (Driver) or “hard service” (Plöger). It is odd that ‫ תנתן‬is imperfect, but see n. 12.b–­b and the Comment. It is also problematic that ‫ צבא‬has to be f. (it may be so in Isa 40:2, though see Bevan) and to have a different referent from vv. 10, 11, 14. These difficulties make one suspect MT. Syr., Vulg. follow MT, but G suggests linking ‫וצבא‬ to v. 11 (see n. 11.d–­d), which is an improvement, though v. 12 now begins even more abruptly. Most difficulties stem from the relationship of v. 12a to its context; perhaps it is an explanatory gloss. 12.b–­b. The tenses of ‫( ותשלך‬simple waw plus jussive), ‫ ועשתה‬and ‫( והצליחה‬both waw plus perfect), are puzzling; so is the tense of ‫( תנתן‬imperfect) in v. 12a. EVV translate ‫ תנתן‬and ‫ ותשלך‬as past, but they are hardly imperfect in meaning, and this really presupposes emendation to waw consecutive or perfect (cf. BHS; and G’s aorists). For RSV’s “was cast down” for ‫ותשלך‬, see BHS. I take the whole verse to have future reference, ‫ ותשלך‬being a final or consecutive clause (GKC 109c suggests jussive is used for rhythmic reasons). 13.a. EVV take ‫ אחד‬as equivalent to indefinite article, but it should then follow the word it qualifies, as in v. 3 (GKC 125b). Further, ‫אחד‬ . . . ‫ אחד‬is idiomatic for “one . . . another” (cf. Amos 4:7; see BDB, GKC 125b). This is also a difficulty for Lacocque’s suggestion that the same “holy one” is referred to both times. See further n. 13.c. 13.b. Taking ‫ ויאמר‬as another waw consecutive following a participle (cf. n. 7.a–­a).

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13.c. Lacocque takes ‫ פלמוני המדבר‬to refer to Daniel himself, but he then has to translate ‫( אמר‬usually “said”) as “asked.” More likely Daniel’s vision follows the pattern of Zech 1:7–17, where the seer overhears heavenly figures speaking to one another. 13.d. NEB adds ‫מורם‬, participle from ‫“( רום‬overthrown”—­cf. v. 11), on the basis of OG. 13.e. BDB takes ‫ שמם‬as poel participle without a preformative, but this is hardly justified by appeal to GKC 52s (puals without ‍‫[ מ‬which may be qal passives] and piels without ‍‫ מ‬of verbs beginning with ‍‫)מ‬. Elsewhere in the OT (incl. 9:18, 26, 27) ‫ שמם‬is a regular qal participle. This participle usually meaning “desolated”—­which fits the state of the temple through Antiochus’s action (Hammer). In later Heb. and Aram., forms of ‫ שמם‬can suggest “be demented”; this meaning could suggest an allusion to the derisive entitling of Antiochus Epiphanes, “[God] Manifest,” as Epimanes, “Madman” (Rowley, “The Bilingual Problem of Daniel,” 264–65). While such polysemy may be present, the basic idea is more likely that the rebellion will bring desolation (cf. 9:26–27): i.e., the participle is active in meaning, the natural understanding of the qal participle in 9:27 “the desolater” (cf. also Ezek 36:3 MT, defended by Zimmerli, Ezechiel, on the passage). The poel, too, can have either transitive or intransitive/passive meaning. Presumably the qal form is chosen to correspond consonantly to ‫( שמ‍]י[ם‬see Comment), which also explains the omission of the article. In this connection, there may be further polysemy in the verb’s capacity to suggest “appalling” (cf. v. 27, also 4:19 [16]). But the basic idea of “desolating” fits the stress on desolation (using ‫)שמם‬ in 9:18, 26 in the context of the use of this verb in 9:27, and on devastation (‫)שחת‬ in the present context (vv. 24, 25); cf. G’s ἐρημώσεως and ἐρημόω in 1 Macc 1:39; 4:38. 13.f. ‫תת‬: the translation of v. 13b follows MT, but MT is odd, and one might have expected that a further occurrence of ‫ נתן‬here would refer to the setting up of the pagan altar. Thus NEB moves it before ‫ הפשע שמם‬and BHS emends to ‫נִ ַּתן‬. Yephet interprets it absolutely, “the giving/setting,” a further specific reference back to the wording of v. 12. 13.g. See GKC 154a, n. 1. 13.h. NEB emends ‫ צבא‬to ‫“ צבי‬fairest.” 14.a. ‫ ;אלי‬G, Vulg., Syr. have “to him,” but they may be conforming the text to what they expect rather than reflecting an original ‫אליו‬. For the seer’s involvement in his vision, cf. Zech 3:5 (where again G removes it). Or has MT understood ‫פלמוני‬ (“individual,” v. 13) to refer to Daniel himself, as Lacocque does (n. 13.c)? 14.b–­b. Cf. NEB for this translation of ‫ צדק‬niphal, which occurs only here; but it differs little from a passive “be put right/justified/vindicated” (cf. BDB), which would presumably be a divine passive (Porter, Metaphors and Monsters, 60). G, Vulg. “be cleansed” may imply taking ‫ נצדק‬as an Aramaism. Zimmermann (“The Aramaic Origin of Daniel 8–12,” 261–62) suggests that it represents Aram. ‫“ זכי‬be cleansed/ justified”; the translator then used ‫ צדק‬as if it had both meanings. But if the author were translating, or even thinking in Aram., why did he not use Heb. ‫ זכה‬with its meaning “be cleansed”? (BH ‫ זכה‬also shows the close relationship between “be clean” and “be justified.”) Ginsberg, 41–42, 79–80, says Aram. ‫ זכי‬can only mean “be justified” and posits a confusion with ‫“ דכי‬be clean”; but see DTT on ‫זכי‬. Davidson (“The Meaning of Nis·daq”) argues that nis·daq can mean “be put right,” “be shown to be in the right,” and “be cleansed,” and that all three meanings are appropriate here (cf. Pröbstle, “A Linguistic Analysis of Daniel, 8:11, 12,” 97). 15.a–­a. Taking the waw consecutive as continuing the infinitival clause; cf. GKC 114r. MT apparently takes the second verb as the main clause—­so NEB, NRSV, the latter translating the two clauses as pluperfect and aorist, not as both imperfect; the effect is more prosaic.

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Notes 407 15.b. ‫( גבר‬geber): cf. the name ‫( גבריאל‬Gabriel) in v. 16. Etymologically that name means “God is my [strong] man” (cf. Collins) or “my [strong] man is God” (cf. Seow), but the chapter likely thinks of the name as a description of Gabriel as a “[strong] man of God.” 16.a–­a. ‫ בין אולי‬is an odd phrase; like English “between,” ‫ בין‬is not used with a s. noun. The phrase is usually taken elliptically, “between [the banks of] the Ulay,” and 12:6–7 may presuppose that understanding, though it uses ‫“ על‬above,” not ‫בין‬. ἀνὰ μέσον τοῦ Ουβαλ (Th.) may give a better interpretation—­not that we need read ‫אובל‬ for ‫( אולי‬against Hartman/Di Lella), but that the reference is to the Ulay Gate, amidst which the heavenly being stood. This understanding parallels the only other clear occurrence of ‫ בין‬with the s., Num 17:2 (in Isa 44:4 and Jer 48:45 the text is dubious on other grounds). Finkelstein (“ ‘Mesopotamia,’ ” 88–90) notes that the Akk. counterpart of ‫בין‬, b¯r ı ¯(t), ı can also be a noun meaning “middle ground” or “interval,” and sees ‫ בין אולי‬as an Akkadianism designating a peninsula between two streams. 17.a. EVV “terrified”: but ‫ בעת‬means “overwhelm” without specifying the cause. The context can indicates something other than fear (e.g., 1 Sam 16:14–15), and fear is not indicated here (see DCH); likewise with the nouns ‫ בעתה‬,‫בעותים‬. 17.b. “Because” (Montgomery; cf. v. 19b, and n. 19.b–­b., also 11:27, 35) is less natural after ‫ הבן‬here. 18.a. Ginsberg takes ‫ נרדם‬as a mistranslation of Aram. ‫דמך‬, which he says means both “lie” and “sleep,” but DTT suggests that ‫ דמך‬means “lie asleep,” not simply “lie down.” 19.a–­a. ‫“ באחרית הזעם‬at the end of the wrath” in the sense of “during the latter part of . . .” (NIV), not “at [or after] the actual termination of . . .”; see on 2:28. 19.b–­b. Cf. Hasslberger, Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis; Young. MT accents and G take as construct “it will be for the time of the end,” parallel to ‫ עת קץ‬in v. 17. But that clause has ‫ החזון‬as subject; this clause would lack an equivalent (supplied by Th AB, cf. BHS). Ginsberg repoints to assimilate to 11:27, but there the phrase as a whole is different. Calvin assimilates the translation of v. 17 to that accepted here for v. 19. 20.a. There being no Heb. equivalent to “is,” vv. 20–21 simply set visionary feature and interpretation alongside each other (cf. v. 22). 20.b. “King(s)” need not be changed to “kingdom(s)” in vv. 20–21 (against Hartman/Di Lella); Daniel elsewhere uses the former for the latter, and cf. the m. suffix in v. 23a (Hasslberger, Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis). 21.a. ‫הצפיר השעיר‬, the Aram. and then the Heb. word for “he-­goat” instead of the idiomatic expression used earlier (see n. 5.b–­b). EVV may be right to take ‫ השעיר‬as an adjective, “hairy.” G assimilates to vv. 5, 8; more likely ‫ הצפיר‬alone is original and ‫ השעיר‬an explanatory gloss (Charles). 21.b. See n. 20.b. 21.c. ‫יון‬, the regular BH word for Greece; Ionia made the earliest contacts eastwards. 22.a. The waw consecutive again continues the participial construction (see n. 7.a–­a. and cf. n. 15.a–­a.; GKC 116wx). 22.b–­b. ‫יעמדנה‬ . . . ‫מלכיות‬. Perhaps both are mixed forms, combining ‫ יעמדו‬. . . ‫“( מלכים‬kings will arise”; G, Vulg.) and ‫העמדנה‬ . . . ‫“( מלכות‬kingdoms will arise”; EVV), though ‫ מלכיות‬is a form from later Heb. (Montgomery) and ‫ יעמדנה‬could be an Aramaism (Ginsberg, 56, cf. GKC 47k), so perhaps the forms are original here. 22.c. Reading ‫( מגוו‬Ginsberg, 56; cf. ‫ גו‬in 3:6, etc.) rather than ‫“ מגוי‬from a nation” (MT) or ‫“ מגויו‬from his nation” (implied by G; cf. Gzella). Eitan suggests “from the world,” comparing ‫ גוי‬in 12:1. 23.a–­a. See n. 19.a–­a. 23.b. BHS repoints ‫“( ַה ְּפ ָׁש ִעים‬rebellions”): cf. G, perhaps assimilating to ‫ פשע‬in (e.g.) vv. 12, 13; 9:24. But the use of the s. distinguishes these passages referring to “rebellion” rather than “rebels.”

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23.c. Or “come to an end” (cf. n. 9:24.e–­e). 23.d. There is no need to take ‫ חידות‬here (alone) to mean sayings intended to deceive (against EVV; see Comment), though this motif does come in v. 25. 24.a–­a. ‫ולא בכחו‬, as in v. 22; the meaning is likely the same (against Syr., JB): the line reaffirms that this king’s strength, too, does not bear comparing with his great predecessor’s. But G omits, and such a qualifying of the description of Antiochus’s power is unexpected as vv. 23–25 build up the suspense; perhaps a gloss from v. 22, either accidental or introducing a negative evaluation of Antiochus. 24.b–­b ‫נפלאות ישחית‬: “[with] astounding acts he will destroy”; see GKC 100d, 118mp. 11:36 has ‫“ ידבר נפלאות‬he will speak astounding things,” and Hartman/Di Lella assimilates 8:24 to it, while Bevan emends ‫ ישחית‬to ‫ ישיח‬or ‫“ ישחח‬he will utter”; but such a meaning of ‫ שיח‬is not clearly instanced and this seems an implausible way to achieve an unnecessary end. 24.c. Explicative waw (n. 6:28.a); the phrase may be a gloss (Bentzen) or may be misplaced from v. 25 (BHS)—­see n. 25.a–­a. 25.a–­a . Cf. Hasslberger, Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis. Montgomery takes as an extraposed phrase (casus pendens) to begin v. 25, but examples and cross-­references in TTH, 123; GKC 143 include none that are so abrupt (Qoh 5:6 comes nearest). OG presupposes ‫ קדשים‬after ‫( ועל‬Graetz), dropped by haplog. (cf. end of v. 24). 25.b–­b. Taking ‫בלבבו‬, literally “in/by his heart/mind,” as parallel to ‫“ בידו‬in/by his hand” in the previous line. For ‫“ לבב‬courage” cf. 11:25, similarly linked with ‫כח‬ “power.” “In his mind [he will grow big]” (EVV) is difficult to parallel, and on the verb see further n. 4.c–­c., n. 8.a–­a; here, too, there is no need to understand it as suggesting pretension, for the king really does “do big things.” 25.c. EVV generally refer ‫ בשלוה‬here and in 11:21, 24 to the (apparent) security of those who are attacked unawares. It more naturally refers to the attacker himself: cf. Th., Vulg.; Syr. (which lacks it at 11:24); OG (but in 11:21, 24 ἐξάπινα: if ‫ בשלוה‬means “suddenly” it is an Aramaism—­so Hartman/Di Lella also here at 8:25); also JB at 11:21, 24. 27.a–­a. ‫“ נהייתי ונחליתי‬I fell [?] and was ill”; for the first verb BDB’s “I came to an end” is dubious. OG omits; Ehrlich suggests dittog. Rather see n. 2:1.c. 27.b–­b. G, Vulg. translate ‫“ ואין מבין‬and no one could understand/explain it”; but ‫ אין‬has already been used as virtually equivalent to ‫“ לא‬not” in a similar clause in v. 5 where the subject of the previous clause has to be the subject of the ‫ ואין‬clause, and this understanding is also natural here.

Form/Structure/Setting Form The chapter is the report of a symbolic vision. It uses the term ‫ חזון‬six times (vv. 1, 2, 2, 13, 15, 26) and also expressions for “appear”/”see”/”look” (vv. 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 15, 20), the preposition ‍‫“ כ‬like,” the demonstrative particle ‫“( הנה‬there”/”here”, vv. 3, 5, 15, 19), and terms such as ‫רדם‬ “fall into a trance,” which are characteristic of vision reports. The root ‫חזה‬ appears also as ‫“( חזות‬conspicuous,” v. 5, recurring in v. 8 MT [see n. 8.c]). The symbolic nature of the vision is indirectly noted by the use of terms for “(cause to) understand,” vv. 15, 16, 17, 19, 23. The chapter also uses ‫ מראה‬to denote not only appearance (v. 15) but (verbal) revelation (vv. 16, 26, 27);

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Form/Structure/Setting 409 the auditory aspect to the vision is important (cf. ‫“ שמע‬hear,” vv. 13, 16). The vision’s broad contours follow those of ch. 7 and earlier visions. It includes a narrative introduction giving a date and geographical reference, which helps to establish the vision’s actuality. There follows the symbolic vision itself. One then expects a description of the seer’s response and puzzlement (cf. 7:15); in ch. 8 this is syntactically incorporated into the initiative from heaven that brings the vision’s interpretation to the seer (vv. 15–19). This elaborate section takes the form of the description of an epiphany (cf. Ezek 8; also the more elaborate equivalent in Dan 10), which establishes the heavenly authority of the explanation. This explanation follows in the next major section (vv. 20–26), an interpretive vision elucidating the symbolic vision. It opens with the characteristic noun clauses of an interpretation but changes to verbal clauses as it moves to providing information about events that were not precisely represented in the vision. The climactic importance of these verses is emphasized by the rhythm and occasional parallelism; vv. 23–25 are poetic in form. Finally, there is a conclusion to the vision as a whole and a narrative closure (v. 27) corresponding to 2:46; 7:28; also Ezek 3:15. The “I, Daniel” formula appears at the three appropriate key points (vv. 1, 15, 27; see ch. 7 Form). The symbolic vision and the portrait of the fierce-­looking king parallel texts such as the Animal Apocalypse in 1 Enoch and the Akkadian dynastic prophecy; ch. 8 is for the most part a similar quasi-­prediction (see ch. 2 Form, chs. 10–12 Form). Although Daniel links this vision with the one in ch. 7 (v. 1), visionary dreams like those in chs. 2; 4; and 7 are now over. Chapters 8–12 are not dreams, and the characteristic terms to denote a dream-­v ision (see 7:1, 2, 7, 13) do not appear; OG’s addition of τοῦ ἐνυπνίου (“of the dream,” v. 2) highlights this lack in the MT. Daniel is awake for the symbolic vision, though he is put into a deep sleep for a short time in v. 18 (cf. 10:9–11). This motif, like the dream form elsewhere, deepens the sense of transcendent mystery about the experience being described and thus heightens the authority of the revelation that issues from the vision. Like a dream, such trancelike sleep cannot be humanly generated: it indicates supernatural involvement.1 On the use of symbols, see Dan 7 Form. Like the ones in ch. 7, these symbols are not merely a code of random ciphers. They indicate that the entity described possesses qualities belonging to the symbol (e.g., a horn suggests strength); they call to mind a body of ideas, images, and values attaching to them in their interrelationships, which are (selectively) projected onto the entity symbolized. Thus the king “breaks” (v. 25), a term which literally applies rather to the horn that symbolizes him. But the symbolism of ch. 8 involves less of the mythic or poetic than that of ch. 7. The anthropomorphic image of

1 Niditch, The Symbolic Vision in Biblical Tradition, 224.

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God does not appear here.2 While vv. 23–25 are poetic in form, bringing the interpretive vision to a climax,3 they do so partly through taking the form of a dynastic prophecy of the kind that will come more fully in ch. 11.4 Compared with ch. 7, the vision thus refers less to events or realities beyond present experience, and it is less cryptic, unless the aspects of 7:4–7 that are cryptic to us were not so to the original audience. Conversely, it contains more literal description of the small horn’s deeds, which makes the symbolism more transparent (in theory: in practice, the literal description is now cryptic to us in a way it, too, may not originally have been). To oversimplify, ch. 7 is myth, ch. 8 is allegory.5 The symbolic vision in ch. 7 comes to a climax with this transition to myth, while the symbolic vision in ch. 8 comes to its climax with a date. Chapter 7 is an impressionist painting open to several interpretations, ch. 8 a political cartoon with the names of the characters incorporated to make sure the reader understands it. As exercises in theology and communication, the two visions thereby complement each other. Chapter 7 is deep, allusive, imaginative; ch. 8 is sober, explicit, concrete. Consequently, the identification of the empires and kings in ch. 8 is all but universally agreed, whereas the identification of the ones in ch. 7 leaves more room for dispute. Chapter 8 interprets ch. 7 for us (it is a sort of midrash on ch. 7);6 ch. 7 reminds us that the historical realities named in ch. 8 are but one set of historical referents of its symbols. It implies a broader horizon. Following the general form of ch. 7 and of earlier visions may add to the credibility and pedigree of ch. 8.7 It is also influenced by earlier Scriptures,8 and this inclination to scriptural allusion counterbalances its less profound use of symbolism. The depth and resonance suggested by mythic allusion or tensive symbol in ch. 7 is suggested by scriptural allusion in ch. 8. Even the mythic allusions in vv. 10–11 have already been taken up into the Scriptures in Isa 14.9 Aspects of Daniel’s description of his experience in vv. 1–2 and of the epiphany in vv. 15–18 correspond to aspects of Ezekiel’s: the provision of date and geographical setting (vv. 1–2; cf. Ezek 1:1–3); the visionary journey to the scene of what is to be revealed (v. 2; cf. Ezek 8:3); the location by a river (? vv. 2, 3, 6; cf. Ezek 1:1–3—Ezekiel’s physical, not his visionary location); the one of humanlike appearance (v. 15; cf. Ezek 8:2 [see BHS]); the form of address, “mortal man” (‫בן אדם‬, v. 17; cf. Ezek 2:1; 8:5; etc.); and the setting upright of one who falls 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Cf. Merrill Willis, “Heavenly Bodies,” 32. BHS includes v 26 (cf. Segert, “Poetic Structures in the Hebrew Sections of the Book of Daniel”), but this verse rather lacks poetic features. Cf. Collins, Daniel, 339, 343. Hölscher, “Die Entstehung des Buches Daniel,” 129. Dequeker, “The ‘Saints of the Most High’ in Qumran and Daniel,” 109. So Niditch, The Symbolic Vision in Biblical Tradition, 232. See Porter, Metaphors and Monsters, 61–120. Merrill Willis discusses the more general mythic nature of Dan 8 in “Myth and History in Daniel 8.”

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Form/Structure/Setting 411 on his face to the ground (vv. 17–18; Ezek 1:28–2:2; 3:23–24). Daniel’s vision report is not an account of a call, like Ezek 1–3; as a vision of the sanctuary desecration and of the desolating rebellion (vv. 11–12), it corresponds in substance though not in forms of expression rather to Ezek 8. The celestial dialogue introducing the interpretive part of the vision (vv. 13–19) also reflects Zechariah’s visions. The first of these visions (Zech 1:7–17) features dialogue between humanlike figures, including a supernatural messenger who explains the vision to Zechariah. Yahweh’s aide asks “how long” (‫ )עד מתי‬Yahweh is going to be wrathful (‫ )זעם‬toward Jerusalem and Judah, beyond the seventy years of which Jeremiah spoke, and he is reassured that the moment of restoration and vindication is coming (cf. Dan 8:13, 14, 19; 9:2). But the isolated parallel with the “How long” of Isa 6:11 is likely coincidental;10 while the talk of “wrath” in Isa 10 is background to Dan 9 and 11 but not specifically to Dan 8. In Zechariah’s second vision (1:18–21 [2:1–4]), four horns have scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem; these horns of the nations will be knocked down (cf. Dan 8:24–25). The third vision (2:1–4 [5–8]) features another dialogue involving both celestial beings and Zechariah himself; it uses the very rare term ‫“ הלז‬this man,” which appears in Dan 8:16. The links with Zechariah hint that Dan 8 belongs with a way of thinking represented more explicitly in ch. 9: the Judahites’ position long after the sixth century is still an experience of subjugation and repression. Visions that are thus analogous to Zechariah’s are brought into relationship to an End centuries after his time by the allusion in vv. 17 and 19 to Habakkuk’s comment that ‫“( חזון למועד ויפח לקץ‬the vision relates to the appointed time and pants [?] for the end”; Hab 2:3); compare the systematic application of Habakkuk to such an End in 1QpHab. The seer gives a key theological assessment of Antiochus by taking up the myth of a subordinate celestial being who seeks to usurp the place of God himself, the myth already applied to a historical figure, the king of Babylon, in Isa 14 (kings are described as goats [‫ ]עתודים‬in Isa 14:9). The myth is here reapplied.11 The mythic language adapted in Isa 14 is given precision by the more literal language of the laments in Isa 59:1–15; 63:7–64:11 [12]. There already truth has fallen in the public squares and cannot be found (Isa 59:14–15; cf. Dan 8:12), and God’s sanctuary is trampled down by Israel’s adversaries (Isa 63:15, 18; cf. Dan 8:11, 13). In the context of these links, the parallel between the three occurrences of ‫ פשע‬in Isa 59:12, 13 and the two in Dan 8:12, 13 may not be coincidental; nor may the parallel between the description of Jerusalem as a desolation (‫ )שממה‬in Isa 64:10 [9] and the mention of the desolating

10 Against Nicol, “Isaiah’s Vision and the Visions of Daniel,” 504. 11 Though Yarbro Collins notes that the myth appears in a form closest to Dan 8 in the fifth century AD in Nonnos’s Dionysiaca 1.163–64, 180–81 (The Combat Myth in the Book of Revelation, 76–83; cf. Niditch, The Symbolic Vision in Biblical Tradition, 229).

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rebellion (‫ )הפשע שמם‬in Dan 8:13. Isa 63:9 also pictures Israel looked after by Yahweh’s personal aide, whose position may be analogous to that of the leader of the army in Dan 8:11. Earlier, Isa 52:14; 53:12 provides terms (‫שחת‬, ‫עצומים‬, ‫ )רבים‬that appear in Dan 8:24–25.12 The quasi-­predictive animal allegories of Daniel and 1 Enoch take up a tradition going back to Gen 49 via Ezekiel’s nature allegories (e.g., Ezek 15; 17; 19; also 39:18). First Enoch 90 illustrates the motif of a horn growing, fighting, and breaking in a way parallel to Dan 8. The vision of ram and goat also has varied extrabiblical background. These two animals are the signs under which Persia and Syria appear in the zodiac.13 Indeed, there is nothing distinctively Jewish about the portrait of the ram and goat (vv. 3–8a). It could have existed already and been taken into the vision as a whole.14 The horns have a varied background in Babylonian omen literature, as well as in OT and wider Semitic symbolism (cf. Dan 7 Form). Stylized aspects of the description of Antiochus’s tyranny (vv. 23–25) appear in Greek writers,15 while the characterization of Antiochus as the clever transgressor due for his comeuppance compares with the link between wisdom and pride already made in Isa 10:13; Ezek 28:2–5 (where the king of Tyre is compared with Daniel!).16 On the background of the 2300 days, see Comment. It has been assumed that the mythic and poetic aspects of ch. 7 suggest that it reflects a “real” visionary experience, while the more concrete aspects of ch. 8 suggest that it is a more consciously contrived elaboration or expansion of part of ch. 7. Both these assumptions can be questioned. 1–2a  Introduction: date and place 2b–14  Symbolic vision (beginning ‫)ויהי בראתי‬ 2b  the seer’s circumstances 3–4 ram 3  its appearance 4  its activity 5–12 goat 5  its arrival 6–7  its activity 8a  its increase 8b  its shattering and new growth 9–12  its small horn 9  its arrival 10–12  its activity 12 Brownlee, “The Servant of the Lord in the Qumran Scrolls.” 13. 13 Cumont, “La pius ancienne géographie astrologique,” 265. 14 Hasslberger, Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis, 401–2. 15 Niditch, The Symbolic Vision in Biblical Tradition, 220–30. 16 See Lebram, “König Antiochus im Buch Daniel,” 739–43.

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Form/Structure/Setting 413 10  in relation to the heavenly army 11  in relation to the army leader 12  in relation to the sanctuary 13–14  the limit set to the visionary events 13  one holy one asks 14  another holy one explains 15–26  Interpretive vision (beginning ‫)ויהי בראתי‬ 15–19  epiphany of interpreter 15a  the seer’s circumstances 15b  the interpreter appears 16  the interpreter commissioned 17a  the interpreter approaches 17b  the interpreter speaks 18  the seer’s response 19  the interpreter’s introduction to the message 20–26  message of interpreter 20  the ram interpreted 21  the goat interpreted 22  the shattering and new growth interpreted 23–25  the fierce-­looking king 23  his rise 24–25a  his success 25b  his fall 26  concluding affirmation and instruction 27  Conclusion: the visionary’s response17

Structure Like ch. 7, ch. 8 uses introductory formulae to mark significant transition points. Thus vv. 3 and 5 have long visionary formulae to introduce the ram and the goat; in v. 8b the resumptive reference to the goat’s strength fulfills a similar function.18 The symbolic vision builds up to v. 12, as the same elements recur in the portrait of ram, goat, and small horn: each appears, acts aggressively, enjoys success, but then falls. The sections of the symbolic vision characteristically open with noun clauses—­an unusual number of these appear here—­then change to verbal clauses. The effect is to draw attention to ongoing, enduring situations, then to punctiliar, changing events. The symbolic vision comes to its climax with a string of verbal clauses in vv. 11–12.19

17 Nuñez (“Narrative Structure of Daniel 8”) suggests a slightly different structure on the basis of text linguistics. 18 Koch, “Vom profetischen zum apokalyptischen Visionsbericht,” 418. 19 Koch, “Vom profetischen zum apokalyptischen Visionsbericht,” 417–18.

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Gabriel Explains Daniel’s Vision

It encourages us to view the small horn’s career in light of patterns in earlier world history (the story of the ram and the goat), of the visions of Zechariah, and of the myth of the rebellion against the heavens’ authority; in each, the assertive powers get their comeuppance. The portrait of the small horn stops short of this final element. The symbolic vision thus terminates at a surprising point and leaves us in suspense. Here there is no visionary presentation of judgment, restoration, or reign of God, and there will be no direct promise of it till the very end of the interpretive vision (v. 25b). While vv. 13–14 do not directly resolve the tension set by vv. 8b–12, they bring the symbolic vision to a further climax with their transition from portraying animals to portraying celestial beings. The conversation between these beings indicates that the small horn is under control. It does not reveal what will happen to it, which is left for the climactic line of the interpretive vision in v. 25. Our anticipation of that revelation is heightened as vv. 13–14 presuppose something of the sort without announcing it. Here, however, another concern surfaces, the question of how long the crisis is to last. This concern is highlighted by its coming at the climax of the vision and by the transition from vision to auditory experience and from an earthly scene to a dialogue between supernatural beings.20 The symbolic vision comes to an end with a celestial conversation; the interpretive vision opens with a celestial conversation. While the symbolic vision gives nearly twice as much space to the ram and the goat as it gives to the small horn, the interpretive vision gives less space to the kings of Medo-­Persia and Greece than to the final, fierce-­looking king. As usual, some aspects of the symbolic vision are not explicitly interpreted, while some aspects of the interpretive vision have no antecedent in the symbolic vision. Formally, vv. 20–25 do interpret vv. 3–12 by identifying the chief referents of the symbolic vision, but they tell the audience only what they could work out and will have worked out for themselves. The symbols for the various nations are of transparent significance. In a sense it was the symbolic vision that was interpretive: it was designed to suggest the significance of the history that the audience knew. The kingdoms named in vv. 20–21 have been portrayed so as to show that they embody more than they themselves are. They embody trans­ historical, supernatural realities. The function of vv. 23–25 is not to explain ciphers from earlier verses but to complement one set of enigmatic sayings with another set. Thus in vv. 20–25 a portrait of animals and astrological motifs is complemented by a portrait of a human-­superhuman aggressor who still, however, remains incognito.21 In the manner of ch. 7, ch. 8 marks the importance of vv. 23–25 as the vision’s climax by a transition to a rhythmic prosody with some parallelism. The importance of this climax is heightened 20 Collins, Daniel with an Introduction to Apocalyptic Literature, 88. 21 Koch, “Vom profetischen zum apokalyptischen Visionsbericht,” 436.

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Form/Structure/Setting 415 by the expansion on the contents of the original vision that it offers, especially by the unheralded conclusion in the last line of v. 25. The arrangement of the cola contributes to the sense of working to a climax. Verse 23 comprises two balancing bicola (a–­a’, b–­b’). Verse 24 comprises two bicola arranged chiastically (abb’a’); omitting the bracketed phrase as a gloss improves the prosody, but it is not necessary. In OG, at least (see n. 25.a–­a), v. 25 begins with two further bicola arranged chiastically (abb’a’), then a further bicolon (taking up ‫ ועל‬and ‫ יד‬from the first) carries the deeds of the previous four to an even greater height of enormity and finally resolves the tension by declaring the divine response. A number of expressions recur through the chapter: ‫“ גדל‬become big,” vv. 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 25 (see n. 4.c–­c., n. 8.a–­a); ‫“ עמד‬stand”/”arise”/”place,” vv. 3, 4, 7, 15, 17, 18, 18, 22, 22, 23, 25; ‫“ שלך‬throw down,” vv. 7, 11, 12; ‫“ רמס‬trample,” vv. 7, 10, 13; ‫“ יד‬hand”/”power,” vv. 4, 7, 25 (the first two with ‫“ מציל‬rescue”); ‫“ כח‬strength,” vv. 6, 7, 22, 24, 24; ‫“ עצם‬might,” vv. 8, 24, 24; cf. the use of ‫עשה‬ “act” in vv. 4, 12, 24. These repetitions help to bind together the symbolic vision, the epiphany by a celestial being, and the interpretive vision. They have a cumulative effect in establishing the tone of what is being described as it repeats itself through the story of the Medo-­Persian Empire, Alexander and his successors, and Antiochus. The repetition also serves to suggest that there is nothing so frighteningly novel about what is happening in this great crisis in Jerusalem.22 The atmosphere of thrusting aggression conveyed by these terms is furthered by a series of expressions suggesting directions of movement. The ram charges west, north, and south (v. 4). The goat comes from the west over the whole earth (v. 5). Its four horns grow toward the four points of the compass (v. 8). The small horn grows south, east, and toward Judea (v. 9). This aggressive movement then moves onto a different plane, to reach to the celestial army and the commander of that army (vv. 10, 11). Alongside the references here to ‫“( השמים‬the heavens,” vv. 8, 10) appear a number of references to ‫“( ]ה[ארץ‬the earth/ground,” vv. 5, 5, 7, 10, 12, 18): both terms are capable of referring both to the this-­worldly plane and to movement between earth and heaven. Spatial allusions in the chapter actually begin with the most elaborate determining of Daniel’s own—­v isionary—­location in the entire book, Elam/ Susa/the Ulay (v. 2). The spatial allusions are complemented by a series of temporal references. These allusions also begin with Daniel’s visionary time (v. 1), but they cluster at the transition from the symbolic vision to the interpretive vision (vv. 13–19). A holy one asks ‫“ עד מתי‬how long” the crisis is to last, and another sets its term. Gabriel tells Daniel that the vision relates to the time of the end and that an end will come at an appointed time; the events will happen ‫באחרית הזעם‬ 22 Cf. Newsom, Daniel, 258.

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“as wrath draws to a close,” and Antiochus will arise ‫“ באחרית מלכותם‬as their kingship draws to a close” (v. 23). In v. 26 Gabriel finally brings these two temporal motifs together, describing the burden of the revelation in terms of how long the crisis is to last and declaring that it relates to ‫“ ימים רבים‬distant days.” The narrative even includes a related temporal expression (‫“ ימים‬some days”) in its conclusion (v. 27), as it had begun with a chronological note (v. 1). The effect of these various characteristics of the chapter is to combine a strong sense of aggressive horizontal movement, aggressive movement between the earth and the heavens, and temporal constraint. There is some redundancy within vv. 15–19; perhaps v. 19 is in a narrower sense an introduction to vv. 20–25, v. 26 then being a corresponding conclusion to the interpretation.23 Scholars who trace a recensional history behind ch. 7 find a parallel one behind ch. 8:24 e.g., vv. 13–14, 16–17, 26a, 27b may be attributed to the author of Dan 9, who is especially concerned with the timing of the crisis. In addition, vv. 18–19 may be attributed to the author of Dan 10–12, with which they share a distinctive use of ‫“( נרדם‬fell into a deep sleep, 8:18; 10:9) and a less supra-­historical way of talking about the End than that of v. 17 (compare 10:14; 11:27, 25 with v. 19).

Setting Given that this vision’s historical setting lies just after the fulfillment of its portrait of the wicked acts of the small horn/fierce-­looking king and before the reversal promised in vv. 14b, 25b, the point of suspense at which v. 12 stops is the point of suspense at which the vision’s audience lives, the time between the sanctuary’s desecration in December 167 and its restoration in December 164. The deeds of Antiochus to which it refers perhaps indicate a slightly later period than that to which ch. 7 belongs. The vision reflects the stance of conservative groups in Jerusalem in the second century as opposed to groups that were willing to reform community life in light of Greek culture. Its concern with the sanctuary’s violation hardly need point to a priestly circle; many other people would be concerned about the sanctuary, and the sanctuary is by no means the chapter’s exclusive focus (see vv. 23–25). Neither need the expectation that the fierce-­looking king will break without being touched suggest that the vision had its background in an antimilitarist group within conservative Jews. In its literary setting, v. 1 makes a double link with ch. 7: the date is just after, and the vision explicitly follows on the earlier one. The date also links the vision of Antiochus’s sacrilege with the reign of the sacrilegious Belshazzar 23 So Plöger, Daniel, on the passage. 24 See Ginsberg, Studies in Daniel, 29–38, developing points made in Noth, “Zur Komposition des Buches Daniel,” 160–61.

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Form/Structure/Setting 417 of whom we read in ch. 5. The chapter supplements the vision of oppression and judgment contained in ch. 7. It reaffirms the promise of ch. 7, perhaps in light of a worsening situation. Repetition in itself also functions to strengthen the main impression conveyed by the previous vision (see Dan 6 Setting). Similar to ch. 7 in length, the chapter also divides into halves that resemble the corresponding halves of ch. 7 in length and structure. Symbolic vision Introduction Summary Babylon Media Persia Greece: Alexander His successors Antiochus God’s judgment God’s purpose restored Conclusion

Interpretive vision

Chapter 7 1 2–3 4 5 6 7a 7b 8 9–12 13–14

Chapter 8 1–2

13–14

19, 23 20a, 24a 20b–22, 24b–25 26 27

15

(15)

28

(1) (2) 3–4 3–4 5–8 8b 9–12

Chapter 7 16 17–18

Chapter 8 15–19

20 20 21 22–23a 23b–25a 25b

26–27

The comparison highlights ch. 8’s lack of any overall scheme for the time from the Babylonian period to Antiochus. It concentrates more on the Greek period, giving particular attention in the symbolic vision to Alexander and slightly more attention to his successors. Its more concrete portrayal of Antiochus’s actions also conveys a deeper sense of appalment at what is envisaged, and the seer’s reaction to the epiphany is one of shock unparalleled in ch. 7. It lacks the divine judgment scene but it includes the heavenly dialogue that opens the interpretive vision. The nature of God’s judgment and the positive fulfillment of his purpose is differently conceived in 7:9–14, 26–27 and in 8:13–14, 25b; in particular, the focus on the kingdom in previous chapters is supplemented by an interest in the temple here.25 With ch. 8 Hebrew resumes. The transition from Hebrew to Aramaic at 2:4a fulfilled a rhetorical function (see further the comments on ch. 2 Structure on the transition from Hebrew to Aramaic at 2:4). The return goes along with a movement from a broader look at the empires in ch. 7 to a closer focus on the last of the four empires’ action against the Jewish people in chs. 8–12.26 Once again “Language enacts identity,” but here “the empire makes no further 25 Goswell (“The Temple Theme in the Book of Daniel”) sees the temple as a key theme in the entire book. 26 Cf. Mayer, Commentary upon All the Prophets, 547.

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claim on the reader.”27 The chapters are written in varying forms of Hebrew. Chapters 8 and 10–12 are less consistent in their use of waw consecutive and in their word order, they use pronouns in a distinctive way, they can omit to match the gender of words to one another (see e.g., 8:9 and the note), and they often lack the simplicity characteristic of classical Hebrew prose.28 But these distinctives function rhetorically in connection with the “stories” that the chapters tell. “The Hebrew of the Book of Daniel is a very carefully crafted composition. Daniel 8 reveals this.”29 These characteristics are more marked than they were in ch. 1, which might suggest different authorship,30 and some of these characteristics can be seen as influenced by Aramaic and as resulting from translation from Aramaic.31 The Hebrew must at least have been written by someone who was as much or more at home in Aramaic (though some of the oddities explained by the translation theory presuppose that he was both a poor Hebraist and a poor Aramaist). Perhaps “the disturbed nature of the language reflects the intensity of the crisis that concerns the seer. It may be that Daniel actually saw things he could not describe any better than this, or he may have deliberately chosen to use rather confused language because of the awfulness of the sacrilege he refers to—­the profanation of the Temple itself.”32 The effect on readers might be to draw attention to the fact that author and readers live in “a strange and difficult new world” but also a covenantal world.33 To write in Hebrew, the language of the Torah, and to take up the themes of the Prophets, was an act of resistance.34 It was perhaps also “a sign of hope, for now Daniel returns to the language of his youth, the language of his freedom.”35 Chapter 8 is the last of the book’s symbolic visions; the succeeding revelations are more verbal than visual. They are still cryptic but not symbolic. Given that the explanation of the symbolic vision in ch. 8 actually explains little, this lack prepares the way for the following vision(s). Verse 27b thus leads into chs. 9 and 10–12, which offer further reaffirmation and more explanation of the vision’s fundamental perspective. The chapter’s connection with the Babylonian period (its setting in the reign of the sacrilegious Belshazzar) links with the focus on the question of how long this oppression is to last, the question that concerns ch. 9. Its epiphany and detailed quasi-­prediction are paralleled on a larger scale by those of chs. 10–12. 27 Portier-Young, “Languages of Identity and Obligation,” 104, 113. 28 See TTH 196; but also see n. 4b. 29 Gzella, Cosmic Battle and Political Conflict, 157, at the conclusion of her verse-by-verse study. 30 Cf. Charles, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Daniel, xlvii, 1–2. 31 Cf. Zimmermann, Biblical Books Translated from the Aramaic; Ginsberg, Studies in Daniel; Hartman/Di Lella (Daniel) lists the Aramaisms. 32 Gowan’s comment (Daniel, on vv 10–12 in particular). 33 Portier-Young, “Languages of Identity and Obligation,” 113, 114. 34 Cf. Newsom, Daniel, 257–58. The poor quality of the Hebrew makes it less likely that the change conveys a move from the vernacular to the scholarly (so Hebbard, Reading Daniel, 177). 35 Pace, Daniel, 262.

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Comment 419

Comment 1–2 The date links back with ch. 7; it might indicate that in reality two years have passed since that vision.36 The third year of Belshazzar was c. 548/47; see 7:1 Comment.37 Daniel is in Elam in his vision; the account presupposes a visionary journey such as Ezekiel experienced (see Form), a journey that has taken the subject far from his bodily setting.38 Elam lies between Babylon and Persia; it corresponds to the Iranian province of Khuzistan, north of the Persian Gulf. In 548/47 it would likely still have belonged to Babylon, but the chapter presupposes the status and circumstances of Susa after Persia became the great power.39 Susa had been destroyed by Asshurbanipal; Darius I rebuilt it as a fortified city, beginning in 521. Elam was then a province of the Persian empire, and in Jewish thinking Susa was the seat of the empire (Neh 1:1; Esth 1:2). Subsequently it was a part of the Seleucid empire; Antiochus III was killed there in 187. Its ruins lie near the River Karun, but the names and locations of the watercourses in the area seem to have changed over the centuries.40 Ulay is, however, an ancient name for a waterway near Susa. The vision is located at a gate opening toward a waterway, in the tradition of Ezekiel’s vision by the Kebar canal (cf. Dan 10:4; 12:5–7; 1 En. 13:7–8; also Pharaoh’s dream set at a river, Gen 41). 3–4 Within the OT and elsewhere, leaders are often symbolized by animals such as the ram and the goat (see Form). Ram and goat, which are singled out in Ezek 34:17, are both clean animals; contrast the unclean hybrids and fierce predators that represent nations in Dan 7 and in 1 En. 89–90.41 So ram and goat are less fearful or objectionable symbols of authority and power. The ram might be readily identifiable as a symbol for Persia: in the zodiac Persia was under Aries, the ram, and the name Ulay (‫ )אולי‬could bring to mind the word for ram (‫)איל‬.42 According to Ammianus Marcellinus, the fourth century AD Roman historian (History 10.1), Persian kings on the march carried a gold ram’s head. The two horns on the single ram then suggest Media and Persia, here recognized to be one yet distinguishable. Persia entered the world stage later than Media but ultimately played a more major part. Verse 4 more likely describes Medo-­Persia’s initial triumphs (under Cyrus) in Turkey and Babylon than later victories over Egypt (under Cambyses), Scythia and Greece (under Darius), and Athens itself (under Xerxes), since Daniel suggests the order

36 37 38 39

Cf. Lacocque, Daniel, on the passage. Cf. Hasel, “The First and Third Years of Belshazzar.” Cf. Lucas, Daniel, 210. On Susa, see Cook, The Persian Empire, 73–74, 145, 158–66; Olmstead, History of the Persian Empire, 163–71. 40 Cf. IBD 1496, 1609. 41 Massyngberde Ford, “Jewish Law and Animal Symbolism,” 205–8 42 Cf. Ps-Saadia in ‫ מקראות גדולות‬on the passage (cf. Gallé, Daniel, 87).

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“west and north and south.” Cyrus’s victories to the east are omitted: from a Judean perspective he is already the ruler of the east (Isa 41:2).43 There is nothing inherently wrong with “doing big things” (‫ ;)הגדיל‬but the expression is used in an unequivocally good sense only of God (1 Sam 12:24; Ps 126:2, 3). Of human beings it tends to suggest arrogance (Jer 48:26; Joel 2:20; Zeph 2:10; Ps 35:26; Ps 55:12 [13]), or at least achievement at someone else’s expense (Zeph 2:8; Lam 1:9). Here it is achievement that presages calamity. The expression has the foreboding ambiguity of the mouth speaking big things in 7:8, 20. There are no divine passive verbs in the description of the animals. “Divine activity is not visibly or directly causative, and the work of the ram and the goat appear to be self-­propelled. . . . These beasts are not under divine commission. History in vv. 3–12 appears to obey its own rhythms.”44 5–8 The opening resumptive phrase heralds a new development. The goat is a less frequent symbol for leadership than the ram (see Isa 14:9; Zech 10:3), but goats are fierce creatures, more powerful than sheep (cf. Jer 50:8). The imperial leadership more powerful than Persia’s will be Alexander’s. The goat might inherently suggest the post-­A lexandrian Greek Empire of the Seleucids; as the zodiac placed Persia under the ram, so it placed Syria under the horned goat, Capricorn. Further, like the hybrids of ch. 7, the goat may have demonic connotations.45 The notion of the unicorn (cf. the sirussu) may derive from the profile reliefs that merge two horns as one.46 The description of Alexander’s flying advance recalls that of Cyrus in Isa 41:3 and the winged leopard of Dan 7:6 (cf. 1 Macc 1:1–4). Over a period of four years between 334 and 331 Alexander demolished the Persian Empire and established an empire of his own extending from Europe to India. On the breakup of his empire, see 11:4 Comment. 9 Rashi takes the small horn to be Titus, so that what follows refers to the destruction of the Second Temple, and some Christian commentators adopt the same approach or relate the small horn to a subsequent anti-­messiah figure.47 This understanding links logically with the identifying of Rome as the fourth creature in ch. 7, and it facilitates an interpretation of this passage as pointing to the action of the continuing embodiments of Rome in the church (persecuting Jews) or more specifically of Catholics (persecuting Protestants). But in the context of this vision, the small horn growing from the Seleucid line is Antiochus IV. He was an insignificant person compared with Alexander, the youngest of several brothers who had no right to the throne, a hostage 43 44 45 46 47

On the history, see Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East 2:656–75; Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander. Merrill Willis, Dissonance and the Drama of Divine Sovereignty in the Book of Daniel, 99. So Gzella, Cosmic Battle and Political Conflict, 135–38. So Montgomery, Daniel, on the passage. See e.g., Rashi in ‫ מקראות גדולות‬on 8:9, and further Goldwurm, Daniel, 220–38; Shea, “Why Antiochus IV Is Not the Little Hom of Daniel 8”; Alomía, Daniel 2:269–75.

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Comment 421 in Rome through much of his earlier life, and a king who would treat Judah ignobly—­even if from a broader historical perspective he was an impressive ruler. On his expeditions and deeds, see 11:21–45 Comment. “The fairest” (‫ )הצבי‬refers to the land of Israel, the land flowing with milk and honey; the term comes in Ezek 20:6, 15, of which the allusion here may be a reminiscence. The word is used in phrases denoting both the country (Dan 11:16, 41; Jer 3:19; 1 En. 89:40) and the hill of Zion in particular (Dan 11:45; cf. 1 Macc 2:12; also the city of Babylon in Isa 13:19). Both references are appropriate in this context. Parallel expressions are ‫“ נחלת צבי‬fair possession” (Jer 3:19); ‫“ ארץ חמדה‬lovely land”(Jer 3:19; Zech 7:14; Ps 106:24); ‫ארץ חפץ‬ “delightful land” (Mal 3:12), and descriptions of Zion as ‫“ יפה נוף‬beautiful in loftiness” (Ps 48:2 [3]; ‫“ מכלל יפי‬totality of beauty” (Ps 50:2; cf. Lam 2:15; also Ezek 27:3, regarding Tyre). 10–11 In the interpretation of the small horn’s attack on the heavenly army (‫ )צבא השמים‬similar issues arise to those raised by ch. 7. The reference to the sanctuary could suggest that the heavenly army is the Jewish people, or the priesthood in particular, viewed as having heavenly significance because of their relationship with the God of heaven. They are Yahweh’s armies (Exod 7:4; cf. 6:26; 12:17, 51; Num 33:1); they are his heavenly children (2 Macc 7:34). It is they who are attacked by Antiochus (1 Macc 1:29–38). Yet the people who are here attacked include “some of the stars,” which rather suggests that the heavenly army is a supernatural body. Elsewhere “the heavenly army” denotes the actual stars in the heavens (Isa 34:4; cf. Gen 2:1; Ps 33:6), and more commonly the stars as personalized objects of worship (Deut 4:19; Jer 8:2; Zeph 1:5). The stars in the heavens are Yahweh’s servants (Judg 5:20), and Dan 12:3 promises that the faithful are destined to shine like the stars. The notion of attacking the stars, which goes back to Isa 14:13, is applied retrospectively to Antiochus in 2 Macc 9:10, and from 169 BC Antiochus’s coins picture his head surmounted with a star; he entitles himself King Antiochus God Manifest (Βασιλευς Αντιοχος Θεος Επιφανης). Perhaps an attack on the temple, on the people of Israel, and on the priesthood is seen as implicitly an attack on the God worshiped there and on his supernatural associates who identify with Israel (so 4Q Serek Šîrôt, the Angelic Liturgy).48 But the manner of expression is allusive, as in ch. 7. The fall of some of the heavenly army/stars has a different significance from that in 1 En. 6; 86. Their being thrown down and trampled presupposes that the small horn is now portrayed by synecdoche in terms appropriate to earthly leaders who are also symbolized by animals (cf. v. 7; also 7:7, 19, 23). The same portrayal continues in vv. 11–13 as sanctuary and truth are overthrown, and sanctuary and army are given over to be trampled. Army,

48 Cf. Strugnell, “The Angelic Liturgy at Qumrân.”

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sanctuary, and truth are all victims of the goat’s charging and butting.49 The king himself becomes momentarily visible in v. 11a (“He grew . . .”). The question of the identity of the army leader is also complicated. In 1:7–11, 18; 11:5, ‫( שר‬leader) denotes a foreign official; in 9:6, 8, an Israelite leader; in 10:13, 20, 21; 12:1, heavenly beings. In 1 Chr 24:5; 2 Chr 36:14; Ezra 8:24, 29; 10:5, it denotes leaders among the priesthood. But ‫ שר הצבא‬is a term for an army leader (e.g., Gen 21:22; 1 Sam 12:9), and the compound expression needs to be understood in light of the reference to “the army” in v. 10. It refers to the leader of Israel or of Israel’s celestial equivalents (not, surely, the sun as commander of the heavenly host).50 Who is this leader? The high priest could be so identified, and 2 Macc 4 reports the murder of the high priest Onias III in 171, but this event antedated the incidents related in v. 10, and Antiochus is not elsewhere blamed for the murder (though see 11:22). Indeed, the reliability of the 2 Maccabees account has been questioned.51 Perhaps the reference is more generally to Antiochus’s usurping the authority of the priesthood over the temple’s religious life. But behind such an arrogation of power is an attack on heaven itself. In Josh 5:13–15 the leader of Yahweh’s army is a celestial being, and the leader of the army here might thus be Michael, though the description of his authority goes beyond that of Michael elsewhere:52 Michael is only one of the prominent leaders (10:13), having a special relationship with Israel parallel to the relationship of other leaders with Persia or Greece (10:21; 12:1). More likely the leader is God himself, who is presumably the “leader supreme” (‫)שר שרים‬ in v. 25, frequently termed ‫“( יהוה צבאות‬Yahweh of armies,” EVV “the Lord of Hosts”). While a plausible view of the humanlike figure in 7:13 is that he is a personification of the holy ones, that understanding cannot apply to this army leader, since he is distinguished from the rest of the army; nor does an attack on Israel thus constitute an attack on God, so that anti-­Semitism is deicide.53 But an attack on the Jerusalem sanctuary does constitute an attack on God. Although Antiochus hardly made himself an object of worship, his self-­designation as Epiphanes could be taken to imply something approaching such arrogance, and theologically his assuming authority over the affairs of the temple involved assuming an authority that belonged to God alone (cf. 11:36–37 and the Comment). “The daily offering” (‫התמיד‬, lit. “the [offering of] continuity”; 8:11–13; 11:31; 12:11) is a regular term for the whole offering sacrificed every morning and evening (‫)עלת ]ה[תמיד‬: see Exod 29:38–42; Num 28–29; Ezek 46:1–15; Ezra 3:5; Neh 10:33 [34]. Other passages use the word in connection with the 49 50 51 52 53

See Porter, Metaphors and Monsters, 57, 65–66, 89–95. Against Goldstein, “The Persecution of the Jews by Antiochus IV,” 142–43. See Parente, “Onias III’s Death.” Bampfylde (“The Prince of the Host”) sees him as the chief angel. Against Lacocque, Daniel, on the passage.

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Comment 423 daily grain offering (‫)מנחת התמיד‬, Num 4:16; Neh 10:33 [34]; cf. Lev 6:20 [13]), the daily incense offering (‫קטרת תמיד‬, Exod 30:8), and the daily (Presence) bread (‫לחם התמיד‬, Num 4:7; cf. 2 Chr 2:4 [3]). 1 Macc 1:45 records the suspension of whole offerings, sacrifice, and libation. While ‫ התמיד‬on its own does refer primarily to the morning and evening whole offering (cf. v. 14), it can thus hint at a wider range of observances, and it may here suggest the religious practices of the temple in general, which were suspended by Antiochus. The temple was not overthrown or destroyed in 167 in the way it was in 587 BC and in AD 70, but it was robbed of its valuables, emptied of its worshipers, and defiled by the accoutrements of an alien religion (1 Macc 1:20–24, 39–40; 3:45; cf. 4:43–48). Its overthrowing consists in its being prevented from functioning as a place of proper worship of the true God. 12 Antiochus and his army now become more transparent (in MT: but see n. 12.a–­a); cf. v. 21 in ch. 7. The seer abandons the visionary way of speaking proper to one who has been watching an event that he thus describes in the past and adopts the future tense proper to an interpretive vision. Concerning the army set over the sacrificial system of the temple, see 11:31 Comment. If the army of vv. 10–11 is an earthly people as well as its heavenly equivalent, however, the same may be true of this hostile army: cf. Isa 24:21 and the allusions to the individual celestial leaders of Persia and Greece in Dan 10:13, 20. In isolation, the rebellion (‫ )פשע‬could be that of the compromised priesthood or of people generally who were involved in reforms affected by Hellenism, which are seen as bringing about Yahweh’s punishment and thus the wrath of which v. 19 speaks. But the Jewish community as a whole has been portrayed as sinned against rather than sinning.54 Daniel seems positive in his attitude to the temple in principle, too (contrast 1 En. 89:73); he envisages the vindication of the temple, not a new temple.55 In v. 13 “rebellion” will refer to Antiochus’s sacrilege and in v. 23 his people will be termed “rebels,” so that “rebellion” is likely the reference here, too. The truth (‫ )אמת‬that is thrown to the ground might denote concretely the Torah, whose authority over the religious life of Judaism is abrogated by Antiochus’s acts; Torah scrolls were destroyed by his forces (1 Macc 1:56). But “truth” is a more general word and it points more generally to the way things are supposed to be.56 “Truth” is the opposite of “deceit” (v. 25). According to 2 Macc 6, the result of Antiochus’s actions was that people could not keep the Sabbath or observe the feasts, and these commitments were replaced by horrifying alternatives. 13–14 Presumably the holy ones are discussing the vision’s meaning, and the seer catches the end of their conversation; compare the allusive nature of the vision/auditory event in Zech 1:7–17 (which underlies this chapter). If the 54 Cf. Collins, Daniel, 335. 55 Cf. Hamerton-Kelly, “The Temple and the Origins of Jewish Apocalyptic.” 56 Cf. Newsom, Daniel, 266.

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holy ones are members of the heavenly/earthly army who are themselves discomfited by Antiochus’s actions, their “how long” (cf. 12:6) may nevertheless stem simply from their concern for afflicted Jews, as in Zech 1:7–17. The “how long” connects with this vision, but behind the vision it connects with that question—­rather, plea—­as it is expressed in protest psalms, not least concerning the devastation of the land and the defiling of the sanctuary (Pss 74:9–10; 79:5; 80:4 [5]; 89:46 [47]; cf. 6:3 [4]; 13:1 [2]; 90:13; 94:3; also Isa 6:11; Jer 12:4; 2 Esd 6:59). The cry of the holy ones takes up the cry of afflicted Israel. A number of the passages expressing this cry presuppose or permit a context in the Babylonian period, of which subsequent afflictions such as those of the Antiochene period are seen as a continuance (cf. ch. 9 and the sixth-­century setting of Daniel generally); and the response they look for—­at least in the way such psalms would be understood in the late OT period—­is God’s final turning to his people and his restoring them, which Dan 8 associates with “the time of the end” (v. 17).57 “Desolating rebellion” (‫)הפשע שמם‬, like “desolating abomination” ([‫]ה[שקוץ]ים‬ ‫]מ‍[שמם‬, 9:27; 11:31; 12:11), apparently parodies the name of the god ‫בעל שמים‬ (Baal Šamem, “Lord of the heavens”).58 While “Lord of the heavens” was a foreign epithet for the highest God, in an earlier period it was one that Jews could utilize as appropriate for the true God (see 2:18 Comment), but it is now a title that the Seleucids especially use. Its Greek equivalent is Ζεὺς Ολύμπιος (Olympian Zeus): see, e.g., Josephus’s quotation from the Phoenician historian Dius in Ag. Ap. 1.17 [113]. It is the title by which 2 Macc 6:2 designates the god to whom Antiochus dedicated the Jerusalem temple. In the creative Jewish distortion of the name, “rebellion” or “abomination” replaces “Baal,” indicating a theological evaluation of the religious innovations of the time (cf. v. 12). “Desolating” replaces “heavens,” using similar letters, and indicating the effect these innovations have on Jerusalem and its sanctuary (cf. vv. 24–25; 9:26; 1 Macc 1:39; 3:45; 4:38). The compound phrase does not yet have a fixed form and is apparently a term of recent creation.59 According to 1 Macc 1:54, the “abomination” was erected on the sacrificial altar, and Porphyry says it involved images of Zeus and of Antiochus himself.60 But 1 Macc 1:59 speaks of a (pagan) altar erected on the sacrificial altar (cf. Josephus, Ant 12.5.4 [12.253]), which implies rather that the abomination consisted in the rebuilding of the altar to serve different religious observances (as in Judg 6:25–26): Antiochus had it turned into an old-­fashioned shrine.61 57 Porter, Metaphors and Monsters, 63–65, referring to Childs, Introduction to the OT, 517–18; Becker, Israel deutet seine Psalmen, 41–68. 58 Nestle, “Zu Daniel,” 248; Eissfeldt, “Ba’alšame¯m und Jahwe,” 24. 59 Cf. Hasslberger, Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis, 343. 60 See Jerome, Daniel, 86, 134. 61 Cf. Bickerman, Der Gott der Makkabäer, 90–116 (ET 61–75); on Goldstein’s suggestion (I Maccabees, 146–47) that the abomination constituted meteorites fixed to the altar as objects to be worshiped, see Lust, “Cult and Sacrifice in Daniel.”

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Comment 425 On the daily offering, the trampling of sanctuary and army, and Daniel’s attitude to the temple, see on vv. 10–12. The charging of the ram and its eventual overthrowing and trampling were events no one could resist and from which there was no rescue (vv. 4, 7), but the trampling of the sanctuary has a term set to it. The forensic metaphor that describes judgment being given for the holy ones on high (7:22) reappears as at least one aspect of the vision’s promise that the sanctuary will “emerge in the right” (‫נצדק‬: see n. 14.b–­b, and cf. 1 Macc 2:29). The 2300 evenings and mornings before this vindication could suggest 2300 occasions when evening or morning whole offering was not sacrificed—­ thus, 1150 days.62 And the period from the pagan altar’s erection to the sanctuary rededication was three years and ten days (1 Macc 1:54; 4:52–53), a slightly shorter period, though orthodox rites might well have been suspended a little before the first of these dates. So 1150 days could denote correctly, by guess or revelation or hindsight, the chronological period during which no regular sacrifices were offered.63 But why should 2300 evenings and mornings be taken to denote 1150 days? An evening and morning make one day (Gen 1:5–31; the order of evening and morning there explains the order here),64 and the morning and evening offering was seen as one unit rather than as two independent ones that could then naturally be counted separately.65 So the natural way to understand the phrase is as denoting 2300 days (cf. G).66 If it were necessary to relate 2300 days to a period of this chronological length, it might still begin with the cessation of sacrifice in late 167 and go on to the prospect of complete victory over Seleucid power and release of the temple area from foreign overlordship or the threat of it. This fulfillment might be seen to have come in 160 with the victory described in 1 Macc 7, though it was soon followed by the death of Judas Maccabaeus and the triumph of the Hellenizing party (1 Macc 9).67 Alternatively, 2300 days is not far from seven years (cf. 9:27) and could stretch from the removal of the high priest Onias III in 171 to the rededication of the sanctuary in 164,68 though the events referred to in v. 13 perhaps have a closer connection with those of 167 than those of 171. But the periods of time in chapters on either side of ch. 8 (see 7:25; 9:24–27)

62 So e.g., Saadia, Daniel, 573; Yephet, Daniel, 43. 63 For more precise—but speculative—interpretations, see Schedl, “Mystische Arithmetik”; Burgmann, “Die vier Endzeittermine im Danielbuch.” 64 Cf. Longman, Daniel, 205. 65 Schwantes, “‘Ereb bo¯qer of Daniel 8:14 Re-examined,” noting especially Ezra 3:3–5. 66 So e.g., Ibn Ezra, according to some accounts (cf. Goldwurm, Daniel, 229); also Theodoret, Daniel, 214–15; Luther, “Vorrede uber den Propheten Daniel,” 17 (ET 302); Thiering, “The Three and a Half Years of Elijah,” 49, though her calendrical explanation is also questionable: see on 12:11–12. 67 Cf. Burgmann, “Die vier Endzeittermine im Danielbuch,” 544–45. 68 Cf. Keil, Biblischer Kommentar, on the passage.

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have symbolic rather than chronological significance, and it is appropriate to look for a significance beyond the chronological for the 2300 days—­whether or not it is significant in each case that the periods are approximately correct chronologically. The figure twenty-­three occurs in 1 En. 90:5. Of the seventy shepherds who have oversight of the Jews during the gentile domination, twenty-­three have this responsibility for the early Hellenistic period. By implication, another group of twenty-­three is responsible during the Persian period.69 The first sixty-­nine of the seventy weeks of years from the Babylonian period to Antiochus (Dan 9:24–27) could thus be seen as three times twenty-­ three. The 2300 days may, then, suggest a fixed “significant” period, which might or might not denote a chronological period in the region of six or seven years. 15–19 That the humanlike person is a celestial being is here overt (contrast 7:13, even if it is to be inferred there; cf. 3:25, 28; 10:16, 18). His appearance is that of a ‫גבר‬, a rather macho word for a male (Judg 5:30), but it comes to denote a man who is strong in and because of his relationship to God (e.g., Jer 17:5–8), and in the Qumran literature to denote someone especially chosen by God.70 Understood to mean “man of God,” ‫ גבריאל‬is thus an appropriate name for God’s celestial servant, and ‫ גבר‬is an appropriate term by which to refer to him, both for its sound (geber) and for its meaning (see n. 15b). Although Gabriel is the first named supernatural being within one of the books that came to be included in the Scriptures, he is only one of a number who already appear in older parts of 1 Enoch. He features with Michael, Raphael, and other leading holy ones in 1 En. 9–10; 20; cf. also 1QM 9.15–16. Familiarity with such figures is presupposed here, though Gabriel’s role in Dan 8 and 9—and Michael’s role in Dan 10–12—does not particularly link with the descriptions in 1 Enoch, and the place of these figures is reduced compared with some such approximately contemporary writings. Within the Christian Scriptures as a whole, he will reappear in Luke 1, but “it is futile to ask what Gabriel did or was between the role ascribed to him in Daniel and his part in the events of the nativity. All that we are told concerning the individual existence of angels is that they are there as the mighty ones “that do his commandments . . . ministers of his, that do his pleasure” (Ps. 10320f.), and we do well, therefore, to picture their individual existence, if at all, only in the actuality with which it is presented in this Psalm.”71 The names of Michael, Gabriel, and other leading holy ones are parallel in form to that of Daniel himself—­or rather, vice versa. Daniel’s name thus hints at a kinship between him and the celestial beings (Daniel is the name of

69 So Porter, Metaphors and Monsters, 44. 70 See Kosmala, Hebräer-Essener-Christen, 208–39; “The Term geber in the OT and in the Scrolls”; and in ThWAT on ‫גבר‬. 71 Barth, CD III, 3:456.

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Comment 427 such a being in 1 En. 6:7) and at the possibility of a link between the seer and the heavenly world. The voice that commissions Gabriel (v. 16) is described as a human one (‫ ;)קול אדם‬that expression recalls the description of God’s own appearance when he speaks in Ezek 1:26. To bring the vision in Dan 8 to a climax, then, there appears not merely an anonymous celestial being but a specific, named one, who belongs to the number of the well-­k nown leading holy ones.72 And God himself not only appears, as in 7:9–10, but speaks.73 The supernatural conversation refers to both a vision (‫ )חזון‬and a revelation (‫)מראה‬. Each word relates to a verb for seeing and suggests a visual disclosure. In v. 26, however, and presumably then in v. 27, the latter word refers to the verbal message about the 2300 evenings and mornings; the same reference will apply in v. 16, the revelation being that in vv. 13–14 (the term refers to a verbal message in 9:23; but see further n. 10:1.f). Gabriel is a “man of God”; he is himself addressed by a humanlike voice that is actually God’s voice. He addresses Daniel as “mortal man” (‫בן אדם‬, traditionally “son of man”), using God’s characteristic form of address to Ezekiel (e.g., 2:1, 3); it suggests both solemnly and encouragingly the awesomeness and the honor of an ordinary human being hearing this man of God address him.74 Falling on the face is a traditional courtly way of expressing recognition of a king’s majesty, the most extreme possible form of personal obeisance (2 Sam 9:6; 14:4; 25:23). It is naturally also an expression of a similar recognition of God’s majesty, especially in a worship context (Lev 9:24; 1 Kgs 18:39; 2 Chr 7:3). Ezekiel falls on his face in self-­effacing obeisance (e.g., 1:28), which is in turn the immediate background to Daniel’s doing so, though here the object of the recognition is God’s heavenly representative, as in Josh 5:14 (a passage noted in connection with v. 11) and Tob 12:6 (involving Gabriel’s associate Raphael). Falling into a trance (‫ )נרדם‬has different connotations. It is not an everyday life or worship word; it denotes a coma-­like state of deep sleep brought about by supernatural agency, especially in connection with visionary experiences (Gen 2:21; 15:12; 1 Sam 26:12; Job 4:13; 33:15; cf. T. Levi 2.5; ironically, Isa 29:10; Jonah 1:5–6; Prov 10:5; 29:10; ?Judg 4:21). The verb recurs in 10:9; see further the seer’s description of his experience in 10:7–19 and the Comment. The seer’s touching also recurs there. While Isa 6:7 and Jer 1:9 refer to God touching a prophet’s lips in a vision (cf. Dan 10:16), the only antecedent for touching to awaken, reassure, and strengthen is Elijah in 1 Kgs 19:5, 7. The more general background is again Ezek 1:28–2:2, where God takes hold of the prophet and sets him on his feet.

72 Zuiddam (“The Shock Factor of Divine Revelation”) argues that Gabriel’s role in chs. 8 and 9 is also to provide reassurance to Daniel. 73 Cf. Plöger, Daniel, on the passage. 74 Keil, Biblischer Kommentar, on the passage.

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Gabriel Explains Daniel’s Vision

“Time” (‫)עת‬, “end” (‫)קץ‬, “closing part [of the wrath]” ([‫)אחרית ]הזעם‬, and “set moment” (‫ )מועד‬appear in vv. 17, 19; compare the further expressions “closing part [of their kingship]” ([‫אחרית ]מלכותם‬, v. 23) and “distant days” (‫ימים רבים‬, v. 26). Like their English equivalents, these terms are everyday words. None inherently refers to the absolute End, and only their contexts tell us whether the expressions in the various combinations refer to the end of a particular period of time or to the End of Time. And “within the context of this vision ‘the end’ (19) need not be ‘The End,’ the ultimate end of history.”75 The notion of a period characterized by wrath is one of the aspects of Dan 8 that reflects Zech 1, where the Babylonian period is a period of wrath (Zech 1:12). The context there indicates that reference to wrath does not denote God’s punishing Israel for its rebellion: although rebellion was the cause of the fall of Jerusalem, the ongoing period of wrath is one in which Israel is continuing to be treated harshly because of the hostility of its enemies rather than because of its own rebellion. In a parallel way 1 Macc 1:64 speaks of Antiochus’s persecution as the coming of very great wrath on Israel (cf. 2 Kgs 3:27), and Dan 11:30 speaks specifically of Antiochus’s wrath rather than God’s.76 Indeed, “the ‘wrath’ has become a quasi-­technical term for the tribulation cause by those kingdoms, especially in its latter phase.” 77 It is thus unlikely that the seer views Israel’s experience in the 160s simply as God’s punishment.78 On the other hand, 1 Macc 1:11–15, 43, 52–53 likely imply that Israel’s transgressions contributed to what happened in the 160s, and Dan 9 will point in the same direction. Perhaps Daniel would agree with Zechariah in Luke 1:77, that Israel needs both deliverance and forgiveness. Both the seventy years of desolation, which Dan 9 sees as extending to the Antiochene period, and the Antiochene period in particular are periods of wrath in the sense that they are periods of oppression and suffering. The time of wrath referred to in 8:19 might be either of these periods, but the link with Zech 1 and the vision’s beginning with the Persian era suggest that the whole period from the fall of Jerusalem to Antiochus is the time of wrath denoted here. This retrospective view of these centuries contrasts with the prospect set before the Judahites by Zech 1, as it had already been set before them by prophecy during the Babylonian period. The Second Temple period has not been a time of God’s comfort but a time of God’s absence.79 The “closing part” of this period is thus also the “closing part” of the four kingships (v. 23), namely the time of Antiochus (on ‫אחרית‬, see on 2:28), and the “end” in v. 19 is then the termination of this period of wrath. While ‫קצת‬/‫“ קץ‬end” and ‫“ אחרית‬latter part” appear in similar phrases (see, e.g., 2:28 and 4:34 [31]) and 75 Lucas, Daniel, 224. 76 Cf. Collins, Daniel with an Introduction to Apocalyptic Literature, 95. 77 Collins, Daniel, 339. 78 Against, e.g., Steck, “Weltgeschehen und Gottesvolk im Buche Daniel,” 71. 79 De Vries, The Achievements of Biblical Religion, 342

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Comment 429 sometimes in the same context (cf. 12:8–9), ‫ קץ‬differs from ‫ אחרית‬in being an essentially punctiliar word; ‫ קצץ‬means “cut off”; ‫ קצה‬means “extremity” or “edge.” The time described as an “end” is also termed “a set moment” (‫)מועד‬. The verb ‫ יעד‬means to appoint or assign, and the noun denotes a set time, place, or meeting (cf. 11:29; 12:7). It is the designating rather than a time reference which is essential to ‫מועד‬. While ‫“ קץ‬end” and ‫“ מועד‬set moment” thus refer to the same time, ‫ קץ‬denotes its punctiliar character in relation to what leads up to it, while ‫ מועד‬denotes its character as designated by God; ‫ קץ‬relates to the horizontal, chronological plane, ‫ מועד‬to the vertical, metahistorical plane. “The time of the end” (‫עת קץ‬, v. 17) is a more allusive expression. The “end” must still be the punctiliar moment of the termination of the Antiochene persecution and the vindication of the sanctuary, but this more absolute phrase hints that v. 17 does see this moment as the End; at least it implies that the end of the Antiochene oppression (v. 19) is also the end of the era (‫אחרית יומיא‬, 2:28), the closing scene of the history of Israel and the nations, and the moment of a final judgment (cf. ‫סופא עד‬, 7:26). It is open to the further explication of what the End will involve, which will be offered in ch. 12; yet the context here in v. 14b also includes a more down-­to-­earth understanding of what the End will mean for Israel than the one that appears in ch. 12. In 11:35, 40; 12:4, 9, “the time of the end” is the period leading up to the End, the period in which the audience of these visions lives. This understanding also fits 8:17–19: the phrase denotes the final act of that historical drama that will come to its actual end with Antiochus’s fall and the sanctuary’s restoration.80 Daniel is not thinking of “the absolute eschatological ‘End,’ ” of “the final and absolute End for all events” when “human history comes to a close.”81 If anything, further human history on earth is presupposed by talk of the sanctuary’s restoration, as it was by talk of a new kingdom in 2:44; 7:14, 18, 27. The End in Daniel is not so different from the day of Yahweh in the prophets.82 Indeed, ‫ קץ‬is one of the expressions Daniel derives from the prophets: see Hab 2:3; also Amos 8:2; Ezek 7:1–7; cf. Lam 4:18. The seer’s use of Hab 2:3 may be compared and contrasted with that in 1QpHab 7.5–8, where it is interpreted to mean that “the last time will lengthen, far beyond anything the prophets said: for the mysteries of God are awesome” (here ‫ קץ‬means “time,” as often in the Qumran literature). 1QpHab is directly commenting on Habakkuk, though its interpretation alters the text’s meaning more explicitly than the less direct allusion in Dan 8:19 does; 1QpHab’s use of Hab 2:3 corresponds more to the reinterpretation of Jer 25 in Dan 9.

80 Cf. Wilch, Time and Event, 111–14. 81 Against Wilch (and cf. Pfandl, “Daniel’s ‘Time of the End’”); contrast Jones, “Ideas of History in the Book of Daniel,” 178–219. 82 Cf. Blaising, “The Day of the Lord and the Seventieth Week of Daniel.”

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Gabriel Explains Daniel’s Vision

Chronologically, then, “the time of the end” denotes a similar period to “the latter part of the wrath,” but it looks at this period in which the seer lives from the perspective of where it is leading, whereas the second expression looks from the perspective of what has led to it. “Distant days” (v. 26) and “the closing part of their kingship” (v. 23) both also refer to approximately the same period. The former looks at it purely chronologically in relation to the Babylonian period. The latter looks at it chronologically in relation to the history of the empires but perhaps also hints that that violent story will come to some sort of cataclysmic end. The comparative significance of these various terms may be seen diagrammatically: The history of The rule of independent the empires Israel

Antiochus’s persecution

Antiochus’s fall

wrath the closing part of wrath the end of wrath the set moment the time of the end the end the closing part of their kingship distant days

v. 19 v. 19 v. 19 v. 19 v. 17 v. 17 v. 23 v. 26

The expressions “set moment” and “end” recur in Sir 36 [33]:8, though not as a construct phrase, and such parallels with Daniel hardly prove that Daniel antedates Sirach.83 20–25 The identification of the political entities denoted by the animals and horns is hardly made to unveil something that was otherwise obscure. It was obvious enough whom vv. 3–12 signified. Thus the climax of the interpretive vision comes in the further description of Antiochus in vv. 23–25, expressed in rhythmic bicola until they end with a climactic tricolon whose closing with its “rhetorical economy . . . deflates Antiochus’s massive pretensions.”84 Regarding the time when “their kingship draws to a close” (v. 23), see on vv. 15–19. ‫“ פשעים‬rebels” denotes people who break obligations to another party. In international relationships as well as in relation to God the verb thus denotes rebellion (2 Kgs 1:1; 3:5, 7); EVV “transgression” obscures the point. While there were Israelite rebels who could be seen as opening the way for Antiochus, as in v. 12 this rebelliousness will be that of gentiles attacking God and his 83 Against Fox, “Ben Sira on OT Canon Again: The Date of Daniel.” 84 Newsom, Daniel, 272.

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Comment 431 people in Jerusalem. The notion of rebels or rebellions reaching full measure applies well to gentiles: see Gen 15:16; Wis 19:1–4; and especially, with reference to the Antiochene period, 2 Macc 6:13–16. That passage is most explicit on the difference between God’s treatment of Jews and gentiles, which is presupposed by the idea of rebels or rebellions reaching full measure. God is forbearing with the gentiles’ wrongdoing, but this forbearance involves allowing their wrongdoing to reach an extreme form that necessitates radical punishment. God chastises Jews without waiting for their wrongdoing to reach full measure so as to seek to draw them back to him and so that they are not finally forsaken. God’s forbearance with gentiles in the time of Abraham (Gen 15:16), the exodus (Wis 19:1–4), and Antiochus (2 Macc 6:13–16) gives them the opportunity to repent, but it serves God’s purpose to bring deliverance and blessing to his people through a judgment that is justified by gentiles’ failure to repent. Two key aspects of Daniel’s portrait of Antiochus are summarized in v. 23b and expanded in vv. 24 and 25:85 his ruthless boldness and his artful cleverness. These characteristics are not mere randomly observed aspects of a particular person’s character. Nor does the seer imply that Antiochus only looks fierce and/or that he compensates for lack of real strength by trickery. Used for evil ends, Antiochus’s two characteristics are both elements in the standard portrayal of a tyrant.86 They are not so much descriptions of Antiochus’s distinctive personal character as elements in a stylized characterization of him as a wicked king (see also Form). More neutrally, however, they are key attributes of any king. Even if Antiochus cannot be compared with Alexander (but see n. 24.a–­a), he is quite strong enough to do just as he wishes with Judah. The “ease” with which he achieves his ends is another aspect of the standard characterization (cf. Ezek 38–39)87 rather than having distinctive historical reference. His expertise with things that are enigmatic (‫ )חידות‬is another necessary attribute of a king, as is reflected in the portrayal of Solomon in comparison with the Queen of Sheba and King Hiram of Tyre (1 Kgs 10; Josephus, Ant. 8.5.3 [8.141–49]).88 There may nevertheless be a pejorative implication about this expression, if it suggests that Antiochus can interpret heavenly secrets as a result of forcing his way into the heavenly realm.89 His deceitfulness (see 11:21, 23, 24, 27, 32) is illustrated in 1 Macc 1:29–30; see also his manipulation of the high priesthood, 2 Macc 4:7–29. Throughout these verses the objects of his violence and trickery are the people of God. While “mighty” (‫ )עצומים‬would be a natural term for foreign enemies (cf. 11:25), that reference is less relevant in the context: compare the focus on Jews in 1 Macc 1:24–32; 2 Macc 5:11–14 and the ‫ עם עצום‬of Ps 35:18. 85 Keil, Biblischer Kommentar, on the passage. 86 Niditch, The Symbolic Vision in Biblical Tradition, 230–31. 87 Lebram, “König Antiochus im Buch Daniel,” 739–43. 88 Müller, “Der Begriff ‘Rätsel’ im AT,” 477–79. 89 Cf. Barr, “Daniel,” on the passage.

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Before God, the people of Judah are mighty ones, so Antiochus’s contempt for them augurs ill for him. The following phrase makes this point explicit (see n. 24.c–­c): the mighty are a people of holy ones. The holy ones who are the object of Antiochus’s attacks are further described as ‫“( רבים‬many,” v. 25), which also parallels ‫“ עצומים‬mighty” in Isa 53:12; all these terms are the self-­descriptions of the conservative Jews. “Many” becomes a frequent term in Daniel’s visions and a technical term for the faithful community in 1QS 6.20–23.90 Whereas ‫ קדשים‬and ‫ עצומים‬might be used of either earthly or heavenly beings, ‫רבים‬ suggests that the objects of Antiochus’s attacks are earthly figures. The leader supreme (‫שר שרים‬, “leader of leaders”) against whom Antiochus sets himself is God (see v. 11 Comment). Setting himself against God will bring Antiochus’s rebellion to its ultimate point, but thereby to the point where God intervenes. Antiochus breaks: once again a term appropriate in the symbolic vision, where it refers to horns, enters the interpretive vision. Antiochus’s breaking by no human hand recalls 2:34, 45 (cf. 11:40–45). It might suggest that the seer did not believe in the Maccabeans’ violent resistance to Antiochus,91 though the combination of human activity and divine judgment appears at the climax of the Animal Apocalypse, 1 En. 90. The vision emphasizes the fact of Antiochus’s fall, not the means of it.92 First and Second Maccabees agree that Antiochus died in the course of a not-­wholly-­successful campaign in Persia. His death took place in November/December 164.93 26–27 Ezekiel’s contemporaries dismissed at least one of his visions on the grounds that it related to distant days (12:27). Ezekiel knew that God does not speak about distant days in a way that has no implications for the present. His promises and warnings relate to the future that is coming upon a prophet’s hearers. The apparent exception here (cf. 10:4) proves the rule, because the real date of the seer’s vision is in the 160s and it concerns events that are present and imminent for seer and audience. Closing up (‫ )סתם‬the vision because of its relevance to that far future context might denote merely keeping it safe until the day when it is needed, but the verb more naturally suggests keeping it secret until that day; it appears alongside “seal” (‫ )חתם‬in 12:4, 9. For an audience in the second century BC, this closing up “explains” why the vision has not been heard of before. At the same time, the motif gives parabolic expression to the conviction that the revelation the seer was bringing to his contemporaries really came from God. Its very emergence was a sign that the End, the breaking off of oppression and the fulfillment of God’s purpose of his people, was near.94 90 Cf. Lacocque, Daniel, on the passage. 91 Portier-Young (Apocalypse Against Empire, 223–79) especially emphasizes the nonviolent commitment of Daniel’s visions. 92 Hasslberger, Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis, 82–83. 93 See Sachs and Wiseman, “A Babylonian King List.” 94 See Russell, The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic, 107–14, with references to other apocalypses.

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Explanation 433

Explanation Suppose we imagine the seer reflecting on his vision. 1–2 My second vision took my first one further, and it, too, seemed to be set in the reign of the sacrilegious Belshazzar. Belshazzar’s acts foreshadowed events of our own day in the context of the trouble Antiochus brought to us, but his fall also foreshadowed the judgment we looked forward to. There can be comfort in the lessons of history. In one sense it was not as awesome a vision as the previous one, but I knew it was a vision that I, and other people, needed to pay careful attention to. Its very geographical setting made clear that it did not relate to the Babylonian period but to later circumstances. 3–12 It began with animals again, animals that symbolized national powers full of aggressive strength. Picturing them that way did not imply any great critique of nations. By their nature nations are full of such strength. Force and violence are of the essence of their lives. It is how they come into existence and how they stay in existence. My vision offered no further hint regarding the origin of their violence. It did not suggest that supernatural powers, heavenly or demonic, lay behind the activity of the nations. It assumed that they have to be taken seriously in themselves. But it suggested no glorifying of the achievements of Medo-­Persia or Greece and no celebrating of the spread of Greek thinking, culture, and civilization. New to this vision was the picture of two of these powers in conflict with each other. Neither of them was particularly good or bad, nor was one of them God’s agent and the other God’s opponent.95 There was no hint of an anti-­messiah in the vision. Events were proceeding in a way that did not manifestly involve God. He was either absent from this history or was way behind the scenes. The origins of human power did not come into focus. What the vision revealed was the empires’ destiny—­that is, their fall. Horns, and the human strength they symbolize, are strong, yet they are also strangely vulnerable.96 Each mighty, even apparently unassailable, human power is in due course broken by another—­sometimes at the height of its achievement, as if the effort involved in that achievement proves too much. God can view the process with distanced disdain, if he chooses: the nations will resolve their own destiny (Ps 33:10–17). My previous vision made use of the four-­empire scheme that did not emerge from the history of the empires themselves but was brought to them (like the fourteen-­generations scheme in Matt 1:1–17). In contrast, ch. 8 “tries to identify some internal logic to political power per se as it manifests itself in history.”97 History has its patterns, but they are not imposed on it so as to 95 Cf. Plöger, Daniel, on the passage. 96 Lüthi, The Church to Come, 110–12. 97 Newsom, Daniel, 256.

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shape it in a way unrelated to the intrinsic significance of events. The patterns are ones that emerge from the consistencies inherent in human nature, in the world, and in God himself. The arrogance of power works itself out, as the aggrandizing growth of one kingdom arouses the envy of another, which challenges and defeats the one that had grown excessively powerful. This vision was again designed to help people cope with a life-­threatening crisis by building up faith and hope. It sought to build up faith by making the present more intelligible, revealing how it linked logically to the past and took further a shaping of events that could be perceived in the past and that thus showed how history was “less out of control and so somewhat less terrifying.”98 It built up hope by using that same patterning as a basis for future projection: “if God made x end in y, he will surely make X end in Y.” The tone of this vision was “decidedly more somber” than the previous one.99 When a nation reaches beyond violence towards other nations like itself to violence towards the people of God and the worship of God, it is a terrible further transgression, but it is also the act that makes its fall inevitable. The events that overtook us in the 160s were not merely acts of cruel oppression like others. Behind the earthly place of worship, the earthly people, and the earthly priesthood stood supernatural realities: the being of God himself who was worshiped there, a purpose of God to have a witness to himself in the world, a reminder that human power is subject to limits. Attacks on Israel are not the same as attacks on other peoples. Anti-­S emitism has an extra dimension. The kind of acts we had witnessed made God subservient to politics, which is then not merely politics’ sin but its downfall. When these events happen, they are a strange kind of encouragement, even though it is difficult for their victims to view it this way until they can see what is at stake in events of this kind. “If God’s own ground can be invaded, and the very ordinances which he himself established as an abiding assurance of a vital relationship between his people and himself can be rudely set aside by a pagan idolater, can the very security of the universe itself be relied upon?”100 The seriousness of the invasion’s implications mean that God must take action. 13–14 There was a further encouragement in the awareness that these events were matters of scandal and concern not only on earth but in heaven. Of course we ourselves were groaning “how long?” to ourselves and to God, like the psalmists. But in my vision that groan was shared by others (cf. the “how long?” of the martyrs in Rev 6:10). How long? “The question encapsulates in a harrowing phrase the unrequited suffering of the innocent through all ages.”101 As the NT will make clear, the appearance of celestial beings in my

98 Newsom, “The Past as Revelation,” 43; also 48. 99 Newsom, Daniel, 256. 100 Towner, Daniel, 123. 101 Berrigan, Daniel, 137–38.

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Explanation 435 visions or in other works from Second Temple Judaism does not imply that God himself now seems distant from our lives,102 though it is the case that when God gave me this vision he was not acting to protect his people. The involvement of heavenly figures with us was an encouragement. I knew that in asking “how long?” the heavenly being was not merely being inquisitive but was sharing in the sorrow of the suffering people of God and concerned for the glory of God.103 The central feature in the act of deliverance would be not the destruction of an enemy but the fate of a sanctuary. That prospect was reflected in the way the holy one set a term to the offensive events: they would last for a period conceived in terms of how long daily sacrifices would be suspended. The climax of the deliverance would come with the vindication of the sanctuary, which would be as significant an event for the world as the granting of a worldwide lordship in my first vision (cf. Isa 2:2–4).104 The figure of 2300 days should not be misinterpreted. Its first significance was to promise that there would be an end, and then that this end was not too far off. But it looked like a symbolic number, and I am not sure it had a literal reference—­though I cannot deny that it is interesting that the time from Onias’s death to the restoration was about that period. If people assume that a day refers to a year and count from the time of Nehemiah in 458/457, then 2300 years will take one to AD 1843/44, the date William Miller will expect the appearing of Jesus. If Jesus does not appear then, it will be a disconfirmation of the kind that will regularly follow on attempts to make inferences from my dates, but neither on this occasion nor on others will it be the case that “the disappointment that [disconfirmation] produced led to a temporary end to date-­setting.”105 Actually, the fact that there was an answer to my question may be more important than the content of the answer. Oppression will not go on forever.106 15–19 I do not believe that this promise was merely a comforting human reassurance for people that everything was going to be all right. It was a God-­g iven reassurance. I am not necessarily claiming to have heard God audibly speaking to me. I know I am a mere human being. I am claiming that my message reflects God’s word and suggests a heavenly perspective on events. Nor is it a message about events that have mere passing significance. The attacks of earthly powers on the people of God, on the worship of God, and on the name of God raise ultimate questions, not mere transient ones.107 In the time of Antiochus we saw a fearful intensifying of human despite of 102 103 104 105 106 107

Against Towner, Daniel, 117; see further the Comment on 4:13–18. So Mayer, Commentary upon All the Prophets, 550. Koch, “Spätisraelitische Geschichtsdenken am Beispiel des Buches Daniel,” 25. So Gowan, Daniel, on the passage. Smith Christopher, “Daniel,” 114, 118. Cf. Plöger, Daniel, on the passage.

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God, which had to lead to an “end.” It is suggestive that those words about an end should have been the ones that came to me. I was not saying that the End was imminent. But there was something ultimate about that outbreak of wrongdoing, and thus there was something ultimate about its termination. I was not implying that there was something demonic about all history (I did not mention the demonic at all, in fact), only that there was something distinctively godless about the history we had to live through. It was like being on the receiving end of someone’s intense anger. I do not mean we thought God was angry with us (I talked of “wrath,” not “God’s wrath”).108 There have been times when God was angry, and I am not against that way of speaking, emerging as it does from our relationship with a deeply personal God. Perhaps “the silence of God in the face of the oppressor’s triumph . . . is an exercise of divine wrath that is disciplinary and instructive for God’s people. . . . The Seleucids are, at best, mere instruments of the Lord’s intentional pedagogy” during the time when God may be “waiting for the right moment to take decisive action against the foreigners who dare to challenge God’s authority.”109 But there are times when calamity strikes and it is as if someone has struck out at you in anger, but there seems no reason why someone should, and so it was for us. It felt as if Antiochus was the rod of God’s anger the way Sennacherib had once been, but I wasn’t clear that the situation was the same. I might have described it as Antiochus’s anger (cf. 11:30). Not that I mean to ascribe feelings to him—­it may have all been very calculated—­but he was the actual author of the calamity that came to us. 20–26 To a greater degree than was the case with my previous vision, the symbols were fairly transparent. The interpretive part mostly made explicit things that were not very enigmatic, though they thus still reinforced the point, yet they left the picture with a touch of mystery and allusiveness. There were several reasons. One was that I am not sure I was clear about it all myself. Another was that the vision did concern ultimate realities, which one cannot reduce to down-­to-­earth prosaic terms without losing something. A further ramification is that the significance of those symbols transcended the events we were involved in. People who have said my visions were about the pope or antichrist are wrong in the sense that they were designed by God to speak as his word to the Antiochene period, in terms that meant something then. But keeping the metaphor even in the interpretive sections of the vision retained the hint of ultimate realities that were embodied for us in one particular historical situation. “The end time . . . is here anticipated in the downfall of tyrants.”110 Those ultimate issues have surfaced on other occasions, and I cannot say that people who lived in such circumstances did wrong to find 108 Cf. Heaton, Daniel, on the passage. 109 Seow, Daniel, 130–31. 110 Berrigan, Daniel, 142.

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Explanation 437 themselves in my visions, even if I might prefer to speak of that process as one of reapplication or appropriation rather than as exegesis.111 Thus the portrait of Antiochus will furnish Paul with imagery to describe a figure who will come as a kind of false messiah before Jesus himself returns (see 2 Thess 2:1–12) and will furnish Revelation with imagery for describing the persecution of the faithful by Rome. First John will provide Christian thinking with the expression “anti-­messiah” (e.g., 1 John 2:18, 22), which will become a standard way of denoting a person who embodies opposition to God and to Jesus. The composite figure that will emerge can then be read back into my visions.112 Thus Jerome will comment, “Most of our commentators refer this passage [v. 14] to the Antichrist, and hold that that which occurred under Antiochus was only by way of a type which shall be fulfilled under Antichrist.”113 Yet Hippolytus and Theodoret will not mention the antichrist in connection with this chapter, and Jerome will confine his comments to the chapter’s reference to events in Antiochus’s day. While Luther will describe Antiochus as a figure of the antichrist,114 Calvin will comment that Luther is “indulging his thoughts too freely” when he refers this passage to the masks of Antichrist.”115 Perhaps Calvin is too hard on Luther, given that Luther does take seriously the passage’s reference to Antiochus. The fact that horns assert themselves against one another and that one breaks another “is world-­ history.”116 It is a sequence that never stops. One horn is broken by another. Empires rise and fall as they successively overreach themselves in arrogance. And sometimes they reach a pinnacle of climactic evil and violence against God and God’s people. But eventually they are overthrown by God. And in the end—­t he ultimate end, as distinct from the many partial “endings” that history illustrates—­G od will finally destroy all that opposes him and establish his own reign fully and forever. . . . Although Antiochus Epiphanes is the single historical figure in view in Daniel’s vision . . . , he is a kind of archetype. That is, he represents a reality that has surfaced at different times in history. . . . That coalition of anti-­G od, anti-­church, anti-­ truth forces and intentions faced the people of Israel in the Old Testament has faced the Jewish people and the Christian church at different times in past centuries and still faces the people of God in many parts of the world today. Jews have seen Antiochus Epiphanes as a pre-­f iguring of the horror of pogroms under “Christian” nations in Europe, culminating in the

111 Cf. Koch, “Vom profetischen zum apokalyptischen Visionsbericht,” 439. 112 On the subsequent history of this approach to Daniel, see Breed, “History of Reception,” 273–83. 113 Daniel, 87. 114 Luther, “Vorrede uber den Propheten Daniel,” 17 (ET 302). 115 Calvin, Daniel 2:119. 116 Lüthi, The Church to Come, 111.

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Holocaust. Christians have suffered from tyrannical regimes that sought to stamp out the Christian faith and church, from Roman emperors to atheist communist states that banned Bibles and all other symbols of Christian profession, to the brutal excesses of ISIS, Boko Haram, and Al Shabab.117

The idea of rebels reaching full measure is another motif that is solemn but simultaneously reassuring because it suggests that an act of judgment must follow when full measure is reached. That result comes about in a mysterious way. It is not merely the fruit of historical forces, like the passing of power from one empire to another at earlier stages. Even if the historical forces that bring the downfall of evil can be traced, there is something supernatural about it. People and events had a transcendent significance. Antiochus is a satanic figure, an embodiment of demonic pretension, but my vision did not suggest that separate from Antiochus there was an independently existent supernatural being using Antiochus or foreshadowed by Antiochus. It did not point us toward a mythic understanding of the battle of the godless against God, what some people call “spiritual warfare.” Antiochus was not literally fighting supernatural beings; rather, therein was the significance of his attack on people and sanctuary. The visible realities such as the Jewish people and the Jerusalem temple had a transcendent significance that Antiochus denied. When believers are hurt, heaven is hurt. At this point, whatever might have seemed to be the case earlier in the vision, it was clear that heaven and earth are not two disconnected, discontinuous worlds. Each underlies the other. Heaven cannot but be involved with earth, earth with heaven.118 The motif of rebels reaching full measure is taken up and applied to the Jewish people itself in Matt 23:32; 1 Thess 2:16 in light of their refusal to acknowledge Jesus; its openness to such reapplication means it can be reapplied again to the church if the church turns its back on God’s way (cf. Rom 11:17–22). Whether or not it was “a call to faith, not a call to arms,” my vision was a challenge to loyalty under persecution119 and a call to humility and repentance on the part of people not under persecution. I am honored to think that “modern readers . . . have to make an effort to realize what a powerful act of intellectual courage and resistance is represented in the work of this chapter, as it wrestles the brutal and horrifying events of 167 into a symbolic framework that is able to acknowledge not only the devastating nature of what has happened but also to project grounds for certainty that the evil will be overcome in the near future.”120 Yes, it has involved assassination of a high priest, plundering of the temple, civil war, massacre, enslavement, 117 Wright, Hearing the Message of Daniel, 172, 177. 118 Cf. Lacocque, Daniel, on the passage. 119 Reid, “Sociological Setting of the Historical Apocalypses,” 184, 188; Enoch and Daniel, 102, 104. 120 Newsom, Daniel, 257.

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Explanation 439 and foreign occupation, desecration, and a ban on proper worship of Yahweh. My vision was hardly a command not to try to put the tyrant down, but it was a reassurance that our inability to put the tyrant down need not trouble us. 27 Awareness of where history is going puts you into a complicated position.121 It indeed gives you confidence where you might otherwise have been overcome by worry: you know that a supernatural hand has already broken all evil power and that the risks you have to live with can be lived with. But you may also be awed and troubled, by having been put in touch with heavenly realities, by the knowledge of what the future may bring to you and to other people. And at the same time you have to get on with the job of living—­which for Daniel means working and serving in the context of the ongoing life of the “horns.” At the end of this vision, even with the involvement of a celestial interpreter as well as a human one, I know that a gap in understanding still exists. Interpretation remains a “slippery and difficult business.” But at least my readers understand that they do not understand and may therefore “continue to seek for relevance and meaning.” The vision’s message is “intentionally mysterious and it demands (re)interpretation.”122

121 Lüthi, The Church to Come, 117. 122 Hebbard, Reading Daniel, 184, 185.

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IX. Daniel Prays for the End of His People’s Desolation and His Prayer Is Heard (9:1–27) Pericope Bibliography Anderson, R. The Coming Prince. —­—­—­. Unfulfilled Prophecy and “The Hope of the Church.” Athas, G. “In Search of the Seventy ‘Weeks’ of Daniel 9.” Avalos, H. “Daniel 9:24–25 and Mesopotamian Temple Rededications.” Baltzer, K. Das Bundesformular. Baumgarten, J. M. “The Heavenly Tribunal and the Personification of Ṣedeq in Jewish Apocalyptic.” Bayer, E. Danielstudien, 1–106. Beckwith, R. T. “The Significance of the Calendar for Interpreting Essene Chronology and Eschatology.” —­—­—­. “Daniel 9 and the Date of Messiah’s Coming in Essene, Hellenistic, Pharisaic, Zealot, and Early Christian Computation.” Bergsma, J. S. “The Persian Period as Penitential Era.” Berner, C. Jahre, Jahrwochen und Jubiläen. Blaising, C. A. “The Day of the Lord and the Seventieth Week of Daniel.” Blayney, B. A. Dissertation by Way of Inquiry into Dan. ix. ver. 20. to the End. Boda, M. J. Praying the Tradition, 26–32. Bosanquet, J. W. Chronology of the Times of Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah. —­—­—­. Messiah the Prince. [Bosanquet, J. W.] Daniel’s Prophecy of the Seventy Weeks. Bowker, J. W. “Intercession in the Qur’an and the Jewish Tradition.” Buis, P. “Notification de jugement et confession nationale.” Bullinger, E. W. Number in Scripture. Burrows, E. The Gospel of the Infancy and Other Biblical Essays. Chazan, R. “Daniel 9:24–27.” Cooper, D. L. The 70 Weeks of Daniel. Cornill, C. H. “Die siebzig Jahrwochen Daniels.” Déaut, R. le. “Aspects de l’intercession dans le Judaïsme ancien.” De Long, K. P. “Daniel and the Narrative Integrity of His Prayer in Daniel 9.” Dequeker, L. “King Darius and the Prophecy of Seventy Weeks,” in The Book of Daniel, 187–210. DeVries, S. J. “Excursus on the Reversal of Saving History in Daniel 9,” in Achievements of Biblical Religion, 340–43. Dimant, D. “The Seventy Weeks Chronology (Dan 9,24–27) in the Light of New Qumranic Texts,” in van der Woude (ed.), The Book of Daniel, 57–76. Doukhan, J. “The Seventy Weeks of Daniel 9.” Driver, G. R. “Sacred Numbers and Round Figures.” Dunn, G. D. “Probabimus venisse eum iam.” —­—­—­. “Tertullian and Daniel 9:24–27.” Eusebius of Caesarea. Εὐαγγελικῆς ἀποδείξεως δέκα λόγοι. Flesher, L. S. “Daniel 9:24–27 and the Tribulation.” —­—­—­. “Tricksters and Martyrs.” Ford, D. The Abomination of Desolation in Biblical Eschatology. Fraidl, F. Die Exegese der siebzig Wochen Daniels in der alten und mittleren Zeit. Frerichs, W. W. “How Many Weeks until the End?” Frischmuthus, J. Evidens demonstratio Messiam secundum computum Danielis pridem apparuisse. Gerhardt, O. “Wann sollte der Messias kommen?” Gilbert, M. “La prière de Daniel.” Gowan, D. E. “The Exile in Jewish Apocalyptic.” Grabbe, L. L. “Chronography in Hellenistic Jewish Historiography.” —­—­—­. “ ‘The End of the Desolations of Jerusalem.’ ” —­—­—­. “The Seventy Weeks Prophecy in Early Jewish Interpretation.” Grelot, P. “Soixante- ­d ix semaines d’années.” Gruenthaner, M. J. “The Seventy Weeks.” Gunkel, H. Einleitung in die Psalmen. Harvey, J. Le plaidoyer prophétique contre Israël après la rupture de l’alliance. Haydon, R. “ ‘The Law and the Prophets’ in MT Daniel 9:3–19.” —­—­—­. “The ‘Seventy Sevens’ in Light of Heptadic Themes in Qumran.” Heard, W. J. “The Maccabean Martyrs’ Contribution to Holy War.” Hengstenberg, E. W. Christologie des AT.

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Pericope Bibliography 441

Hess, R. S. “The Seventy Sevens of Daniel 9.” Hoehner, H. W. “Daniel’s Seventy Weeks and NT Chronology.” Jepsen, A. “Gnade und Barmherzigkeit im AT.” Jones, B. W. “The Prayer in Daniel ix.” Kalafian, M. The Prophecy of the Seventy Weeks. Kline, M. G. “The Covenant of the Seventieth Week.” Knibb, M. A. “The Exile in the Literature of the Intertestamental Period.” Knowles, L. E. “The Interpretation of the Seventy Weeks in the Early Fathers.” Koch, K. “Die mysteriösen Zahlen der judäischen Könige und die apokalyptischen Jahrwochen.” König, E. “Die siebzig Jahrwochen.” —­—­—­. “Die chronologisch-­christologische Hauptstelle im Danielbuche.” Laato, A. “The Seventy Yearweeks.” Lacocque, A. “The Liturgical Prayer in Daniel 9.” Lagrange, M. J. “La prophétie des soixante-­dix semaines.” Lambert, G. “Une exégèse arithmétique du chapitre ix de Daniel.” Laurentin, R. Structure et théologie de Luc i-­ii, 45–63. Lebram, J. C. H. “Apokalyptiek als keerpunt in het joodse denken.” Lipiń ski, E. La liturgie pénitentielle dans la Bible. Lurie, D. H. “A New Interpretation of Daniel’s ‘Sevens’ and the Chronology of the Seventy ‘Sevens.’ ” McComiskey, T. E. “The Seventy ‘Weeks’ of Daniel against the Background of Ancient Near Eastern Literature.” McFall, L. “Do the Sixty-­Nine Weeks of Daniel Date the Messianic Mission of Nehemiah or Jesus?” Meadowcroft, T. J. “Exploring the Dismal Swamp.” Montgomery, J. A. “A Survival of the Tetragrammaton in Daniel.” Moore, C. A. “Toward the Dating of the Book of Baruch.” Nestle, E. “Zu Daniel.” Nel, M. “Daniel 9 as Part of an Apocalyptic Book?” Newman, R. C. “Daniel’s Seventy Weeks and the Old Testament Sabbath-­ Year Cycle.” Nolland, J. “Sib. Or. iii. 265–94, an Early Maccabean Messianic Oracle.” Ouro, R. “Daniel 9:27a.” Parente, F. “Onias III’s Death.” Park, J. H. “Overtones of the Jubilee in the Seventy Weeks of Daniel 9:24–27.” Payne, J. B. “The Goal of Daniel’s Seventy Weeks.” Plöger, O. “ ‘Siebzig Jahre.’ ” Poythress, V. S. “Hermeneutical Factors in Determining the Beginning of the Seventy Weeks.” Price, J. R. “Prophetic Postponement in Daniel 9 and Other Texts.” Quervain, A. de. Busse. Rad, G. von. “Gerichtsdoxologie.” Redditt, P. L. “Daniel 9.” Rigger, H. Siebzig Siebener. Rosscup, J. E. “Prayer Relating to Prophecy in Daniel 9.” Sawyer, J. F. A. “Types of Prayer in the OT.” Scholl, Dr. [F. X.] Commentatio exegetica de septuaginta hebdomadibus Danielis. Segal, M. “The Chronological Conception of the Persian Period in Daniel 9.” Shea, W. H. “Poetic Relations of the Time Periods in Dan 9:25.” —­—­—­. “When Did the Seventy Weeks Begin?” Sostmannus, A. Commentarius chronologicus, philologicus & exegeticus Oraculi Danielis de LXX. Hebdomadibus. Spangenberg, I. J. J. “The Septuagint Translation of Daniel 9.” Steck, O. H. Israel und das gewaltsame Geschick der Propheten, 110–37. Steudel, J. C. F. Disquisitio in locum Dan. ix, 24–27. —­—­—­. Quid de recentioribus quibusdam loci Dan. ix, 24–27. interpretationibus judicandum sit. Stonard, J. A. Dissertation on the Seventy Weeks. Tanner, J. P. “Is Daniel’s Seventy Weeks Prophecy Messianic?” Torrey, C. C. “The Messiah Son of Ephraim.” Towner, W. S. “Retributional Theology in the Apocalyptic Setting.” Turpo, J. “Estudio exegético de Daniel 9:24.” —­—­—­. “El ‘ungimiento del santísimo’ en Daniel 9:24.” Ulrich, D. R. The Antiochene Crisis and Jubilee Theology in Daniel’s Seventy Sevens. —­—­—­. “From Judgment to Jubilee.” —­—­—­. “How Early Judaism Read Daniel 9:24–27.” Van Bebber, J. “Zur Berechnung der 70 Wochen Daniels.” VanderKam, J. C., and W. Adler, (eds.). The Jewish Apocalyptic Heritage in Early Christianity, 201–38. Van Deventer, H. J. M. “The End of the End.” —­—­—­. “Suffering, Psalms and Allusion in Daniel 9.” Venter, P. M. “Constitualised Space in Daniel 9.” —­—­—­. “Daniel 9.” —­—­—­. “Intertekstualíteít, kontekstualiteit en Daníël 9.” Wacholder, B. Z. “Chronomessianism.” Walvoord, J. F. “Is the Seventieth Week of Daniel Future?” Wambacq, B. N. “Les Prières de Baruch (1,15–2,19) et de Daniel (9,5–19).” Wieseler, C. Die 70 Wochen und die 63 Jahrwochen des Propheten Daniel. Wilke, A. F. “Daniel 9.” —­—­—­. Die Gebete der Propheten, 67–91. Wilson, G. H. “The Prayer of Daniel 9.” Zuiddam, B. A. “The Shock Factor of Divine Revelation.”

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Daniel Prays for the End of His People’s Desolation

Translation In the first year of Dareyaweš, son of Ah· ašweroš, a Medite by birth, who awas made king  a over the realm of the Kasdim—­2in the first year of his reign, I (Daniyye’l) noted a in the documents the number of years c(the word of Yahweh which came to Yirmiyah the prophet) c to be completed for the ruins of Yerušalaim, seventy years. 3So I turned to the Lord a God to bmake prayers of supplicationb with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes; 4I prayed a prayer of confession a to Yahweh my God. 1

O b Lord, the great and awesome God who keeps his covenantal commitment c with people who love him and keep his commands, 5we failed, awent astray, acted faithlessly, rebelled,a bwe turned away b cfrom your authoritative commands c 6and did not listen to your servants the prophets who spoke in your name ato our kings, our leaders, and our fathers, and to all the people of the country.a 7Right belongs to you, Lord, while aa look of shame a attaches to us this day,b to the people of Yehudah and to the citizens of Yerušalaim, and to all Yis´ra’el near and far away in all the countries where you drove them because of the trespasses they committed against you. 8Yahweh, a look of shame attaches to us, our kings, aour leaders, and our ancestors, in that we failed you; 9aa deep compassion which keeps pardoning a belongs to the Lord our God. Because b we rebelled against him 10and did not listen to the voice of Yahweh our God by living according to his instructions a that he set before us by means of his servants the prophets, 11and all Israel overstepped your instruction and turned away a to avoid listening to your voice, bthe solemn curse b written in the instruction of Moses the servant of God overwhelmed us. Because we failed him,c 12he kept his words a that he uttered against us and against bthose who acted as our leaders b c by bringingc great trouble upon us, din that d nothing has happened in all the world such as happened to Yerušalaim, 13just as it is written in the instruction of Moses, aall this trouble—­it came b upon us. cWe did not seek mercy from c Yahweh our God by turning from our waywardness and dgiving heed to d your truthfulness,e 14 and Yahweh kept this trouble ready and brought it upon us. Yes,a Yahweh our God bwas right b in all the things that he did, and we did not listen to his voice. 15 But now, Lord our God, who brought your people out of the country of Egypt by strength of hand and earned renown for yourself this day: we failed, we acted faithlessly. 16Lord, in keeping with all your aright deeds,a O may your burning fury turn away from your city, Yerušalaim, your sacred mountain; for because of our failures and our ancestors’ wayward acts, Yerušalaim and your people became objects of scorn to everyone around us. 17But now, our God, listen to your servant’s prayers of supplication and smile upon your desolate sanctuary for amy Lord’s sake.a 18My God, give ear and listen,a open b your eyes and look at our desolate state in the city that bears your name,c for it is not on the basis of our right deeds that we are laying down our supplications before you but rather on the basis of your great compassion. 19Lord, listen. Lord, pardon. Lord, hear

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Translation 443 and act, do not delay, for your own sake, my God, because your city and your people bear your name.”

I was still speaking, confessing in prayer b my failure c and the failure c of my people Yis´ra’el and laying down my supplication before Yahweh my God concerning the sacred mountain of my God, 21still speaking in prayer, when Gabri’el, athe being a I had seen in the vision I had previously,b cwhen I was tired and weary,c approached me at e the time of the evening offering. 22aHe spoke with me and explained: a “Daniyye’l, I came out b specificallyc dto give you clear insight.d 23When you began your supplications a word came out,a and I came to declare it,b for you are cheld in high regard.c d So heed the word and give heed to the revelation.d 20a

Seventy sevens a have been assigned b forc your people and forc your sacred city, To end d the rebellion, e to do away with failures,f To wipe away g waywardness, to bring in lasting vindication,h To seal ia prophet’s vision,i to anoint ja most sacred place.j

24

You must acknowledge and perceive:

25

From the coming out of a word to abuild a restored a Yerušalaim, To an anointed, a leader: b seven sevens. For sixty-­two sevens b cit will be restored, and rebuilt c squared and moat.e f But in the pressure of the timesf 26 and after the sixty-­two sevens,a An anointed will be cut off b c and will have neither the city nor the sanctuary.c A leader to come d will devastate e a people,f and its end:g with the flood. Until the end of h battle idesolations are determined i, 27 and a covenant will prevail a for the multitude b for one seven. c In the middle of the seven c sacrifice and offering will cease,d And eupon a wing:e a desolating abomination,f until ga conclusion that has been decreed g overwhelms a desolate one.h”

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Notes 1.a–­a. ‫ה ְמ ַלְך‬, ָ the only instance of the hophal in BH; BHS compares ‫( קבל מלכותא‬taken as “received the kingship”) in 5:31 [6:1]. G, Syr. have an active verb “he reigned,” perhaps indicating ‫ ִה ְמ ַל ְך‬understood in an inwardly transitive sense (cf. GKC 53def for other verbs; PS, 277 for this verb in Syriac). An Aramaism (Lacocque)? 2.a. Qal ‫( בינתי‬instead of ‫ )בנתי‬is a shortened hiphil in form (see GKC 73a). For the meaning (“consider” is better than “understand”: that is part of Daniel’s problem!), see BDB; it need not be an Aramaism (against Hartman/Di Lella). 2.b. ‫ספרים‬: EVV “scriptures” may be too specific (so Wilson, “The Prayer of Daniel 9”) 2.c–­c. The wording of the parenthesis, ‫אשר היה דבר יהוה אל ירמיה הנביא‬, follows that of passages such as Jer 14:1, where ‫“ אשר‬that” is defined by the subsequent noun ‫( דבר‬see BDB, 82b); it is not accusative of respect (as EVV) (cf. Charles, comparing Deut 5:5). 3.a. In ch. 9 God is referred to as ‫“ יהוה‬Yahweh,” ‫“ אדני‬Lord,” and ‫“ אלהים‬God.” OG uses δέσποτα (“Master,” only in the vocative), κύριος “Lord,” and θεός “God.” In vv. 3, 15, 16, 17, and 19a (twice), where L has ‫אדני‬, some medieval mss have ‫יהוה‬. Q ‫ אדני‬may sometimes have replaced ‫ יהוה‬in the text, though the substitution of ‫ יהוה‬for ‫ אדני‬is also explicable (e.g., in v. 3, assimilating to v. 2). In vv. 15, 16, and 17 OG has δέσποτα, but not in v. 3 (though this difference might simply come about because the term there needs to be accusative) or in v. 19a; OG also has δέσποτα where MT has ‫יהוה‬ in v. 8. OG’s use of δέσποτα must be utilized with caution as evidence for an original ‫ יהוה‬since δέσποτα also appears as an equivalent of ‫“( אלהינו‬our God,” v. 17) and ‫אלהי‬ (“my God,” v. 19b). 3.b–­b. ‫לבקש תפלה ותחנונים‬. “To seek prayer . . .” gives an odd sense. “To inquire with prayer . . .” gives good sense, but when ‫ בקש‬means seeking a word from God, it needs an object (2 Sam 21:1; Ezek 7:26; Amos 8:12); so also the similar use of ‫דרש‬. Rather the lit. meaning is “to ask a prayer . . . ,” i.e., to utter one: an Aramaism—­cf. the use of ‫בעה‬ in 6:8 [7] (Zimmermann, “Aramaic Origin,” 263). Appeal to Akk. baqašu (G. R. Driver, according to Porteous) seems forced and unnecessary. The first noun is a general one for (formal, liturgical) prayer; the second specifies the kind of prayer. Cf. vv. 17, 18, 23; also for the compound expression 1 Kgs 8:30, 33, 45, 49; Dan 6:11 [12] for an Aram. equivalent with verbs. See Sawyer, “Types of Prayer in the OT.” 4.a. ‫ואתודה‬ . . . ‫“ ואתפללה‬I prayed and confessed”: again (see n. 3.b–­b) the first word is a general one for (formal, liturgical) prayer, the second specifies the kind of prayer. 4.b. “O” in EVV before a vocative rarely has a BH equivalent, but it has one here (contrast vv. 7, 8, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 in EVV): ‫ אנא‬is “a strong part[icle] of entreaty” (BDB). Cf. enclitic ‫( נא‬v. 16). 4.c. ‫“ הברית והחסד‬the covenant and the commitment.” 5.a. The three verbs are simple waw plus perfect, the events being coordinate not consecutive (TTH 131–33). Q omits ‫“ ו‬and” from ‫[“ והרשענו‬and] we acted faithlessly,” assimilating to 1 Kgs 8:47; G omits both this “and” and the previous one for stylistic reasons. 5.b–­b. ‫וסור‬, inf. absolute continuing the series of finite verbs; cf. GKC 113z (cf. v. 11). 5.c–­c. ‫“ ממצותך וממשפטיך‬from your commands and from your decisions.” 6.a–­a. The terms are in descending order of status; ‫ אבות‬thus refers to heads of local kinship groups (not here “ancestors,” as JB) and ‫ עם הארץ‬to ordinary people; cf. Jer 1:18 (Jeffery). 7.a–­a. ‫“ בשת הפנים‬shame of face.”

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Notes 445 7.b. ‫ כיום הזה‬regularly means “today,” “this very day,” not “as at this day” (EVV); see, e.g., Jer 44:6, 22, 23. Cf. HS 262; J. Goldingay, “kayyôm hazzeh ‘On This Very Day,’ ” VT 43 (1993): 112–15. 8.a. ‫“ ולשרינו‬and our leaders” acc. Oriental mss (so BHK), G, Syr. 9.a–­a. ‫הרחמים והסלחות‬, both pl., perhaps suggesting “acts of.” 9.b. It is hard to instance ‫ כי‬meaning “although” (NEB), though “when” comes near that implication (cf. BDB, 473b). See Aejmelaeus, “Function and Interpretation of ‫כי‬,” esp. 207; contrast Vriezen, “Einige Notizen zur Übersetzung des Bindesworts kı¯,” 272; Schoors, “The Particle ‫כי‬,” 272–73. But anyway, the ‫ כי‬clause is an odd follow-­up to v. 9a, and more likely begins a new sentence (Joubert, 162–63). 10.a. OG, Vulg. have s., but the less usual pl. is surely original. 11.a. Cf. n. 5.b–­b. 11.b–­b. ‫“ האלה והשבעה‬the curse and the oath.” 11.c. Some medieval mss correct ‫“ לו‬him” to ‫“ לך‬you.” But the prayer keeps moving between 2nd and 3rd person (as psalms do); God has been referred to in the 3rd person three words previously, and the 3rd-­person reference is presupposed by the opening of v. 12. I take this clause as the beginning of that sentence (Wambacq, “Les Prières de Baruch et de Daniel,” 469). 12.a. Q has s., perhaps rightly (Plöger). 12.b–­b. ‫“ אשר שפטונו שפטינו‬our judges who judged us”: but the noun can denote leaders other than the “ judges” (BDB). 12.c–­c. ‫להביא‬, perhaps “that he would bring” (JB). 12.d–­d. ‫ ;אשר‬Bevan “so that.” For both possible meanings, cf. BDB, 83b. 13.a. ‫ את כל הרעה‬perhaps resumes ‫“ רעה גדלה‬great trouble” (v. 12)—­hence the object marker (so Behrmann, Marti). It is doubtful if ‫ את‬simply emphasizes the noun, which is actually the subject of ‫( באה‬see EWS, 148–54 against GKC 117m; Saydon, “Meanings and Uses of the Particle ‫ ;”את‬Macdonald, “The Particle ‫)”את‬. The phrase may be the quasi-­object of the passive ‫“ כתוב‬is written” (Bevan; cf. GKC 117k, 121c); or the construction may simply break down (so in different ways Montgomery; Blau, “Zum angeblichen Gebrauch von ‫ את‬vor dem Nominativ,” 9). 13.b. ‫ באה‬accented on the first syllable and thus taken as perfect. Some medieval mss have ‫( הבאה‬participle, “which came”). 13.c–­c. ‫“ ולא חלינו את פני‬and we have not sweetened the face of”: a different ‫חלה‬ from ‫“ חלה‬be sick” (cf. BDB). EVV continue from the previous clause, implying that v. 13b denotes a failure to seek God after his punishment fell. But this understanding of either the Babylonian or the Second Temple period is unlikely; more likely v. 13b again reviews Israel’s history in broader fashion. If the reference should be tied down more specifically, it would be to the preexilic period (cf. v. 9b and the last clause of v. 11). 13.d–­d. ‫ השכיל ב‬might mean “gaining insight in/by means of”: cf. v. 25. 13.e. ‫ אמת‬suggested “true religion” in 8:12, “reliability” in 8:26, but the more common OT meaning fits well here (cf. NEB “[remembered] that thou art true to thy word”). 14.a. EVV “for”: we should perhaps give even apparently asseverative ‫ כי‬some connective function (Aejmelaeus, “Function and Interpretation of ‫ כי‬in Biblical Hebrew,” 205), but this ‫ כי‬introduces a closing clause that balances v. 7 (see Structure) and the connection is with vv. 9b–14a as a whole, not just with v. 14a. 14.b–­b. The context has to determine the time reference of a noun clause, and past reference seems appropriate here. 16.a. Taking ‫ צדקתך‬as literal pl. (BDB, 842b, cf. Syr.) rather than pl. of amplification (“true justice,” see GKC 124e; cf. G).

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17.a–­a. ‫למען אדני‬, an odd expression (esp. in a 2nd person context), but apparently original, since Th. (“for your sake, Lord”), OG (“for your servants’ sake, Lord”), and Syr. (“for your name’s sake, Lord”) all offer different “improvements” on MT. 18.a. ‫ּוׁש ָמע‬: ֲ the composite shewa emphasizes the vocal character of the shewa after ‫ו‬ (GKC 10g). 18.b. K reads ‫ פקחה‬as a lengthened form of the imperative (cf. v. 19); cf. Q ‫פקח‬. But the ‫ ה‬might be an abbreviation for ‫ ;יהוה‬the clause’s structure then parallels its predecessor and the pair parallel 2 Kgs 19:16 (Lacocque). 18.c. ‫“ אשר נקרא שמך עליה‬over which your name has been proclaimed.” 20.a. On the circumstantial clause, see TTH 169; GKC 116u. 20.b. On ‫“ ומתפלל ומתודה‬praying and confessing,” see n. 4.a. 20.c. G, Vulg., Syr. presuppose pl. pointing each time. 21.a–­ a . G “behold the man . . .” perhaps presuppose reading ‫והא האיש‬ (Montgomery); for ‫ הא‬see BDB, 210b, 1089b. “The man Gabriel” is odd, even in light of 8:15; Ehrlich compares Exod 11:3 and suggests translating “the lord Gabriel.” 21.b. In isolation one could take ‫ בתחלה‬to mean “at the beginning” and as referring back to ch. 7; but following on the occurrence of the expression in 8:1 (see n. 1.d there) it more likely again means “previously.” 21.c– ­c. Grammatically, ‫“ מעף ביעף‬wearied with weariness” could apply to Daniel or Gabriel, but the word order implies the former (Keil) and also suggests referring it to the faint of 8:17–18 rather than to the result of this time of prayer and fasting. G, Syr., Vulg. connect the phrase with Gabriel’s flight and presuppose that ‫“ יעף‬be weary” has a homonym meaning “fly,” a by-­form of ‫( עוף‬Brockington emends to ‫עף‬ ‫מעפף‬, forms of ‫ עוף‬itself), which implies that such heavenly aides, like seraphs and cherubs, have wings to fly with. Verse 21 rather implies (like other parts of the OT) that such beings are human in form and can be distinguished from seraphs (Isa 6) and the hybrid figures in Ezek 1: see esp. Gen 28:12 (supernatural aides moving between heaven and earth by ladder); even I Chr 21:16 does not say that the aide has wings to fly with. 21.d. ‫ נגע‬can mean “touched” (so Th., cf. 8:18; 10:16), but “reached” (OG, Syr., cf. 8:7; 12:12) fits better here. For the participle referring to a punctiliar event in a double participial construction, see GKC 116u. 21.e. ‍‫ כ‬indicating time at which, not “about” which (against NIV) (cf. HS 262); the variants ‫ ל‬and ‫ ב‬make this explicit. 22.a. ‫“ ויבן וידבר עמי ויאמר‬he explained and spoke with me and said.” NAB emends to ‫ויבינני‬ . . . “he made me understand,” comparing Th., Vulg.—­but they may only be translating in light of the context; ‫ הבין‬can be used absolutely (BDB, 107a). NRSV, JB emend to ‫ויבא‬, comparing OG, Syr—­but they are more likely resolving some typical Danielic fulsomeness. 22.b. ‫“ יצאתי‬come out,” as in vv. 23, 25 with respect to the message “coming out,” suggests a supernatural commission more specifically than the ‫ בוא‬of the similar passage Josh 5:13–15 (cf. 2 Sam 14:15). 22.c. ‫ עתה‬draws attention to the “momentousness” of the occasion rather than having a simply temporal reference (“now”) in such contexts; cf. Josh 5:14 (Ehrlich). 22.d– ­d. ‫“ להשכילך בינה‬to instruct you [in] insight”; the noun is adverbial accusative. 23.a. ‫יצא‬, as in v. 22 to refer to Gabriel himself. 23.b. Heb. lacks “it”; direct and indirect object can be omitted after ‫( הגיד‬BDB, 616b). ‫“( לך‬to you”; 2 medieval mss, cf. G, Syr.) is presumably an addition. The following clause (‫ )כי חמודות אתה‬might be the object of ‫“( הגיד‬that you are held in high regard”) (cf. Barthélemy, Critique textuelle de l’AT 3:471).

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Notes 447 23.c. ‫חמודות‬, intensive pl. (see GKC 124e). The term is usually preceded by a construct noun, and ‫ איש‬might be added here as in 10:11, 19 (cf. Th.), but grammatically the noun in the predicate of a noun clause is quite regular (GKC 141c, TTH 189). 23.d– ­d. ‫ובין בדבר והבן במראה‬, a double hendiadys, “give careful heed to the revelatory word.” 24.a. ‫ ;שבעים‬while ‫ שבוע‬is the regular BH word for “week,” etymologically it means a heptad (a period or group of seven of something); as well as meaning seven days, it can thus mean seven years in Jubilees and in postbiblical Hebrew (DTT). Outside Dan (9:24–27; 10:1–2), its pl. is ‫ שבועים ;שבועות‬may be an Aramaism (Hartman/Di Lella). 24.b. The s. ‫ נחתך‬implies “there has been determined/God has determined seventy sevens” (GKC 121ab), or perhaps “[a period of] seventy sevens has been determined” (cf. GKC 145h, 124ab). 24.c. Montgomery translates ‫“ על‬against,” but the context points rather to the frequent meaning “concerning” (cf. BDB, 754b; also in Aram., BDB, 1106a). 24.d. K probably implies ‫ ִל ְכל ֹא‬from ‫“ כלא‬restrain,” leading into ‫“ לחתם‬seal” in the next phrase (see n. 24.e–­e) (RV mg.). The verbs through v. 24a then develop, but not in a very plausible way. More likely with Q the verbs are synonyms, and ‫ לכלא‬comes from ‫ כלה‬not ‫( כלא‬cf. BDB, 476b, 478a; GKC 75aa, rr; G ουντελεσθῆναι, also Aq.; cf. Q and many medieval mss ‫)לכלה‬. ‫ כלה‬can mean “complete, finish” or “eliminate, finish off” (cf. 9:27; 11:16, 36; 12:7) which better fits the general context here (Bevan; contrast Plöger). Finish off in the sense of completing the payment for a debt (Anderson, Sin, 85–89) requires more reading in. 24.e–­e. Reading ‫( ולהתם‬from ‫ )תמם‬with Q, cf. OG, Aq., Syr., Vulg. K ‫“ לחתם‬to seal” (cf. Th.) perhaps follows on from ‫( ִל ְכל ֹא‬n. 24.d); after ‫ ְל ַכ ֵּלא‬it might imply sealing up as complete (Bentzen), but this idea is also rather allusive, and it is more likely ‫לחתם‬ here is assimilated to ‫ לחתם‬in v. 24b than that the word is used twice with different meanings. 24.f. Following K ‫( ַח ָטאֹות‬cf. G, Syr.). Q and many medieval mss, also Aq., have s. ‫“ ַה ָטאת‬failure,” which looks like assimilation to s. ‫( פשע‬Bevan). Perhaps the three expressions for sin (the rebellion, failures, waywardness) deliberately vary (article with s., anarthrous pl., anarthrous s.). 24.g. ‫ ;כפר‬in Arabic kpr can mean “cover,” but the Heb. meaning links rather with Akk. kaparu/kuppuru “cleanse”: CAD; Levine, In the Presence of the Lord, 56–66, 123–27; against BDB. Cf. OG. 24.h. MT punctuation divides v. 24 after ‫“ צדק עלמים‬lasting vindication,” but more likely we should divide the infinitival clause(s) between the three negatives (all two-­ word clauses) and the three positives (all three-­word clauses); cf. BHS. 24.i–­i. ‫“ חזון ונביא‬vision and prophet.” 24.j–­j. ‫“ קדש קדשים‬a sacredness of sacrednesses.” There is no word for “place,” but in the OT the phrase always refers to locations or objects (the wilderness sanctuary or the temple, esp. its inmost room, also its altars, vessels, incense, sacrifices, etc.: see Driver). Vulg. takes it to refer to a person (cf. Turpo, “El ‘ungimiento del santísimo’ en Daniel 9:24”; also “Estudio exegético de Daniel 9:24”), but it never does so elsewhere in the OT except for one possible understanding of 1 Chr 23:13 (see RV mg.), though it likely does at Qumran, which opens up the possibility of that understanding here (so Meadowcroft, “Exploring the Dismal Swamp”). A fortiori the reference cannot be to the anointed one, the Messiah (cf. Syr. mšyh· ’). G’s literal ἅγιου ἁγίων could be read as denoting a person or a place, but OG hardly presupposes a messianic interpretation, since it even lacks the verb “anoint” (its εὐφρᾶναι “rejoice” apparently misreads ‫למשח‬ as ‫[ לשמח‬Montgomery]).

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25.a. ‫“ להשיב ולבנות‬to restore and to build.” “To rebuild” (cf. Vulg.) would require emending ‫ להשיב‬to ‫( לשוב‬BHS), since ‫ שוב‬is always qal when used in coordination with another verb to indicate repeating an act (GKC 120d). Bevan repoints ‫“ ְלה ִֺׁשב‬to populate,” but this would be a unique sense of ‫ ישב‬hiphil. 25.b–­b. ‫שבעים שבעה ושבעים ששים ושנים‬. NIV’s “seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-­t wo ‘sevens’ ” (cf. G, Syr.) suggests that the appearance of “an anointed, a leader” comes after sixty-­ nine “sevens,” but this translation involves ignoring MT’s more natural division of the verse. Shea’s argument for it on poetic grounds (“Poetic Relations of the Time Periods in Dan 9:25”) is not compelling; contrast the understanding of the prosody reflected in the translation above. Young questions whether Heb. syntax allows ‫ שבעים ששים ושנים‬to be accusative of duration; but see GKC 118k. Do the verbs then imply that restoration and rebuilding continue over the sixty-­t wo years (so Hengstenberg, Christologie)? That would be odd; so NIV could be right, and MT might be seen as antimessianic (Beckwith, “Daniel 9 and the Date of Messiah’s Coming,” 522), but its construal is well instanced in early Christian writers (see McComiskey, “The Seventy ‘Weeks’ of Daniel”). 25.c–­c. Qal ‫“ תשוב‬be restored” could here stand in coordination with ‫“ נבנתה‬be built” and the phrase as a whole could mean simply “be built again” (cf. GKC 120e on the construction). But the usage in v. 25a suggests rather that ‫ תשוב‬is quasi-­passive of ‫השיב‬, as ‫ נבנתה‬is passive of ‫ ;בנות‬letting the two words be independent fits the prosody. For this use of ‫ שוב‬in qal cf. 1 Kgs 13:6. Bevan (cf. n. 25.a–­a) repoints ‫ּת ֵׁשב‬. ֵ 25.d. ‫ ;רחוב‬a “broad open place” (cf. root ‫)רחב‬, not “street” (NEB), though hardly the temple court specifically (against van Selms, “The Origin of the Name Tyropoeon in Jerusalem,” 173), which would need to be made explicit as in Ezra 10:9. 25.e. ‫ ;חרוץ‬the root means “cut,” the adjective “sharp.” In Akk. h· arıˉṣu denotes a ditch (cf. NEB “conduit”) or moat, associated with a rampart (cf. Th. τεῖχος, JB). Van Selms (see n. 25.d) plausibly takes ‫ חרוץ‬to refer to the Tyropoeon Valley here and in Joel 3 [4]:14 (at one time the Tyropoeon was more of a ravine, like the Qidron). 25.f–­f. Linking ‫ ובצוק העתים‬with v. 26, with NEB (though it speaks of “the trouble of the times” not “the times of the trouble”; contrast 12:1). The ‫“ ו‬but” looks like the beginning of a new sentence or clause. Syr. lšwlm zbn’ suggests ‫“ ובצוק העתים‬but at the end of the times,” which would also naturally link with v. 26 (Bevan); cf. OG καὶ κατὰ ουντέλειαν καιρῶν (in v. 27)—­influenced by Syr? Yet Syr. looks like the substitution of a more familiar expression for a less familiar one. Van Selms (see n. 25.d) ingeniously suggests that the phrase means “mound [cf. BDB on ‫בצק‬, ‫( ]בצקת‬and) bends [cf. BDB on ‫]עות‬,” the last four words of v. 25 thus referring to Jerusalem’s east (temple court), west (Tyropoeon), north (the more elevated hill), and south (the valleys below the city). If MT is right, v. 25b as a whole refers to the two features of Second Temple history that could be known from the OT, the rebuilding of the city and the pressure of Israel’s hostile neighbors (Hartman/Di Lella). 26.a. OG “and after seven and seventy and sixty-­two.” OG thus suggests Year 139 of the Seleucid era, the year 171 BC (see e.g., Bruce, “The Earliest OT Interpretation,” 43–44). 26.b. ‫ כרת‬niphal: “disappear” (Plöger). 26.c–­c. Ozanne, “Three Textual Problems in Daniel,” 446–47; MT’s punctuation of ‫ ואין לו והעיר והקדש‬places the athnach after the first two words, which makes them cryptic (cf. G, Vulg., Syr., EVV). For ‫ו‬ . . . ‫“ = ו‬both . . . and,” see GKC 154a; cf. 8:13. 26.d. ‫ ;הבא‬for indeterminate noun followed by determinate participle, see GKC 126w. ‫“ נגיד‬leader” is perhaps implicitly determinate (cf. TTH 209). On OG καὶ ἤξει, see n. 26.g. 26.e. ‫ישחית‬, cf. 8:24–25; also 11:17, though there it could refer to moral/religious rather than physical damage. If we read ‫( ִעם‬see n. 26.f), the verb will then be understood as intensive hiphil, “will act corruptly” (cf. GKC 53dg)—­or we could follow one medieval ms ‫“ יִ ָּׁש ֵחת‬will be corrupted/destroyed” (cf. Syr. tth· bl).

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26.f. ‫­—עם‬ ַ one medieval ms has ‫“ ִעם‬with” (cf. Th., Syr; OG, Vulg. conflate readings), which looks like an attempt to make easier sense of an apparently difficult MT and/ or a reinterpretation of it based on the conviction that “a leader to come” is the same as the “leader” of v. 25. 26.g. In 11:45 ‫ קצו‬refers to the end the leader comes to, but here this meaning would require a sudden change in the meaning of ‫ קץ‬in the next clause. More likely ‫ קץ‬denotes the end he brings or the people’s end (NJPS). ‫( שטף‬verb and noun) more often denotes the flood of calamity brought by an oppressor (11:10, 22, 22, 26, 40). OG [καὶ ἤξει] ἡ ουντέλεια (cf. n. 26.d), “[and] the end [will come],” substitutes a more familiar for a less usual expression. 26.h. So MT, Th., Syr; Aq., Sym. “until the end there will be . . .” (cf. EVV). ‫ קץ‬is used in a nontechnical sense in 11:6, 13. 26.i–­i. ‫“ נחרצת שממות‬a decree of desolation,” ‫ נחרצת‬being niphal participle f. s. construct, ‫ שממות‬qal participle f. pl. absolute. 27.a. Th., Vulg., EVV translate ‫“ הגביר‬confirm” or the like (cf. 1QH 8.35), with ‫ברית‬ “covenant” as object, but one might then have expected the subject to be indicated. “Prevail” (cf. OG) fits well with other occurrences of ‫הגביר‬, Ps 12:5; 1QH 2.24; for m. verb with f. subject, see GKC 145c (cf. Bentzen, Plöger). 27.b. ‫“ הרבים‬the many” is becoming a commonplace term for the main body of the (faithful) community (11:33, 39; 12:3; Esth 4:3; 1QS 6.20–23); thus hardly “the mighty” (NEB), cf. Isa 53:12. The ‫ ל‬is equivalent to a dative of disadvantage, “against” (cf. Charles). Anarthrous ‫ רבים‬retains the commonplace meaning “many” (against Wiklander, “Begreppet rabbim i Daniel 8–12”). 27.c–­c. ‫ חצי‬could denote duration of time (“for half of”: see Keil; cf. GKC 118k), but point of time reads better (so G, Doukhan, “The Seventy Weeks of Daniel 9,” 13; cf. GKC 118i). While one would expect ‫“ ב‬in” before ‫חצי‬, cf. the absolute use of ‫חצות‬ in Ps 119:62; Job 34:20. 27.d. Cf. G, Vulg. MT ‫( ישבית‬EVV “cause to cease”) can have this meaning (cf. GKC 53def); it hardly needs repointing. 27.e–­e. MT ‫ ועל כנף שקוצים‬implies “upon the wing of abominations” (RV). But G, Vulg. “in the temple” rather implies the noun pointed as absolute, ‫ּכנָ ף‬: ָ see n. 27.f. 27.f. ‫ שקוצים משמם‬looks like one of the phrases for the desolating rebellion/ abomination (see 8:13; 11:31; 12:11). The pl. is odd, but G also has a pl. expression, βδέλυγμα τῶν ἐρημώσεων: see Comment. 27.g–­g. Hendiadys (Bentzen). ‫“ כלה‬destruction” denotes putting an end to something; it can hardly mean merely “in the end” (NEB). Cf. n. 24.d. 27.h. In 8:13, 12:11, ‫ שמם‬has transitive meaning, but there it is preferred to ‫משמם‬ for paronomasia. Here in 9:27 ‫ משמם‬has been used for the transitive, and ‫ שמם‬for “desolate” in vv. 18, 26, following general OT usage. Intransitive is thus also more likely here. Cf. KJV.

Form /Structure/Setting Form The framework of ch. 9 is a seer’s report of a revelation; it has some parallels with Middle Eastern reports of a revelation coming in a dream.1 It thus opens (vv. 1–3) with a note of the historical and personal context, though it 1 See ANET, 606.

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lacks any corresponding closure after v. 27 (contrast 7:28; 8:27); indeed, the revelation itself (vv. 24–27) comes to an abrupt end (contrast 8:26; 12:5–13). The revelation has the form of a quasi-­prediction (see ch. 2 Form and chs. 10–12 Form); vv. 25–27a refer to events that are past in the visionary’s time, while vv. 24, 27b contain the actual prediction. The revelation speaks allusively in a manner not unlike the interpretive visions in 7:17–18, 23–27; 8:22–25; compare also the closing vision in chs. 10–12. It contains no equivalent to the symbolic visions in chs. 7 and 8, the role of the symbolic vision being played by a passage from the Scriptures that Gabriel takes up. Beginning as it does not with a dream or vision but with a text from the Scriptures, ch. 9 comes nearer than any other passage in Daniel to being expository midrash, midrash that explicitly concerns itself with issues raised by a specific biblical passage, while still concerned—­like all interpretation—­ with questions arising from the context in which the Scriptures are being read. Indeed, “this is the only instance of explicit biblical interpretation in the Book of Daniel and one of very few instances in Jewish apocalyptic literature.”2 In taking the passage as a prediction of events in the audience’s day, its hermeneutic corresponds to that of pesharim such as 1QpHab, but the chapter does not use the term ‫פשר‬, nor does the revelation take the pesher form (see ch. 2 Form). As is often the case with midrashic study, the celestial revelation offers illumination from the text that emerges from setting it in the context of other passages from the Scriptures.3 The passage’s “text” is Jer 25 (and/or Jer 29), which refers to the completing of seventy years of punishment for Judah’s wrongdoing. Jeremiah’s “seventy years” was earlier taken up in Zech 1:12 (cf. 7:5).4 Second Chronicles 36:20–23 then nuances Zechariah’s prophecy by understanding the seventy years in light of Lev 25:1–7; 26:31–35, 43. The period of ruin and desolation comprises seventy years during which the land is uncultivated to make up for the approximately 490 sabbathless years of the monarchic period. The deuterocanonical Epistle of Jeremiah, possibly written soon after Alexander and also taking Jer 29 as its jumping-­off point, turns the seventy years into seven generations, which perhaps signifies 280 years according to an OT way of reckoning.5 Daniel 9 dates itself in the period to which Zech 1 and 2 Chr 36 refer, but it presupposes a time of continuing “desolation,” national subservience to foreign powers that came to a climax with the oppression of Antiochus. 2 Collins, Daniel, 359. 3 Cf. Venter, “Intertekstualíteít, kontekstualiteit en Daníël 9”; Van Deventer (“Suffering, Psalms and Allusion in Daniel 9”) adds the Psalms to the prayer’s intertextual links; Haydon (“‘The Law and the Prophets’ in MT Daniel 9:3–19”) sees the Torah and the Prophets as providing the prayer with its “theological grammar.” 4 See Lipin´ski, “Recherches sur le Livre de Zacharie,” 35–42. 5 See Moore, Daniel, Esther, and Jeremiah: The Additions, 334–35.

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This desolation has lasted a comparable period to that of the monarchy. How could this be? Considering Jer 25:11/29:10 in light of Lev 26:18, 21, 24, 28 as well as 25:1–7; 26:31–35, 43 provides an answer: the seventy Sabbath years needed to be exacted sevenfold. The last part of Lev 26 is also more encouragingly significant. Years of desolation and ruin do not mean that Yahweh has ratified Israel’s breaking of the covenant (vv. 15, 44); if Israel acknowledges its waywardness and the appropriateness of its punishment, Yahweh will remember the covenant (vv. 40–42). The two-­sided implications of Lev 25–26 correspond to two sides to Jeremiah’s prophecy in chs. 25 and 29. The former warns how long Yahweh’s chastisement will be; the latter promises that it will not last forever. The use of 70 and 490 in structuring history appears elsewhere in writings of the Persian and Greek periods. From the flood to the End is 70 generations (1 En. 10:12) or 70 weeks (4Q180 1.9); 1 En. 91:1–17; 93:1–10 divides history into seven followed by three weeks. Seventy shepherds pasture Israel from the Assyrian captivity to the End (1 En. 89–90); T. Levi 16:1; 17:1 seems to speak in a similar connection of 70 weeks. While the time from the exodus to the building of the temple was 480 years or twelve generations (1 Kgs 6:1) and there are hints that the time of Israel’s ancestors, of the monarchy, and of the Second Temple period could also be reckoned at 480 years each, there are other hints of an understanding of biblical history as involving 490-year sequences,6 and 11QMelch envisages a period of ten jubilees, thus 490 years, up to the final judgment. While some of these documents may be later than and dependent on Daniel, they represent a way of thinking that Daniel takes up rather than initiates.7 Leviticus 25:8–17 also describes the jubilee year, and Jubilees in due course structures history by jubilees,8 though Dan 9 itself does not describe the 490 years in these terms and the seven sevens of Dan 9:25 are hardly sufficient to indicate that it reflects jubilee thinking.9 The supernatural revelation in Dan 9 presupposes a reading of Jer 25:11/29:10 in light of further passages beyond Lev 25–26. The leader (‫)נגיד‬ who is anointed (‫ )משיח‬recalls the prophecy about the king of Tyre in Ezek 28 (see vv. 2, 14), which shares other motifs with Dan 9:24–27 such as ruin and 6 7

8 9

Cf. Bullinger, Number in Scripture, 5–6. See Cornill, “Die siebzig Jahrwochen Daniels,” 7–9, 14–18; Milik, The Books of Enoch, 248–59; Koch, “Die mysteriösen Zahlen der judäischen Könige”; Thiering, “The Three and a Half Years of Elijah,” 43–45; Fitzmyer, “Further Light on Melchizedek”; Dimant, “The Seventy Weeks Chronology (Dan 9,24–27) in the Light of New Qumranic Texts.” See, e.g., Beckwith, “The Significance of the Calendar for Interpreting Essene Chronology and Eschatology,” 168–71. Park thus speaks only of “Overtones of the Jubilee in the Seventy Weeks of Daniel 9:24–27.” But see further (e.g.) Lacocque, Daniel, on the passage; Buchanan, Hebrews, 42–43; Ulrich, The Antiochene Crisis and Jubilee Theology in Daniel’s Seventy Sevens; ———. “From Judgment to Jubilee”; Berner, Jahre, Jahrwochen und Jubiläen; Redditt, “Daniel 9”; Henze, “Daniel and Jubilees.”

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desolation (‫שחת‬, ‫שמם‬, vv. 8, 17, 19), God’s sacred mountain (vv. 14, 16), and the profaning of sanctuaries by failure and waywardness (vv. 16, 18).10 Isa 10:22–23 declares that: ‫ כי כלה ונחרצה‬. . . ‫ “( צדקה שוטף‬justice is in full flood. . . . because an end that has been decreed [is Yahweh . . . bringing about ]”). Each word recurs in Dan 9:24–27; the second phrase appears in the identical form in v. 27, apparently indicating that the consummation that is now effected is the one of which Isaiah spoke.11 The allusive ‫“( הגביר‬prevail”?—­see n. 27.a) might have its background in the ‫“ אל גבור‬God the champion” of Isa 10:21.12 There are a number of possible links between Dan 9 and Isa 52:13–53:12, of which the most plausible are in 52:14: ‫שמם‬, ‫רבים‬, ‫( שחת‬1QIsa a ‫)!משח‬.13 Within the framework of the supernatural revelation, Dan 9 is dominated by a long communal prayer of confession (vv. 4–19). It is comparable to other Second Temple prayers in Ezra 9:6–15; Neh 1:5–11; 9:5–38; Bar 1:15–3:8; 1QS 1.22–2.1; 4Q Words of the Luminaries (and less so to Isa 59:12–15; 64:5–12 [4–11]; Jer 14:7–9, 19–22; Pss 51; 106; Prayer of Manasseh),14 though each of these prayers is distinctive in relation to its context. 15 This prayer begins with an ascription of praise to God (v. 4), a motif that recurs in the body of the prayer (e.g., vv. 7a, 9a, 15). The recognition that right is on Yahweh’s side is of key importance to the prayer, which in this connection can be described as a Gerichtsdoxologie, an act of praise at the justice of God’s judgment.16 The central feature of the prayer is thus an acknowledgment of wrongdoing (vv. 5–14). It makes a statement in general terms of what Israel did and failed to do (vv. 5–6, 9b–11a, 11b, 13b, 14b) and of God’s acts in response (esp. vv. 11b, 12–13a, 14), and it contrasts the consequent moral positions of God and people (esp. vv. 7–8a). It incorporates some description of the afflicted state of the people for whom Daniel prays; the description corresponds to the lament in a protest psalm. This second section of the prayer is the longest, yet it does not express its main aim. The prayer is not just an acknowledgment of wrongdoing and acceptance of responsibility for it, like Josh 7:20–21; 2 Sam 12:13a; and the Deuteronomistic History as a whole. The acknowledgment of being in the wrong is designed to open the way to a plea for mercy, as in Judg 10:15; 1 Sam 15:24–25; Ps 106;17 contrast—­among the communal prayers of confession—­Ezra 9. Thus the third element in the prayer’s form is a plea for God to turn back to his people in forgiveness and 10 11 12 13 14

See Doukhan, “The Seventy Weeks of Daniel 9,” 16. See Lester, Daniel Evokes Isaiah, 142–45. See Kilne, “The Covenant of the Seventieth Week,” 466–67. See Brownlee, “The Servant of the Lord in the Qumran Scrolls,” 13–14. See Harvey, Le plaidoyer prophétique contre Israël; earlier Gunkel, Einleitung in die Psalmen, 117–39 (ET 82–98). 15 See Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, on the prayers in Ezra and Nehemiah; Boda, Praying the Tradition, 26–32. 16 See von Rad, “Gerichtsdoxologie.” 17 Hoftijzer, “David and the Tekoite Woman,” 425–27.

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restoration (vv. 15–19). The transition to the plea is marked by the emphatic particle ‫“ ועתה‬but now,” which recurs in v. 17: for the repetition, compare 2 Sam 7; 1 Kgs 8. It is both a conjunction and an interjection;18 it expresses an outburst of emotion. The plea is dominated by motive clauses and phrases that indicate the reasons why God should forgive and restore (vv. 15a, 16a [two phrases], 16b, 17b, 18a, 18b, 19b). The prayer’s alternating between “we/our” and “I/my,” and between “you” and “he” in speaking of God, reflects features of the corporate prayer of the Psalter. While the “we” is appropriate to a prayer that concerns Israel’s wrongdoing, the “I” puts Daniel in the position of intercessors such as Moses and Jeremiah.19 It may take up the picture of Dan[i]el as a just man who might be the means of delivering others (Ezek 14:12–20; cf. Jer 15:1). The prayer’s language has the characteristic repetition of liturgical style. It assembles series of near-­synonyms (vv. 4b, 5a, 15b, 18a; also instances treated as hendiadys, vv. 4b, 5b, 9a, 11b), similar phrases (v. 4b), parallel clauses (vv. 5b–6, 9b–10, 11, 13b), and whole sentences of similar meaning (vv. 7 and 8–9a; vv. 9b–11, 11b–13a, and 13b–14). Comparable impact is achieved by chains of related expressions (e.g., vv. 6b, 7b, 8a). The pathos and effectiveness of the plea’s climax in v. 19a depends on the repetition of imperative phrases calling on God as well as on their novel brevity. The prayer’s repetitiveness also reflects that of the Deuteronomistic covenant tradition to which the prose prayers of confession belong.20 In terms of that tradition, the prayer is an acknowledgment of the covenant God (vv. 4, 7a, 14b, 15a), of the breaking of the covenant through Israel’s failure to keep covenantal commitment (vv. 5–6, 7b, 8, 9b–11, 15b), and of the appropriateness of God’s treatment of Israel in the framework of the covenant (vv. 11b–14). It appeals to the graciousness that lay behind God’s covenantal commitment (vv. 9a, 16a, 18b) and implicitly to the possibility of forgiveness and restoration announced in the covenant for people who repent of their covenantal failure. Among Deuteronomistic motifs in the prayer are terms such as ‫חסד‬, ‫תורה‬, ‫אהב‬, ‫שוב‬, and ‫( היום‬commitment, teaching, love, [re]turn, and today), the significance attached to Moses, kings, and prophets as scribes, hearers, and preachers of Yahweh’s instruction (i.e., Deuteronomy itself) (vv. 6, 8, 10, 11, 13), the phrase “as it is written,” the idea of the curse, the references to Yahweh’s name (vv. 18, 19), the actual use of the name, and the stress on shame and scorn (vv. 7, 8, 16: ‫ בשת‬and ‫ חרפה‬do not come in Deuteronomy itself, but for the idea see, e.g., 22:13–21; 24:10–11; 25:3, 9; 27:16). Both Leviticus and Deuteronomy envisage the 18 Laurentin, “We‘attah-Kai nun,” 190–97. 19 Gilbert, “La prière de Daniel,” 303–4. 20 Cf. Harvey, Le plaidoyer prophétique contre Israël; Buis, “Notification de jugement et confession nationale”; Kline, “The Covenant of the Seventieth Week,” 454–58; Baltzer, Das Bundesformular.

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relationship between Yahweh and Israel being fundamentally disturbed by Israel’s faithlessness and disobedience yet see Yahweh’s response in punishing Israel as stopping short of finally terminating the covenant. If the people in exile acknowledge their wrongdoing and the justice of Yahweh’s punishment, he will remember his covenant with them (Lev 26:39–45); if they return to Yahweh, he will restore them (Deut 30:1–10; cf. 1 Kgs 8:46–53; Jer 29:10–14). Daniel 9:4–19 expresses the repentant confession that these passages look for.21 This response also features in the other communal prayers of confession. Practically every phrase in vv. 4–20 can be paralleled in Ezra 9; Neh 1; 9, or the traditions that underlie these four prayers: the Deuteronomistic prose of Deuteronomy, 1 Kgs 8, and Jeremiah, or the more worship-­oriented traditions of Leviticus, Chronicles, and the Psalter.22 The prayer was hardly composed with any of these texts sitting before the writer, but it was composed by someone who knew this tradition well, from study and/or from worship, and who instinctively but also consciously prayed in ways stimulated and hallowed by it. The prayer has a particularly close relationship with that in Baruch. As with parallels with 1 Enoch in ch. 7, a case can be argued for dependence either way or for mutual dependence on a third source, in this case some already-­existent liturgical prayer.23 The communal prayer of confession is a Second Temple phenomenon. It may have developed from the preexilic community lament, but if so, lament and protest with their characteristic “Why?” have disappeared, perhaps because the Deuteronomic covenant theology offers an intelligible understanding of contemporary experience of adversity to which the appropriate response is rather a confession of God’s justice and of human failure.24 Yet elsewhere the book of Daniel does not suggest such a theology, and the opening of the book pointedly omitted any explanation of the fall of Jerusalem from within this framework. And in this prayer much of the logic of protest may be present, particularly if we translate the past tense verbs as aorist (referring to past history) rather than perfect (as if applying to the present community. The prayer says, “Okay, but enough already!”25

21 So Lacocque, “The Liturgical Prayer in Daniel 9,” 122–24; Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, 488–89; against Towner, “Retributional Theology”; but Towner is right that there is a conventional element in the confession—Dan 9 is not simply a transition to “retribution theology” (Van Deventer, “The End of the End,” thinks rather in terms of the prayer being an addition to reassert Deuteronomic theology). 22 Lists in Szörényi, Psalmen und Kult im AT, 105–9; also Montgomery, Daniel, and Lacocque, Daniel, on the chapter. 23 Discussion in Moore, “Toward the Dating of the Book of Baruch.” 24 So Westermann, “Struktur und Geschichte der Klage im Alten Testament,” 48–49, 74–75 (ET 171–72, 206). 25 See further Flesher, “Tricksters and Martyrs.”

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Structure 1–2  narrative introduction to the revelation 1 date 2 occasion 3–4a  narrative introduction to the prayer of confession 4b–19  prayer of confession 4b  ascription of praise 5–14  acknowledgment of wrongdoing 5–6  Israel’s disobedience 7–9a  God in the right, Israel’s shame 7a  God in the right 7b  Israel’s shame because of wrongdoing 8  Israel’s shame because of wrongdoing 9a  God’s mercy 9b–11a  Israel’s rebellion and Yahweh’s punishment 11b–13a  Israel’s failure and Yahweh’s bringing trouble 13b–14a  Israel’s recalcitrance and Yahweh’s deliberate response 14b  God in the right, Israel’s disobedience 15–19  plea for mercy 15  resumptive acknowledgment of wrongdoing 16–19  fourfold plea for God’s mercy, each with motivation 20–27 revelation 20–22a  narrative introduction resumed 20–21a  occasion 21b  celestial being’s epiphany 22a  introduction to celestial being’s speech 22b–27  celestial being’s speech 22b–23  introduction 24–27  revelation 24  summary: what will be achieved by the end of 70 sevens 25–27  detailed outline of the 70 sevens 25a  the first 7 sevens 25bαβ  the next 62 sevens and their end 26bγ–27a  the first half of the 70th seven 27b  the middle of the final seven and the final events The narrative opening (vv. 1–2) provides the date expected in a vision or revelation (see ch. 2 Form) and indicates the circumstances that led to the prayer of confession. The introduction to the prayer (vv. 3–4a) discloses that it will be a prayer of supplication and confession; it discloses it both by the acts that accompany it and by the titles it is given. In the prayer, then, Daniel will be seeking a fulfillment of the prophecy referred to in the narrative opening,

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by offering the response that opens up the possibility of that fulfillment. As the passage from the Scriptures fulfills the role of the symbolic vision in chs. 7 and 8, the prayer takes the structural place occupied by the symbolic vision there. The framework of the chapter emphasizes God’s sovereignty; the prayer emphasizes the importance of his people’s penitence.26 There are links between the revelation and the prayer. The revelation concerns “your people and your sacred city” (cf. v. 20). It promises that rebellion, failure, and waywardness will be dealt with: the prayer also began here (v. 5, cf. vv. 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 15, 16, 20)—­though in the prayer the idea of rebellion is expressed by terms other than ‫פשע‬. Its concern with justice corresponds to a feature of the prayer (vv. 5 [‫רשע‬, the antonym], 7, 14, 16, 18—though never ‫ צדק‬itself). The rebuilding and restoring of the desolate city and sanctuary correspond to motifs in the prayer (vv. 17, 18); both speak of God’s judgment overwhelming (vv. 11, 27). The covenant’s prevailing (see n. 27.a) recalls the covenant-­keeping God of the prayer (v. 4). The introduction to the revelation promises insight, lack of which the prayer had confessed (see n. 13.d–­d).27 Conversely, the prayer makes no reference to the anointed leader or the prophetic vision; the prayer’s concern with prophecy has a different focus, and this motif in the revelation goes back to v. 2. The comparisons and contrasts between prayer and revelation open up two readings of the revelation. It can be understood in light of the prayer at each point, so that it is Israel’s wrongdoing that necessitates the prolonging of the years of devastation but that can now be dealt with in response to the (second-­century BC) prayer, or it can be understood semi-­independently, the wrongdoing then being that of Israel’s oppressors. As happens with words of revelation in other chapters, vv. 24–27 are expressed in rhythmic language, with some of the symmetry and balancing of parallelism (esp. in v. 24) and with the terseness and allusiveness of poetry, though one could argue over whether they are better seen as elevated prose rather than strictly as verse.28 The revelation’s allusiveness, with its lack of articles, is also the allusiveness characteristic of “sibylline” quasi-­predictions.29 After its opening in v. 24, the bidding in v. 25 suggests another new beginning there (see Comment). The introduction and the revelation are in comparable Hebrew to that of chs. 8 and 10–12, characterized by jerkiness, Aramaisms, and complex resumptive sentences (vv. 1–2, 20–21). The prayer is composed in literary 26 Cf. Venter, “Constitualised Space in Daniel 9.” 27 See Jones, “The Prayer in Daniel ix,” 491; Doukhan, “The Seventy Weeks of Daniel 9,” 8–9. 28 Segert (“Poetic Structures in the Hebrew Sections of the Book of Daniel,” 267–69) has a slightly different poetic analysis and some comments on poetic features. 29 Delcor, Daniel, on the passage. But Grabbe (“‘The End of the Desolations of Jerusalem’”) infers from its allusiveness that it is an older prophecy that the author of Daniel has taken over.

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Hebrew, without Aramaisms. Further, the prayer can be removed from its context without disturbing the latter’s coherence; indeed, the omission of the prayer along with vv. 4a, 20 improves the flow of the chapter as a whole.30 Because the prayer stands out from its context in its language, its use of the name Yahweh, its overtly Judean perspective, and its emphasis on the sin of Israel as a cause of their troubles, one might ask whether it is a later addition to the chapter, much like the additions in ch. 3 (3:24–90 G).31 Among the considerations that have raised this question, some are not very substantial. It is not the case that vv. 1–3 make one expect a prayer for illumination rather than a prayer of confession; Daniel in the sixth century had no reason to be puzzled by the prophecy, and the observances of v. 3 are appropriate to penitence. It is not the case that there are no links between prayer and revelation (see above). Variations in expression between vv. 20 and 21a do not imply a change of author, nor is the repetitiveness of vv. 3, 4a and 20, 21a uncharacteristic of Danielic prose. The appearing of a prayer of this kind in the place occupied in chs. 7 and 8 by a symbolic vision does not argue against its originality. Nor do the features noted in the previous paragraph point strongly to its being a later addition. The possibility of removing it is not evidence of its being secondary. Its distinctive language reflects its nature and background as a quasi-­liturgical prayer; the same is true of its distinctive use of the name Yahweh, which is paralleled in Neh 1:4–11 in relation to its context and by the way other names for God concentrate in specific chapters in Daniel.32 Its Judean perspective is the author’s perspective, and here he simply omits to conceal it; the revelation’s not needing the prayer to lead into it reflects the conviction that God’s sending Gabriel was independent of the prayer—­it issued from his prior plan. Some arguments for the prayer’s originality are also weak. While the chapter would be short without it, it would not be a torso: its structure would more closely correspond to that which appears on a large scale in chs. 10–12 (see chs. 10–12 Structure). Nor is it the case that a prayer of confession must meet with an oracle of response, such as a protest psalm looks for.33 The difficulty of the hypothesis that the prayer is a later addition to the chapter lies in the close links between prayer and context, noted above.34 These links are not as marked as those in Ezra 9; Neh 1; 9, which could not have existed independently of their context, though their degree of specificity to their setting varies. Possibly the prayer in Dan 9 already existed and was 30 Wilke (Die Gebete der Propheten, 67–91) adds that vv 5–14 and 15–19 look like originally separate units. 31 Rigger (Siebzig Siebener) suggests that the chapter developed in four stages between 180 and the 160s as the Antiochene crisis deepened. 32 Bayer, Danielstudien, 49 33 Against Lipin´ski, La liturgie pénitentielle, 83–106. 34 And from a narrative-critical angle, see De Long, “Daniel and the Narrative Integrity of His Prayer in Daniel 9.”

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taken over by the author of the chapter, but the hypothesis is not compelling. It is as easy to believe that the author wrote the whole chapter.

Setting The chapter offers divergent pointers regarding its historical setting. The prayer suggests a Jerusalem setting (vv. 7, 16). Its perspective might point to the Babylonian period; interpreters who have reckoned it independent of its context have dated it as early as 600 BC, perhaps with second-­century glosses.35 But the prayer’s perspective is not very different from that of Ezra 9; Neh 1; 9, and—­like them—­it alludes to the community’s experience in a later day, in its references to Jerusalem’s “desolation,” which parallel those in vv. 24–27. Writings from the Persian, Greek, and Roman epochs commonly see these periods as a continuation of the time of desolation.36 The form of the revelation suggests it is a quasi-­prediction whose setting would be Jerusalem between the introduction of new forms of worship in 167 and their abolition in 164 (cf. ch. 8). The end of desolation is described by taking up earlier prophetic texts (v. 27), as in 11:40–45, which suggests that it is still future for the seer.37 While the narrative introduction refers explicitly to a setting in the Babylonian period and presumably in Babylon, that feature seems to be part of the fictional scene-­setting for the revelation that aligns the chapter as a whole with the rest of the book. Daniel 9 is concerned about the temple and its offerings, which might suggest a link with priestly circles, though it includes neither positive nor negative references to the priesthood, and many people outside such circles would share a concern with the temple and its offerings.38 It does reflect the views of conservative rather than reformist groups in second-­century Jerusalem. Reference to praying “before Yahweh” at the time of the evening offering (vv. 20, 21) might suggest that the prayer itself presupposes a temple setting,39 as do Ezra 9 and Neh 9, but such features appear in a dispersion context in Dan 6:10 [11]; Neh 1:4, 6. The study of the Scriptures and the liturgical style of prayer could as easily suggest a background in the synagogue, which encouraged communal study of the Scriptures and a way of praying that reflects the study of the Scriptures. In the chapter’s setting in the book, its concern with insight ([‫ )בינ]ה‬links it with ch. 8.40 Chapter 9 begins with that focus (v. 2; cf. 8:5), as ch. 8 had 35 So Lacocque, Daniel, on the passage. Laato, “The Seventy Yearweeks in the Book of Daniel,” sees vv. 24–27 as a pre-Maccabean message that has been updated in the 160s. 36 See Knibb, “Exile in the Literature of the Intertestamental Period”; Gowan, “The Exile in Jewish Apocalyptic.” 37 Cf. Heaton, Daniel, on the passage. 38 Cf. Collins, Daniel with an Introduction to Apocalyptic Literature, 92–93. 39 Gilbert, “La prière de Daniel,” 288. 40 Doukhan, “The Seventy Weeks of Daniel 9,” 4–6. Nel (“Daniel 9 as Part of an Apocalyptic Book?”) notes its close connection with chs. 7–12 more generally.

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Comment 459 ended there, the positive contrasting with the preceding negative. This motif is prominent as the supernatural being appears with his revelation (vv. 22–23), as it had been prominent at the equivalent point earlier (8:15–17, also 23). The implication might be that Dan 9 was intended to clarify issues raised in ch. 8; it takes up the question of the fate of the temple and seeks light from the Scriptures on what the dream and vision left opaque. In other respects, however, ch. 9 is not as closely linked to ch. 8 as ch. 8 was to ch. 7. Although it takes further the theme of the restoration of desolate Jerusalem and its temple, it does so by means of different forms, structure, and motifs. It also shares its emphasis on insight with ch. 1 (vv. 4, 17, 20), which concerned itself with the question of the length of the time of desolation, too. One might perceive a link between the 70/490 years and the date in 1:1, though the attention given to Israel’s history over Second Temple times is more explicit in ch. 9, and is explicit only there in the book—­elsewhere chs. 7–12 focuses more on world history, and structures events by the history of world empires.41 Chapter 9 relates sacred history, other chapters profane history.42 Chapter 9 alone, too, refers to preexilic history; elsewhere the temple’s destruction is such a caesura that it seems as if history began then.43 The model prayer in ch. 9 is that of the model Israelite in exile who has been portrayed in chs. 1–6. Is it the kind of prayer the Daniel of ch. 6 is assumed to have prayed, soon after Darius was made king (compare the terms of vv. 3–4a with those of 6:10–11 [11–12])? It is hardly appropriate to declare that the prayer “is not an actually practiced prayer,” but it would be the case that “the practice of the prayer in Dan 9 [is] a social action.”44 The suggestion that ch. 9 is the center of the book45 overestimates the importance of its stress on sin, which is actually another feature that makes it stand out from its context.

Comment 1 Zechariah 1 links Jeremiah’s seventy-­years prophecy with the events of 519, in the time of Darius I, which are close to seventy years after the fall of Jerusalem in 587, and Porpyry thus assumes that the king by whose reign ch. 9 is dated must be Darius I.46 But in the context of Daniel, the Darius who is “of Median birth” must be the Darius of Mede who was introduced in 5:31 [6:1]. His “being made king” of Babylon may reflect his “acquiring/receiving” the 41 So Koch, “Spätisraelitische Geschichtsdenken am Beispiel des Buches Daniel,” 20–21. 42 Hanhart, “Kriterien Geschichtlicher Wahrheit in der Makkabäerzeit,” 82. 43 Gowan, “The Exile in Jewish Apocalyptic,” 214; cf. Janssen, Das Gottesvolk und seine Geschichte, 51–52. 44 Werline, “Prayer, Politics, and Social Vision in Daniel 9,” 23, 25. 45 Bickerman, Der Gott der Makkabäer, 26 (ET 16). Van Deventer (“Suffering, Psalms and Allusion in Daniel 9,” 213) calls it the “focal point.” 46 See Jerome, Daniel, 90. Dequeker (“Darius and the Prophecy of Seventy Weeks”) takes the original reference to have been Darius II.

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kingship of Babylon there (and see Setting above). ‫( אחשורוש‬Ah· ašweroš) is the regular BH equivalent of OP K· šayarša (Aram. ‫ חשיארש‬corresponds better), in Greek Ξερξης (Xerxes: so OG here; Th. transliterates); see Esther; Ezra 4:6. Historically, Darius I was the father of Xerxes I; the order of events in Ezra 4 might have suggested that Xerxes (v. 6) preceded Darius (v. 24). K· šayarša, like Da¯rayavahuš/Da¯rayavauš itself, may be a throne name, meaning “hero among rulers,”47 and it has been suggested that it could thus have been borne by an earlier figure such as Darius the Mede’s father,48 though it seems a problem with this suggestion that K· šayarša is a Persian name. In Esther, G takes ‫אחשורוש‬ to refer to Artaxerxes, while in Tob 14:15 Ασυηρος (Asueros) denotes Uvakštra (Cyaxares), the Median conqueror of Nineveh in 612.49 He might be seen as Darius the Mede’s predecessor/ancestor/father, and ‫ אחשורוש‬is actually as close a transliteration of Uvakštra (Akk. U-­aksa-­t ar) as it is of K· šayarša.50 2 The resumptive opening phrase may simply arise from grammatical need (Th. omits it); yet v. 1 is not so very long, and perhaps the phrase suggests that this year is the very year in which fulfillment of Jeremiah’s promise was due. Jeremiah’s seventy-­year period of Babylonian rule might be reckoned to begin with Judah’s submission to Babylon in 605 or with the fall of Jerusalem in 597 or 587; it might be reckoned to end with the fall of Babylon in 539, the initiation of a Judahite return in 538, or the completion of the rebuilding of the temple in 517. It is thus possible to argue that Jeremiah was chronologically accurate. But he himself hardly intended the “seventy years” to have a precise chronological reference; nor is there reason to infer that Daniel understood it this way. There is little evidence that seventy years suggests a human lifetime. It does suggest a long but finite and complete period; cf. Isa 23:15; Ps 91:10; also Esarhaddon’s inscription, “Seventy years as the period of its desolation he (Marduk) wrote down (in the book of fate).”51 Although the revelations given in dream and vision in Daniel show the influence of the Scriptures, here alone is there explicit reference to a passage. If “the documents” (‫ )הספרים‬is a term for the Scriptures, it suggests the existence of an identifiable collection of authoritative religious writings, though the fact that the book of Daniel is not yet among them shows that their existence does not imply a “canon” to which nothing could be added. The inclusion of Jeremiah among the books suggests that “the documents” denotes at least “the Torah and the Prophets,” which might be a collection not very different (Daniel apart) from what became the Hebrew Bible.52 Perhaps the 47 So Frye, Heritage of Persia, 97. 48 See Lucas’s discussion, Daniel, 234–35. 49 Frye, Heritage of Persia, 72–73. 50 See Auchincloss, “Darius the Median”; Torrey, “‘Medes and Persians,’” 7–8. 51 Luckenbill, “The Black Stone of Esarhaddon,” 167. 52 See Barton, Oracles of God, 47–48, on the reference to the “Prophets” in the near-contemporary Prologue to Sirach.

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Comment 461 existence of such a collection of “Scriptures” necessitated or at least opened up the possibility of recourse to the “pesher” method of interpretation and to the device of pseudonymity.53 Both dream or vision and the Scriptures would be seen as the true loci of revelation concerning present and future that contrasted with the Babylonians’ heavenly tablets.54 It was the God of Israel who really gave such revelations, sometimes hidden in the symbols of dream, vision, and portent, sometimes hidden in apparently straightforward words from the Scriptures. And one way in which God continued to speak to his people was by inspiring their reflection on those Scriptures so that they spoke out what the original speaker might say now. But “the documents” may more specifically denote the letters included or mentioned within Jeremiah that relate to the exchanges between Jeremiah and the exiles, to which Jer 29 refers as “documents.” As the book of Daniel tells the story, Daniel was in Babylon when these exchanges took place.55 Perhaps we are to imagine him consulting those documents again. Either way, Daniel is not seeking an explanation of a puzzling text. He knows that the two passages in Jeremiah document a threat or warning (Jer 25) and a promise or reassurance (Jer 29).56 In his prayer he will go on to seek to fulfill the condition laid down in Jer 29:12–13.57 “Daniel never asks for enlightenment about the seventy years of Jeremiah or even expresses bewilderment. His reaction to the prophecy is one of distress” and therefore confession of sin and request for mercy.58 Daniel 9 is “profoundly concerned with divine absence,” yet it “does not necessarily attest to a profound dissonance concerning that absence as Dan 8 does.”59 Instead it expresses penitence and thus accepts responsibility for the absence, and it prays. 3–23 On the prayer, see Form and Structure above. Motifs recurring in the prayer are (a) God as its object, (b) his characteristics, (c) his ways of speaking and his means of speaking; (d) Israel as the ones who are addressed and who are prayed for, (e) the response he looks for in them, (f) their actual characteristics, and (g) their needs; also significant are (h) the nature of the prayer, (i) its content, and (j) the response it meets. 3–23 (a) The object of prayer is God (‫)אלהים‬. But this most general word appears only once, in the introduction to the prayer (v. 3). Even here it is combined with the title “Lord” (‫אדני‬, also vv. 4, 7, 9, 15, 19, 19). While Ezekiel frequently uses the title “Lord” in accordance with its philological meaning, suggesting God’s authority and awesomeness, Daniel’s usage does not stress 53 Cf. Tigay, “An Early Technique of Aggadic Exegesis.” 54 Lacocque, Daniel, on the passage. 55 Cf. Wright, Hearing the Message of Daniel, 191. 56 Scheetz, The Concept of Canonical Intertexuality, 107–8. 57 So Wilson, “The Prayer of Daniel 9”; cf. Bergsma, “The Persian Period as Penitential Era.” 58 Collins, Daniel, 347. 59 Merrill Willis, Dissonance and the Drama of Divine Sovereignty in the Book of Daniel, 137.

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this connotation. Rather, it reflects Judaism’s developing inclination to use the title “Lord” to avoid uttering God’s actual name Yahweh (cf. Q ‫אדני‬, G κύριος, EVV Lord). Each occurrence of “Lord” in ch. 9 comes at a point where Israelite prayer would traditionally have used “Yahweh”: compare the general preference for ‫“ אלהים‬God” rather than ‫ יהוה‬in Pss 42–79. “Lord,” then, is suggestive of reverence before the person of the God of Israel. The name Yahweh itself comes in vv. 4, 8, 10, 13, 14, 14, 20; also v. 2 (and see n. 3.a). Whereas “Lord” generally appears as a vocative, and thus appears especially in the plea, “Yahweh” characteristically appears in third-­person references, and not at all in the plea. Only here in Daniel does the distinctively Jewish name for God feature; Dan 9 follows earlier prophetic and liturgical usage. The very use of the name constitutes an appeal to the special relationship between Yahweh and the Israel who alone knew the name. That consideration also lies behind the references and appeals to “our God” (‫אלהינו‬, vv. 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 17) and “my God” (‫אלהי‬, vv. 4, 18, 19, 20, 20). Daniel uses “my God” when referring to his own prayer, at its opening and closing; he uses “our God” in the midst of the prayer when referring to those on whose behalf he prays. Much of his usage is comparable to the Psalms, where the phrases “Yahweh my God”/“Yahweh our God” are common and “my God”/“our God” appears in parallel with “Yahweh.” Sometimes the context suggests that “my God”/“our God” appeals directly to the special personal relationship indicated by the pronouns (e.g., Pss 22:2, cf. 1 [3, cf. 2]; 38:21 [22]; 48:14 [15]; 71:4; 86:2; 91:2; 94:22; 95:7; 106:47; 118:28). The combination of “my” and “our” in one psalm is rare. Interesting is 94:22–23, where the psalmist appeals to the fact that Yahweh is “our God” as the basis for expecting him to act as “my God.” The argument in Dan 9 takes the opposite form: Daniel urges “my God” to act as “our God.” This way of praying appears in one other prose confession, Ezra 9. A person such as Ezra or Daniel prays as someone who has a close relationship with God, someone to whom God may be expected to listen. The prayer that “my God” may act as “our God” is therefore powerful. The personal nature of Daniel’s appeal on behalf of the entire people is clearest in vv. 18–20. At the opening of the prayer, the Lord is reverenced as the great and awesome God (‫האל הגדול והנורא‬, v. 4). The phrase corresponds to Neh 1:5. “God” is here ’el, the name of the Canaanite high god (e.g., Gen 14:18–24), but often in the OT a common noun for God (cf. Dan 11:36). There is some courage about beginning with recognition of the majestic aspect to God, which is a threat to people who fail to yield to him, whether foreigners or Israelites (cf. the closely comparable phrases in Deut 7:21; 10:17; Neh 4:14 [8]; 9:32). It is precisely such failure that Daniel will have to go on to acknowledge. 3–23 (b) “Great and awesome” (v. 4) is the first of a series of terms to denote God’s characteristics; v. 4 adds that he is one who keeps his covenantal commitment (‫ )הברית והחסד‬with his people. As in English, a “covenant” (‫)ברית‬

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Comment 463 is a formal agreement involving two parties, which has been entered into in a solemn and binding fashion. It may be primarily an undertaking by one party to the other, who is required only to receive what the first offers; or it may presuppose that a more powerful party requires certain reciprocal undertakings from a less powerful one in response to benefits promised or given by the former; or it may be a mutual bond between equal parties. For secular instances, see, e.g., Gen 21:22–32; Josh 9:3–20; 1 Sam 11:1; 18:3; 2 Chr 2:3; 15:12. “Covenant” then provides a natural image to describe relationships between God and humanity. The emphasis in such relationships may be on God’s commitment (Gen 9:8–17; Lev 26:40–45; Num 25:10–13; Jer 31:31–34; 2 Chr 13:5), or on human beings’ commitment to God (Job 31:1; Ezra 10:3; 2 Chr 29:10), or on a reciprocity in the relationship—­though hardly, for theological reasons, an equality between the two parties (Exod 19:3–6; Deut 29:1–29 [28:69–29:20]; 2 Kgs 23:1–3; 2 Chr 34:30–32). This last application of the covenant image is characteristic of Deuteronomy, which seems to utilize Israel’s knowledge of the equivalent political covenants (i.e., treaties); it is this kind of covenant relationship that is presupposed by Dan 9 (see Form). “Commitment” (‫ )חסד‬has its background in human relationships more broadly, where it denotes an attitude of kindness or generosity or mercy that expresses itself in acts of the same kind and thus initiates or presupposes a relationship of mutual loyalty and faithfulness (Josh 2:12; Judg 1:24; 8:35; 1 Sam 15:6). Appeal to someone’s ‫ חסד‬presupposes that he or she has taken on a responsibility and can be expected to fulfill it. Applied to God, it suggests his turning to humanity in his unconditioned and steadfast friendship and magnanimity, thus working toward his divine claim to have fellowship with human beings.60 In the OT, the most common application of the idea to the attitude shown by God to human beings appears, not surprisingly, in contexts such as the present one, the context of prayer, in the Psalms (e.g., 25:6–10; 36:5–10 [6–11]). ‫ חסד‬is not essentially a “covenant” word,61 but the human relationships in which ‫ חסד‬is expressed may be described in “covenantal” terms (1 Sam 20:8, 14–16; 1 Kgs 20:31–34). God’s ‫ חסד‬may also be associated with his covenant, as is so in Dan 9:4; the usage stems from Deuteronomy (see 7:9, 12; cf. 1 Kgs 8:23; Isa 54:10; 55:3; Pss 89:28 [29]; 106:45; Neh 1:5; 9:32). The prayer’s opening allusion to God’s keeping his covenant commitment is not an implicit appeal for mercy, but an acknowledgment that Yahweh has kept his side of the covenant and bears no responsibility for its collapse. It offers no direct basis for Daniel’s prayer; the latter will have to acknowledge that Israel has not kept its covenantal commitment and thus has no claim on him. Yet it is necessary that the prayer begins from an acknowledgment of these facts as they are. Further, if Israel’s relationship with God began from 60 Stoebe, “Die Bedeutung des Wortes h· äsäd im AT,” 254. 61 Against Glueck, H · esed in the Bible.

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an unearned commitment on God’s part, perhaps it could be reestablished on the same basis? There is a close connection between commitment (‫)חסד‬ and grace (‫)חן‬, in human relationships (Gen 19:19; 47:29; Ps 109:12; Esth 2:17), and in God (Exod 34:6 and related texts).62 It is only as they invoke the grace of God which forgives sins that Moses (Ex. 3211f., Deut. 923), Solomon (1 Kg. 8) and Daniel (94f.) can intercede with God that He will still graciously accept this people. It is never their own being and doing which constitutes the justice of their cause, and for the sake of which the divine advocacy and action takes place. It takes place only for the reason that Israel’s infidelity cannot suspend God’s fidelity (Rom. 33), that God cannot repent of His gracious promises and calling (Rom. 1129), and therefore only for the sake of God’s own righteousness. Looking upon Israel’s own ways and conduct, God can only judge, reject and punish. In the process of judging, rejecting and punishing, God does not break but keeps His covenant, and therefore comforts, helps and saves. . . . Only in faith in Him, only in that intercession of Moses, Solomon and Daniel for the forgiveness of sins, can Israel be subjectively in the right. But in faith, in that prayer, it is in point of fact subjectively righteous. If it seizes this promise of the divine advocacy and action, in this apprehension it already lives in its fulfilment, and it can and may and will stand before its enemies and in every misfortune.63

Reliability, truthfulness, or constancy (‫אמת‬, v. 13) commonly accompanies commitment both in references to God and in references to human conduct (Gen 47:29; Exod 34:6; Josh 2:14; Pss 25:10; 40:10–11 [11–12]; 57:3, 10 [4, 11]; 61:7 [8]; 85:10 [11]; 89:14 [15]; 108:4 [5]; Prov 3:3; 16:6; 20:28; Isa 16:5; Hos 4:1; Zech 7:9). Sometimes the two terms are a hendiadys suggesting a commitment that can be relied on; where they can be distinguished, the former may suggest protective faithfulness, the latter active kindness.64 For God’s truthfulness as our protection, see Pss 25:5; 40:11 [12]; 43:3; 57:3 [4]; 61:7 [8]; 91:4; 96:13 [14]. Yahweh is ‫אל אמת‬, the God who is by nature reliable and constant (Ps 31:5 [6]). That aspect of his nature is revealed in his deeds; they always correspond to his words (Ps 111:7). Thus another of the prose confessions declares that Yahweh has been entirely truthful in his relationship with Israel over the years (Neh 9:33). It is precisely this point that Dan 9:13 echoes: the history of Israel is the story of God’s truthfulness; his promises have been reliable, his protection has been constant. Daniel makes a similar point when declaring that Yahweh is in the right 62 See Sakenfeld, The Meaning of H · esed in the Hebrew Bible, 137, 237–38. 63 Barth, CD II, 1:389–90. 64 See A. Jepsen in ThWAT on ‫אמן‬.

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Comment 465 over against Israel. A prominent motif in his prayer is that any breakdown in relationship between Yahweh and Israel is the responsibility of the latter, not the former. Yahweh is in the right, Israel is in the wrong. Near the beginning and end of his confession Daniel declares that “right” belongs to God and that he is “in the right” in his relationship with Israel (‫הצדקה‬, ‫ ;צדיק‬vv. 7, 14). The second of these two affirmations corresponds to ones that appear in prose confessions in Ezra 9:15; Neh 9:33 (cf. also Exod 9:27; 2 Kgs 10:9; Ezek 18:9; Lam 1:18; 2 Chr 12:6). The first corresponds to forms of expression in Gen 15:6; Deut 6:25; 24:13. “Right” is another term from human relationships, but here relationships looked at within a framework of law. In a court contest between God and Israel, Daniel affirms, God would win the case. Right is on his side. This narrow, forensic connotation of ‫צדקה‬/‫ צדק‬is appropriate to vv. 7 and 14. In other OT contexts [‫ צדק]ה‬has a wide range of significance, suggesting God’s doing the right thing in his relationship with his people by acting faithfully. In v. 16, this broader meaning is closer to hand: part of the evidence of God’s being in the right is the concern for what is right that has characterized his behavior in relation to Israel. While the declarations at the opening of the confession that ‫ צדקה‬attaches to Yahweh, and at the end that he is ‫צדיק‬, could signify that Yahweh is justified in his punitive action (compare ‫ צדק‬in Isa 5:16; 10:22), the prayer goes on to refer to his ‫“( צדקת‬right deeds,” v. 16), which are concrete expressions of ‫ צדקה‬in acts of faithfulness, mercy, and deliverance: see the context in which ‫ צדקה‬comes in Isa 51:6, 8; 59:16–17; 60:17; Hos 2:19 [21]; Pss 33:5; 36:5–10 [6–11]; 40:10 [11]; 71:2, 15–16, 19, 24; 98:1–13; Prov 21:21. We should hardly confine the reference in vv. 7, 14, then, to God’s being justified in his punishment of Israel: it denotes more broadly his being in the right in the way he has dealt with Israel. He has been a faithful rock and deliverer in accordance with his word. The allusion to his right acts recalls Judg 5:11b; 1 Sam 12:7; Isa 45:24; Mic 6:5; Ps 103:6. These right acts are his acts on behalf of Israel when it is attacked or afflicted by oppressors in Egypt, in the wilderness, in the judges period, and in the exile. The dynamic aspect to ‫ צדקה‬is brought out by its common association with ‫משפט‬, which denotes authority and decisiveness (RV “ judgements”: cf. ‫ “ שפט‬judge”). A king’s calling is to exercise ‫( משפט וצדקה‬2 Sam 8:15; 1 Kgs 10:9): to act with authority on behalf of what is right. Such action is also characteristic of God (Isa 5:16; Pss 33:5; 36:6 [7]). At the beginning of the plea (v. 15) Daniel specifically refers to the exodus, Yahweh’s paradigm act of ‫צדקה‬. God brought Israel out of Egypt by strength of hand and thus established his reputation for doing what is right. It is the reference to the exodus that leads into the generalization about Yahweh’s ‫ צדקת‬in the next verse. The opening allusion to Yahweh’s being in the right begins a chiasm in vv. 7–9a (see Structure), which closes with a balancing allusion to Yahweh’s being compassionate and pardoning. There is no tension between these two. In the same way, Yahweh’s abandoning anger at Israel’s wrongdoing is

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assumed to be in keeping with his right deeds, not in conflict with them. ‫( צדקה‬EVV justice/righteousness) is not a justice that is centrally concerned to see wrongdoing punished or a personal quality of moral righteousness. It is a concern for what is right that rejoices in being merciful to the weak; and it still sees his people who suffer because of their sin as people who need to be restored. Those who take this word “righteousness” to mean “ judgment,” are in error and inexperienced in interpreting the Scriptures; for they suppose God’s justice to be opposed to his pity. But we are familiar with God’s righteousness as made manifest, especially in the benefits he confers on us. It is just as if Daniel had said, that the single hope of the people consisted in God’s having regard to himself alone, and by no means to their conduct. Hence he takes the righteousness of God for his liberality, gratuitous favor, consistent fidelity, and protection, which he promised his servants: O God, therefore, he says, according to all thy promised mercies; that is, thou dost not fail those who trust in thee, thou dost promise nothing rashly, and thou art not accustomed to desert those who flee to thee; oh! by thy very justice, succor us in our distress. We must also notice the universal particle “all,” because when Daniel unites so many sins which might drown the people in an abyss a thousand times over, he opposes to this all God’s promised mercies. As if he had said, although the number of our iniquities is so great that we must perish a hundred times over, yet thy promised mercies are far more numerous, meaning, thy justice surpasses whatever thou mayest find in us of the deepest dye of guilt.65

Like ‫“( צדקת‬right deeds,” vv. 16, 18), “compassion” and “pardon” (v. 9) are both plural, suggesting deep or repeated compassion and pardon—­though ‫ רחמים‬meaning “compassion” is always plural in the OT, and ‫ סל]י[חות‬is plural in two of its three occurrences (here and Neh 9:17; the third is Ps 130:4). Compassion and pardon are two outworkings of commitment (‫חסד‬, v. 4): see Exod 34:6–7; Num 14:18–19; Isa 54:7–10; Hos 2:18–23 [20–25]; Pss 25:6–7; 51:1 [3]; 69:16 [17]; 86:5, 15; Neh 9:17. ‫( רחמים‬also v. 18) is a feelings word: it denotes a strong emotion. ‫רחם‬ denotes the womb, so that ‫ רחמים‬could point to the strong feelings of love and concern that might be expected within the family on the part of a mother, a father, a husband, or a brother. This implication underlies a number of occurrences of the noun and the related verb (see Gen 43:30; 1 Kgs 3:26; Isa 13:18; 49:13–15; 54:6–8; 63:15–16; Jer 31:20; Hos 1–2; 14:3; Amos 1:11; Ps 103:13; Lam 4:10).66 ‫ רחמים‬also features in combination with terms such as 65 Calvin, Daniel 2:177. 66 Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, 31–59

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Comment 467 commitment, faithfulness, and grace (‫חסד‬, ‫אמת‬, ‫ ;חן‬see Exod 34:6 and related texts; Isa 63:7; Pss 25:6; 40:11 [12]; 51:1 [3]; 77:9 [10]; 145:9; Lam 3:22; and esp. the prose confession Neh 9:16–33). In such contexts, with which Dan 9 may be compared, the significance of ‫ רחמים‬as a word that points to the feelings of a mother or a father is not in the foreground; but the frequency of that usage elsewhere in the OT suggests it would be present in the background. Although ‫ רחמים‬is thus a feelings word, it does not denote mere feelings. It suggests a compassion that instinctively issues in action. ‫ רחמים‬is lifegiving.67 Here, the particular outworking of compassion is pardon (‫ ;סלחות‬vv. 18–19), as is the case in some passages where the reference to family feelings is overt (Jer 31:20; Hos 1–2; Ps 103:12–13); it is also so in Exod 34:6 and related passages, and in others where ‫ רחמים‬appears in combination with terms such as grace and faithfulness (Pss 25:6; 51:1 [3]), including a number that speak in covenant terms (Deut 4:31; 13:17 [18]; 1 Kgs 8:50; Neh 9). We have noted that the term for pardon reappears only in the prose confession in Neh 9:17 and in Ps 130:4. Both the noun for “pardon” and the related verb (‫סלח‬, v. 19) are used only of God; they thus contrast with the use of the verb most commonly translated “forgive,” ‫( נשא‬e.g., Exod 10:17), which more generally denotes “carry.” While ‫ סלח‬may have been used of human beings (e.g., a king), it suggests “pardon” (by a superior), whereas ‫ נשא‬suggests “forgiveness” (which may be by an equal). It has been suggested that in the Second Temple period law gained a significance of its own independent of covenant—­necessarily, because the covenant had been broken.68 If so, this framework of thinking is not reflected in Dan 9; covenant provides the context for all that follows by way of an understanding of the relationship between God and Israel. There is no hint that the Judaism represented by Daniel has a legalistic understanding of that relationship. The bond is more what has been called “covenantal nomism”:69 the relationship stems from the gracious initiative of God but then requires the responsive obedience of Israel. Israel’s wrongdoing breaks the covenant, but not in such a way as inevitably to terminate the relationship. One’s wrongdoing leads to a casting of oneself on mercy. Proper prayer has two aspects. It requires an abject acknowledgment that we are in the wrong and can ask for nothing on the basis of what we deserve. And it requires a confidence in God’s mercy that makes it possible to emerge from “the abyss of despair.”70 67 Jepsen, “Gnade und Barmherzigkeit im AT,” 262. 68 So Noth, Die Gesetze im Pentateuch. 69 See Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism. It is in this sense that one could see Daniel as reflecting a focus on “law” (see Kratz, “Reich Gottes und Gesetz im Danielbuch”—he understands ch. 9 as the latest arrival in the accumulating development of the book: see Kratz, “The Visions of Daniel”). 70 Calvin, Daniel 2:159.

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3–23 (c) Yahweh’s relationship with Israel involves words as well as deeds. These words are first termed ‫“( מצות‬commands,” vv. 4, 5). They declare the will he expects to be obeyed. They embody his authority—­they are ‫משפטים‬ (v. 5). This expression is another term for commands, but we have noted in (b) that the underlying idea of ‫ משפט‬is the exercise of authority on behalf of what is right and against what is wrong. ‫ משפטים‬are authoritative declarations concerning behavior that is acceptable and behavior that is not. In the Torah the term refers to particular enactments, but it also has a more general reference to the authoritative commands that belong to the covenant (Lev 26:15, 43, 46; Deut 26:16–17; 30:16; Ps 147:19–20; 2 Chr 33:8; and, in prose confessions like this one, Neh 1:7; 9:13, 27). Daniel’s favorite general term for God’s words is instruction(s) (‫ת‬/‫תורה‬, vv. 10, 11, 11, 13). “Law(s)” (EVV) gives a misleading impression, since ‫תורה‬ can refer to the teaching of a prophet or a parent. Alongside ‫ מצוה‬and ‫משפט‬, ‫ תורה‬does denote a set of directives regarding how Israel is to live its life, along with associated warnings regarding the consequence of disobedience. The repository of God’s instructions is the teaching of Moses, the pentateuchal “law,” the Torah. When “word(s)” (‫ )דבר]י[ו‬are specifically mentioned here (v. 12), they are not words of instruction nor words of information, but words of warning. Yahweh’s words have two ways of reaching people. His instructions come orally through his servants the prophets (vv. 6, 10). They speak in his name, as his representatives (v. 6); they make his voice audible (v. 11). As in Neh 9, prophets appear only in a good light in Dan 9. Heeding their word could have prevented the fall of Jerusalem. Their oral teaching is backed up by the word “written in the instruction of Moses” (vv. 11, 13), who is also “the servant of God” (v. 11). The prophets teach orally what Moses teaches in writing. The specific reference to Moses’s teaching, too, is not to information or instruction, but to words of warning. The words that back up the teaching emanating from the prophets constitute the solemn oath that Yahweh has now kept (see Deut 29:20–27 [19–26]). 3–23 (d) The people to whom prophets spoke were in particular “our kings, our leaders, and our fathers” (vv. 6, 8). Whereas in 1 Kgs 8 “the king himself serves the people by interceding for them and teaching them how to do penance,” here the kings appear only in a bad light (so also Neh 9:34).71 “Leader” (‫ )שר‬is a broad term that gains its specific connotation from its context. It often denotes people in authority under the king (2 Kgs 24:12, 14; Jer 34:21; 1 Chr 22:17; Neh 9:32, 34): they may be ministers of state, royal advisers, army commanders, magistrates, or the king’s representatives in a particular city or area. Such a meaning fits the word’s appearance here after the reference to kings. On the other hand, it precedes the term “fathers,” 71 Towner, Daniel, 131.

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Comment 469 and in light of that collocation might denote the leaders of the clans that were composed of the fathers’ houses.72 “Our fathers,” then, are the men who rule in the local community by virtue of an authority associated with their seniority, age, and sex. Their authority is reinforced by describing their position in kinship terms: they have the kind of authority in the community that a father has in the family. Strictly, then, the fathers are the people who stand at the head of a household or an extended family, a ‫ בית אב‬or “father’s house,” though “heads of families” or “fathers” can suggests clan leaders in a broad sense.73 In v. 16 the term for fathers, ‫אבת‬, appears in a different sense; “kings” and “leaders” are not mentioned, and the word is apparently a more general term, for ancestors. While the OT does refer elsewhere to the sin of Israel’s early ancestors, in this context more likely the expression denotes the generations previous to that of the speaker, the preexilic generations. One generation commonly pays for the previous generation’s wrongdoing, and the fall of Jerusalem resulted from the actions of earlier generations as well as those of people alive at the time (Lev 26:39–40; Lam 5:7). The implication is not that a generation may be punished despite being relatively innocent itself: if a generation repents, it finds mercy (see the discussion in Ezek 18; also Jer 31:29–30). Rather, the implication is that the effects of wrongdoing accumulate over time, and the next generation will likely walk the same way as the previous one. Thus OT confessions often acknowledge the wrongdoing of previous generations, as Lev 26:40 requires (2 Kgs 22:13; Jer 3:25; 14:20; also the prose confessions Ezra 9:7; Neh 1:6; 9:2, 16).74 While God’s message comes directly to the community’s leaders, it concerns the whole people, the “we/us” with whom Daniel often associates himself: “all the people of the country” (v. 6), “all Israel” (v. 11), Judah, Jerusalem, and the dispersed Israel far and near (v. 7), “your people,” “your city,” “your sanctuary” (vv. 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20). The first of these expressions (‫כל עם הארץ‬, v. 6) follows up the reference to kings, leaders, and fathers, and thus denotes the mass of ordinary members of the people (cf. 2 Kgs 16:15; Jer 1:18; 34:19; 44:21; Ezek 22:25–29; Hag 2:4, for the use of the term with this meaning in similar contexts). Elsewhere in the Second Temple period “the people of the country” became a pejorative term for non-­Jewish people in Judah (e.g., Ezra 9) or for Jews who were unobservant or ignorant of the Torah, but there is no suggestion of pejorative connotation here.75 Chapter 9 uses the name Israel three times to refer to the people to whom 72 See Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh 257–92, 365; de Vaux, Les institutions de l’AT 1:21–22 (ET 7–8). 73 See the passages in Gottwald and de Vaux just cited. 74 See H. Ringgren in ThWAT on ‫אב‬. 75 See de Vaux, Les institutions de l’AT 1:111–13 (ET 70–72); also Charlesworth, The OT Pseudepigrapha and the NT, 20–21, 146–47.

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God’s word came and for whom Daniel prays (vv. 7, 11, 20). As the whole people saw Jacob/Israel as their ancestor, the whole people bore his name. When it split into two, the much larger of the two resultant kingdoms had assumed continuing use of the name. The Judahites, however, saw themselves as the preserved remnant of that whole people of God and came to apply the name “Israel” to themselves (cf. 1:6). To speak of Israel, then, is to make a significant theological claim for the little community of surviving Judahites in seeing them as the successors of that whole people with whom Yahweh entered into covenant (vv. 11, 20). Chronicles emphasizes how “all Israel” took part in events such as making David and Solomon king, bringing up the covenant chest, and dedicating the temple. Admittedly, the unity of “all Israel” in v. 11 is a unity in wrongdoing. Yet, like Chronicles, Daniel has not abandoned an awareness that “Israel” was designed to be a much bigger entity than “Judah and Jerusalem” (v. 7). The latter is the nucleus of Israel, but as such it does not exclude others; it is rather a “representative centre, to which all the children of Israel should be welcomed if they return.”76 The community of the Babylonian period and of Second Temple times represents Israel as a whole: compare the reference to Ephraim and Manasseh as well as Judah and Benjamin at the head of the list of the Second Temple community in 1 Chr 9:3, the twelvefold leadership of “the men of the people of Israel” in Neh 7:7, and the first of Nehemiah’s prose confessions, offered on behalf of “the descendants of Israel” (Neh 1:6). Daniel describes them as “my people Israel” (v. 20). When Israel is “my people,” the pronoun usually refers to Yahweh. In prayer, they would normally be “your people”: so vv. 15, 16, 19 (as Daniel speaks of “your city” and “your sanctuary” in vv. 16, 17, 19). The expression indicates Yahweh’s special relationship with Israel, which is fundamental to the basis on which one prays for them. On the other hand, Yahweh can use the expression “your people” in speaking to their representative (Exod 32:7; 34:10; contrast 32:11, 12; 33:13, 16); he is then dissociating himself from them. Here Daniel takes the initiative in identifying himself with the people whom Yahweh has every ground for repudiating. His speaking of them as “my people” links to his addressing Yahweh on their behalf as “my God.” It is by their association with him that he commends them to Yahweh. Daniel belongs to that company of persons such as Israel’s ancestors, the prophets, kings, priests, and heavenly beings whose prayer can be expected to find a hearing with God. If Ezek 14:14 refers to this Daniel rather than to an ancient hero belonging to the epoch of Abraham and Job, there is a tension between this view and the warning about the effectiveness of Daniel’s prayer for himself alone in Ezek 14:14.77 He prays as one 76 Williamson, 1 and 2 Chronicles, 26, referring to Williamson, Israel in the Books of Chronicles, 87–140. 77 Cf. Calvin, Daniel 2:189

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Comment 471 who is persona grata with Yahweh, though the passage does not quite make the explicit assumption that an intercessor’s personal merits may “count” on behalf of people for whom he prays.78 Daniel has a special focus on Judah, Jerusalem, and its sanctuary (vv. 7, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20). Judah had remained faithful to David and to Zion; Judah (and Benjamin) had continued to be the embodiment of the actual Israel (cf. the list in Neh 11). Administratively, Judah was a separate area from that of the old northern kingdom, Samaria; the arrival of the Persians meant it became a province of the Persian Empire, ruled by its own provincial governor (see Hag 1:1; Ezra 2:1, 63; Neh 1:3; 5:14–15; 8:9).79 In the Hellenistic period the Ptolemies treated it as part of the larger major province; within that province Judah (Judea) remained a distinguishable unit over against Samaria to the north and Idumea to the south.80 There are also both theological and political reasons for special mention of the city of Jerusalem in the prayer (vv. 7, 16, 18, 19). Yahweh’s city, centered on Mount Zion, is the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth; it is the place where Yahweh has made himself known in the history and the worship of his people (Pss 48; 50:2). It is the city Yahweh chose as the dwelling place of his name (Neh 1:9, identifying Jerusalem as the place denoted by Deut 12:5). Admittedly, Daniel emphasizes rather that it is the city that bears Yahweh’s name—­that is, the city he owns. Nor does Daniel specifically speak of it as Zion, the name that carries most theological freight and that thus most often features in the praise and prayer of the Psalms, though he does refer to it as “my God’s sacred mountain” (‫הר קדש אלהי‬, v. 20, cf. v. 16), which is an epithet of Zion (Pss 2:6; 48:1 [2]; 99:9). In any case, the Babylonians’ desolation of Jerusalem put a question mark by the theological claims that had been made for Zion (Lam 2:15). The restoration of the city is of key importance for prophets and community leaders in the sixth century, but even in Nehemiah’s time the city lacks inhabitants and requires a semi-­compulsory repopulation (Neh 11:2). The prose confessions in Ezra-­Nehemiah do not focus on Jerusalem, despite the context of Neh 1 in a concern for the city and despite the Jerusalem setting of Ezra 9 and Neh 9. Although set geographically in the exile, Dan 9 thus contrasts with those confessions. But in the Hellenistic period the city increased in political significance. “As the only ‘city’ of Judea, Jerusalem completely dominated the country. . . . Judea could now be regarded by outside observers as the territory of what seemed to be the ‘polis’ of Jerusalem.”81 Within the city, Daniel is specifically concerned for the sanctuary. The 78

See Bowker, “Intercession in the Qur’an and the Jewish Tradition,” 79–80; le Déaut, “Aspects de l’intercession dans le Judaïsme ancient,” 35–50. 79 Widengren, “The Persian Period,” 510–11. 80 See Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus, 32–105 (ET 1:18–55). 81 Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus, 101 (ET 1:53).

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significance of the sacred mountain (‫ )הר קדש‬lies in the presence of the sacred place (‫( )מקדש‬v. 17; cf. 8:11; also the use of ‫ קדש‬in 8:13, 14; 9:24 [?], 26). In 587 and in the 160s the sanctuary was despoiled and emptied of its thronging worshipers. “[Jerusalem’s] sanctuary was laid waste like a wilderness, its feasts were turned into mourning, its sabbaths into reproach, its honor into contempt”; sacrifices were suspended and the building defiled (1 Macc 1:39, 45–47; cf. Lam 1:4, 10; 2:6, 7). The prayer’s interest in matters concerning worship corresponds to that of other material in chs. 7–12. 3–23 (e) The response God looks for from his people is stated first in the initial description of God’s characteristics: he is faithful to those “who love him and keep his commands” (v. 4). The phrase recalls Neh 1:5, and earlier Deut 7:9 (also Deut 5:10 = Exod 20:10); the theme of loving God is most common in Deuteronomistic contexts. As is the case here, the context there characteristically indicates that this love is not so much an emotion as a moral commitment (cf. Deut 6:5; 10:12; 11:1; 30:16, 20). The same emphasis features subsequently in Dan 9 in repeated references to listening to/obeying (‫)שמע‬ God’s voice speaking through the prophets (vv. 6, 10, 11, 14), which issues in living (‫הלך‬, “walk”) by his teaching(s) (v. 10). These expressions, too, are characteristically Deuteronomistic (e.g., Deut 11:22; 12:28; 13:4–5 [3–4]; 19:9; 28:1–2; 30:2, 8, 10, 16; Josh 22:5). The response God seeks from his people is the one required by the covenant expounded in Deuteronomy. If the people give God that response, they will be in the right with him, able to appeal to him on the basis of their ‫“( צדקת‬right deeds,” v. 18). That they should be able to do so is presupposed by the use of the term in Ezek 3:20; 18:24; 33:18. With the use of other words, it is a common theme elsewhere in Israelite prayers, which commonly protest the innocence of the people who pray (e.g., Ps 7:3–4 [4–5]; 44:17–22 [18–23]; Job 31) in the conviction that casting oneself on God depends on one’s relationship with him being right. An element of disobedience on Israel’s part is inevitable. Their task then is to turn (‫ )שוב‬from it and pay attention (‫ )שכל‬to God’s truthfulness (v. 13). The idea of turning from wrongdoing—­a s opposed to (re)turning to God or simply (re)turning/repenting—­is characteristic of the prose of Jeremiah and Ezekiel (e.g., Jer 15:7; 18:7–11; 23:14; 25:5; 26:3; 35:15; 36:3, 7; Ezek 3:19; 13:22; 18:21–30; 33:9–19; see also 1 Kgs 8:35; 13:33; 2 Kgs 17:3; Jonah 3:10; Zech 1:4; Neh 9:35; but not Deuteronomy). It is thus an idea especially associated with the Babylonian period and its desolation, and with the religious situation in which Daniel’s prayer is set. Its assumption is that Israel’s wrongdoing does not in itself end Israel’s relationship with Yahweh (cf. section [b] above). If Israel turns from such wrongdoing, the relationship continues. If there is a specific background to the idea of paying attention (‫ )שכל‬to God’s faithfulness (v. 13), it lies in the communal confession of Ps 106, which acknowledges that Israel’s ancestors did not pay attention to and learn from Yahweh’s wondrous acts in Egypt (v. 7; cf. Deut 32:29). But Daniel uses words

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Comment 473 from this root more than any other OT book except Proverbs (and Psalms, if one includes the word ‫)משכיל‬. It is a wisdom word. Daniel’s concern here is for Israel to be wise in their relationship with God as they reflect on his dealings with them. Evidencing such reflection is advisable if they are to persuade Yahweh to take a warm and favorable attitude towards them (‫חלה את פני יהוה‬, v. 13; see n. 13.c–­c). The phrase comes sixteen times in the OT, and like many OT theological expressions it has its background in the royal court (cf. Ps 45:12 [13]; Job 11:19; Prov 19:6). It implies some concrete expression of respect, homage, and honor that prepares the way for making a request. It need not imply that the superior party is angry, only that the inferior is needy. Such a way of speaking easily transfers to the theological sphere. It would then naturally connect with making offerings to God (1 Sam 13:12; Mal 1:9), though—­a s here—­the offering could belong to the realm of morality and piety, not explicitly that of worship (cf. Ps 119:58).82 3–23 (f) The prayer presupposes that such expectations have not been met; most of the terms just surveyed appear in Dan 9 in the negative. Israel has not listened, not lived by Yahweh’s teachings, not turned from its wrongdoing or paid heed to his faithfulness, not sought his favor, and it is not in the right with him. In acknowledging these facts, in effect Daniel is providing the necessary response to a fourfold confrontation by Yahweh.83 The term used most often to describe Israel’s shortcomings is failure (‫חטא‬, vv. 5, 8, 11, 15, 16, 20, 20; EVV “sin”). In secular usage the verb suggests missing a target (Judg 20:16) or missing the way (Prov 19:2), though the religious usage of the word in other Semitic languages antedates the OT’s, and it may be hazardous to assume that the secular usage is basic to understanding the religious usage.84 Either way, ‫ חטא‬does not imply that people had been seeking to live in accordance with God’s expectations but had not managed to achieve what they were aiming at. It implies that their failure was willful. Daniel’s opening confession in v. 5 adds four other images to the image of failure. “We have gone astray” (‫ ;עוה‬cf. v. 16, ‫“ עון‬waywardness”) has a similar background meaning to that of ‫חטא‬.85 “We have acted faithlessly/done wrong” (‫ ;הרשיע‬also ‫רשענו‬, v. 15) is a forensic expression, the antonym of ‫“( צדק‬act faithfully/do right,” vv. 7, 14, 16, 18). It indicates action that puts a person in the wrong in a legal or quasi-­legal setting but also in a quasi-­familial one. It is used in connection with the covenant relationship in 11:32. “We have rebelled” 82 See Seybold, “Reverenz und Gebet”; also in ThWAT on ‫ ;חלה‬Ap-Thomas, “Notes on Some Terms Relating to Prayer,” 239–40; Sawyer, “Types of Prayer in the OT,” 136–37. 83 Lederach, Daniel, 208. 84 According to K. Koch in ThWAT, ‫ חטא‬fundamentally means “to commit an offence against someone with whom one stands in an institutionalized community relationship” (ET 4:311). See also Knierim, Die Hauptbegriffe für Sünde im AT. 85 See HALOT for the nontheological use of ‫עוה‬, against BDB, which posits separate roots.

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(‫ ;מרד‬also v. 9) may be a stronger term, and a less technically religious one, than ‫( פשע‬see v. 24). “We have turned our backs” on your commands (‫סור‬, v. 11) is another Deuteronomistic expression (e.g., Deut 17:11, 17, 20), though it goes back to the very beginning of Israel’s covenant relationship with Yahweh (Exod 32:8). Perhaps the verbs build up through v. 5 (and v. 6a): turning the back and closing the ears is the climactic rejection of Yahweh’s word and the crowning insult. Later verses in the confession introduce two further terms. “Trespass” (‫מעל‬, v. 7), a common expression for unfaithfulness to Yahweh in worship or life in Ezekiel and Chronicles, suggests encroachment on what is holy, including on God’s name (by violating an oath).86 “We have overstepped your instruction” (‫עבר‬, v. 11) indicates a contravention of the enactments of the covenant in a broader sense. The wrongdoing Daniel confesses characterizes not only the present generation but past generations (v. 16) (see the discussion of the “fathers/ ancestors” above). It characterizes the people as a whole, and specifically Israel’s national leadership (v. 8). Neither priests nor prophets are mentioned; Daniel’s prayer contrasts with the outlook of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, who saw the fall of Jerusalem as in part issuing from the failure of prophets and priests. 3–23 (g) Being in the wrong in relation to Yahweh, one finds oneself overcome by great trouble (vv. 12, 13, 14), by unprecedented trouble (v. 12). The term for trouble, ‫רעה‬, is a general one, equivalent to English “bad”: it covers what is unpleasant or objectionable, what is distressing or calamitous, what is hurtful or injurious, and what is evil or wicked. In the last senses it applies to Israel’s conduct before Yahweh, while in the earlier senses it applies to the judgment he brings on their conduct (e.g., Jer 36:3, 7, 31; 44:2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 17, 23, 27, 29). The concrete descriptions of this trouble are twofold. First, it involved the desolation of city and sanctuary (‫שמם‬, vv. 17, 18). Desolation suggests the wasting of a place, the devastation and ruin of what is built and the consequent emptying of what is inhabited. That a place should be wasted is a standard threat (Lev 26:22, 31–43; Jer 4:27; Amos 7:9); that the land has been wasted is a standard element in the depiction of Judah’s position (Isa 59:8, 19; Ezek 36:34–36; Zech 7:14; Lam 1:4, 13, 16; 5:18; 2 Chr 36:21) and of the Antiochene period (1 Macc 1:38–39; 3:45; 4:38) (see 8:13 Comment). Second, “trouble” took the form of banishment (‫נדח‬, v. 7) from Judah and Jerusalem to countries near and far away. That phrase is characteristic of Jeremianic prose. There is a pathos about the phrase “all the countries where you have driven them”; it features prominently in promises that Yahweh will restore the people even from all these countries (Jer 16:15; 23:3, 8; 29:14; 86 Milgrom, “The Concept of ma‘al in the Bible and the Ancient Near East”; expanded in Milgrom, Cult and Conscience, 16–35.

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Comment 475 32:37; 46:27; also Deut 31:1, where in this context the exiles are coming to their senses). One of the threats of Israel’s banishment, Jer 29:18, also refers to its bringing abuse (‫ )חרפה‬on Judah—­not to say taunts and curses; cf. also Jer 24:9; 49:13. Daniel, too, speaks of the desolation and emptying of Jerusalem having brought shame and abuse (‫בשת‬, ‫ ;חרפה‬vv. 7, 8, 16). The two terms come together in Isa 54:4 and Jer 51:51 to denote the real or imaginary sense of contumely and contempt caused by the exile (also Isa 30:5; Ps 69:19 [20]). The visible shame to which Daniel refers appears also in Jer 7:19; Ps 44:16; Ezra 9:7; 2 Chr 32:21, while passages such as Ezek 5:14–15; 36:15; Lam 5:1 speak of the abuse brought upon Israel by the fall of Jerusalem (cf. also ‫ברעה גדלה ובחרפה‬ “in great trouble and in reproach” in Neh 1:3, leading in to Nehemiah’s prose confession). Daniel’s prayer is prayed as out of the situation brought about by the fall of Jerusalem. Here, as in other apocalypses, it is not a fictional conceit. It was from that sixth-­century catastrophe that many of the problems of second-­ century Jews stemmed. It was their model experience, as is the case in many of the laments in the Psalter, though the content of their prayer is different (see Form).87 As Daniel’s prayer overtly takes up the experience of the sixth century, it covertly takes up that of the second century, in which that earlier experience continues. Thus far, Daniel’s description of the people’s fate bears comparison with the description in 1 Macc 1:39–40; 2:7–12:88 desolation, mourning, dishonor, banishment. Daniel’s understanding of its cause, however, differs from that in 1 Maccabees. He can picture the cause in impersonal terms: in their affliction a solemn, written curse has its effect (v. 11). A curse (‫ )אלה‬does not denote an imprecation, but a sanction imposed in the name of legal rights or religio-­ ethical demands.89 Such a conditional curse buttresses the commitment to fidelity that two parties make to a treaty. By analogy, the treaty/covenant relationship that Yahweh lays upon Israel is protected by a curse, as is declared in Deut 29 (see esp. vv. 19–21 [18–20]), which backs up the promises and warnings of chs. 27–28. Such a curse “overwhelmed” Israel (‫)נתך‬: the image is of something pouring forth and flowing over, like a torrent of rain or a flooding waterfall (Exod 9:33; Job 3:24). The word is regularly used of God’s wrath overwhelming people, and also—­solemnly—­of the smelting of metal in a furnace, a figure of judgment (e.g., Ezek 22:17–22). To speak of a curse overwhelming Israel is to exclude an explanation of their calamity in terms of chance or of the demonic. It is not, however,

87 Gowan, “The Exile in Jewish Apocalyptic,” 219. 88 Towner, Daniel, 135. 89 J. Scharbert in ThWAT on ‫אלה‬.

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to exclude an explanation in terms of the magical.90 Here, though, Daniel immediately describes the calamity’s origin more personally: in it Yahweh is keeping his spoken undertaking (v. 12). Daniel underlines the personal deliberateness of Yahweh’s deed by speaking of him as watching over the trouble, keeping it ready; it comes as his carefully considered act (v. 14), the determined realization of a predetermined plan. The unusual verb Daniel uses (‫ )שקד‬again recalls Jeremianic prose (Jer 1:11–12; 31:28; 44:27). At the same time, his act expresses his burning fury (‫אף וחמה‬, v. 16). The OT can speak of wrath, too, as an impersonal disaster that comes on people irrespective of what they deserve (e.g., 2 Kgs 3:27; Qoh 5:17), or as a disaster that comes on people as retribution for wrongdoing but without the idea of God’s personal activity being prominent (e.g., Josh 9:20; cf. Ezra 7:23). In each of the passages just quoted, the noun is ‫קצף‬. In Daniel the term ‫ זעם‬is used in a similar way (8:19; 11:36; following Isa 10:25;91 26:20). But ‫ אף‬and ‫חמה‬, the OT’s two most frequent words for anger, appear more consistently with a possessive pronoun or noun, or with another indication in the context that they are essentially personal expressions. Feelings are more integral to the aspect of wrath they convey: wrath as it shows in the appearance of the face (and the snort of the nostrils?) (‫ ;)אף‬wrath as burning rage (‫)חמה‬. 3–23 (h) The antonyms of anger in the OT are words such as ‫“ רחמים‬compassion” and ‫“ חסד‬commitment.”92 And the God of Israel has already been described in this prayer as the God of compassion and commitment. It is on this basis that Daniel intercedes with him on Israel’s behalf. His intercession involves turning to God (v. 3). In 6:10 [11] Daniel prayed in a room facing Jerusalem, and here his turning to the Lord will have a similar implication.93 At the same time, turning (‫ואתנה את פני‬, “I set my face”) implies a deliberate, purposeful act expressive of determination in connection with a crisis or challenge: cf. 2 Chr 20:3; also Gen 31:21; and 2 Kgs 12:17 [18] with Luke 9:51; contrast Dan 10:15. The deliberateness of Daniel’s action is underlined by his describing it as “laying down” supplications before Yahweh (‫הפיל‬, “cause them to fall”; v. 20). Behind this expression there lies the practice of causing oneself to fall before God. “Supplications” (‫תחנונים‬, vv. 3, 20, 23) are prayers in which one casts oneself on grace (‫ )חן‬and pleads on that basis. Daniel’s prayer for Jerusalem’s restoration begins as a confession (see also v. 20). The verb ‫ ]הת[ידה‬covers confessing both the great things God has done (2:23; 6:10 [11]) and the wrong things we have done. In either case, the confession characteristically takes the form of pure statement: either the declaration of God’s acts (e.g., Ps 40) or the declaration of our acts (as here).

90 91 92 93

Again cf. Scharbert in ThWAT on ‫אלה‬. Cf. Lester, Daniel Evokes Isaiah, 73–79. See E. Johnson in ThWAT on ‫אנף‬. Layton, “Biblical Hebrew ‘To Set the Face,’” 171–72.

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Comment 477 In either case, expressions such as “we thank you” or “we are sorry” have less prominence than is the case with Christian worship. The confession lies in the statements themselves.94 Further, in the case of confessing sin, this act also is a confession of the justice of God—­an act of praise at the justice of his judgment (see Form). Such turning to God is a matter of words spoken out loud (vv. 20, 21). But words spoken out are accompanied by deeds acted out (v. 3); the actions add to the seriousness and earnestness expressed by the prayer. Fasting, sackcloth, and ash are indications of grief and self-­abasement in the context of calamity or loss experienced or threatened, or of wrongdoing committed (Isa 58:5; Jonah 3:5–9; Neh 9:1; Esth 4:1–4). Fasting involved abstaining from (regular) food during the day (Judg 20:26; 1 Sam 14:24; 2 Sam 1:12; 3:31–35; 12:15–23; Jer 16:7; Ezek 24:17; fasting for the whole of twenty-­four hours is less usual—­ see Lev 23:32; Esth 4:16). Sackcloth was dark, rough, cheap material worn in contrast to the more presentable clothing in which a respectable person would normally wish to appear in public (1 Kgs 20:31–32; 2 Kgs 19:1–2). The reference to ash denotes putting ashes (or dirt) on the head or on the head and body, or lying or sitting in a pile of ash (Josh 7:6; 1 Sam 4:12; 2 Sam 1:2; 13:19). Shock, loss, and grief naturally express themselves in a loss of interest over food and one’s appearance and in an inner gloominess that expresses itself in gloominess of appearance. Such practices give formal, stylized, ritual expression to feelings people have or purport to have. Fasting also features in the context of a special meeting with God or of seeking a meeting with God or of a revelation from him. It then suggests abandoning regular human preoccupations for the sake of concentration on seeking God or being with God (Exod 34:28; 1 Kgs 19:8; 2 Esd 6:31; 2 Bar. 20.5–6; 47.2; Matt 4:1–2; Acts 13:2–3). In the apocalypses, the two contexts or significances of fasting coalesce. The seers behave as people who are grieving and abasing themselves; the background of many apocalypses, notionally or actually, in one of the falls of Jerusalem is relevant here. The seers are also people who hope for and receive revelations from God after a period of such self-­abasement (2 Esd 5:13, 20; 6:35; 2 Bar. 5.7; 9.2; 12.5).95 Either context or significance could be appropriate to Dan 9. Daniel’s mourning belongs in the context of his asking God, “When are you going to restore Jerusalem?” The question might represent a seer’s plea for information regarding God’s purpose or a suppliant’s plea for action to implement that purpose. Reading it in light of the apocalypses (and of v. 22, also 10:2) would suggest the former, whereas reading it in light of other references in the OT (and of vv. 1–2) would suggest the latter.

94 On ‫ידה‬, see Westermann, Das Loben Gottes in den Psalmen, 20–24 (ET 25–30). 95 Smith-Christopher also notes that fasting could be part of preparation for war (cf. 1 Macc 3:44–46): it is “associated with a communal call on God to act when the odds seem overwhelming.” It as “an act of spiritual warfare” (“Daniel,” 126).

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The two need not be dissociated. Verses 1–2 do not directly portray Daniel as in need of revelation; he understands the revelation and seeks its fulfillment. But the second-­century author and audience is in need of revelation, and its puzzledness also underlies vv. 1–2. The expression of grief and self-­abasement is both a plea for divine revelation and a plea for divine action. The prayer of confession, then, is an expression of self-­abasement before God that is appropriate to someone who longs for God to reveal and implement his purpose for his people. It has been said that the confession is key to an explanation of Daniel’s “degenerative conception of history.”96 But like the prayers of confession at the beginning of some church services, it may simply indicate a sense that sin is always an obstacle between humanity and God and needs to be confessed and forgiven before we can expect God to speak or act. It is a model act of repentance for people who want to seek God.97 The prayer from the 1549 English Book of Common Prayer recalls it: “We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy.”98 Words from Daniel’s prayer thus feature in the confessions during the evening service on Yom Kippur.99 One might see the prayer as a typical act of Second Temple piety whose confession is not to be related to an awareness of a link between particular people’s sin and a particular experience of trouble. The prayer need not carry the implication that it is Jewish sin that explains Jewish suffering in the second century.100 Further, while such a prayer is a necessary undertaking on the part of someone who seeks for God to speak and act, God’s response is not directly a response to this confession—­a s may be hinted at by the fact that Gabriel was commissioned at the beginning of the prayer, not after its end. 3–23 (i) The content of Daniel’s supplication is expressed in vv. 16–19, most directly and movingly in v. 19, the close and climax of the prayer. “There is hardly another prayer in scripture so urgent.”101 It asks first that God may “listen” (‫)שמעה‬. That note appears already in v. 17, and then in v. 18 (“give ear and listen”), while v. 19 adds a plea to “hear” (‫)הקשיבה‬. It is the standard first element in the actual prayer in a protest psalm.102 Such a plea arises out of a context where God has been ignoring his people’s plight and their prayer. It pleads first that he should give attention. 96 Boccaccini, Middle Judaism, 141. 97 Cf. Wilke, “Daniel 9.” 98 Cf. Wright, Hearing the Message of Daniel, 202–3. 99 See Form of Prayers for the Day of Atonement, 31–68; cf. Sumner, “Daniel,” 187. 100 Cf. Towner, “Retributional Theology in the Apocalyptic Setting.” 101 Lederach, Daniel, 211. 102 See Westermann, Das Loben Gottes in den Psalmen, 40, 49, 50 (ET 54, 67, 69).

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Comment 479 The other regular feature of the prayer in a protest psalm is the appeal to God to act, to deliver the petitioner(s) and if necessary to punish their oppressors. Here, Daniel’s closing plea asks that God may “pardon” his people (‫ ;סלחה‬cf. v. 9). Perhaps this plea takes the place of an appeal to punish the oppressors. The unjustly afflicted seek justice; the justly afflicted seek pardon. “The Israel which acknowledges its God’s justice even when disaster comes to it can ask for his mercy. Only those who know that they are struck down as guilty before God, only they can appeal to God’s mercy.”103 The same idea lies behind the plea for God’s burning fury to turn away from the city (‫שוב‬, v. 16). Like the use of this verb to refer to turning away from wrongdoing (v. 13), its use to denote God’s wrath turning away from people is frequent in Jeremianic prose (Jer 2:35; 18:20; 23:20; 30:24; cf. Isa 12:1; Hos 14:4 [5]; Prov 29:8). It is used elsewhere of other figures who caused God’s wrath to turn away (Num 25:11; Ps 106:23; 2 Chr 12:12; 29:10; 30:8), like Daniel and Jeremiah (for turning away human wrath, see Gen 27:44–45; Prov 15:1). The expression pictures anger as a violent, dynamic force like a fierce wind that would destroy all in its path. It cannot be instantly calmed once generated; it has to spend itself. Someone in its path must bear its force or must hope it may veer and dissipate itself harmlessly elsewhere. To put the point more positively, Daniel asks that God’s face may shine on the sanctuary (‫האר פניך‬, v. 17). He takes up one element in the Aaronic blessing (Num 6:25), which becomes a prayer in Psalms (31:16 [17]; 67:1 [2]; 80:3, 7, 19 [4, 8, 20]; 119:135; cf. 4:6 [7]; 118:27). The metaphor presupposes that a person’s happiness shows in the brightness of his or her face (cf. 1 Sam 14:27, 29), then that this same brightness directed towards other people is an indication of regard and favor (cf. Job 29:24; Prov 16:15). In such passages, the expression is regularly used in association with words such as save, bless, and redeem, the verbs characteristic of a psalmic plea for God to act. Thus Daniel, too, in his final plea bids God act and not delay (‫)עשה אל תאחר‬. Such an appeal to God not to delay acting closes off the pleas in Pss 40:17 [18]; 70:5 [6]. It recalls the “how long . . . ?” in the lament itself (Pss 6:3 [4]; 13:1–2 [2–3]; 74:10; 79:5; 80:4; 89:46; 90:13) and the positive plea to hurry to help (e.g., 22:19 [20] 38:22 [23]; 40:13 [14]; 70:1, 5 [2, 6]; 71:12). Each verse in the plea offers some motivation for God to hear, forgive, and act. It would be in keeping with his acts in the past, in rescuing his people from oppression in Egypt (vv. 15–16) (cf. Isa 63:7–64:12; Jer 32:16–25; Pss 80; 106; and the prose confessions in Neh 9). Daniel appeals to the saving act that led to Yahweh’s covenant relationship with Israel and always underlay it, an aspect of the covenant that offered promise for the future rather than merely explaining the trouble of the present. He urges God to open his eyes and look at the desolate state of people, city, and sanctuary (see [g] above). It is an appeal to 103 Plöger, Daniel, on the passage.

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his compassion, but also to his honor. In rescuing his people from Egypt, he made a name for himself as a God of compassion who did the right thing by that afflicted people (vv. 15, 16, 18). People, city, and sanctuary bear Yahweh’s name. Calling something by your name (see n. 18.c) indicates that you own it (2 Sam 12:28; Isa 63:19; 65:1; Amos 9:12). The people’s desolation brings discredit on God; for his own sake, he should act (vv. 17, 18, 19). “To the degree that he has committed himself to preserving the safety of those things which are named by his name (identified with him, blessed in his name and with his sanction), to that extent the God of Israel has limited and compromised his own freedom to act in the future.”104 It is on that note that the prayer closes. 3–23 (j) The OT assumes that prayers meet responses. OT narratives support this assumption (e.g., Josh 7:7–15; 2 Chr 20:1–30); passages within the prophets suggest the same dynamic (e.g., Jer 3:21–4:2; Hos 14:1–8 [2–9]; cf. the promise of Isa 58:9), and some protests in the Psalter preserve responses (Pss 12; 60). Others show a marked change of mood reflecting an assurance that God has heard and granted the prayer, which might indicate that a priest or prophet responded to the plea (Pss 6; 13; 22; 28). The suppliant of course hoped that this response would be positive but could not take it for granted (e.g., Jer 14:1–15:9).105 Daniel’s prayer receives the expected response (v. 21), though it comes via a heavenly being rather than via an earthly one. It comes at the time of the evening offering, the special hour for prayer (cf. Ezra 9:5, the introduction to Ezra’s prose confession). In Dan 9 the note could have special point, because the offerings may not have been regularly made during the Babylonian period, and they were certainly suspended by Antiochus (cf. 8:11; 11:31; 1 Macc 1:45). The relationship between God and Israel still holds, notwithstanding the lack of offerings; compare the promise of Ezek 11:16 for the people exiled from the temple. “Prayer can still be acceptable even when Antiochus had proscribed certain rites and polluted the temple.”106 God behaves as though the offerings are still being made. The cosmic temporal order, reflected in the rhythm of the hours of prayer, stands despite the vicissitudes of history.107 Gabriel describes the message as one that will bring insight and understanding to Daniel (v. 22). He does not speak of giving Daniel an interpretation of Jeremiah’s words from which the chapter began but of bringing a new “revelation” (v. 23).108 But the revelation will take the form of a gloss on that scriptural passage, a gloss that will explain why Jeremiah’s promise was not fulfilled. The image of a message “coming out” or issuing (‫ )יצא‬has its background in everyday life, where it is used of the deliberate proclamation 104 Towner, Daniel, 139. 105 See Westermann, Das Loben Gottes in den Psalmen. 106 Cf. Pace, Daniel, 297. 107 Lebram, “The Piety of the Jewish Apocalyptists,” 187. 108 Cf. Bergsma, “The Persian Period as Penitential Era.”

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Comment 481 of significant words (Num 30:2 [3]; Josh 6:10; Judg 11:36; Jer 44:17), especially by the king (Esth 1:19; 7:8; cf. ‫ נפק‬in Dan 2:13). The image is naturally applied to God’s declaration of his will and intention (Isa 2:3; 45:23; 48:3; 51:4; 55:11; Ezek 33:30). The message issues authoritatively from God himself, like the original word of prophecy. It comes to Daniel as a person “held in high regard” (‫)חמודות‬. Like words such as ‫“ אהב‬love,” ‫ חמד‬suggests both a feeling and an attitude that expresses itself in being drawn toward the object of love and in committing oneself to it (Isa 53:2; Pss 19:10 [11]; 68:16 [17]).109 Daniel is one to whom God is committed; he has indeed prayed to Yahweh as persona grata. Or might the genitive be subjective: Daniel is one who loves well?110 In keeping with the possibility that self-­abasement ([h] above) may suggest both a plea for divine revelation and a plea for divine action, the response to Daniel’s prayer involves both revelation and a promise of action. It would offer little good news to a sixth-­century context; the revelation it offers to the second-­century context mostly comprises a way of understanding what God has been doing over the preceding four centuries, like the other revelations in chs. 7–12. It thus takes the overt form of a revelation to the seer set in the sixth century, but it covertly promises action on behalf of the people praying this prayer in the second century. Like the exiles in that period in which Daniel’s prayer is set, they could be inclined to think that God was indifferent to his people’s cries in their affliction (Isa 40:27; 49:14; cf. 58:3). The point expressed in loving hyperbole in Isa 65:24 (cf. 65:1), that Yahweh responds to his people’s prayer before it is begun, let alone finished, here becomes prosaic narrative reality.111 The implication is not that the prayer was unnecessary or unheard but that God is eager to respond to his servants when they come to him on behalf of his people in need. The picture of God “responding” before Daniel actually prays may also safeguard God’s sovereignty, a concern that underlay some hesitation over the whole idea of intercession in Judaism,112 as it can underlie Christian hesitation over the idea that prayer leads to God doing things that God would not otherwise have done. 24–27 “Seventy sevens” implies “seventy times seven years,” as the original “seventy” of Jeremiah was explicitly a period of seventy years (v. 2). The seventy years of punishment due according to Jer 25:11/29:10 is being exacted sevenfold in accordance with Lev 26 (see Form). This passage has been variously treated, and so distracted, and almost torn to pieces by the various opinions of interpreters, that it might be considered nearly useless on account of its obscurity. But, in the assurance

109 110 111 112

BDB; cf. Herrmann, “Das zehnte Gebot.” Cf. Wiesel, “Daniel,” 110. Cf. Yephet, Daniel, 49; Saadia, Daniel, 595. Le Déaut, “Aspects de l’intercession dans le Judaïsme ancient,” 51–55.

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that no prediction is really in vain, we may hope to understand this prophecy, provided only we are attentive and teachable according to the angel’s admonition, and the Prophet’s example. I do not usually refer to conflicting opinions, because I take no pleasure in refuting them, and the simple method which I adopt pleases me best, namely, to expound what I think delivered by the Spirit of God. But I cannot escape the necessity of confuting various views of the present passage.113

Explicitly or implicitly (and not wrongly), ancient and modern interpreters have commonly understood vv. 24–27 by beginning from the end of the seventy sevens and working backwards: “let the 490 years be calculated in reverse.”114 The oldest surviving understandings of the passage illustrate the point. The description in 1 Macc 1:54 of Antiochus’s constructing a desolating abomination on the temple altar is “the earliest interpretation of the phrase in Daniel.”115 OG’s version of the opening of v. 26 presupposes a reference to the Antiochene crisis that had taken place a few years previously (see n. 26.a). In general, indeed, OG’s idiosyncrasies in vv. 24–27 partly reflect an attempt “to shape the wording to correspond as closely as possible with recent events as the translator(s) understood them.”116 Naturally enough, a parallel instinct to relate the passage to their own times subsequently encouraged Jewish and Christian interpretation not to relate the passage to the Antiochene period, until the calculations of the innovative seventeenth-­century chronographer John Marsham (subsequent to his entanglement in the English Civil War with its rather different involvement with Daniel).117 Marsham’s work was then taken up by the philosopher Anthony Collins as an aspect of his defense of a more historical approach to the Scriptures.118 Taking the Antiochene crisis as the starting point for understanding Gabriel’s message fits the other visions’ focus on this crisis. At the same time, OG shows signs of recognizing that not everything promised in vv. 24–27 has yet happened, and “it is evident from 1 Maccabees—­not to mention other Second Temple literature—­that not all prophecy or even the six objectives of Dan 9:24 reached complete realisation at the resolution of the Antiochene crisis. The author of 1 Maccabees knew that the death of Antiochus IV and the victory of the Maccabees did not mark the full accomplishment of the six objectives of the seventy sevens.” 119 113 Calvin, Daniel 2:195–96. 114 Theodoret, Daniel, 244–45. 115 Collins, Daniel, 357. 116 Adler, in VanderKam and Adler, 206; Spangenberg, “The Septuagint Translation of Daniel 9.” 117 See his Chronicus canon aegyptiacus, ebraicus, graecus, 610–19; cf. Collins, Daniel, 356. 118 See The Scheme of Literal Prophecy Considered, 173–200. Cf. Bickerman, Four Strange Books, 132–33. 119 Ulrich, “How Early Judaism Read Daniel 9:24–27,” 1069.

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Comment 483 Ironically, in their relationship to subsequent events there is a parallel between this prophecy in Daniel and the Jeremiah prophecies that form its starting point. It is the regular relationship between prophecy and event in both Testaments. A prophet declares that God is about to do something that constitutes the “end,” the achievement of God’s ultimate purpose. Subsequently, something happens that constitutes a confirmation of the prophet’s word. An end comes upon Samaria or Jerusalem, confirming the words of Amos or Jeremiah; an end to desolation comes to Judah, confirming promises in Jeremiah or Isa 40–55. But neither end is the end, in the bad sense or the good sense. The threats and promises then stand as warnings and encouragements in light of which the people of God need to live. As Dan 9 reapplies Jeremiah’s promises to the second century, Jews and Christians came to reapply Dan 9 to events at the end of the Second Temple period. To put it the other way, they too calculated the 490 years in reverse, but they took events in the first century AD as their starting point for understanding the significance of Dan 9 for themselves. Jewish interpreters began from the Roman assault on Jerusalem in the 60s and understood this event in light of Dan 9.120 The NT does not refer to the seventy sevens in this connection; Luke 1–2 applies v. 24 in a different way.121 Nor does Justin Martyr in his Apology refer to the passage. “It was only in the late second-­century AD that Christian writers began to use this part of Daniel to prove that Jesus was the one to fit the chronology,”122 and there are only passing references in Christian writers before Hippolytus.123 As far as we know, Julius Africanus in the third century was the first to work out an approach to an interpretation of vv. 24–27 that began from Jesus’s life and/or death, on the basis that he brought about the achievements described there. Jerome subsequently notes various ways of doing so that are represented by Eusebius, Hippolytus, Apollinaris, and Tertullian, and the different views they espouse continue to be maintained in the twenty-­f irst century.124 Both for Jews and for Christians, it would be evident that once more not everything promised in the passage had been achieved and that its fulfillment remains an object of hope. It is not surprising that Jews and Christians disagree over the precise 120 See e.g., Rashi and Ibn Ezra in ‫ מקראות גדולות‬on vv 24–27; cf. Grabbe, “The Seventy Weeks Prophecy (Daniel 9:24–27) in Early Jewish Interpretation”; see also Chazan’s study of medieval Jewish exegesis, “Daniel 9:24–27: Exegesis and Polemics.” 121 See the paragraphs on “Daniel in the NT” in the Introduction to this commentary. 122 Dunn, “Tertullian and Daniel 9:24–27,” 336–37. 123 Cf. Tanner, “Is Daniel’s Seventy Weeks Prophecy Messianic?” 198. 124 See Jerome, Daniel, 95–110; on the patristic writers, Dunn, “Probabimus venisse eum iam” and “Tertullian and Daniel 9:24–27”: over the past century (e.g.) Anderson, Prince; Hoehner, “Daniel’s Seventy Weeks and NT Chronology”; McFall, “Do the Sixty-Nine Weeks of Daniel Date the Messianic Mission of Nehemiah or Jesus?” Kalafian, The Prophecy of the Seventy Weeks of the Book of Daniel; Lurie, “A New Interpretation of Daniel’s ‘Sevens’ and the Chronology of the Seventy ‘Sevens’”; Ouro, “Daniel 9:27a”; Shea, “When Did the Seventy Weeks of Daniel 9:24 Begin?”

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first-­century AD starting point for a retrospective interpretation of Gabriel’s message. It might be more surprising that interpreters such as Julius, Eusebius, Hippolytus, Apollinaris, and Tertullian and their equivalents in the twenty-­ first century,125 who are in broad agreement over an interpretive starting point, disagree over whether (e.g.) to work back from Jesus’s birth or death, and/or over whether to work back to Artaxerxes, Darius, or Cyrus, and/or over how many days to assume that there are in a year, and and/or over where one locates the final seven years. Their differences of understanding reflect some inevitable arbitrariness over the starting point, the finishing point, and the method of calculation. The problem here is the assumption that first Jeremiah and then Gabriel offer chronological information. Jerome is again illuminating. As well as declining to offer an opinion concerning the question on which the other theologians differ, he notes that Julius’s contemporary, Clement of Alexandria, “regards the number of years as a matter of slight consequence,” though this conviction does not hold Clement back from suggesting a calculation.126 There are ways of making Gabriel’s chronology work whether one starts from the 160s or from Jesus in such a way that the seventy sevens extend from some point in the sixth century to the second century BC or to some point in the first century AD (then maybe with a 2000-year extension on the basis of “prophetic postponement).127 Yet the very variety in the approaches raises questions about the venture and may seem to suggest the conclusion that Dan 9 misestimates the time period and reflects “wrongheaded arithmetical calculations.”128 But a fundamental objection to attempts either to vindicate and build on Daniel’s figures or to critique them is that both attempts are mistaken in taking the 490 years to offer chronological information. Writers of the Hellenistic period were not uninterested in or incapable of discovering the real chronology of preceding centuries.129 Yet the variety of ways of understanding the data in Dan 9 raises the question whether these data, at least, involve not chronology but chronography. Chronography is a stylized scheme of history that is used to interpret historical data, rather than an understanding that arises from the data. It is comparable to cosmology, arithmology, and genealogy as these appear in writings such as the OT.130 A general consideration 125 See the previous note. 126 Jerome, Daniel, 105. 127 See E.g., Behrmann, Das Buch Daniel, on the passage; more recently Athas, “In Search of the Seventy ‘Weeks’ of Daniel 9”; Price, “Prophetic Postponement in Daniel 9 and Other Texts.” Pierce (“Spiritual Failure, Postponement, and Daniel 9” rather suggests a link with the Hasmonean kings. Segal (Dreams, Riddles, and Visions, ch. 6) takes the first seven to begin rather than end with Cyrus. 128 Porteous, Daniel, on the passage; cf. Driver’s comment that some of the figures are “patently incorrect” (“Sacred Numbers and Round Figures,” 65). 129 Beckwith, “Daniel 9 and the Date of Messiah’s Coming.” 130 Grabbe, “Chronography in Hellenistic Jewish Historiography,” 43–44; Young (Daniel, on the passage) describes it as symbol.

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Comment 485 of OT dates supports the view that a figure such as 490 years is not designed to offer chronological information. The books of Kings offer precise figures regarding how long kings reigned (28 years, 41 years, etc.), and while these figures raise detailed problems, they do seek to convey chronological information. In contrast, Judges speaks of periods of forty years of oppression, peace, or some other experience, which do not look like chronological markers of that precise kind. First Kings itself says that the building of the temple began 480 years (twelve times forty years) after the exodus (6:1), and this date, too, does not have the appearance of a chronological note, while elsewhere 490 also seems to have been used as a principle for periodizing history (see Form). Daniel 9 is to be related to these ways of speaking. It begins from Jeremiah’s “seventy years,” which was hardly a chronological calculation but a term denoting a long but finite period such as a human lifetime that extends beyond the years that the hearers will see and combines that figure with the principle of sevenfold punishment from Lev 26. None of this background suggests that either the total period of 490 years or its subdivisions are to be expected necessarily to correspond numerically to chronological periods. The attempt to interpret as chronology figures that are not amenable to any consistently literal interpretation is misguided. With unconscious irony, Jerome further comments that in connection with Gabriel’s numbers Origen “had no leeway for allegorical interpretation . . . but was restricted to matters of historical fact.”131 Where is Origen with his symbolic interpretation when you need him?—­because the numbers are “symbolical,” and “it is not warrantable to seek to discover the precise lengths of the sevens.”132 It was the apparent specificity of the numbers, the fact that the exile did last seventy years, and the human desire for insight about the future that came to draw interpreters into treating them as providing such information.133 24 Gabriel declares that by the time the seventy sevens end, six things will have been achieved for the people and the sacred city; his concern is Israel and Jerusalem, not the world as a whole. The three negatives in v. 24 are near-­ synonyms: wickedness is characterized as rebellion, failure, and waywardness (‫פשע‬, though with the article; ‫חטאת‬, though plural in K; and ‫)עון‬. Daniel’s prayer has used such terms to describe Israel’s wickedness: see Comment (f) on vv. 3–23. In speaking of the “wiping away” of waywardness, v. 24 uses the key sacramental verb ‫כפר‬. It presupposes that cleansing is God’s own act of salvation in history rather than a human sacramental act.134 131 Jerome, Daniel, 105. 132 Young, The Messianic Prophecies of Daniel, 56. Cf. e.g., Flesher, “Daniel 9:24–27 and the Tribulation,” 586; Hess, “The Seventy Sevens of Daniel 9”; Haydon, “The ‘Seventy Sevens’ (Daniel 9:24) in Light of Heptadic Themes in Qumran”; Lucas, “A Statue, a Fiery Furnace and a Dismal Swamp” 296–99. 133 See e.g., Koch, “Die Bedeuting der Apokalyptik” in Koch, Die Reiche der Welt, 16–45; Deines, “How Long? God’s Revealed Schedule for Salvation and the Outbreak of the Bar Kokhba Revolt.” 134 Janowski, Söhne als Heilsgeschehen, 115–37.

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One might thus understand the message as a response to Daniel’s confession of Israel’s sin, promising cleansing and relief from the afflictions that have come as sin’s punishment; it would then parallel Isa 40:1–2 in the Babylonian period.135 Yet several considerations point against this view. There is no indication in the prayer or the message that the whole Second Temple period is seen as a period of wickedness. The prayer refers more explicitly to the unfaithfulness of the monarchic period. In the message, the last “seven” is characterized by wickedness, wrath, and desolation, but Daniel has not so far pictured the afflictions of the second century as punishment for the Jews’ wickedness. Antiochus is the desolater rather than the rod of Yahweh’s anger,136 and the expression “the rebellion” recalls 8:12–14, 23,137 where the offending acts of Antiochus have at least part of the focus. Like Job 38–41, Gabriel’s message does not relate very directly to what precedes; it is designed to give a new perspective on issues raised so far.138 The promises in vv. 24–27 emerge from God’s sovereign will; they are not a response to Israel’s sin or to Daniel’s confession. Daniel will subsequently make explicit that there is a distinction between faithfulness and wickedness that runs within Israel itself (see 11:30–35; 12:10), and Dan 9 might presuppose this distinction; the innocent identify with the wicked, and God responds to their prayer.139 But the chapter is allusive over the question, as ch. 7 is allusive over the identity of the humanlike figure. Perhaps its allusiveness is to be resolved by later chapters, as that of ch. 7 may be. Or perhaps, like other instances of ambiguity in the OT, it functions to set questions before the hearers: to drive us to ask what relationship between calamity, confession, and promise obtains between us and God. Or perhaps the ambiguity over whether the wrong referred to is Antiochus’s or Israel’s indicates that the agency or subject of this wrong is not in focus. It is the objective result in the sacrilege of the sanctuary that is Gabriel’s concern. In v. 24, three positives correspond to the three negatives. ‫“ צדק‬vindication” recalls the prayer’s use of ‫צדיק‬/‫“( צדקה‬right,” vv. 7, 14, 16, 18), which denoted the idea that Yahweh was in the right over against Israel. “Bringing in ‫ ”צדק‬thus suggests causing right to be acknowledged. But it is also natural to connect this “lasting vindication” with the vindication of the sanctuary in 8:12–14. It is one facet of the close parallelism between this oracle and the vision in ch. 8. It is less natural to take ‫ צדק‬in a Christian theological sense, to refer to the justification of sinners,140 or in the broader OT sense instanced 135 So Anderson, Signs and Wonders, on the passage; Steck, “Weltgeschehen und Gottesvolk im Buche Daniel,” 65–75. 136 Collins, Daniel with an Introduction to Apocalyptic Literature, 94–95. 137 Cf. Charles, Daniel, on the passage. 138 Jones, “The Prayer in Daniel ix,” 493. 139 Cf. Heard’s study of the perspectives of 2 Maccabees and T. Moses, “The Maccabean Martyrs’ Contribution to Holy War,” 293–308. 140 Against Young, The Prophecy of Daniel, on the passage.

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Comment 487 in Isa 45:8, to refer to Israel’s deliverance,141 or in the Qumran sense, to refer to a personified divine attribute.142 Reference to the sealing of a prophet’s vision recalls 8:26 (for the verb, cf. Dan 12:4, 9; also 6:17 [18]). Yet it is Jeremiah, not Daniel, whom ch. 9 describes as a prophet (v. 2). The phrase has been taken to suggest that prophecy is to be sealed up and thus silent through this period,143 but this inference is a lot to read out of the phrase. Sealing elsewhere suggests authenticating (1 Kgs 21:8), which fits the present context: the promise is that Jeremiah’s prophecy will be fulfilled and thus confirmed. The anointing of a most sacred place (‫קדש קדשים‬: see n. 24.j–­j) again recalls the treading down and vindication of the sacred place (‫ )קדש‬in 8:13– 14. The meeting tent, the altar, and associated objects had been anointed to consecrate them at the beginning (Exod 30:26–29; 40:9–11; cf. also 29:36–37, where ‫כפר‬, ‫משח‬, and ‫ קדש קדושים‬appear together).144 They are now anointed to reconsecrate them after their defiling (cf. the account in 1 Macc 4:36–59).145 A coherent understanding of v. 24 thus emerges if we take it as a restatement of the promises in ch. 8. Like that vision, it looks forward from the time of Daniel to the Antiochene crisis and promises God’s restoration. 25 The opening of v. 25 (“you must understand and perceive”) repeats the contents of v. 23b (“heed the word,” “give heed to the revelation”). The resumptive exhortation marks v. 25 as a new beginning. Verses 25–27 subdivide the seventy sevens into 7, 62, and 1; vv. 26–27 focus on the last. Chronologically, v. 24 describes what will have been achieved by the end of vv. 25–27; within vv. 25–27, matters are treated in chronological order.146 While v. 23 has already spoken of a “word” coming from Yahweh’s mouth, v. 25 goes on to refer to a different “word,” or to one aspect of that word. The “word” to which v. 23 referred constitutes vv. 24–27 as a whole. Gabriel now speaks of a word of command, a commission to build a restored Jerusalem. The “coming forth of a word” again suggests the image of a solemn royal proclamation, and thus here a solemn proclamation by Yahweh. “From the coming forth of a word to build a restored Jerusalem to an anointed, a leader” lasts seven sevens. While these seven sevens must come at the beginning of the period from the Babylonian period to Antiochus, we cannot certainly identify either their beginning or their end. By the proclamation to restore Jerusalem, Gabriel may have meant Jeremiah’s prophecy referred to in v. 2 (605 in the 141 Against Delcor, Daniel, on the passage. 142 Against Baumgarten, “The Heavenly Tribunal and the Personification of S· edeq in Jewish Apocalyptic,” 222–23. 143 So Keil, Biblischer Kommentar, on the passage. 144 Doukhan, “The Seventy Weeks of Daniel 9,” 11–12. 145 Avalos (“Daniel 9:24–25 and Mesopotamian Temple Rededications”) notes Mesopotamian parallels. 146 Against Payne, “The Goal of Daniel’s Seventy Weeks”; Doukhan, “The Seventy Weeks of Daniel 9,” 12–15.

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case of 25:12; 597 in the case of 29:10); or his prophecies recorded in connection with the fall of Jerusalem in 587 (30:18–22; 31:38–40); or Gabriel’s own words to Daniel (?539); or the decree of Cyrus in 539 (Isa 45:1; Ezra 1:1–4; seen as a rebuilding of the city, not just of temple, in 4:12–16); or the decree of Darius in 521 (Ezra 6:1–12; also seen as a rebuilding of the city in anticipation in 4:21); or the decree of Artaxerxes in 458 (Ezra 7:12–26); or the warrant given to Nehemiah in 445 (Neh 1).147 “To restore and build” is a rich and suggestive phrase that combines reference to the restoring of the community and the rebuilding of the city.148 It would be wooden to suggest it could only denote one or another of the events envisaged by these passages, all of which were aspects of the restoration of Zion. “Square and moat” does make clear that the restoration Gabriel speaks of involves the city’s material renewal; the phrase perhaps refers to the internal layout of the city and its external defenses.149 “An anointed, a leader” (‫ )משיח נגיד‬could conceivably denote a non-­Israelite ruler: the first term refers to Cyrus in Isa 45:1, the second to the ruler of Tyre in Ezek 28:2. But both words are more characteristically used of Israelite leaders, and there is something out of the ordinary about the exceptions in Isa 45:1; Ezek 28:2.150 A non-­Israelite ruler would more naturally be referred to here as a ‫מלך‬, a king, as commonly in Daniel. In the absence of indication to the contrary, then, “an anointed, a leader,” is more likely an Israelite figure, a ruler (e.g., 1 Sam 2:10, 35; 9:16; 10:1) or a (high) priest (e.g., Lev 4:3; 2 Macc 1:10; Jer 20:1; Neh 11:11; cf. Dan 9:26; 11:22). If the seventy sevens commence about the time when the Babylonian oppression begins, and the anointed leader appears after the first seven sevens, then the term likely refers either to Zerubbabel or Joshua, ‫“ בני היצהר‬sons of oil” according to Zech 4:14. Some of the periods that might be denoted as seven sevens come near to forty-­nine calendar years, but the principles about chronography and chronology dissuade us from inferring that the period nearest forty-­nine calendar years must be the one referred to. Seven sevens do constitute one jubilee, but jubilee themes do not explicitly feature in vv. 24–27 (see Form). 26 The sixty-­two sevens that follow are characterized by or end in the situation of oppression that especially concerns the seer and his audience, the oppression whose termination v. 24 promised. “The pressure of the times” (‫ )צוק העתים‬contrasts with “the stability of your times” (‫ )אמונת עתיך‬promised in Isa 33:6. Talk of devastation, battle, and desolation reflects the seriousness of the trouble brought to people, city, and temple by the combined force of heathen

147 See Poythress, “Hermeneutical Factors in Determining the Beginning of the Seventy Weeks.” 148 Lacocque, Daniel, on the passage. 149 So Hartman/Di Lella, Daniel, on the passage. 150 See Westermann, Das Buch Jesaja: Kap. 40–66, and Zimmerli, Ezechiel, on the passages.

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Comment 489 ruler(s) and usurper priest(s), described at length in 1 Macc 1–4 and 2 Macc 4–5. They are also reflected in the early Maccabean messianic oracle Sib. Or. 3.265–94; it refers overtly to events of the Babylonian period, including the destruction of the temple, but covertly to the Antiochene crisis.151 The sufferings of this crisis are not to be minimized, as they are by writers who seek to dissociate Dan 9:24–27 from the second century.152 At the same time, one may grant that the terms used to describe these troubles are theologically freighted. The crisis is an anticipatory embodiment of the last great battle and also a historical embodiment of the first great battle between the forces of chaos and the forces of order (cf. Ezek 38–39 and 1QM).153 Thus after the seven plus sixty-­two sevens “an anointed is to be cut off” (‫)יכרת משיח‬. It is impossible to argue that this “anointed” must be the same “anointed” as in v. 25154 or that he must be a different one;155 likewise the suggestion that vv. 24–27 refer to the expectation of two Messiahs known from other Jewish writings156 builds too much on an allusive text. Nouns in Daniel’s visions are commonly anarthrous (e.g., a vision, a prophet, a most sacred place [v. 24]; a word, an anointed, a leader, a square, a moat [v. 25]; an anointed, a leader, a people [v. 26]; a covenant, a wing, an abomination, a conclusion, a desolate one [v. 27]). The effect is to contribute to the allusiveness appropriate to a vision, which cannot be resolved from within ch. 9 itself. In the context of the Antiochene crisis, this “anointed” will be the high priest Onias III, also referred to as “a covenant leader” in 11:22. On the accession of Antiochus in 175, Onias was displaced as high priest by his brother Jason. In 172 Jason in turn was displaced by Menelaus, brother of another of Onias’s opponents, and if we may believe 2 Macc 4, in 171 Menelaus had Onias killed.157 Being “cut off” could signify displacement or disappearance or death.158 Losing city and sanctuary sounds like a reference to his displacement and withdrawal for safety to Daphne, near Antioch (2 Macc 4:33); but his death in 171 would mark the beginning of the seven years of trouble. Presumably the “leader to come” (‫ )נגיד הבא‬is also a representative of the high-­priestly line, one who follows Onias. Onias’s successor Jason159 both corrupted and devastated—­the two possible senses of ‫­—ישחית‬the people of Jerusalem (see 2 Macc 4–5). The hostility of Jason’s action may be indicated by the verb “come,” which frequently denotes an aggressive “coming” in ch. 11 151 Nolland, “Sib. Or. iii. 265–94,” 162–63. 152 Hengstenberg, Christologie des AT; Baldwin, Daniel, on the passage; but also Montgomery, Daniel, 383. 153 Porteous, Daniel, on the passage. 154 Against Young, The Prophecy of Daniel, on the passage. 155 Against Keil, Biblischer Kommentar, on the passage. 156 Torrey, “The Messiah Son of Ephraim,” 268–72. 157 But see Comment on 8:10–11. 158 See BDB, 504a. 159 So Bevan, Daniel, on the passage.

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(e.g., v. 10, with the term “flood” [‫ ]שטף‬as here). “His end” and “the end” are closely related. 27 The ‫( ברית‬covenant) prevailing for the body of the Jews for the final seven could allude to the covenant between God and Israel referred to in 9:4; 11:22, 28, 30, 32. The words could then denote either the faithfulness of conservative Jews despite the pressure placed on them (cf. 1 Macc 1:62–63) or the faithfulness of God (cf. Lev 26:42).160 But the verse goes on to describe aspects of the sacrilege of the Antiochene crisis, which suggests that ‫ ברית‬in v. 27a has negative connotations. It might be an Aramaism for an edict imposed by Antiochus;161 more likely it denotes the covenant between reformist Jews and gentiles reported in 1 Macc 1:11. The multitude is presumably still the body of (faithful) Jews (see n. 27.b). If so, the idea of the clause is that the covenant made between the reformist Jews and the Greeks will last for seven years, to the hurt of the conservative Jews. First Maccabees 1:11 implicitly associates this covenant with the beginning of Antiochus’s reign in 175, but it is hazardous to infer that the seventieth seven is the period that begins then, so that the events of the actual crisis belong to a further seven.162 Halfway through this final seven the worship prescribed by the Torah will cease, to be replaced by a repellent alternative (cf. 1 Macc 1:41–59). “Sacrifice and offering” covers the blood sacrifices involving the death of an animal on one hand, and on the other the offering of grain, oil, and wine. Thus the dual expression covers the total system of sacrifice and offering. To describe its replacement, Gabriel uses a variant on the term “the desolating rebellion” (‫ )הפשע שמם‬in 8:13. Here the expression is “a desolating abomination” (‫שקוצים משמם‬: see n. 27.f). ‫ שקץ‬replaces ‫פשע‬, perhaps because its numerical value is 490,163 perhaps because of the association of ‫ שקץ‬and ‫ שמם‬in passages such as Jer 4; 7; 44; Ezek 5; 6; 7.164 It is plural, if we accept the MT, perhaps because it substitutes for the quasi-­plural noun ‫“ אלהים‬God.”165 The desolating abomination will appear “on a wing” (‫)כנף‬. G and Vulg. take the “wing” to be the winglike top corner of the temple, the “pinnacle” of Matt 4:5. But the desolating sacrilege lay not on the temple pinnacle, but on the altar within the temple, which had winglike top corners that are usually described as horns. Perhaps Gabriel speaks of wings rather than horns because “winged one” (‫בעל כנף‬, “lord of wing” or “winged one”) is a title of Baal.166 Devastation will continue to overwhelm desolate Jerusalem until what God 160 Philip, By the Rivers of Babylon, on the passage. 161 So Charles, Daniel, on the passage. 162 Against Lebram, “Apokalyptik und Hellenismus im Buche Daniel,” 513–15. 163 Klein, “Über das Buch Daniel,” 240. 164 Ford, The Abomination of Desolation, 148. See further Theophilos, The Abomination of Desolation in Matthew 24, 178–90; he also notes the irony with which Daniel turns expressions that describe Israel’s actions into actions of which it is if anything the victim. 165 Lacocque, Damiel, on the passage. 166 Delcor, Daniel, on the passage.

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Explanation 491 has decreed is exhausted. Within the gloom are thus gleams of light. The calamity fulfills the prophecy of Isa 10:22–23: so it is not meaningless. And it is de-­termined, not endless. If ‫ שמם‬really means “desolater,” not “desolate one” (see n. 27.h), or if the desolate one is Antiochus himself as his end comes, the gleam of light is an explicit beam.

Explanation 1–2 We move on once more to the year when the Babylonians lost control of Babylon. In previous chapters, many scriptural passages have contributed subtly to the shaping of the stories and visions that we have been invited to take as clues to understanding what God was doing in the Babylonian, Persian, and Greek periods. But the stories and visions stood in their own right. Their scriptural allusions could have remained unnoticed. The stories and visions commended themselves to us on the basis of the experience and insight they embodied. Here, in contrast, insight emerges overtly in connection with the Scriptures. Babylon is now ruled by a king of Median birth, as Jer 51:28 promised. The punishment threatened in Jer 25:12–14 has begun. The restoration of the exiles that Jer 29:10 associates with that same moment, and the restoration of Jerusalem that prophecies in Isaiah and Ezekiel promised, ought therefore to be imminent. It is easy to imagine an exilic Daniel noting the passages in Jer 25/29 that spoke of a seventy-­year exile and wondering about their fulfillment; Zechariah, after all, did so. It is also easy to imagine a second-­century “Daniel” doing the same thing. Whether or not we should universalize the declaration that when Yahweh acts, he always reveals his purpose to his servants the prophets (Amos 3:7), the existence of the more-­or-­less collected prophetic Scriptures in the second century will have encouraged people to look there for some explanation even of the devastating experiences of this time.167 God’s having spoken through the prophets does not mean that all the faithful have to do is sit, newspaper in hand, awaiting the outcome. “The faithful do not so acquiesce in the promises of God as to grow torpid, and become idle and slothful through the certainty of their persuasion that God will perform his promises, but are rather stimulated to prayer.”168 3–19 Daniel’s prayer complements his other prayer in 2:20–23; “to Daniel, prayer was praise and lament, thanksgiving and confession.”169 There is a form of prayer appropriate to every day, the prayer Daniel prayed in ch. 6. There is also a form of prayer that arises in extraordinary situations, the prayer Daniel prays here. “In the prayer of ch. 9 Daniel uses every device he can muster 167 Koch, “Spätisraelitische Geschichtsdenken am Beispiel des Buches Daniel,” 21. 168 Calvin, Daniel 2:135. 169 Petersen, “The Prayers of Daniel,” 63.

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to ‘move the heart of God from wrath to pity’; confession of sin, complaint, petitions, historical reviews, declarations of the attributes of God, covenantal reminders, and the language of shame and honor.”170 Or perhaps both prayers are the same and Dan 9 was a way people prayed throughout the Second Temple period. A particular prayer may be prayed every day but with new significance in different situations—­especially when it comes to be newly juxtaposed with the Scriptures. There is interplay between the words of the Scriptures and the words of prayer. The Scriptures stimulate prayer. Prayer constitutes the appropriate response to the Scriptures. Prayer naturally reflects the Scriptures. At the same time, it naturally reflects the traditional liturgical prayer of the believing community. The individual’s experience of life and of God keeps the prayer of the ongoing community alive and real. The tradition of the community’s prayer over the centuries gives the individual’s prayer its means of expression and its context in the prayer of the whole community of faith. So Daniel prays, and perhaps says, “When you pray, say. . . .” Lord, you are our God. You have committed yourself to us. And you are my God, because in your sovereignty you have chosen to work through me, and through me to reveal your purpose to your people. You have proved your commitment to me, and I come to ask you to do so again in response to my prayer for your people. You revealed your name to us, but I hesitate to use it lest I do so wrongly, perhaps falling into overfamiliarity. For you are the great and awesome God, and I will have to acknowledge that we have not often treated you as such. My visions have pictured the empires as faithless and implied that the people of God are the faithful, but I know that we must identify with the empires and acknowledge our own faithlessness as the people of God rather than pretending to be otherwise.171 Yet no sooner do I recall your greatness and awesomeness than I also find myself affirming your loving compassion. At Sinai and before, you committed yourself to us as your people in the way that mighty powers like Assyria would commit themselves to the protection of lesser powers. But the great powers were always clear about what they would get out of the relationship. Your commitment to us was less hardnosed; and you have always kept your commitment. When we pray, as we do now, out of desolation and affliction, we know that such desolation and affliction does not stem from your failure to keep your commitment. You are the God who is by nature reliable and faithful, true to his word and constant in his protection. If you and we should find ourselves in court, you would win any case that the court considered. You are in the right. There is nothing on your side to cause a breakdown in the relationship between us and you. Part of the evidence is that you have always been concerned to do what was right for us, 170 Flesher, “Tricksters and Martyrs,” 156. 171 Cf. Lüthi, The Church to Come, 121–27.

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Explanation 493 you wanted the best for us. It goes back to the exodus again, when you showed yourself concerned for the rights of a people afflicted by oppressors, and you have been that way in your relationship with us and in your acts on our behalf ever since. In other words, you have been a compassionate God, caring about us with the deep feeling of love that we associate with family life. You make allowances for us, like a king being merciful to his servants when they fail him. We know that the basis of our relationship with you is not what we do for you; it is what you have done for us. Yet we know that we are called to respond to what you have done for us. You have issued to us commands to be obeyed, authoritative declarations regarding the deeds you approve, directions regarding how we are to live our lives. We have heard them through your prophets who spoke to us as your representatives, making your voice audible, and we have read the warnings of Moses about the consequences of ignoring them. Although the covenant did not stem from our initiative, we know that it demands our obedience and that disobedience imperils it. Your word came directly to those who have exercised leadership among us over the generations, kings and other people who have authority in the community. But it relates to the whole people for whom I am concerned to pray and whom I long to commend to you on the basis of your regarding me with your favor, that people of Judah which has a certain self-­awareness as a political entity within the empire that governs it, but that more importantly is the remnant of the people of Israel that you have preserved and to which your covenant commitment still applies. It relates to that city, Jerusalem, which is the focus of Judah politically and religiously—­because it is the city that you made your own. It relates to that sanctuary where you are worshiped. So your word came to us; and you expected from us a response that was behavioral at least as much as emotional. You expected us to heed your words and live by them. Your design was that we would then be in the right with you, as you are with us, in a position to cast ourselves on you in need because our relationship with you was right. Not that we would never fail—­but when we did fail, it was our task to turn from wrongdoing, reflecting wisely on your faithfulness in the past and giving you that respect and homage which prepares the way for renewed prayer. What actually happened was that leaders and people did not listen to you or live by your teachings or turn from our wrongdoings or pay heed to your faithfulness or seek your favor. We are not in the right with you. We have failed, willfully, to live in accordance with your expectations. We have avoided the path you laid before us. We have contravened the enactments of the covenant. We have put ourselves in the wrong in relation to you. We have rebelled against your authority. We have turned our backs on your commands. We have been unfaithful to our relationship with you. As the people of God, we accept responsibility for our actions and neglects. We are not fatalistic. Our history has not been out of our control, imposed on

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us by you. Your dealings with us are not predetermined to unfold in a sequence uninfluenced by human acts. We recognize them as a response to our acts. We know that our acts affect history as it subsequently unfolds. It is because we are in the wrong in relation to you that we have found ourselves overcome by unimagined calamity. City and sanctuary became wastes: buildings devastated and ruined, habitations emptied because their people are banished. We feel the contumely and contempt of people whose wrongdoing has been exposed. It is as if we were overwhelmed by a curse—­the solemn curse written into the covenant as a legal document, designed to protect the relationship between you and us but inevitably bringing harm to us as the price of being protective in other circumstances. You yourself saw to it that the curse fell. It was your premeditated, carefully considered act. It was calculated, but not cold: it expressed the burning fury that accompanies your warm compassion and commitment, both of them aspects of your being a real person. It is because this situation is the position of my people that I come to you determined to gain your attention for myself and for my prayers. I am casting myself on your grace, that instinct of yours to show favor when none is deserved. By that grace I have sought to stand firm in my commitment to you, but I also stand firm in my commitment to my people in their waywardness and their affliction, and I dare to ask you to look on them in mercy because of your love for me, because you are my God. I began my confession by acknowledging that you are the awesome yet loving God of Israel. But the goal of my confession was to acknowledge that we are in the wrong in relation to you. You are in the right. I start there; but on the basis of starting there, I believe that I can plead with you for mercy upon these people who have justly experienced disaster from your hand. I turn aside from concern with food or with my appearance: I come with an inner gloominess that expresses itself in a gloominess of appearance. I long for you to reveal and implement your purpose for your people. You are ignoring our plight and our prayer, as you have the right to do. Lord, listen. You seem to be holding our wrongdoing against us, as you have the right to do. Lord, pardon, let your anger dissipate itself somewhere else. You are refusing to give us that blessing you promised through Aaron, as you have the right to do. Lord, look on us with the bright smile of your love. You behave as if intent on doing nothing in our lives. Lord, act. It is what you have done in the past. It is what we need now. It is what will bring you honor.

If this is indeed how people prayed in those days, we can see how they came through the storms and stresses of that terrible time.172 20–23 It is to be expected that prayers meet with answers, and so it is with Daniel. The answer indicates that communication between earth and 172 Porteous, Daniel, on the passage.

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Explanation 495 heaven goes on, even though the sacrificial system may be interrupted. The content of the answer corresponds to the content of the protest, as the prayer has offered the response to God’s prophetic word that makes the fulfillment of that word possible. The promise of fulfillment issues when Daniel turns to God, yet it issues before he prays his prayer, so the story affirms not only the importance of prayer and the place it plays in the outworking of God’s purpose (it is in response to prayer that God acts) but also the importance of God’s sovereignty (prayer is a means of God’s own good will being put into effect). One person’s prayer brings about the restoration of the people of God; but it is a matter of releasing that restoration which God already purposed.173 The dynamics of the interrelationship of prayer and divine act here may be compared with those in Gen 18:17–33. While the significance of Jeremiah’s words might have been clear for their original hearers, their significance in a later context is not. A general theological principle is implied: the subsequent significance of this passage from Jeremiah cannot be discerned by ordinary human study. It can only be received by revelation, like the original prophecy, or like visions such as those that come elsewhere to Daniel. To understand the significance of prophecies (or other Scriptures), one needs the same divine inspiration that the prophet himself had received.174 One might add that the key to hermeneutics is character. “To become the kind of person open to repentance and prayer in the manner of Daniel in chapter 9 is to become the kind of person well suited to perceiving in the books what is significant or pertinent to the life of faith.” Thus, “If you want to become a better exegete, become a deeper person, as Brevard Childs is reported to have said.”175 Yet historically, the interpretation emerges from a situational context, in the second century BC; it is in light of this context that the Scriptures are studied and enabled to become newly illuminating. History itself is not inherently revelatory, but history poses questions about the meaning of the Scriptures to which revelation provides the answers, and thus history plays a part in revelation. 24–27 Jeremiah had spoken of seventy years’ desolation for Jerusalem, but the desolation was to last centuries longer. God is free to exact whatever chastisement he chooses. The message’s good news is that it is not chastisement without end. The number 490 is not an arithmetical calculation to be pressed to yield chronological information. It is a figure that puts together two symbolic figures, the seventy years of Jer 25:11/29:10 and the sevenfold chastisement of Lev 26:28. The result is a doubly symbolic figure extending

173 Cf. Rosscup, “Prayer Relating to Prophecy in Daniel 9.” 174 So Gregory Thaumaturgus, Address of Thanksgiving to Origen 15; cf. Bickerman, Four Strange Books of the Bible, 111. 175 Briggs, “‘I Perceived in the Books,’” 124, 127.

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from the beginning of chastisement to whenever it ends. The description of the end in vv. 24–27 is allusive, but fortunately we are in a position to move from the known to the unknown. The climax to which ch. 8 looks lies in the crisis in the second century BC, when God delivered his people and his sanctuary from the combined threat of Antiochus Epiphanes and reformist Judaism. The same crisis is the focus of chs. 10–12. The implication is that ch. 9 has in mind the same events, and the details of vv. 24–27 support that inference, as do OG’s translation and the way 1 Maccabees tells the story of the Antiochene crisis. The time between the two desolations of Jerusalem divides into two. The first period is the years of Babylonian domination, which began with a promise of restoration from that domination at the beginning of the sixth century and ended with the fulfillment of that promise when Judahites were free to return to Jerusalem and rebuild temple, city, and community at the end of the sixth century and during the fifth. The second period is the long years from that time of rebuilding to the second century, the period of Jerusalem rebuilt (v. 25), when the city is nevertheless still under foreign domination. The Antiochene crisis is heralded by the deposing of one high priest and the wickedness of another (v. 26). It brings a period of unholy alliance, of disruption of temple worship, of its replacement by an apostate alternative, and of a devastation that will continue to overwhelm desolate Jerusalem until the exhausting of what God had decreed (v. 27). This gloomy prospect is set in the context of a promise that by the end of the seventy sevens God will have purged people and city of wrongdoing—­Greek wrongdoing and Jewish wrongdoing alike, perhaps—­a nd vindicated the sanctuary and the prophecy of Jeremiah from which we started (v. 24). The fulfillment of God’s promise is described in 1 Macc 4:42–61; what Gabriel pictures as a divine work, 1 Maccabees relates as an achievement involving human initiative and activity. To speak of God determining history over 490 years may suggest a “radically deistic” view of God’s activity; time is now autonomous and unalterable, and even God has to wait upon it.176 Yet “the author of Dan 9 seems to have been able to hold to both apocalyptic determinism and conditional covenant theology at the same time.”177 Parallel sets of causation, one human, the other supernatural, neither of which renders the other inoperative, are as much a feature of Greek thinking about accountability as they are of their storytelling from Homer onwards. . . . The function of supernatural causation is not, as we might think, to replace or override empirical cause and effect. . . . Nor is it the 176 Cf. DeVries, Achievements of Biblical Religion, 342. 177 Werline, “Prayer, Politics, and Social Vision in Daniel 9,” 30; Venter on “Daniel 9” in the same volume makes parallel points.

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Explanation 497 function of a theory of supernatural causation to remove moral responsibility, to make men and women no longer accountable for their actions.178

Further, we must recall that Gabriel’s way of speaking belongs at the end of the 490 years; only retrospectively does he affirm God’s “control.” The 490 years unfolded in the ordinary way that history does (as ch. 11 will show in detail). If Gabriel’s quasi-­prediction were actual prediction, a deistic view might be implied; but it is not. Further, the quasi-­prediction says nothing of God being positively involved in the historical events of the Babylonian and Second Temple periods, because its real focus lies on the events of the 160s rather than because God was assumed to be absent. In Jewish and Christian tradition, Gabriel’s promises have been applied to later events: the birth of the Messiah, Jesus’s death and resurrection, the fall of Jerusalem, various subsequent historical events, and the still-­future manifesting of the Messiah. The promises do not apply directly to these events. The detail of vv. 24–27 fits the second-­century crisis and agrees with allusions to this crisis elsewhere in Daniel. The verses do not indicate that they are looking centuries or millennia beyond the period to which chs. 8 and 10–12 refer. They do not suggest that the cleansing and renewal of which v. 24 speaks is the cleansing and renewal of the world: it is the cleansing and renewal of Jerusalem. The passage refers to the Antiochene crisis. Yet its allusiveness and the incompletemess of its fulfillment in the second century BC justifies its reapplication in later contexts, as is the case with previous visions. Indeed, it directly encourages such reapplication by its not referring to concrete persons and events in the manner of a historical narrative such as 1 Maccabees. It speaks in terms of symbols of what those persons and events embodied, symbols such as wrongdoing, justice, an anointed leader, a flood, an abomination. It invites people to understand concrete events and persons in light of such symbols, but the symbols transcend them. They are not limited in their reference to these particular concrete realities. The symbols have other embodiments. The identification of these other embodiments is a matter of theological, not exegetical, judgment—­a matter of faith, not of science. But if Jesus is God’s anointed, and his birth, ministry, death, resurrection, and appearing are God’s ultimate means of revealing himself and achieving his purpose in the world, then these realities are also God’s means of ultimately achieving what the symbols in vv. 24–27 speak of. It is in this sense that “although every chapter [of Daniel] contains an abundance of doctrine, nevertheless this chapter by far exceeds the others. Daniel hands down the clear testimony concerning the advent of Christ, the death of Christ, the righteousness of 178 J. Gould, Herodotus (New York: St. Martin’s, 1989), as quoted in Niskanen, The Human and the Divine in History, 102.

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the New Testament and the destruction of the Jewish state. He includes the doctrine of penance in a prayer, he rightly assesses the value of his own righteousness, and he shows the righteousness of faith.”179 One might express this point in another way by speaking in terms of a typological relationship between the events and people of the Antiochene crisis and deliverance, and those of Jesus’s time and of the End we still await.180 And it is in this sense that we can affirm the comment Pascal adds to an observation on the equivocal nature of the seventy weeks prophecy, that “we understand the prophecies only when we see the events happen.”181 Gabriel’s allusiveness accompanies an inclination to speak in the words of the Scriptures reapplied. Gerard Manley Hopkins observed that “the world is charged with the grandeur of God”; Daniel recognizes that the same is true of the Scriptures, with “a prodigious energy.”182 Daniel is doing with Isaiah what subsequent exegetes do with Daniel. This mode of interpretation, too, reflects the fact that the author speaks “with faith rather than knowledge.”183 The period of deepest oppression did last about 3 1/2 years, but that is not the point. Gabriel’s message is not prognostication or prediction. It is promise. “The issue here . . . is not the mathematical conundrum of determining what date in history the prediction of Jeremiah should forecast. Rather, to judge by the prayer that follows, the problem is a theological one: what is the meaning of the desolation of Jerusalem, why does it last, and when will it really end?”184 But “the prayer embodies the theology implicit at the beginning of the book. Daniel knows that his God has given Jerusalem over to its enemies,”185 but that same fact means that God can take it back again. Gabriel’s message does not have a worldwide perspective; he is not speaking of the end of all history or of the sin of the whole world. Daniel 9 is returning to “salvation history” from the secular history that dominated chs. 7–8 and will dominate chs. 10–12. The book’s moving between these two foci suggests that both are of God. God is the God of all history, but nature and grace are not identical; there are special purposes he is achieving in Israel’s history. On the other hand, while God is the God of Israel’s history, nature and grace are not to be sundered; he purposes to reign in all history.186 Gabriel’s message is a promise given from the midst of a life and death crisis—­life and death for

179 Melanchthon, In Danielem prophetam, 153, as quoted in Beckwith, Ezekiel, Daniel, 359. 180 Cf. Ulrich’s comment on Jewish interpretation, “How Early Judaism Read Daniel 9:24–27.” 181 Pascal’s Pensées, 697 or 698 (the numbering varies); Thoughts of Blaise Pascal, 131. Cf. Bickerman, Four Strange Books, 193. 182 Berrigan, Daniel, 155. 183 Heaton, Daniel, on the passage. 184 Seow, Daniel, 139. 185 Nolan Fewell, Circle of Sovereignty, 122 (she adds that God gave Jerusalem over because of its sin, but Dan 1:1 pointedly does not make that point). 186 See Lash, Theology on the Way to Emmaus, 66–69; cf. Rahner, “Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschichte.”

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Explanation 499 human beings and for Jewish faith. It contains no exhortation to action. It is not concerned to urge people to obedience or resistance, but to offer them hope. The Scriptures are often content to do so. In contrast to the preceding chapters, Dan 9 fails to tell us Daniel’s reaction to the revelation. As is the case with other texts that close with a question or something puzzling (e.g., Jonah; Mark), the effect is to ask how the reader is going to react.187

187 Hebbard, Reading Daniel, 193–94.

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X. A Celestial Figure Reveals to Daniel What Will Happen to His People at the End of the Era (10:1–12:13) Pericope Bibliography Abel,  F.-­M . “Antiochus Épiphane.” Alfrink, B. J. “L’idée de résurrection d’après Dan xii, 1–2.” Allen, L. C. “Isaiah 1iii. 11 and Its Echoes.” Anderson, R. B. “A Touch of the Holy.” Anon. A New Interpretation of Daniel xi. Armerding, C. “Dan 12, 1–3.” —­—­—­. “Russia and the King of the North.” Bailey, D. P. “The Intertextual Relationship of Daniel 12:2 and Isaiah 26:19.” Bampfylde, G. “The Prince of the Host in the Book of Daniel and the Dead Sea Scrolls.” Barrett, D. S. “Patterns of Jewish Submission in the Hellenistic- ­R oman World.” Bauckham, R. J. “The Delay of the Parousia.” Beckwith, R. T. “The Earliest Enoch Literature and Its Calendar.” Bertholet, A. “Der Schutzengel Persiens.” Bevan, E. R. The House of Seleucus. Birkeland, H. “The Belief in the Resurrection of the Dead in the OT.” Boccaccini, G. “The Solar Calendars of Daniel and Enoch,” in van der Woude (ed.), The Book of Daniel 2:311–28. Bonora, A. “Il linguaggio di risurrezione in Dan. 12,1–3.” Botterweck, G. J. “Marginalien zum atl. Auferstehungsglauben.” Brightman, T. A Most Comfortable Exposition of the Last and Most Difficult Part of the Prophecie of Daniel. Bringmann, K. Hellenistische Reform und Religionsverfolgung in Judäa. Bunge, J. G. “Der ‘Gott der Festungen’ und der ‘Liebling der Frauen.’ ” —­—­—­. “Die sogenannte Religionsverfolgung Antiochus IV. Epiphanes und die griechischen Städte.” —­—­—­. “ ‘Theos Epiphanes.’ ” Campbell, J. An Exposition of Daniel xii. 5, 6, 7. Carroll, R. P. “Prophecy and Dissonance.” —­—­—­. When Prophecy Failed. Cavallin, H. C. C. Life after Death. —­—­—­. “De visa lärarnas död och uppsta˙ndelse.” —­—­—­. “Leben nach dem Tode im Spätjudentum.” Clifford, R. J. “History and Myth in Daniel 10–12.” Collins, J. J. “Apocalyptic Eschatology as the Transcendence of Death.” —­—­—­. Jewish Cult and Hellenistic Culture. —­—­—­ and J. G. Manning, (eds.). Revolt and Resistance in the Ancient Classical World and the Near East. Conrad, D. “On ‫רֹוע‬ ַ ְ‫‘ = ז‬Forces, Troops, Army’ in Biblical Hebrew.” David, P. “Daniel 11,1,” in van der Woude (ed.), The Book of Daniel, 505–14. Davies, P. R. “H · asidim in the Maccabaean Period.” Day, J. “Da‘at ‘Humiliation.’ ” —­—­—­. “The Development of Belief in Life after Death in Ancient Israel.” —­—­—­. “Resurrection Imagery from Baal to the Book of Daniel.” Delcor, M. “L’histoire selon le livre de Daniel,” in van der Woude (ed.), The Book of Daniel, 365–86. Del Medico, H. E. “L’identification des Kittim avec les Romains.” Doukhan, J. B. “From Dust to Stars.” Dubarle,  A.-­M . “Belief in Immortality in the OT and Judaism.” Emerton, J. A. “A Consideration of Some Alleged Meanings of ‫ ידע‬in Hebrew.” Erling, B. “Ezekiel 38–39 and the Origins of Jewish Apocalyptic.” Festinger, L., et al. When Prophecy Fails. Fischer, T. Seleukiden und Makkabäer. Garber, D. G. “Resisting Daniel.” Gardner, A. E. “The Way to Eternal Life in Dan 12:1e-2.” Gese, H. “Der Tod im AT.” —­—­—­. “Das Geschichtsbild des Danielsbuches und Ägypten.” Gibbs, G. L. Daniel’s Last Vision. Ginsberg, H. L. “The

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Oldest Interpretation of the Suffering Servant.” Goswell, G. “Resurrection in the Book of Daniel.” Grabbe, L. L. “The Hellenistic City of Jerusalem.” Grainger, J. D. The Syrian Wars. Granot, M. “‫ ”ותעמד לגרלך לקץ הימין‬Greenspoon, L. J. “The Origin of the Idea of Resurrection.” Grelot, P. “La promise de la résurrection et de la vie éternelle, Dn 12 1–3.” Griffiths, J. G. “Apocalyptic in the Hellenistic Era,” in Hellholm (ed.), Apocalypticism, 273–93. Gruen, E. S. “Hellenism and Persecution.” Haag, E. “Daniel 12 und die Auferstehung der Toten,” in Collins/Flint (eds.), The Book of Daniel 1:132–48. —­—­—­. “Der Kampf der Engelmächte in Daniel 10—12.” Hanhart, R. “Die Übersetzungstechnik der Septuaginta als Interpretation (Daniel 11, 29 und die Aegyptenzüge des Antiochus Epiphanes).” Harton, G. M. “An Interpretation of Daniel 11:36–45.” Hasel, G. F. “Resurrection in the Theology of OT Apocalyptic.” Hasslberger B. Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis: Eine formkritische Untersuchung zu Daniel 8 und 10–12, 111–374. Heard, W. J. “The Maccabean Martyrs’ Contribution to Holy War.” Herrmann, W. “Das Buch des Lebens.” Hobbins, J. F. “Resurrection in the Daniel Tradition and Other Writings at Qumran,” in Collins/Flint (eds.), The Book of Daniel 2:395–420. Hunt, B. “A Short Note on Daniel 12:11–12.” Itō, G. “Old Persian a pa da a na.” Jaubert, A. “Fiches de calendrier.” Jones, B. W. “Antiochus Epiphanes and the Persecution of the Jews.” Kaiser, O., and E. Lohse. Tod und Leben. Keil, V. “Onias III.” Kellerma nn, U. “Über windung des Todesgeschicks in der alttestamentlichen Frömmigkeit.” Kleinknecht, K. T. “Der leidende Gerechtfertigte,” 75–78. Knox, Z. “The Watch Tower Society and the End of the Cold War.” Kosmala, H. “Mas´kîl.” Kossen, H. B. “De oorsprong van de Voorstelling der opstanding uit de doden in Dan. 12:2.” Levenson, J. D. Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel, 181–200. Lindenberger, J. M. “Daniel 12:1–4.” McGarry, E.P. “The Ambidextrous Angel (Daniel 12:7 and Deuteronomy 32:40).” McHardy, W. D. “The Peshitta Text of Daniel xi. 4.” Martin-­Achard,  R. De la mort á la résurrection d’après l’AT. —­—­—­. “L’espérance des croyants d’Israël face à la mort selon Esäie 65, 16c–25 et selon Daniel 12, 1–4.” —­—­—­. “Trois remarques sur la rèsurrection des morts dans l’AT.” Mathews, S. F. “The Numbers in Daniel 12:11–12.” Meadowcroft, T. J. “History and Eschatology in Tension.” —­—­—­. “Who are the Princes of Persia and Greece?” Mercer, M. “The Benefactions of Antiochus IV Epiphanes and Dan 11:37–38.” Moore, M. S. “Resurrection and Immortality.” Morgenstern, J. “The King-­G od among the Western Semites and the Meaning of Epiphanes.” Myers, T. A. Translation of the Prophecies of Daniel. Nickelsburg, G. W. E. Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life in Intertestamental Judaism. Nikolainen, A. T. Der Auferstehungsglaube in der Bibel und ihrer Umwelt. Niskanen, P. “Daniel’s Portrait of Antiochus IV.” Nötscher, F. Altorientalischer und alttestamentlicher Auferstehungsglauben. Owen, J. “The Labouring Saint’s Dismission to Rest.” Parry, J. T. “Desolation of the Temple and Messianic Enthronement in Daniel 11:36—12:3.” Paul, S. “Daniel 12:9.” —­—­—­. “Heavenly Tablets and the Book of Life.” Pfeiffer, R. H. “Wisdom and Vision in the OT.” Preuss, H. D. “ ‘Auferstehung’ in Texten alttestamentlicher Apokalyptik.” Rappaport, U. “Apocalyptic Vision and Preservation of Historical Memory.” Raurell, F. “The Doxa of the Seer in Dan-­L XX 12,13,” in van der Woude (ed.), The Book of Daniel, 520–32. Redditt, P. L. “Calculating the ‘Times’: Daniel 12:5–13.” —­—­—­. “Daniel 11 and the Sociohistorical Setting of the Book of Daniel.” Rost, L. “Alttestamentliche Wurzeln der ersten Auferstehung.” Rowley, H. H. “The ‘Prince of the Covenant’ in Daniel xi. 22.” Sawyer, J. F. A. “Hebrew Words for the Resurrection of the Dead.” Schäfer, P. “The Hellenistic and Maccabaean Periods.” Schedl, C. “Mystische Arithmetik oder geschichtliche Zahlen?” Schlatter, A. “Die B ene parisim bei Daniel: 11, 14.” Schubert, K. “Die Entwicklung der Auferstehungslehre von der nachexilischen bis zur frührabbinischen Zeit.” Scolnic, B., and T. Davis, “How Kittim Became ‘Rome.’ ” Shea, W. H. “Wrestling with the Prince

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of Persia.” Sparkes, S. A Historical Commentary on the Eleventh Chapter of Daniel. Spronk, B. Beatific Afterlife in Ancient Israel and the Ancient Near East. Steinmann, A. E. “Is the Antichrist in Daniel 11?” Stele, A. A. “Resurrection in Daniel 12.” Stemberger, G. “Das Problem der Auferstehung im AT.” Stevens, D. E. “Daniel 10 and the Notion of Territorial Spirits.” Sutcliffe, E. F. The OT and the Future Life. Swain, J. W. “Antiochus Epiphanes and Egypt.” Szold, B.”The Eleventh Chapter of the Book of Daniel.” Tanner, J. P. “Daniel’s ‘King of the North.’ ” Täubler, E. “Jerusalem 201 to 199 B.C.E.: On the History of a Messianic Movement.” Teeter, A. “Isaiah and the King of As/Syria in Daniel’s Final Vision,” in Mason et al. (eds.), A Teacher for All Generations 1:169–99. Thomas, D. W. “Note on ‫ הדעת‬in Daniel xii.4.” Thomson, H. C. “OT Ideas on Life after Death.” Toll, C. “Die Wurzel prs· im Hebräischen.” Torrey, C. C. “ ‘ Ya¯ wa¯ n’ and ‘Hellas’ as Designations of the Seleucid Empire.” Tsafrir, Y. “The Location of the Seleucid Akra in Jerusalem.” Van der Kooij, A. “A Case of Reinterpretation in the OG of Daniel 11.” —­—­—­. “The Concept of Covenant (berît) in the Book of Daniel,” in van der Woude (ed.), The Book of Daniel, 495–501. Van der Woude, A. S. “Prophetic Prediction, Political Prognostication, and Firm Belief.” Van Goudoever, J. “Time Indications in Daniel that Reflect the Usage of the Ancient Theoretical So-­called Zadokite Calendar,” in van der Woude (ed.), The Book of Daniel, 533–38. Wacholder, B. Z. “The Beginning of the Seleucid Era and the Chronology of the Diadochoi.” Walbank, F. W., et al. (eds.). The Hellenistic World. Wildgruber, R. Daniel 10–12 als Schlüssel zum Buch. Wilson, R. D. “The Title ‘King of Persia’ in the Scriptures.” Wolters, A. “Zo¯har Ha¯ ra¯ qîa’ (Daniel 12.3) and Halley’s Comet.” Yarbro Collins, A. “The Political Perspective of the Revelation to John.” Zamora, P. “The Daniel and Qohelet Epilogues.”

Translation In the third a year of Koreš bking of Paras,b a message was revealed c to Daniyye’l, who had been named Belt·eša’s· s· ar. The message was trustworthy; it concerned a great war.d He understood e the message; understanding came to him through the vision.f 2 “During that time I, Daniyye’l, was mourning for aa period of three weeks.a 3I ate no rich food, no meat or wine passed my lips, and I did not anoint myself at all,a until the period of three weeks was completed. 4Then on the twenty-­fourth day of the first month, when I was by the bank of the Great River, the Tigris,a 5I lifted my eyes a and looked, and there: a man dressed in linen, his waist belted with pure b gold, 6his body like topaz,a his face with the brightness of lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and feet with the gleam of polished brass, the sound of his words like the sound of thundering.b 7a “Now I, Daniyye’l, alone saw this sight; bthe men who were with me did not see the sight.b Nevertheless, such terror came over them that they fled into c hiding. 8So I myself remained alone. I looked at this great sight, and no strength remained in me; my vigor a dissolved into confusion band I had no strength left.b 9aThen I heard the sound of his words. Whenb I heard the sound of his words,a cI was falling in a trance,c don my face, with my face d to the ground. 10And there: a a hand touched b me and shook me c onto dmy hands and knees.d 11 “He said to me, Daniyye’l, man held in high regard a, attend to the words which I am about to speak to you, and stand up in your place, because I have now been sent to you.’ 10:1

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Translation 503 As he told me this, I stood up, trembling. 12He said to me, ‘Don’t be afraid, Daniyye’l, because from the first day you set your mind to understand, by humbling yourself before your God, your words were heard—­I have come because of your words. 13The leader of the kingdom of Paras was opposing me for twenty-­one days, but there: a Mika’el, one of the supreme leaders, came to help me, when bI was left alone b there with cthe kings ofc Paras. 14I have come to explain to you what will happen a to your people at the end of the era,b because cthere is yet a vision concerning that era.’c 15 “While he spoke these words to me, I bowed my face a to the ground and kept silence. 16 And there: a bsomeone of human form b touched my lips, and I opened my mouth and spoke. I said to the one who stood before me: ‘My lord, at this sight turmoil c has convulsed me, I have no strength left. 17And how can my lord’s mere aservant speak with such as a my lord? Now,b I have no strength left in me. There is no breath in me anymore.’ 18 “Again one of human appearance touched me and encouraged me, 19saying ‘Don’t be afraid, man held in high regard. All will be well with you.a Take courage, take courage.’ b When c he spoke to me, I took courage and said ‘My lord may speak, for you have encouraged me.’ 20aThen he said, ‘Have you realized b why I have come to you? But now,c I must return to fight with the leader of Paras, though when I go,d there:e the leader of Yawan will be coming. 21Nevertheless, I will tell you what is inscribed in a trustworthy book.a No one supports me against these, except Mika’el, your leader. 11:1And I, ain the first year of Dareyaweš the Medite: I took my stand b to support and strengthen him. 2But now,aI will tell you something trustworthy. “ ‘There: bthree further kings will arise in Paras, but the fourth—­he will be far wealthier than anyone.c And through the power he obtains through his wealth, he will stir upd e everyone in relation to the kingdom of Yawan.e 3Then a warrior-­king will appear who will rule aa great realm a and act as he pleases.b 4But as soon as a he arises, his kingdom will break up and divide toward the four winds of the heavens. cIt will not belong to his surviving family nor be a realm such as he ruled,c because his kingdom will be uprooted and will belong to others besides these. 5 “ ‘ The southern king  a will then be powerful, bbut one of his officers b—­he will be more powerful than him and he will rule, his rule being a great rule.c 6Then after some years an alliance will be made a and the daughter of the southern king will go to b the northern king to establish an agreement. But she will not be able to hold onto cher powerc nor will his powerd last out. She will be given up,e as will those who escorted her f and the one who fathered herg and hsustained her.h In time i 7one of a the shoots from her roots—­he will arise b in his place. He will attack the armyc and enter the stronghold of the northern king. He will deal with them as their conqueror;d 8their gods with their molten images and their precious silver and gold ware he will also take off to Mis· rayim. Although he a will keep away from the northernb king for some years, 9he will then invade the southern king’s kingdom but will return to his own country. 10His sons a will commit themselves to war. They will gather a massive horde that bwill advance and advance and sweep through like a flood.b It will again battle on as far as his stronghold;c 11but the southern king will be provoked to come out to fight with him—­with the northern king.a He b will raise a large horde, but the horde will be given into his power. 12When the

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A Celestial Figure Reveals What Will Happen

horde is carried off,a his b mind will be elated c and he b will put down tens of thousands,d but he will not be victorious. 13 “The northern king will return a and raise a larger horde than the first. Thus bafter a period of years b he will advance and advance c with a large force and much equipment. 14 During those times many will rise up against the southern king, but when wild men among  a your people assert themselves, in fulfillment of b a vision, they will stumble. 15 Then a the northern king will advance, throw up siegeworks,b and capture a fortified city.c The southern forces will not be able to withstand. Even their picked troops d ewill be powerlesse to withstand. 16His attacker will thus a be able to act as he pleases and no one will be able to withstand him, and he will take his stand in the fairest land,b destruction c being in his power. 17He will determine a to bcome into control of his whole kingdom b and will make an agreement c with him and give him a wife d in order to destroy it.e But it f will not succeed; itf will not come about for him. 18So he will turn a his attention to the sea lands b and capture many. cBut a commander will put an end to his challenge for him,c d so that he will not be able to return d his challenge to him. 19He will turn a his attention to the strongholds in his own land. But he will stumble and fall, and disappear. 20 “ ‘There will arise in his place one who will send around an oppressor a of b kingly splendor. But in a few days he will break, though not in the heat of battle.c 21 “ ‘ There will arise in his place a despised a man who has not been given royal honor; he will advance with ease and gain power over the kingdom by means of empty words. 22Overwhelming forces a will be overwhelmed before him and bbroken, and so too a covenant leader.b 23Thus by means of  a alliances made with him he will act deceitfully. He will badvance to power b with a small group; 24with ease a with the powerful ones of a province b he will go on to act as his fathers and grandfathers did not. Spoil, plunder, and wealth he will scatter among them. He will also devise plans against fortresses, until a certain time. 25 “ ‘He will assert a his strength and act with determination against b the southern king with a large force, but the southern king will commit himself to war with an exceedingly large and powerful force, though he will not be able to stand firm, because plans will be devised against him. 26People who eat his provisions a will break him. His force will pour away,b and many will fall slain. 27The two kings themselves, their minds set on trouble, will sit at a common table and speak lies, but to no avail, because an end will yet await the set time. 28Then he a will return to his country with great wealth. bHe will act with determination against a holy covenant b and then return to his own country. 29 “ ‘At the set time he will again invade the south, but it will not be like the first and the second occasion.a 30Ships from Kittim a will attack him, and he will quail and return; b he will take harsh action b against a holy covenant and return.c He will pay heed to such as have abandoned a holy covenant, 31and forces of his will take their stand and desecrate the sanctuary (the stronghold a). They will remove the daily offering and set up the desolating abomination.b 32Such as have acted faithlessly in relation to a covenant a he will turn into apostates b by means of empty words, but a people that acknowledgesc its God will offer firm resistance.d 33Discerning ones a within a people will enlighten the multitude,b though they will stumble c by sword and by fire, dby captivity and by becoming

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Translation 505 prey, for some time. 34When they stumble, they will receive a little help.a But many will join them with empty words,b 35and some of the discerning will stumble, to refine, to purify, and to cleanse them,a buntil the time of the end—­for it b will still await c the set moment. 36 “ ‘So the king will act as he pleases, and will exalt himself and magnify himself over any god; a concerning a God of gods a he will utter awesome statements. And he will succeed, until wrath is complete,b cfor what is determined shall be done.c 37Thus he will pay no heed to the god of his fathers,a nor to the one women love,b cnor to any god c will he pay heed, but he will magnify himself over everything. 38In his place a he will honor a stronghold god,b chonor a god b his fathers did not acknowledge, with gold and silver, with precious stones and rich gifts. 39So he will deal with a a most secure stronghold b by the aid ofc an alien god. The people he regardsd he will endow with great honor and make them rule over the multitude, and he will divide up e land as payment. 40 “ ‘At the time of the end the southern king will engage in a struggle with him. The northern king will storm against him with chariots, cavalry, and many ships. He will invade other countries, sweep through like a flood,a 41and invade the fairest land. Many of them a will stumble, but while these b will escape from his power, Edom, Mo’ab, and the leaders c of the Ammonites, 42when he lays his hand on a other countries,b Mis· rayim will not go free. 43He will gain control of the gold and silver treasures and of all the riches of Mis· rayim, and Lubbites and Kušites will fall at his heels.a 44Then reports from the east and north will alarm him and he will set off in great fury to devastate and annihilate a many. 45He will pitch his royal headquarters a between the Sea and b the fairest holy hill. But he will come to his end, with no one to help him. At that time there will arise Mika’el the supreme leader,a Who stands by b those who belong to your people,c and there will be a time of trouble Such as has not occurred d since they became a nation e until that time. But at that time your people will escape, everyone who can be found written in the book. 2 Thus many of those who sleep a in a land of earth b will wake up, c Some to lastingd life, others to utter shame,e to lastingd abhorrence. 3 The discerning will shine like the moon a in the sky. Those who set the multitude right b will shine like the stars to all eternity. 12:1

You, Daniyye’l, are to close up these words and seal the book until the time of the end. Many will hurry to and fro,a and suffering b will increase.’ 4

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“Then I, Daniyye’l, looked, and there before me two other figures were standing, one on the river a bank on this side, one on the river  a bank on the other side. 6The man dressed in linen who was afarther upstream a was asked,b ‘How long is it to the end  c of these awesome events?’ 7I listened to the man dressed in linen who was farther upstream. He raised his right hand and his left to the sky and swore by the One who lives for ever that it would be for a set period,a two set periods,a and a half, and that when the shattering b of the power of the holy people is ended,c all these things will come to an end. 8 I listened, but I could not understand, and I said, ‘Sir, what will be the last stage a of these events?’ 9He said, ‘Go your way, Daniyye’l, because these words will be closed up and sealed a until the time of the end. 5

Many will purify themselves, cleanse themselves, and refine themselves,b but the faithless will act faithlessly. None of the faithless will give heed,c though the discerning will give heed.c 10a

“ ‘From the time when the daily offering is taken away and the desolating abomination is set up will be 1290 days. 12Happy the one who waits and reaches the 1335 days. 13But you may go your way until the end a and rest. You will rise b to your destiny on the final day.’ ” 11

Notes 1.a. OG “first” may assimilate to 1:21 or may be an inner Greek corruption (so Pace, The OG Text, 225–227). 1.b–­b. In secular usage, this title belongs to the Greek period, but in Ezra it is a regular title for the Persian kings (see Wilson, “The Title ‘King of Persia’ ”). 1.c. ‫ נגלה‬could mean “revealed itself” (e.g., 1 Sam 3:21), but a reverential passive also makes sense. 1.d. ‫ צבא‬most often means “army”; cf. 8:10–12 (and OG?), though there the phrase ‫“ צבא השמים‬heavenly army” is more explicit. It can also refer metaphorically to an appointed time of hard service (Isa 40:2; Job 7:1; 14:14), and it might denote the long (‫ )גדול‬period to elapse before the vision’s fulfillment (Rashi) or the toil it demanded of Daniel in order to understand it (NEB; cf. Vulg., Th.). In Num 4; 8:24, 25 it denotes Yahweh’s sacred “army,” the Levites, fulfilling their “service.” But it can also mean “war” (cf. Aq.) and a reference to the heavenly and earthly conflicts of 10:12–12:4 (cf. JB, NIV) fits the context, even if Isa 40:2 suggested the word (see Form, Structure). 1.e. ‫ובין‬, perhaps a qal derived from a hiphil form (Hartman/Di Lella), though hardly itself hiphil (against GKC 73a). The text may be suspicious (cf. OG, Aq., Syr.); for emendations, see, e.g., Hartman/Di Lella, Brockington. The verb and the following cognate noun denote both understanding and attentiveness. In 12:10 (which the phrase anticipates: see Structure) the context suggests a focus on attentiveness; so also 9:23 where two forms of the root appear. Here the form of the subsequent noun clause suggests a focus on understanding.

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Notes 507 1.f. The definite article is required (against NIV). The reference is hardly confined to the vision in ch. 10 (see Structure). 2.a. ‫“ שלשה שבעים ימים‬three weeks days”: see GKC 131d, though “three whole weeks” (cf. EVV) overinterprets (Driver). The idiom may derive here from the Joseph story (Gen 41:1) or may indicate literal weeks of days not of years (contrast ch. 9; Lacocque). 3.a. Hartman/Di Lella explains the odd phrase here as a mistranslation from Aram. 4.a. This identification is hardly a gloss; the phrase “the Great River” is always followed by an identification, elsewhere as the Euphrates (e.g., Gen 15:18; cf. Syr. here), and the Tigris is not so far from Babylon (Hasslberger, Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis). 5.a. See n. 4:34.a. 5.b. Uphaz (EVV) is otherwise unknown (except when this phrase recurs in Jer 10:9). Rather ‫ אופז‬is to be connected with ‫“( קזז‬refine [?],” 1 Kgs 10:18) and ‫“( פז‬pure gold,” e.g., Song 5:11, 15); cf. Ibn Ezra, Ps-­Saadia. The initial ‫ א‬perhaps reflects the variant reading ‫( אופיר‬Ophir, cf. NEB; Hartman/Di Lella). 6.a. ‫ תרשיש‬is apparently a yellow topaz or yellow quartz, known in Greek as chrysolite (Aq., Vulg., and G elsewhere). Beryl (JB) is green. See IBD, IDB “Jewels,” “Tarshish.” 6.b. This basic meaning of ‫ המון‬fits well here (cf. BDB); EVV “crowd” (cf. 11:10–13) is a derived meaning. See Gerleman, “Die lärmende Menge.” 7.a. Taking ‫“( וראיתי‬now I saw”: waw plus perfect) as a circumstantial clause rather than merely an Aramaism (against TTH 160). 7.b. MT in Dan apparently distinguishes ‫( ַמ ְר ָאה‬also vv. 8, 16) from ‫“( ַמ ְר ֶאה‬vision”; 8:16, 26, 27; 9:23; 10:1)—­though the nature of the difference is unclear (BDB, Montgomery take ‫ ַמ ְר ָאה‬as “vision”) and C fuzzes it. See Brenner, “ ‘‫­–’מ ְר ֶאה‬ ַ ‫’מ ְר ָאה‘ ו‬.” ַ 7.c. One would expect ‫ל‬, not ‫ ;ב‬Bevan translates “in the act of hiding.” 8.a. See BDB for this meaning of ‫ ;הוד‬the phrase takes up v. 7 (Hasslberger, Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis). 8.b–­b. There are no textual grounds for removing this phrase, though it repeats the content of “no strength remained in me” and anticipates words in v. 16. 9.a–­a. OG, Syr. omit one of these repetitive clauses (haplog./to simplify?). 9.b. See n. 8:8.b. 9.c–­c. ‫הייתי נרדם‬, cf. 1:16; see GKC 116r. But it could be a pluperfect (Bevan) or simply an Aramaism for “I fell” (Zimmermann, “The Aramaic Origin of Daniel 8–12,” 259–61). On ‫ רדם‬see n. 8:18.a. 9.d–­d. ‫על פני ופני‬. Th. omits the first phrase, OG, Syr. the second. The first might be assimilation to 8:18, the second assimilation to 10:15 or dittog, or MT might be conflate. 10.a. The ‫ הנה‬marks a sudden experience (Hasslberger, Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis). 10.b. The most common meaning of ‫נגע‬, cf. v. 16; it can mean “strike,” but not “grasp” (cf. BDB). 10.c. For ‫ותניעני‬, 6QDan ‫ להניעני‬has “to shake me.” For the translation cf. NJPS (and Aq. ἐκίνησέ). “Raised” (G, Vulg., Syr.) and “set me trembling” (EVV) are too gentle (cf. Taylor, Peshitt· a, 258). 10.d–­d ‫“ ברכי וכפות ידי‬my knees and the palms of my hands.” Th. lacks the second phrase; one medieval ms, OG have ‫“ רגלי‬my feet” for ‫ידי‬. 11.a. OG “pitied” (implying ‫ חמל‬for ‫ )חמד‬follows vv. 8–9 nicely; similarly in v. 19. 13.a. See n. 10.a. 13.b–­b. ‫ נותרתי‬is difficult, but Syr., Vulg. presuppose it and G κατέλιπον looks more like an attempt to interpret than a witness to original ‫( הותרתי‬against NRSV)—­which would anyway mean “left him alone,” not just “left him” (Driver). The meaning might

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be “I held out” (NEB) or “I gained the superiority” (Keil, cf. the hiphil) or “I was left over” (i.e., no longer needed; RV mg.). 13.c–­c. ‫מלכי‬: 6QDan’s ‫מלכות‬, “kingdom” (cf. Th.) looks like assimilation to v. 13a. 14.a. Following K ‫ ;יִ ְק ֶרה‬Q ‫ יִ ְק ָרא‬assimilates to Gen 49:1. 14.b. See on 2:28. 14.c–­c. ‫כי עוד חזון לימים‬. The word order suggests “yet a vision for the days,” not “a vision for days yet (to come),” ‫“ חזון‬vision” having no article; cf. NRSV against RSV, which assimilates to 8:26 (with G?). 15.a. ‫ ;פני‬6QDan ‫אפי‬. 16.a. See n. 10.a. 16.b–­b. ‫“ כדמות בני אדם‬like the appearance of human beings”: the pl. is odd but s. (one medieval ms, Th., Vulg.) looks like simplification of a difficult text. 6QDan ‫“( כדמות יד אדם‬like the appearance of a human hand”; cf. OG) is perhaps assimilation to v. 10—or was the ‫ יד‬lost by assimilation to 8:15; 10:18? 16.c. ‫ציר‬, properly the fearsome and helpless convulsion of childbirth (1 Sam 4:19). 17.a–­a. ‫זה‬ . . . ‫זה‬: cf. BDB, 261, 262. 17.b. ‫( ]מ[עתה‬cf. 10:20; 11:2) is not a chronological “now” but an emphatic or adversative one: see Jenni, “Zur Verwendung von ‘atta¯ ‘ jetzt’ im AT,” 8–10. Jenni queries the text here, but see Ehrlich; cf. DTT. The pronoun ‫ אני‬is also emphatic. 19.a. NEB: on this meaning of ‫ שלום‬here (cf. 4:1; 6:25 [3:31; 6:26]) in the context of Daniel’s reaction in vv. 9–17 see Eisenbeis, Die Wurzel ‫ שלם‬im AT, 212–15; against Montgomery. 19.b. Some medieval mss have ‫“ חזק ואמץ‬take courage and be strong” for ‫​­—חזק וחזק‬ cf. G, Vulg., Syr., assimilating to Josh 1:6–9, etc. Saadia comments that he translates as if ‫ חזק ואמץ‬were the reading to avoid the repetition. The ‫ ו‬is unusual when an imperative is repeated (Bevan); cf. the greater frequency of ‫ ו‬copulative with repeated nouns in Late Biblical Hebrew (GKC 123c). 19.c. See n. 8:8.b. 20.a. The train of thought in 10:20–11:2a is difficult, but there are no textual grounds for querying the order of the verses, and commentators who reconstruct them vary in the way they do so. 20.b. ‫( הידעת‬perfect) takes up vv. 12, 14 (Hasslberger, Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis). 20.c. See n. 17.b. 20.d. Or perhaps “come forth [from that battle]”; cf. NRSV “am through with him,” though this reads rather a lot into ‫( יוצא‬despite 1 Sam 14:41; Qoh 7:18). 20.e. See n. 10.a. 21.a. Not “the,” and ‫ אמת‬suggests dynamic reliability rather than simply objective truth. (‫ בתכת‬in the BHS fascicle is a misprint for ‫בכתב‬.) 11:1.a–­a. Perhaps the phrase’s similarity to introductory dates elsewhere (e.g., 10:1) led to the anomalous MT petuchah at the end of 10:21, which the medieval chapter division follows. EVV remove the phrase as a gloss and emend v. 1 in varying ways. For Darius the Mede, G has Cyrus, smoothing out the chronology (Collins, Daniel, 8). 1.b. ‫( עמדי‬inf. construct, “my standing [was]”). 4QDanc ‫“ עמדתי‬I stood” (cf. Vulg., Th.), OG εἶπέν, Syr. qm look like different ways of responding to the unusual MT expression. 2.a. See n. 10:17.b. 2.b. See n. 10:10.a. 2.c. Not “any of them” (EV V): ‫ מכל‬is absolute (Hasslberger, Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis). 2.d. G έπαναστήσεται hardly requires ‫( יעור‬against BHS), since ‫ יעיר‬could mean “act in an aroused manner” (BDB). Cf. G’s [ἀνα]στήσεται in v. 3a to translate ‫ עמד‬qal.

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Notes 509 2.e–­e. ‫הכל את יון מלכות‬. Hardly “the whole kingdom of Yawan” (cf. G, Syr.): why then would ‫ את‬follow ‫ ?הכל‬Even as an explanatory gloss, “the kingdom of Yawan” raises problems (see Comment). If these problems can be overcome, more likely ‫הכל‬ “everything” is the subject (Barr; Torrey, “ ‘ Ya¯ wa¯ n’ and ‘Hellas,’ ” adding ‫)שר‬. More likely ‫ את‬denotes a less direct object. “Against” (EVV, cf. Vulg.) presupposes ‫ את‬ii “with” (cf. Aq.; Jer 38:5; Bentzen); compare ‫ עם‬following ‫ קום‬and ‫ יצב‬in Ps 94:16 (Bevan). For “toward” (cf. Syr.) see examples in Izre’el, “‫ ;”את=אל‬BDB. 3.a–­a. Cf. G; the adverbial understanding of phrases here and in vv. 4, 5 (Vulg.) is less straightforward. 3.b. Cf. vv. 16, 36. 4.a. See n. 8:8.b. 4.b. Were there not so many shortened imperfect (jussive) forms following simple waw in ch. 11, one would understand this occurrence as suggesting a result clause (Montgomery), but here rather it is a stylistic preference. 4.c–­c. Taking these as noun clause(s) (even though the pronoun is omitted) rather than noun phrases (Bevan, cf. 8:19, 26; GKC 116s, 147). ‫ אחרית‬is broader than “descendants” (cf. Amos 4:2; 9:1) (Keil). OG (cf. BHS) assimilates to 8:22, 24. 5.a OG replaces “of the south” by “of Egypt” in this chapter, but it allows the literal “of the north” to stand—­fortuitously, in not destroying the reminiscence of the OT image of the northern foe. 5.b–­b. An extraposed phrase (casus pendens) at the beginning of a new clause, for emphasis (against MT accents): see TTH 123, 125. 5.c. On the construction, see Barthélemy, Critique textuelle de l’AT 3:477–78. 6.a. Taking ‫ יתחברו‬as impersonal; EVV have “they will make an alliance,” but see Comment. 6.b. ‫ בוא אל‬is an expression for a bride’s going to live in her husband’s home (Josh 15:18; Judg 12:9; Jeffery). 6.c–­c. ‫כוח הזרוע‬, “the power of the arm.” OG takes ‫ הזרוע‬as subject, but cf. 10:16; and a change of subject for the verb would need to have been made earlier (Hasslberger, Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis, 212–13). 6.d. ‫וזרעו‬. The ‫ ו‬is pleonastic, for emphasis (Wernberg-­Møller, “Pleonastic waw,” 324–25). EVV “his posterity” implies repointing ‫ זְ ר ֹעֹו‬to ‫ זַ ְר עֹו‬with Th. But Dan 11 likes to repeat words—­t hus ‫ זרע‬twice here; see also n. 6.g. Philologically ‫ זר]ו[ע‬could mean “army” in v. 6 like the pl. in vv. 15, 22, 31 (Conrad, “On ‫רֹוע‬ ַ ְ‫)”ז‬, but this meaning does not fit here (see Comment). 6.e. For the absolute use of ‫נתן‬, see e.g., 2 Sam 20:21. 6.f. ‫מביאיה‬, picking up ‫ בוא‬from v. 6a; some medieval mss have s. ‫ מביאה‬here. 6.g. EVV “her child” implies reading ‫ ַהּיַ ֽל ָּדּה‬with one medieval ms, Th. (Syr., Vulg. have “children”; OG lacks). MT implies that throughout v. 6 the reference is to the people involved in establishing the marriage—­and thus here to father rather than to child. 6.h–­h. Or “the one who had power over her,” her husband (GNB): but see n. 6.g. 6.i. The time phrase makes more sense as the introduction to v. 7 (cf. EVV). 7.a. Partitive ‫( מן‬GKC 119w and the note). 7.b. ‫ ועמד‬follows the extraposed phrase (see n. 6.i and cf. TTH 123); there is no need to emend. 7.c. NEB “the defences” repoints ‫ ַה ַחיִ ל‬as ‫ה ֵחיל‬. ַ 7.d. ‫“ ועשה בהם והחזיק‬he will deal with them and he will prevail.” 8.a. Emphatic ‫ הוא‬precedes the verb, suggesting a circumstantial clause (Montgomery). 8.b. ‫ חצפון‬in the BHS fascicle is a misprint for ‫הצפון‬.

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A Celestial Figure Reveals What Will Happen

10.a. ‫ בניו‬Q; K ‫“ בנו‬his son.” Historically K is more accurate (see Comment); s. and pl. both appear in v. 10, the subject of some verbs being unclear. 10.b–­b. ‫“ ובא בוא ושטף ועבר‬will come [with] coming and will pour through and will overwhelm.” Inf. ‫ בוא‬suggests repeated action; some medieval mss have ‫( בו‬cf. OG, Syr.), but that reading is idiomatically simpler and fits the context less well. 10.c. ‫מעזה‬: presumably the southern king’s, as he is the antecedent; the southern king has changed since v. 9, from Ptolemy III to Ptolemy IV, but the celestial being often views the sequences of kings corporately, esp. the southern one, who is merely the opponent of the great northern king (Hasslberger, Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis). Driver suggests Gaza (‫)!עזה‬, though Antiochus may have already occupied that town; more likely Raphia (see Comment). 11.a. Perhaps a double reading (Collins); but for such defining phrases explaining a pronoun, see GKC 131n. 11.b. The northern king is the antecedent; his army is therefore overcome by the southern king. 12.a. Like chaff carried off by the wind (Delcor, comparing 2:35). “Rises up [for battle]” (cf. Keil) is less likely, since the usage of ‫ נשא‬is more unusual and ‫“ ההמנן‬the horde” has to refer to a different army. 12.b. After v. 11, presumably the southern king, which then leads naturally into v. 13. 12.c. K ‫ ;ירום‬Q, C, many medieval mss ‫ורם‬. Dahood (“Hebrew-­Ugaritic Lexicography III,” 323) takes ‫ ירום‬as participle from ‫ירם‬, a by-­form of ‫רום‬. 12.d. ‫רבאות‬, a mixed form (BHS). 13.a. ‫ שב‬could simply indicate repetition (“will again [raise a horde]”), cf. vv. 10a, 29a; but ch. 11 often uses ‫ שוב‬for north-­south movement (cf. vv. 9 [with ‫בוא‬, as here], 28–30). 13.b–­b. ‫“ לקץ העתים שנים‬at the end of the times, years”; again perhaps a double reading (Collins) but cf. the expression in 10:2 and the note. 13.c. ‫ ;יבוא בוא‬see n. 10.b–­b. 14.a. ‫“ בני פריצי‬the sons of the violent of [your people]”: see Comment. 14.b. ‫ להעמיד‬could denote their aim or simply the result of their action. 15.a. If v. 15 refers to further stages in the campaign (see Comment); but v. 15 could resume from v. 13 after a parenthesis in v. 14. 15.b. ‫ ;וישפך‬4QDana,c ‫ ושפך‬is more what one would have expected (Pace, OG Text, 34). 15.c. See Comment. Th., Syr. take ‫ עיר מבצרות‬as pl. (cf. GKC 124r). The standard pl. expression is ‫( ערים בצרות‬e.g., Neh 9:25) or ‫( ערי מבצר‬e.g., Jer 34:7), and the term here might have been misdivided through the influence of ‫ מבצר‬in vv. 24, 39 (cf. Syr?). 15.d. Or perhaps “their fortresses” (Schafer, “‫מבחור‬/‫מבחר‬,” 395). The suffix on ‫ מבחריו‬apparently has ‫“ הנגב‬the south” as its antecedent (cf. JB). 15.e–­e. ‫ואין כח‬: emphatic ‫( ו‬Ehrlich). 16.a. See n. 4.b. 16.b. See on 8:9. 16.c. ‫ּכ ָלה‬, ָ as 9:27. G, Syr. understand ‫ וְ ָכ ָלה‬as a verb, suggesting “and it will be destroyed by his hand” (cf. Jer 16:4); the verb occurs in 12:7. “All of it” (NRSV) implies repointing to ‫ּכ ָּלּה‬. ֻ The construction involves an asyndetic noun clause, like the one at the end of v. 5. 17.a. ‫“ וישם פניו‬and he will set his face”: see n. 4.b. 17.b–­b. ‫לבוא בתוך כל מלכותו‬: “to come in all his kingly might” (cf. NIV) leads into the rest of v. 17 less well.

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Notes 511 17.c. See BHS on ‫ ;ישרים‬there is no need to emend. The waw consecutive ‫ועשה‬ follows its extraposed object (cf. TTH 123). 17.d. ‫ובת הנשים‬, “the daughter of women.” 17.e. The kingdom: not “to destroy her” (it did not) nor “to corrupt her” (it did, from Antiochus’s angle, but this is too subtle). 17.f. Not “she” (against NEB); the phrase follows Isa 7:7 (Hasslberger, Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis). 18.a. Reading K ‫ וישב‬not Q ‫“( וישם‬set,” cf. NJPS “head for”)—­a ssimilation to v. 17; see also n. 4.b. 18.b. The term can denote any islands or countries around the Mediterranean. 18.c–­c. ‫ ;והשבית קצין חרפתו לו‬G, Syr. suggest “and he will stop a commander who challenges him” (or “. . . with his challenge to him,” cf. Keil); but see Comment. ‫קצין‬ is an archaic poetic term for a military leader; a consul was both a magistrate and a military commander. 18.d–­d. Not “indeed he will return” (cf. NRSV); ‫ בלתי‬is a negative. Charles suggests emending ‫ לו בלתי‬to ‫“( לבלתי‬so that not”; cf. JB), but probably ‫ בלתי‬alone could have this meaning (cf. the alternatives of ‫ למען‬and ‫)יען‬. The clause then refers to the northern king’s inability to deal with the commander’s response to his original challenge. Ozanne (“Three Textual Problems,” 447–48) emends to ‫“( לבלתי‬by wearing him down”; cf. NEB). 19.a. Reading ‫ וישב‬not ‫ וישם‬with some medieval mss: see n. 18.a. 20.a. ‫ נגש‬usually means “to rule (in a domineering way)”; it can mean “to exact” (Deut 15:2, 3) (see Comment). 20.b. There is no preposition; “for” is also possible (NRSV). Plôger takes as direct object (cf. RSV, JB), understanding “the splendor of a kingdom” to be Israel. 20.c. ‫“ ולא באפים ולא במלחמה‬but [some medieval mss, Syr., Vulg. omit] not in anger and not in battle”; cf. OG. Th.,JB, NEB take ‫ אף‬in an Aram. sense as “face” (DTT). 21.a. Or “contemptible” (NRSV) or “worthless” (cf. GNB); but the next clause suggests ‫ נבזה‬means “despised” (cf. Isa 53:3). 22.a. ‫“ זרעות השטף‬the forces of the flood.” NEB repoints to ‫ה ָּׁש ֵטף‬, ִ NRSV to ‫ה ָּׁשטֹף‬. ִ 22.b– ­b ‫ ;וישברו וגם נגיד ברית‬NEB emends to . . . ‫וישבר גם‬, making the covenant leader subject. Suggestively, Goldstein makes the covenant leader (then Menelaus) the subject of vv. 23–24 (II Maccabees, 262): but the transition after v. 24 is difficult. 23.a. ‫ מן‬rarely means “after” (NIV) except with temporal expressions such as ‫יום‬. 23.b–­b. ‫“ ועלה ועצם‬come up and grow powerful.” 24.a. See n. 8:25.c. RSV links with v. 23, Syr. omits. 24.b. The best of the possible translations (cf. EVV) of ‫ משמני מדינה‬in the context of vv. 23–24 (see Comment), following on from v. 23b (Hasslberger, Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis). 25.a. NEB repoints to ‫וְ יָ ֻער‬, “he will be aroused [in].” 25.b. Lit., “his heart will be against” (cf. Hasslberger, Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis, and n. 28.b–­b). 26.a. ‫ ואכלי פת בגו‬perhaps belongs to the end of v. 25 as the subject of ‫יחשבו‬ (“[people . . . ] will devise”) (BHS, though there is no need to delete the emphatic ‫)ו‬. On ‫ פת בג‬see n. 1:5.b. 26.b. Qal ‫( ישטוף‬cf. vv. 10, 40) can hardly have the usual meaning “overflow” either transitively or intransitively (against Barthélemy). But ‫ שטף‬can mean “wash away” (transitively) (Ezek 16:9), to which this occurrence can be taken as an intransitive correspondent; there is no need to assimilate to the niphal of v. 22 (against BHS). 28.a. The northern king. See n. 4.b.

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28.b–­b ‫“ ולבבו על ברית קדש ועשה‬and his heart [will be] against a holy covenant, and he will act.” I ignore MT punctuation and assume that he takes this action on the way home; the last clause in v. 28 is then resumptive. 29.a. With Th. against EVV: see Hanhart, “Die Übersetzungstechnik der Septuaginta.” 30.a. ‫כתים‬, originally a town in Cyprus, then a term for the island as a whole, then for “Cyprus and beyond,” and later for Rome (cf. OG, Vulg.). 30.b– ­b. ‫ועשה‬ . . . ‫“ וזעם‬and he will be harsh . . . and he will act.” Antiochus’s harshness is hardly his personal rage at his humiliation in Egypt; the word denotes the harshness of his actions as experienced by his victims rather than his personal feelings. Cf. the noun in v. 36; 8:19. 30.c. The balanced arrangement of clause(s) in v. 30 (Hasslberger, Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis) suggests that ‫ ושב‬belongs with what precedes (against MT). 31.a. Grammatically it is easiest to take ‫ מעוז‬as a description of the sanctuary, but it is an odd word to use of it and historically it refers more easily to the citadel near the temple (see Comment). 31.b. ‫השקוץ משומם‬: as in 8:13 (see n. 8:13.e) the participle lacks the article but it is here poel, while ‫ פשע‬is replaced by ‫שקוץ‬. 32.a. ‫( מרשיעי ברית‬cf. 1QM 1.2): giving the verb its usual meaning in Daniel and taking the construct as defining (cf. RV; GKC 116h, 128x). But “such as wrong a covenant” (cf. the use of ‫ הכשיל‬in Mal 2:8) or “such as condemn a covenant” are possible. “Covenant” might virtually mean “covenant people”; but “such among the covenant people who act faithlessly” (partitive) is unlikely, as the phrase denotes the people referred to in v. 30b and the celestial being would hardly make a point of stating that they belong to the covenant people. 32.b. ‫ ;יחניף‬the verb suggests keeping the outward form of a faith that one has really given up. 32.c. It is perhaps significant that ‫ ידע‬appears here in a covenant/treaty context (cf. Huffmon, “The Treaty Background of Hebrew yaˉda‘”). 32.d. ‫“ יחזקו ועשו‬display strength and act.” 33.a. The more common meaning of the hiphil verb in BH, though participle ‫משכיל‬ commonly means “teacher” at Qumran (Kosmala, “Mas´kîl,” 240). While the phrase might refer to all those who acknowledge their God (v. 32; Delcor), more naturally it suggests a group among the conservative Jews. 33.b. See n. 9:27.b. 33.c. There is a troubling paronomasia between “discerning” (‫ )שכל‬and “fall” (‫( )כשל‬vv, 33, 34, 35) (cf. JB). ‫ כשל‬can mean “be caused to sin” (Jer 18:15; Mal 2:8), but this ill fits the context. 33.d. 6QDan, G have “and.” 34.a. Or “strength”: see Miller, “Ugaritic q´zr and Hebrew ‘zr ii,” 171. 34.b. As an understanding of ‫בחלקלקות‬, covert support (JB) is less likely than covert hostility, as in v. 21 (and cf. v. 32 ‫)בחלקות‬. 35.a. The many potentially insincere adherents of v. 34b are a more plausible antecedent for ‫ בהם‬than the discerning of v. 35a (Hasslberger, Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis). 35.b–­b. ‫ ;עד עת קץ כי‬NEB reverses the last two words. 35.c. If “it” is the final moment; “last for” if “it” is the persecution. 36.a. [‫ אל]ים‬refers to subordinate heavenly beings; English “god[s]” in relation to “God” gives just the right impression. 36.b. ‫כלה‬: perhaps wrath on the northern king being “full and ready to be expressed” (cf. 1 Sam 25:17) (so JB) or being “fully expressed, poured out” (cf. Ezek

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Notes 513 5:13; 2 Chr 36:22), but more likely wrath on Israel being “exhausted, at an end” (cf. Isa 10:25; Dan 8:19). See n. 9:24.d. 36.c– ­c. ‫כי נחרצה נעשתה‬: perfect of certitude, as following ‫ כי‬and as paralleling the imperfect after ‫ נחרצה‬in 9:27 (cf. GKC 106n) rather than “when what is determined is done.” 37.a. More likely s. than pl., as the standard BH expression for “the God of his fathers” (Bunge, “Der ‘Gott der Festungen,’ ” 170): see Comment. 37.b. Grammatically ‫“ חמדת נשים‬the love of women” could be objective genitive “love for women,” but this does not fit contextually. 37.c–­c. 2 medieval mss omit (cf. OG). 38.a. ‫על כנו‬: the antecedent is “his fathers’ god,” the one this new god replaces. “On his stand” (Hartman/Di Lella) involves reordering the words to fit the context, and the meaning as in vv. 7, 20, 21 is more natural. 38.b. ‫אלה מעזים‬, lit. “god of strongholds,” preceded by ‫ ל‬marking the object (BDB, 512). 38.c. Taking the ‫ ו‬as explicative (cf. NEB): see n. 6:29.a. 39.a. ‫עשה ל‬: as with other occurrences of ‫ עשה‬in ch. 11, the verb’s meaning is further defined by the following verb(s), with which it forms a compound idea. See also Josh 8:2 for the construction in v. 39 (Keil). 39.b. Taking ‫ מבצרי‬as pl. of extension/amplification (cf. GKC 124abe), referring to Jerusalem (Lacocque). 39.c. ‫“ ִעם‬with.” NEB, NAB, JB repoint ‫ ַעם‬to provide ‫ עשה‬with an object, but the resultant expression is dubious, and see n. 39.a. 39.d. ‫ ;אשר הכיר‬NJPS, JB “the man who regards him,” but this changes subject between this verb and the next one and changes number between this word and the following verb’s suffix. Q ‫ יכיר‬looks like a correction of K ‫( הכיר‬Bevan). 39.e. ‫וחלק‬, following its extraposed object (cf. TTH 123). 40.a. ‫“ ושטף ועבר‬and pour through and overwhelm.” 41.a. ‫רּבֹות‬,ַ apparently referring to the ‫ ארצות‬of v. 40. EVV repoint ‫“ ִרּבֹות‬ten thousands” (so Sym; cf. n. 12.d). 41.b. Taking the clause beginning ‫ ואלה‬as circumstantial. 41.c. ‫ ראשית‬suggests the flower of a people (Pss 78:51; 105:36; Baldwin). Syr. implies ‫“ שארית‬remnant”; but cf. Num 24:20; Jer 49:35; Amos 6:1. 42.a. The phrase can indicate plotting rather than action (Tawill, “Two Notes,” 36), but the usage is rarer and not indicated by the context here. 42.b. ‫;בארצות‬ ַ some medieval mss ‫ָבארצות‬ 43.a. ‫במצעדיו‬: Kopf (“Arabische Etymologien,” 272–73) translates “to his power” on the basis of Arabic. 44.a. Driver (“Hebrew Homonyms,” 56–59) derives ‫ ולהחרים‬from ‫ חרם‬ii “cut off” not ‫ חרם‬i “devote” (see BDB). 45.a. ‫אהלי אפדנו‬, “the tents of his pavilion.” ‫ אפדנו‬comes from a Persian word for a colonnaded audience hall; it entered Aram. via late Babylonian (see Ito¯, Old Persian a pa da a na”; Wagner, Aramaismen, 28). On the magnificent palace complexes at Susa and Persepolis see Olmstead, History of the Persian Empire, 272–87; Cook, The Persian Empire, 158–63. 45.b. Taking ‫“ ימים‬seas” as pl. of extension (cf. GKC 124b) and as referring to the Mediterranean (as Judg 5:17; cf. Montgomery). NIV “between the seas, at . . .” is possible, but its reference is unclear. 12:1.a. That is, one of the supreme heavenly beings (not the sole one), several of whom appear in chs. 8 and 10. 1.b. ‫ ;העמד על‬cf. NEB “who stands guard over.”

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1.c. ‫“ בני עמך‬the sons of your people.” There is no reason to limit the phrase’s reference to the seer’s own group (Collins, “The Mythology of Holy War,” 603, against Plöger). 1.d. But see n. 2:1.c. 1.e. Grammatically it is easier to take ‫ גוי‬as subject of ‫( היות‬EVV), but taking it as complement gives a better meaning (Spronk, Beatific Afterlife, 339). 2.a. “Many who sleep” (which might then mean “all who sleep”—­a ll Jews or all people) would require taking ‫ מן‬as explicative, which is rare (BDB, 581), unlikely with ‫( רבים‬contrast Qoh 3:12; Esth 8:17; 2 Chr 30:18), and not indicated by the context. 2.b. ‫אדמת עפר‬: not “the dust of the earth,” both because of the word order and because ‫ עפר‬means “soil” (Hartman/Di Lella, cf. BDB) and this translation is more natural in a quasi-­geographical expression (Nickelsburg, Resurrection, 17). Talmon (“Double Readings,” 167–68) takes the phrase as a conflation of two readings. Doukhan (“From Dust to Stars,” 90) links the strange expression to Gen 3:19 where the words come in this order. 2.c. Alfrink (“L’idée de résurrection”) begins a new clause here, “they will go to lasting life, while others will go to utter shame,” though the second lacks an antecedent (Hasslberger, Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis). The idea of the wicked being awakened in order to be exposed and condemned seems bizarre, but the idea of exposure and condemnation after death without such awakening is little less so, and the problem arises from taking vv. 1–2 literalistically. The notion of a double resurrection is not clearly stated elsewhere for two centuries (2 Esd 7:32–44; Rev 20). 2.d. ‫עולם‬: see on 2:20. 2.e. ‫“( לחרפות‬to shames,” pl. of amplification—­GKC 124e); perhaps a gloss on the less familiar ‫“( דראון‬abhorrence,” only here and Isa 66:24). 3.a. Cf. Wolters, “Zo¯har Ha¯ ra¯ qîa,’ ” for the meaning “luminary”; his specific reference to Halley’s Comet is less convincing (cf. Lucas, Daniel, 263). 3.b. Or “vindicate,” a common meaning of ‫ הצדיק‬in Dan 7–12. “Justify” in the sense of “atone for” (Delcor) is not suggested by the context. 4.a. ‫יׁשטטו‬: BHS suggests emending to ‫“ יׂשטטו‬will fall away.” ‫ ׁשטט‬can hardly refer to searching the book (against Delcor). 4.b. EVV “knowledge” fits ill in the context; hence JB’s “wickedness,” emending ‫ דעת‬to ‫( רעה‬cf. OG). Rather follow NEB in linking ‫ דעת‬to a ‫ ידע‬ii meaning “be still, submissive” different from ‫“ ידע‬know” (cf. Thomas, “Note on ‫ הדעת‬in Daniel xii.4”; Emerton, “A Consideration of Some Alleged Meanings of ‫ ידע‬in Hebrew,” 150, 177; Day, “Da‘at ‘Humiliation,’ ” 98–99). ˉ ‫ נהר‬as in 10:4 but ‫יאר‬, a loanword from Egyptian, usually referring to the 5.a. Not Nile, derived here from the Joseph story (see the several verbal links between 12:5–7 and Gen 41:1; cf. n. 6.a–­a). 6.a–­a. ‫“ ממעל למימי היאר‬above in relation to the waters of the river”—­but this hardly means in the air (against EVV); cf. n. 9:21.c–­c., also ‫ על‬in Gen 41:1. 6.b. Taking ‫ ויאמר‬as indefinite 3rd s. (cf. GKC 144d) rather than inferring that one of the figures in v. 5 is the subject (NIV, JB); cf. Gen 19:17; 38:28. There is no need to emend to ‫( ואמר‬NEB, RSV, cf. OG)—­but the versional evidence is uncertain (Barthélemy, Critique textuelle de l’AT 3:494). 6.c. At Qumran ‫ קץ‬often means “time,” which is possible here; but “end” fits well (cf. vv. 7–9) and corresponds to usage elsewhere in Daniel. 7.a. See n. 4:16.a. 7.b. ‫נַ ֵּפץ‬: the Heb. is unusual and often emended (NEB ‫נִ ּפֹץ‬, JB ‫נ ֵֹפץ‬, interchanged with the next word ‫)יד‬, but no one emendation carries conviction. NEB also derives the word from ‫ נפץ‬ii “scatter” not ‫ נפץ‬i “shatter.”

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Form/Structure/Setting 515 7.c. ‫ככלות‬: “stopped” rather than “brought to completion” (so NIV?); see n. 9:24.d–­d. 8.a. ‫אחרית‬, not ‫“ קץ‬end”: cf. Driver. 9.a. Paul (“Daniel 12:9”) identifies this double expression as the equivalent of a technical Akkadian term. 10.a. Rhythm and parallelism suggest taking v. 10 as a double bicolon, which works abb’a’. 10.b. ‫יצרפו‬: C ‫יתצרפו‬, 4QFlor ‫יצטרפו‬, both hithpael. 10.c. “Explain [it]” (Lebram, “The Piety of the Jewish Apocalyptists,” 179) is oversubtle, esp. given the rarity of ‫ בין‬hiphil used absolutely. 13.a. G omits ‫“( לקץ‬until the end”—­i.e., your death), which might be dittog from the next line. 13.b. ‫ עמד‬is used as an equivalent to ‫ קום‬in Late Biblical Hebrew (BDB, 764a).

Form/Structure/Setting Form See ch. 2 Form. Daniel 10–12 is the report of a vision and auditory experience given to a human being by a supernatural being. The vision prepares for the auditory experience rather than conveying the content of the revelation, as a prophetic vision does; the revelation’s content lies in the auditory event.1 The content is expressed less allusively and more directly than is the case in any of the other visions. While chs. 10–12 include some mythic motifs, in general they communicate more by means of ciphers and less by means of symbols than the preceding visions do. The revelatory message concerns present, past, and future, illustrating how apocalypses have a much broader interest than the preoccupation with questions about the future that is often attributed to them.2 But the central part of the auditory revelation is a regnal prophecy outlining the rise, activities, achievements, and fall of a series of kings, who are unnamed but can be identified on the basis of the events referred to. Thus “this vision is more firmly and obviously rooted in human history than any of the others,” 3 even though it names no names. Such prophecies have no parallels elsewhere in the OT, but have a number outside it from Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece, from the late second millennium to the Hellenistic period. An Assyrian example reads: . . . A ruler will arise, he will rule for thirteen years. There will be an attack of Elam against Akkad, and the booty of Akkad will be carried off. 1 2 3

Cf. Plöger, Daniel, on the passage. See Rowland, The Open Heaven. Meadowcroft, “History and Eschatology in Tension,” 247.

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516

A Celestial Figure Reveals What Will Happen The temples of the great gods will be destroyed, the defeat of Akkad will be decreed [by the gods]. There will be confusion, disturbance, and unhappy events in the land, and the reign will diminish [in power]; another man, whose name is not mentioned [as a successor] will arise, and will seize the throne as king and will put to death his officials.4

These texts are for the most part quasi-­prediction rather than actual prediction. They combine extensive quasi-­prediction of events before the writer’s day with more limited actual prediction of events still to come. The formulae and the detail in the texts compare with Daniel; so does the anti-­ Hellenistic nature of instances from this period. On Grayson’s interpretation, the Dynastic Prophecy from the Hellenistic age, which covers the history of the Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and Hellenistic Empires, ends in a way that is particularly similar to Dan 10–12, with an actual prediction of the fall of the Seleucid empire and a rubric regarding keeping the prophecy secret.5 As is the case with other parts of the OT, Dan 11 becomes clearer when seen against its ancient Near Eastern background. As with other such parallels, the implication is not that the quasi-­predictions in Daniel are directly dependent on such Assyrian texts,6 but this material does indicate that in their context the Danielic visions would be mostly quasi-­prediction. We would require evidence if we were to think that the author has turned a known way of formulating quasi-­predictions into a way of giving actual predictions, for which there are no parallels in the OT. “The burden of proof must fall on those who wish to argue that Daniel is different from the other examples of the genre.”7 The difference in Daniel’s theology does not invalidate this assumption;8 these quasi-­predictions “are distinctively Jewish, yet are a Jewish form of a widespread contemporary phenomenon.”9 In unveiling its revelation, chs. 10–12 take up motifs from ch. 7: with 7:25 compare the characterization of the northern king in 11:36 and the limit placed on the time of trouble in 12:7. It has further links with ch. 9: with the account of Daniel’s preparation for and receiving of his revelation 4 ANET, 606; cf. NERT 118–22. 5 Grayson, Babylonian Historical-Literary Texts, 13–37; see also Lambert, The Background of Jewish Apocalyptic, 9–16; Lucas, Daniel, 269–72; more broadly Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus, 337–45 (ET 1:184–89); Osswald, “Zum Problem der vaticinia ex eventu”; also Collins, Apocalypse, on Sib. Or., especially the oracle on Alexander in 3.388–400, updated to refer to Antiochus. 6 See Neujahr, Predicting the Past in the Ancient Near East, 119–36. 7 Collins, Daniel with an Introduction to Apocalyptic Literature, 34. 8 Against Baldwin, “Some Literary Affinities of the Book of Daniel,” 92–94. On theological questions that might be raised by the conclusion that the Scriptures contain quasi-predictions, see the Conclusion to this commentary under Form. 9 Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, 520.

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Form/Structure/Setting 517 in 9:3, 21–23 compare 10:1–3, 9–11; with the content of the revelation in 9:24–27, compare 11:10, 16, 22, 31, 36 (floodlike destruction, the removal of the anointed/leader, the suspension of regular sacrifices and the desolating abomination, the implementing of what has been determined). Many of these motifs have also appeared in ch. 8, and it is with ch. 8 that chs. 10–12 have most detailed points of contact. Indeed, reminiscences of almost every verse of ch. 8 reappear here.10 One can thus see chs. 10–12 as a reworking of those earlier visions, and in particular of ch. 8.11 Like the previous visions, Dan 10–12 is also shaped by earlier Scriptures; it is in part another situational midrash. Clearest influence in ch. 10 is exercised by the accounts of God’s appearing in Ezek 1–3; 9–10:12 the detailed chronological reference, the river setting, the man dressed in linen, each detail of his description (v. 6), Daniel’s reaction (v. 9), the man’s response (vv. 10–11), and the one of human appearance (‫דמות‬, v. 16). Behind Ezekiel’s description of his receiving his vision is a long tradition concerning the seeking and receiving of oracles, going back to Mari.13 The address of the supernatural being as “my lord” corresponds to Zech 1:9; 4:4, 5, 13; 6:4; his rhetorical question in v. 20 also compares with such questions in Zech 1–6; and his touching Daniel corresponds to Jer 1 and Isa 6, though with different significance. For v. 14, cf. Gen 49:1. Some key words in Dan 11 parallel the warning of Jerusalem’s destruction in Ezek 7:19–27: the temple as the fairest (v. 16) will be attacked by violators (v. 14); people who seek a vision (v. 14) will fall over (‫כשל‬, v. 14) the stumbling block (‫ )מכשל‬of their iniquity; the sanctuary/strong[hold] will be desecrated by abominations and made a desolation (v. 31); people will hear reports that alarm them (v. 44). More generally, the vision takes up aspects of Isaiah that may have seemed enigmatic: in light of events, the seer seeks, receives, and relates illumination on what these texts now signify. Thus he begins in 10:1 with allusions to Isa 40:1–11 with its references to conflict/servitude (‫צבא‬, v. 2), to the reliability of God’s message (v. 8), and to something being revealed (v. 5); for the vision’s setting in the reign of Cyrus, compare Isa 45:1.14 The body of the revelation reflects the influence of earlier passages from Isaiah concerning the Assyrians, upon which Dan 11 is an actualizing commentary in the manner of the Qumran literature.15 Allusions to armies flooding through the land and to many stumbling and falling (vv. 10, 18–19, 22, 26, 33–35, 40) recall Isa 8:7–8, 14–15. The characterization of the last northern king 10 Lists in Boutflower, In and Around the Book of Daniel, 224–25. 11 Hasslberger (Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis, 190–91) understands 10:14 to refer to ch. 8 in this connection. 12 See Kim, “Biblical Interpretation in the Book of Daniel,” 250–76. 13 Weinfeld, “Patterns in Prophetic Literature,” 181–82. 14 Cf Lacocque, Daniel, on the passage. 15 Seeligmann, “Voraussetzungen der Midraschexegese,” 171; and now more systematically Teeter, “Isaiah and the King of As/Syria in Daniel’s Final Vision.”

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(vv. 36–39) recalls that of the Assyrians in Isa 10, especially vv. 5–6, 12, 15 (cf. 14:12–15; 33:10),16 while the desolations that are determined (v. 36) reflect Isa 10:22–26 (cf. 28:22). See also Isa 7:5–7 (cf. v. 17), 17:12 (cf. v. 10), 30:18 (cf. 12:12); 34:17 (cf. 11:39; 12:13). Phrases from servant passages in Isa 40–55 appear at several points. Clearest are allusions to Isa 52:13–53:12 in 12:1–4: the role of the discerning (‫משכילים‬, cf. Isa 52:13 ‫ ;)ישכיל‬their setting the multitude right (cf. 53:11); also perhaps their shining like stars (cf. 53:11 1QIsa a);17 and the increase in ‫“( דעת‬suffering” [see n. 12:4.b], cf. Isa 53:11).18 See also 10:8, the seer’s face being disfigured (‫משחית‬, cf. Isa 52:14); 11:12 (‫ נשא‬and ‫ירום‬, cf. Isa 52:13); and 11:22, 28, 30, 32 for the use of “covenant” to refer to people (cf. Isa 42:6; 49:8).19 From other passages in the prophets and elsewhere, 11:20 contrasts with Zech 9:8, and 11:21 with 1 Chr 29:25. The end awaiting its time (10:14; 11:27, 35; cf. 8:17) takes up Hab 2:3. The ships from Kittim (11:30) are those of the prophecy in Num 24:24. The account of the last northern king’s end (11:40–45) is shaped as a whole as well as in specific detail by the OT tradition of the attack of a gentile foe who is defeated and killed near the gates of Jerusalem (e.g., Pss 2; 46; 48; 76), a tradition already reworked in prophetic passages such as Isa 10; 14:24–25; 31; Ezek 38–39; Joel 2:20; Zech 14,20 as well as by the prophetic portrayals of judgment on Egypt (Isa 19; Jer 43:8–13; 46; Ezek 29–32) and on Libya and Sudan (e.g., Nah 3:9, also Ezek 30:5 [see BHS]). In ch. 12, the time of trouble (v. 1) recalls Jer 30:7. The awakening of some who sleep in the dirt and the consigning of some to abhorrence (v. 2) combines phrases from Isa 26:19 and 66:24; Isa 26:17–21 also includes the ideas of an experience of trouble and of the punishment of the wicked.21 The hurrying to and fro during the time that God’s words are hidden (v. 4) takes up Amos 8:12. Expressions and ideas in 12:1–2 take up Gen 3 and other passages that talk about lasting death and lasting life.22 Daniel 10–12 is situational midrash rather than expository midrash; its starting point is questions raised by present experience, which the interpreter seeks to address by means of the Scriptures, rather than questions raised by studying the text in its own right. Or perhaps we may say that it resolves one problem, the apparent meaninglessness of present history, by first bringing to the surface a second, the enigmas of ancient prophecy, and solves both problems by setting them alongside each other. The seer promises that the 16 17 18 19

See Lester, Daniel Evokes Isaiah, 61–93. Cavallin, “De visa lärarnas död och uppsta˙ndelse,” 51. Allen, “Isaiah liii. 11 and Its Echoes,” 28. Brownlee, “The Servant of the Lord in the Qumran Scrolls,” 12; Portier-Young, Apocalypse Against Empire, 272–76. 20 Gese, “Das Geschichtsbild des Danielsbuches und Ägypten,” 150–51. 21 Kossen, “De oorsprong van de Voorstelling der opstanding uit de doden in Dan. 12:2”; Bailey, “The Intertextual Relationship of Daniel 12:2 and Isaiah 26:19.” 22 Cf. Gardner, “The Way to Eternal Life in Dan 12:1e–2.”

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Form/Structure/Setting 519 ancient word is to be fulfilled or filled out in a way that will restore meaning to present experience. The anthologizing of the Scriptures that has been a feature of chs. 7–9 becomes central in chs. 10–12: it enables the seer to develop a systematic interpretation of past, present, and future that will help his people to live with them. The quasi-­predictions contribute to this process by interpreting recent history in light of the Scriptures. They are not engaged in apologetics, in proving something, but in fulfilling a theological need.23 Nor must it be the case that a pretended ability to predict the future in 11:2–39 gives grounds for believing the actual predictions in 11:40–12:3. Rather, the quasi-­predictions’ ability to make sense of the past, by relating it in the light of the Scriptures, implies grounds for trusting the actual predictions’ portrait of what the future will bring, a portrait painted in the light of the same Scriptures. When they speak about the past, they do so on the basis of having historical data and scriptural text as a means of interpretation. When they speak about the future, they have only scriptural text. The seer “did not draw a clear-­cut line between past and contemporaneous events which already had been realized in accordance with God’s predestined course of history, and the impending eschatological events predicted by the prophets, whose words were inspired by the same Lord.”24 The seer is then providing an imaginary scenario, a possible embodiment of that text. It is not to be pressed to provide (or be judged by) literal historical data, any more than is the case with the prophets. Its object is not to provide literal historical facts but to provide scriptural interpretation of the events that will come. While the seer implicitly wishes to commend a certain form of behavior, namely, resistance to Seleucid/reformist pressures, his explicit focus is cognitive. He aims to provide a way for conservative Jews to understand their present experience, by looking at it in light of some scriptural texts. The supernatural being provides this understanding for the seer (10:1, 14); the “discerning” provide it for the multitude (11:33). While aspects of his and their ideas may have a Persian background, there are no clear pointers in this direction. At Qumran, the dualism of light and darkness, Michael and Belial, represents a way of thinking that might more plausibly be thought to indicate Persian influence.25 There is apparently no Persian equivalent to the idea of heavenly beings identified with particular peoples,26 which is more likely a development of OT ideas (e.g., Deut 32:8 in 4QDeut, LXX). The picture of the celestial beings’ activities in 10:13; 10:20–11:1, and of the discerning who 23 Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, 510–11 (and see 509–22 generally); cf. Niskanen, The Human and the Divine in History, 46; against e.g., Hartman, “The Functions of Some So-called Apocalyptic Timetables.” 24 Van der Woude, “Prophetic Prediction, Political Prognostication, and Firm Belief,” 63, comparing Osswald, “Zum Problem der vaticinia ex eventu.” 25 Collins, “The Mythology of Holy War in Daniel and the Qumran War Scroll,” 604–11. 26 So Bertholet, “Der Schutzengel Persiens,” 34–37.

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join them in 12:1–3, provides crucial insight on the “metaphysical backdrop” to current events.27 The picture likely reflects visionary experience of the kind to which chs. 10–12 testify, building on scriptural reflection. The promise of resurrection in ch. 12 conflates the prophetic eschatological hope and its stress on the realization of God’s sovereignty in relation to Israel as a whole with the concern for the destiny of the individual characteristic of the wisdom tradition and the Psalms.28 It does not require an explanation in terms of Persian influence.29 If extra-­Israelite traditions appear, they are old Canaanite ideas about human life being subsumed into the life of the celestial world.30 The evidence for Egyptian background for the portrait of Antiochus31 is rather circumstantial.

Structure The MT divides the section as 10:1–3; 10:4–21; 11:1–12:3; and 12:4–8; and 12:9–13, possibly a slightly more illuminating understanding than that of the medieval chapter divisions in printed English and Hebrew Bibles. I understand the structure of the section approximately as follows. 10:1 Narrative introduction and summary 10:2–19 Opening appearance of supernatural beings 2–3 Seer’s preparation 4–19 Appearing and address of supernatural being 4–6  Appearing 7–9  Daniel’s response 7–8  to the sight 9  to the sound 10–11 Twofold elevation of Daniel 12–14 Preliminary address by supernatural being 15–17 Daniel’s response to the address 18–19 Reassurance of Daniel 10:20–12:4 Main address by supernatural being 10:20–11:2a Introduction 11:2b–12:3 Announcement of events to come 11:2b  Persian kings 11:3–4 A warrior king 11:5–19 Conflicts of southern and northern kings 27 Collins, Daniel with an Introduction to Apocalyptic Literature, 102. 28 Kleinknecht, “Der leidende Gerechtfertigte,” 78; Moore, Resurrection and Immortality.” 29 Cf. Nötscher, Altorientalischer und alttestamentlicher Auferstehungsglauben, 173–261; against, e.g., Birkeland, “The Belief in the Resurrection of the Dead in the OT,” 75–78; Hultg˙ ård (“Das Judentum in der hellenistisch-römischen Zeit und die iranische Religion,” 544–45) derives the idea of double reward from Persia. 30 Spronk, Beatific Afterlife, 341–43. 31 Lebram, “König Antiochus im Buch Daniel,” 750–52.

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Form/Structure/Setting 521 5 Rise of the southern king’s lieutenant 6 Alliance between north and south 7–8a Invasion by the southern king 8b–9 Invasion by the northern king 10–12 Further invasion by the northern kings 13–15 Further invasion by the northern king 16–19 The northern king’s triumph and eventual fall 11:20 A northern king who sends round an oppressor 11:21–45 The last northern king 21–24 His rise and success (until a certain time) 25–28 His invasion of the south and his attack on a covenant (but the end waits) 29–35 His further invasion and attacks (at the set moment; but the end still waits) 36–39 His attack on God (until wrath is complete) 40–45 His last invasion, attack, and fall (at the time of the end) 12:1–3 The deliverance of the faithful (at that time) 12:4  Conclusion 12:5–13 Closing dialogue with supernatural beings 5 Their appearing 6–7 Seer overhears their conversation 8 Seer asks for explanation of it 9–13 Closing address by supernatural being 9 Command to seer and explanation 10–12 Summary announcements of events to come 13 Command to seer and promise The narrative introduction and summary (10:1) emphasize the importance of this final vision; it is the first third-­person introduction since ch. 7. They also introduce some suspense into the section as they hint at the content that will follow. The elaborate opening appearance of supernatural being(s) and the dialogue with the seer (10:2–19) further underline the authority and significance of the revelation’s content. Daniel’s apprehensiveness and reluctance on account of his sense of unworthiness parallel features of prophetic call narratives and thus imply that the revelation has prophetic authority.32 The dialogue also opens up a key point of substance regarding the perspective on history to which the revelation invites its audience (v. 13) and perhaps implies an anticipatory contrast with the action of the last northern king in 11:20–45: whereas he will seek to storm heaven and will be put down, heaven reaches down to Daniel and he hesitates to raise his head but is lifted up. 32 Cf Anderson, Signs and Wonders, on the passage.

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There is contact between earth and heaven, in the experience of the seer and in the realities of his people’s history. The main address opens (10:20–11:2a) by recapitulating this point and by emphasizing the reliability of what is to follow. Its announcement of events to come begins with a series of kings who seem to have the capacity to achieve much, but who eventually fail or fall (11:2b–9). There follows a northern king—­not clearly distinguished from his predecessors—­who foreshadows acts of the last northern king (11:10–19) by his two campaigns against a southern king, his being checked by a third force, his receiving support among Daniel’s own people, and his campaigning in the fairest land. Another northern king foreshadows a different aspect of the last king’s activity, his violation of the Jerusalem temple; he, too, then falls (11:20). The main address comes to a climax with a lengthy description of the last northern king (11:21–45), whose career follows that of his foreshadowing types but goes beyond it—­he acts “as his fathers did not”—­in his achievement, his intrigues, his campaigns, his unconscious fulfillment of the Scriptures, his dealings with a covenant people and their sanctuary, his god-­like and god-­defying assertiveness, his plunder, and his fall. The momentousness as well as the divine determination of his reign is marked by recurrent references to waiting for the “set moment.”33 The “rise” of a quite different leader, with the deliverance of the faithful who have been under attack during the last king’s reign, completes the announcement of events to come (12:1–3; MT puts a petuchah here). These verses manifest features of poetry (rhythm, parallelism, metaphor, simile), which emphasize their significance at the high point of the main address, as happens with the other visions.34 The main address is closed off with words to Daniel (12:4). The vision then returns to the dialogue between seer and supernatural figures with which it began (12:5–13). The function of this further dialogue is to add reassurance regarding the limits set to the events that have been presaged and to stiffen the resolve of those who will be put under pressure by them.35 Like ch. 8, Dan 10–12 is written in idiosyncratic Hebrew influenced by Aramaic and perhaps translated from Aramaic.36 It includes a number of instances of extraposed phrases (casus pendens) followed by waw (11:5, 7, 17), of emphatic waw (11:6, 15), and of the combining of ‫ עשה‬and another verb in hendiadys (11:7, 30, 32, cf. 28). At the same time, ch. 11 in particular is characterized by the use of a variety of terms within certain fields of meaning that help give it a particular cast: terms suggesting royal authority and power (√‫מלך‬, √‫משל‬, ‫תקף‬, ‫יד‬, ‫כח‬, ‫)זרוע‬, its acts and achievements (‫]כרצון[ עשה‬, ‫חזק‬, ‫בשלוה‬, ‫עשר‬, 33 On ch. 11, see Clifford, “History and Myth in Daniel 10–12,” 24–25. 34 Segert (“Poetic Structures in the Hebrew Sections of the Book of Daniel,” 269–71) again has a slightly different poetic analysis and some comments on poetic features. 35 Zamora (“The Daniel and Qohelet Epilogues”) compares this last section with the last section of Ecclesiastes. 36 See conveniently Hartman/Di Lella, Daniel, on the chapters.

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Form/Structure/Setting 523 ‫ירום לבבו‬, ‫גדל‬, ‫רב‬, ‫שים פנים‬, ‫)חלקלקות‬, the rise and fall of kings and their empires ([‫עמד ]על כנו‬, ‫כשל‬, ‫נפל‬, ‫שבר‬, ‫נתש‬, ‫חצה‬, ‫כח‬, ‫)עצר‬, military matters (‫חיל‬, ‫המון‬, ‫שר‬, ‫מבצר‬, ‫מעוז‬, ‫אף‬, ‫)מלחמה‬, military action, victory, and defeat (‫בא ב‬, ‫נלחם‬, ‫עור‬, ‫גרה‬, ‫סלל‬, ‫שטף‬, ‫מעוז‬, ‫שבר‬, ‫נתן‬, ‫)נשא‬, and movement more generally (‫בא‬, ‫יצא‬, ‫)שוב‬.37 Family words are drawn in, often in the context of the making of alliances (‫בת‬, ‫הילדה‬, ‫אבות‬, ‫אחרית‬, ‫זרע‬, ‫חבר‬, ‫)]מ[ישרים‬, as are religious terms such as words for God, gods, idols, and sacred vessels, and expressions for time (‫עת‬, ‫שנים‬, ‫קץ‬, ‫)מועד‬. Several words appear with particular frequency: ‫( עמד‬arise/stand/raise, sixteen times), ‫( בא‬come/attack/bring, twelve times), ‫( שוב‬turn/return/do again, twelve times), ‫( עשה‬make/act/do, ten times). These verbal phenomena contribute to the drawing of patterns in history: for example, kings who seem to have the power to do as they will but who are then frustrated and fall (vv. 3, 16, 36); kings who seek to seal alliances by means of marriages and fail (vv. 6, 17); more generally, the ceaseless movement and warring between north and south, the unending rise and fall of rulers and empires with their awesome power and authority yet their less acknowledged constraints and transience. Some of the terms are taken on from ch. 10 into ch. 11 or from ch. 11 into ch. 12 (e.g., ‫עמד‬, ‫חזק‬, and other terms for strength);38 they thus establish links and contrasts between the different forms of strength and authority that the chapters portray. The book of Daniel “redefines ‘strength’ for the faithful in stark contrast to that of the battling powers of Antiochus and his armies.”39 On the basis of overlaps, repetitions, and unevennesses, it has been suggested that an earlier form of the section lacked some of 10:1; 10:20–11:1; 12:5–13, in whole or in part, or conversely lacked the bulk of ch. 11,40 along with some explanatory phrases such as “the northern king” in 11:11 (BHS) and the explicit reference in Egypt in 11:8.41 Carroll looks at the developing sequence of estimated periods in 12:7, 11–12 in the light of Festinger’s studies of how groups cope with nonfulfillment of prophecies.42

Setting The Hellenistic period has been described as one of secularization, materialism, economic activity, exploitation, and militarization,43 and more of the 37 Wildgruber (Daniel 10–12, 241–42) comments that no semantic field is as prominent in ch. 11 as the field of words for power. 38 Barth, Diesseits und Jenseits im Glauben des späten Israel, 86. 39 Portier-Young, Apocalypse Against Empire, 242. 40 See, e.g., Hasslberger, Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis, 135–41; Davies, Daniel, 63–65; Redditt, “Calculating the ‘Times’: Daniel 12:5–13”; and David’s rationale for the place of 11:1 (“Daniel 11,1”). 41 So Charles, Daniel, on the passage. 42 See Pericope Bibliography. 43 So Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus, 8–107 (ET 1:6–55). Collins (Jewish Cult and Hellenistic Culture, 1–43) is more dispassionate. See also Collins/Sterling, Hellenism in the Land of Israel. On the other hand, Portier-Young (Apocalypse Against Empire, 49–216) is more passionate.

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elements in such a profile are visible as the background of chs. 10–12 than were visible in earlier chapters. While Greek rule and culture thus had a profound influence on Judea, Baal Šamem is a Syrian god, and the Antiochene period once more brings to a head questions about the relationship between Israel’s faith and that of other Middle Eastern religions, as well as its relationship to Hellenism.44 The chapters’ specific historical setting at the point where quasi-­ prediction gives way to actual prediction lies after the outbreak of resistance to Antiochus IV some time between 167 and 164. It reflects the beliefs and pressures of conservative Jews, who might be identified with the Hasidim or “committed” of 1 Macc 2:42. The Hasidim can later be divided into more and less militarist groups; here this division is possible but not explicit. Although the Hasidim may be characterized as a transformationist sect set over against reformist Jews (see ch. 7 Setting), their emphasis on the multitude, the main body of the community, indicates that they had a vision for the people as a whole; in this sense their mentality was not sectarian.45 They are anti-­Seleucid but not explicitly anti-­Hellenistic or pro-­Ptolemaic. Daniel 10:2–3 suggests that the group was one that respected “mantic activity” in the sense of the attempt to open oneself to God in a way that might lead to God revealing something. Stylistic differences in chs. 10–12 may indicate a different author from that of previous chapters,46 but if so, the author comes from the same group. The chapters gain special emphasis by their length and their location at the end of the book. Their introduction is particularly complex and awesome, with a number of celestial beings involved. It provides a concrete “metaphysical backdrop” to the quasi-­prediction in ch. 11.47 Following on the symbolic dream and vision of chs. 7 and 8 and the still cryptic scriptural exposition of ch. 9, ch. 11 offers the plainest and most clear-­cut of the quasi-­predictions, explaining and decoding what precedes.48 The account of the End in 11:40–12:3 complements the earlier portrait of the lasting reign of the holy ones, the vindication of the temple, and the downfall of the desolater by working out some of their implications for people whom death seems to rob of the chance to see or share in them. Throughout, links with the earlier visions are pointed up by links of vocabulary, with a possible implication that Daniel “grows” as a seer through the book.49 The repeated concluding instructions (12:4, 9, 13) enhance a sense that the book is coming to its end,50 and “mention of Daniel’s death in 12:13 clearly indicates the closure of the book.”51 44 Lampe, “Die Apocalyptiker,” 64. 45 Reid, “Sociological Setting of the Historical Apocalypses,” 214–15, contrasting 1 Enoch; cf. Enoch and Daniel, 119. 46 So, e.g., Hasslberger, Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis, 145–58. 47 Collins, Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel, 103–4. 48 Szold, “The Eleventh Chapter of the Book of Daniel,” 53. 49 See Makiello, “Daniel as Mediator of Divine Knowledge in the Book of Daniel.” 50 Collins, Daniel with an Introduction to Apocalyptic Literature, 98. 51 Collins, Daniel, 402–3.

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Comment 525 This closing section of Daniel also links back to its opening chapter. 10:1 introduces chs. 10–12 as a story about Daniel like chs. 1–6, uses the name Belteshazzar, refers to Cyrus, and relates an incident in the king’s third year (cf. 1:1, 7, 21). 10:2–3 recalls 1:8–16 as well as 9:3. We are to read a vision received by the hero portrayed in chs. 1–6.52 It is a vision relating to leaders experiencing the same afflictions as are described in chs. 1–6—sword (2:6, 12–13), fire (ch. 3), exile (ch. 1), and becoming prey (ch. 6): see 11:33. They are confronting an overweening king like the kings of chs. 4–5: see 11:36. If he does not turn like the first king, he will fall like the second king. They are challenged to acknowledge their God and offer firm resistance (cf. chs. 3; 6) and to purify themselves (cf. ch. 1): see 11:32, 35; 12:10. They are to be steadfast in sharing the fruits of their discernment (cf. chs. 1–2; 4–5, especially the use of ‫ שכל‬and ‫ בין‬in 1:4, 17, 20): see 11:33. The promise of resurrection in ch. 12 takes up the motif of miraculous deliverance from death in chs. 3 and 6.53

Comment 10:1 The opening verse summarizes chs. 10–12 as a whole by introducing the motifs of the trustworthy revelation that comes to Daniel, the conflicts ch. 11 describes, and the understanding Daniel then receives. The date “in the third year of Cyrus” fits the pattern of other Danielic dates (see 1:1 Comment, 2:1 Comment), but it may be significant in its own right: it takes us beyond the first year of Cyrus mentioned in 1:21, which should herald the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s seventy-­years prophecy and the restoration of the temple as the exiles are free to return to Jerusalem (Ezra 1:1–3), into and apparently beyond “the second year of their arrival” (Ezra 3:8), when they were able to begin the restoration but were soon caused to give up (Ezra 4:24). The disappointment associated with the beginning of Israel’s restoration from exile is countered by a promise of final restoration (12:1–3).54 10:2–3 The date thus provides the background to the “mourning” of vv. 2–3, which emerges from a context parallel to that of 9:1–2 and has similar significance to Daniel’s seeking God in 9:3 (see 9:3–23 Comment [h]). Mourning (‫ )אבל‬is the response to the state of Jerusalem in Isa 66:10; see also 60:20; 61:2–3; Neh 1:4; 8:9. There is less ground here than in ch. 9 for taking the mourning to denote penance (against JB). As in ch. 9, mourning expresses itself in fasting in the sense of abstention from festal food and even from the everyday grooming of a respectable person (2 Sam 12:20; 14:2; Qoh 9:7–10; Jdt 10:3). The three-­week period will be explained by v. 13; Daniel commits 52 See Anderson, Signs and Wonders, on the passage. 53 See Goswell, “Resurrection in the Book of Daniel.” 54 Plöger, Daniel, on the passage.

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himself to fasting until he gets a response from God. There is also perhaps an implication that Daniel’s self-­a ffliction goes far beyond the three-­day periods of Exod 19:10–16; Esth 4:16.55 10:4 The date implies that Daniel’s fast will have included the feasts of Passover and Unleavened Bread, which Antiochus “turned into mourning” as he made them impossible to observe properly (1 Macc 1:39, 45). Daniel shares in anticipation in this “mourning.” Twenty-­four days also equals 3 1/2 weeks, which might indicate that the vision comes halfway through a week of years.56 10:5–6 The appearing of the man in linen (vv. 5–6) reflects that of the supernatural beings in Ezek 1; 9–10 (see Form). Linen is the garb of a priest; here as in Ezek 9–10 the servants of the heavenly temple concern themselves with the affairs of its earthly equivalent. The details of the description in v. 6, as in Ezek 1, combine to suggest the impression of the dazzling brightness and awesome splendor of a heavenly being. 10:7–19 This effect continues in the description of the dismayed reactions of Daniel’s companions and of Daniel himself to the sight and sound reported in vv. 4–6, and the stages by which Daniel is restored. The man in linen is not described as a “holy one,” but the verses illustrate “the idea of the holy” as suggesting fundamentally a splendor that inspires awe rather than a purity that evokes an awareness of sin.57 Daniel is almost seeing God and hearing God, and almost losing his life as a consequence (see Exod 33:20; Deut 4:33; Judg 6:22–23).58 We are told successively how his companions fled in terror, how Daniel was overcome by weakness, and how he fell into a trance (see 8:18 Comment). We are then told successively how he was touched and raised to his hands and knees and then to a standing but bowed position, then touched and enabled to voice his weakness, then touched and encouraged to listen to the messenger. It is perhaps significant that he is now addressed as “man held in high regard” (v. 11, contrast 9:23): he has been devastated, given the life of an animal on all fours, then restored to his human standing (cf. ch. 7).59 “It is especially important that Daniel pay heed to the angel’s words because he is not offering any quick resolution to Daniel’s grief; there are yet many sorrows to come.”60 It is not clear how many supernatural beings appear in the section. In 12:5–6 there are two others apart from the man in linen, and so it may be here, but the seer does not make it explicit. The man in linen (vv. 5–6) may be Michael (on whom see 7:12–13 Comment) and the subsequent speaker may be Gabriel, though—­if so—­it is odd that the names are not applied to the 55 Lacocque, Daniel, on the passage. 56 So Burgmann, “Die interkalation in den sieben Jahrwochen des Sonnenkalendars,” 71. 57 Gammie, Daniel, on the passage. 58 Cf. Anderson, Signs and Wonders, on the passage. 59 Lacocque, Daniel, on the passage. 60 Pace, Daniel, 314.

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Comment 527 figures, nor are the links noted (contrast 9:21); nor does the reference to Michael in 10:21 mention his being present. The figure in vv. 11–12 has the task of speaking, not acting, and the description of his role corresponds to that of Gabriel in 9:20–23; so also v. 14. If Gabriel is the man in linen, then he is being described in more awesome terms than were used of Gabriel previously. They are terms like those used of God in Ezek 1, though they need not indicate that the person is God or represents God (like the messenger of Yahweh, e.g., Gen 16), only that the passages have this literary connection.61 The man in linen might be the one who spoke with Gabriel in 8:16.62 There is no reason to link any of the figures here with the humanlike figure of 7:13. Like ch. 7, then, the scene has the allusiveness that often characterizes vision reports and the visionary experience itself, and exegesis has to preserve this allusiveness. It heightens the awesomeness of what is described. Like other ancient Near Eastern writings, the OT assumes that the results of battles on earth reflect the involvement of heaven. Usually the picture is of heavenly forces aiding Israel and enabling it to win against otherwise overwhelming earthly forces. Yahweh and his armies fight with Israel’s armies: hence Israel’s victories against impossible odds (Num 10:35–36; Deut 33:2–3; Judg 5:19–20; cf. 1QM 12; Hab 3; Ps 68). There is a parallel between the structure of heaven as portrayed in Canaanite myths and as the OT sees it, but in the OT the “gods” are merely the servants of the one Yahweh. The exodus story gives Yahweh’s messenger a key role in connection with Israel’s victorious progress (Exod 14:19; 23:20, 23; 32:34; 33:2); the Joshua story pictures the involvement of the commander of Yahweh’s armies (Josh 5:14–15). Where Israel loses, it means he has been fighting against them; other heavenly powers may still be acting as his servants (cf. Deut 29:26; 32:8 in 4QDeut, LXX; Sir 17:17). But a few passages suggest that there are heavenly armies that oppose Yahweh, so that earthly battles reflect battles in heaven; whichever side wins in heaven, its equivalent wins on earth. Heavenly beings who oppose Yahweh are destined for punishment (Isa 24:21; Ezek 28, if the leader of Tyre is the heavenly figure who is identified with Tyre; Ps 82; 1 En. 89–90; 2 Macc 5). It is unclear how the description of affairs in heaven in 10:13 and 10:20–11:1 is to be placed in relation to this broader OT material. The description is again equivocal, though perhaps for reasons different from those that apply to the figure(s) in the vision, if seer and audience could presuppose a frame of reference that clarified what is now unclear to us. The conflict presupposed here63 may be a verbal/legal one with the representative of Persia, as in the scenes in Zech 3 and Job 1–2,64 or one involving 61 Heaton, Daniel, on the passage; contrast, e.g., H. Haag in ThWAT on ‫ ;בן אדם‬Rowe, “Is Daniel’s ‘Son of Man’ Messianic?” 90–91. 62 So Bampfylde, “The Prince of the Host,” 129–30. 63 On which see Haag, “Der Kampf der Engelmächte in Daniel 10–12.” 64 Cf. Jerome, Daniel, 114.

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a warrior seeking to halt a messenger,65 or a “physical” struggle between supernatural armies:66 compare the appearance in the heavenly scene of the Persian kings, presumably heavenly equivalents of the earthly kings who appear in 11:2.67 The background to the Persian representative’s opposing the messenger may be the earthly conflicts described in Ezra 468 or the conflicts to be announced in ch. 11: the Persian representative will wish to avoid the declaring and thus the implementing of a message that speaks of the fall of the Persian Empire, an event associated with the end of the era (v. 14).69 10:20–11:2a Three comments about the messenger’s purpose in coming and his intention with regard to the message (the opening of 10:20, of 10:21, and of 11:2) interweave with two sayings about his conflicts (the bulk of 10:20 and of 10:21–11:1) in an a-­b -­a-­b -­a arrangement; cf. the a-­b -­a arrangement of similar material in 10:12–14. The effect is to tie together the delivering of the earthly message and the significance of the heavenly conflicts. The effect is thus also to underline in another way the message’s importance, if its delivery was worth diverting the messenger’s attention from such crucial conflicts (the sayings about the conflicts are longer and thus more prominent). In v. 20 the details of expression are again allusive, but apparently the verse pictures the messenger returning to resume the fight to ensure that Persia continues to be restrained from adversely affecting God’s purpose (especially for Israel) but then pictures the Greeks in turn taking up their attempt to implement their own will, which also threatens that purpose. The words do not imply that the nations oppose Israel in particular; Israel just happens to be in their way. Chapter 11 implies the same picture. The celestial messenger is not speaking of the imperial nations’ direct concern with Israel, which is presupposed elsewhere when the nations are God’s agents in executing his wrath on Israel. The conflict between Persia or Greece and Israel is a political, not a religious one.70 The messenger is opposing the heavenly correspondents of these earthly powers, supported by Michael (v. 21b)—­not surprisingly, because the interests that concern the messenger, which focus on the purpose of God himself, are also the interests of Michael’s own people, since they are central to that purpose. There is thus a common interest between the messenger and Michael, which made it appropriate for the messenger to support Michael on another occasion (11:1). This comment might refer to the fall of Babylon to the Medes, an earlier historical event of key importance for Israel (see 5:31 [6:1] Comment), or to the deliverance of Daniel (see ch. 6), or to the message in ch. 9 (see 9:1). 65 Cf. Plöger, Daniel, on the passage. 66 Cf. Collins, Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel, 135. 67 Meadowcroft (“Who are the Princes of Persia and Greece?”) notes that the Persian leader could be a human figure, like the leaders in (e.g.) 9:6, 8; cf. Calvin, Daniel 2:252. 68 So Keil, Biblischer Kommentar, on the passage. 69 Cf. Plöger, Daniel, on the passage. 70 Cf. Collins, “The Mythology of Holy War,” 601.

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Comment 529 The “nevertheless” of v. 21 indicates that the messenger is prepared to delay resuming his battles in order to deliver the revelation that follows. For the notion of a book detailing a program of events to take place, cf. the heavenly tablets of 1 En. 81:93;71 regarding the individual, Ps 139:16. 11:2b–39 The content of the message constitutes “a deep investigation of the intrinsic structures of history as they are disclosed by the detection of patterns in a detailed chronicle of events.”72 It combines a considerable amount of historical information on the Persian and Greek periods, especially the reigns of Antiochus III and IV,73 with interpretation by means of a considerable number of allusions to passages from the Scriptures (see Form). These allusions may imply that the period’s history is a recapitulation of crises in earlier centuries; typologically the earlier Assyrian enemy from the north stands for the Syrians and Sargon for Antiochus.74 Or they may portray this period as a fulfillment of prophecies from Isaiah, Habakkuk, Numbers, and elsewhere, in the manner of 1QpHab.75 Or they may simply illuminate the period without the chapter presupposing a specific hermeneutical link between them and the events. Our chief sources for the history of the events, apart from Daniel itself, are 1 and 2 Maccabees (first century BC), the Greek historians Polybius (second century BC) and Diodorus Siculus (first century BC), the Roman historians Livy (c. 59 BC–­A D 17) and Appian (second century AD), the Jewish historian Josephus (first century AD), and the philosopher Porphyry (third century AD) as quoted by Jerome in his commentary on Daniel.76 Like narrative history, quasi-­predictive history selects and presents its material on some principle, such as an interest in political or social or military or religious affairs, or in the achievements of great individuals. Chapters 10–12 focus more on the Hellenistic period than earlier chapters did. While the time of wrath may be the period beginning with the exile, there are fewer pointers in this direction than was the case in 8:19. The more specific focus lies on the career of Antiochus IV. The picture of him is “strangely lacking in individual traits”77 because he is portrayed as a second-­century BC instance of the “type” of the arrogant gentile warrior attacking the people of God (see Form, Structure). The historical facts that are included are ones illustrating this portrayal; the generalizations relate to the “type” that he fulfills, so that descriptions of his cleverness or deceitfulness do not constitute attempts to characterize his personal individuality. Chapter 11 is “God’s mirror of the nations and their rulers. It is neither 71 See Russell, The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic, 107–8. 72 Newsom, Daniel, 326. 73 On which see Grainger, The Syrian Wars. 74 See Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel; cf. Teeter, “Isaiah and the King of As/ Syria in Daniel’s Final Vision,” 193–99. 75 See Seeligmann, “Voraussetzungen der Midraschexegese,” 171. 76 See Walbank et al. (ed). The Hellenistic World, 1–22. 77 Delcor, “L’histoire selon le livre de Daniel,” 386.

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entertaining nor edifying to look into it, but it is wholesome and necessary.”78 It is a story dominated by money, power, cunning, deception, and violence. Given the bleakness of this historical account, why should Daniel not despair? The answer is that these terrors are known by God and they exist only in the appointed time—­a time that is surely limited. Antiochus’s despotism is no different from that of the preceding kingdoms; as they have fallen, so will the empire of Antiochus, the new Nebuchadnezzar. Indeed, when this day arrives a radical change will occur. Instead of one kingdom following yet another, it will be the time of the End (12:4).79 One aspect of the pattern of history as portrayed in ch. 11 emerges immediately. It is the story of the exercise of power, but the exercise of power leads only to external conflict (v. 2b), internal dissolution (vv. 3–4), or eclipse by a more powerful entity (v. 5). The nature of kings is not to recognize this fact; they always aspire to the elusive final victory. They seek it by marriage alliances, but they fail (v. 6). More commonly they seek it by the use of force, but the use of force also fails (vv. 8b–9). It may win famous victories, but the victories always turn out to be temporary (vv. 7–8a, 10–12). A first climax to the portrayal of history by this pattern comes in vv. 13–19, where most of the individual features of vv. 2b–12 come together. A final victory of north over south seems possible, but in the end the northern king is stopped in his tracks by another power altogether. The talk of his standing as others are unable to stand before him (vv. 15–16) is replaced by talk of his plan’s not standing and of his stumbling and falling (vv. 17, 19). The account of the relationship between Seleucid and Ptolemaic Empires is not primarily concerned with making moral judgments. As it describes kings obtaining wealth and power, being in a position of unchallengeable authority, using marriage as a means of cementing dynastic relationships, invading the holy land, or involved in ceaseless invasion and warmongering, it is reflecting the fact that such conflicts are built into history. Thus, “despite alternating patterns of aggression, neither the king of the north nor the king of the south can ‘effect a permanent rule by reason of their containment of each other.’ ”80 Antiochus IV reaches after the overcoming of this ongoing impasse, but by issuing a challenge to God he makes it inevitable that God overcomes the impasse in a different direction. When the seer reaches his goal, the reign of Antiochus, he structures his portrayal by means of a series of time expressions, mostly reusing terms that appeared in 8:17, 19 (see Comment). The repetition of ‫“( קץ‬end,” vv. 27, 35, 40, cf. 45; also 12:4, 6, 9, 13) underlines the punctiliar, definitive actuality and finality of the reversal promised. The less punctiliar 78 Lüthi, The Church to Come, 151. 79 Pace, Daniel, 333. 80 Newsom, Daniel, 327, quoting from Clifford, “History and Myth in Daniel 10–12,” 24.

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Comment 531 term ‫“( אחרית‬latter part,” “last stage”: see on 2:28) comes only in 10:14; 11:4 (where it is not a temporal term); and 12:8 (where EVV do not take it in a temporal sense). The repetition of ‫“( מועד‬set time,” vv. 27, 29, 35; cf. 12:7) underlines the divine control and purpose at work even in the abominations and the suffering of the Antiochene period. They are acknowledged by referring to it as a time of wrath (‫זעם‬, v. 36), a time of unprecedented trouble (‫עת צרה‬, 12:1), and a time of awesome events (‫הפלאות‬, 12:6); but the idea of wrath being “complete” (11:36) implies that they cannot go on without limit. Exegetically, it makes best sense to refer all the indications of time to the same moment. Antiochus’s purposes are frustrated at a particular juncture because “an end will yet await the set time” (v. 27), and some of the discerning later fall for the same reason (v. 35). This set moment will arrive with the last battle between the two kings (v. 40) and will see Michael arising (12:1). Daniel’s book is to be sealed until this moment (12:4, 9), which will come after a set time (12:6), and will be the moment when Daniel will arise to his destiny (12:13). 11:2b The Achaemenid kings were Cyrus (560/59–530), Cambyses (530– 522), Smerdis (522), Darius I (522–486), Xerxes I (486–465), Artaxerxes I (465–424), Xerxes II (424), Sogdianos (424–423), Darius II (423–405/4), Artaxerxes II (405/4–359/58), Artaxerxes III (359/58–338/37), Artaxerxes IV (338/37–336), and Darius III (336–330).81 If the assertion that “the fourth king will be far wealthier than anyone” is to be pressed, it has to allude to Xerxes I, who invaded Greece to be defeated at Salamis in 480. Strictly, there was no one Greek Empire until the time of Philip of Macedon. The reference of v. 2b as a whole is thus to the four kings who followed Cyrus. But the prophecy then has to leap over a century from Xerxes to Alexander. Further, the reference to the four Persian kings recalls the four heads of 7:6, while “three . . . and the fourth” recalls numerical sayings in passages such as Prov 30 and Amos 1–2.82 Therefore the figure “four” may need not to be pressed, nor the kings specifically identified. The phrase might denote the Achemenids as a whole. And/or it might denote the sequence of Persian kings mentioned in the OT: Cyrus, Darius I, Xerxes I, Artaxerxes I, and the Darius of Neh 12:22. The wealth of the last will be the presumed accumulated wealth of the last Persian king,83 as the hostility to Greece denotes that of the empire as a whole. 11:3–4 Alexander the Great came to the throne of Macedon in 336. He invaded and conquered the territory from Turkey to India and thus came to rule the largest empire the world had yet known. But he reigned over this empire less than a decade; he died of a fever in 323. His empire shattered, and four units eventually emerged from its fragmentation, centered on Macedon and Greece; Thrace; Syria and the east; and Egypt. To speak of the empire 81 Cook, The Persian Empire, 266. 82 See Wolff, Dodekapropheton 2 (ET Joel and Amos) on the passage, and his references. 83 So Hartman/Di Lella, Daniel, on the passage.

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dividing toward the four winds of the heavens involves a figurative expression (cf. the four horns of 8:8): the division did not correspond at all closely to the points of the compass. Alexander’s empire did not “belong to his surviving family.” His half-­ brother Philip III and his son Alexander IV were nominal rulers of the empire until their deaths in 317 and 311 (or 305),84 but central administrative power was held by Alexander’s prime minister, Perdiccas, until his assassination in 321. And the united Macedonian empire immediately became a fiction. Alexander’s real “successors” (diadochoi) were the generals who ruled different satrapies of his empire. Among these were Ptolemy in Egypt, Antigonus, whose area included much of Turkey and later Syria and the east, and Seleucus, who became satrap of Babylon in 321. 11:5 In ch. 11 “the southern king” and “the northern king” are generic terms to refer to the current occupants—­whoever they may be—­of the Ptolemaic throne in Egypt and the Seleucid throne in Syria and Babylon. The two realms lie either side of Judea and thus directly concern Judea, and they are the two most powerful of the Hellenistic monarchies. Chapter 11 shows that the outline of the history of the Syrian and Egyptian empires was quite well known to the author. He alludes to thirteen of their kings, noted in the following outline of their reigns: Ptolemy I Soter, son of Lagus, 322–285 (v. 5a)

Seleucus I Nicator, 312–280 (v. 5b)

Ptolemy II Philadelphus, 285–246 (v. 6)

Antiochus I Soter, 280–261 Antiochus II Theos, 261–246 (v. 6)

Ptolemy III Euergetes, 246–221 (vv. 7–9)

Seleucus II Callinicus, 246–226 (vv. 7–9) Seleucus III Soter Ceraunus 226–223 (v. 10)

Ptolemy IV Philopator, 221–203 (vv. 10–12)

Antiochus III Magnus, 223–187 (vv. 10–19)

Ptolemy V Epiphanes, 203–181 (vv. 14–17)

Seleucus IV Philopator, 187–175 (v. 20)

Ptolemy VI Philometor, 181–146 (vv. 25–28)

Antiochus IV Epiphanes, 175–163 (vv. 21–45) Antiochus V Eupator, 163–162 Demetrius I Soter, 162–150

84 See Wacholder, “The Beginning of the Seleucid Era,” 183–211.

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Comment 533 The first southern king, Ptolemy I, ruled Egypt from 322 but declared himself king only c. 305. The first northern king was Seleucus I, but he fled to Egypt and became one of Ptolemy’s generals when Antigonus expanded his empire in Asia and attacked Babylon in 316. Ptolemy and Seleucus defeated Antigonus’s army at Gaza in 312. Subsequently, Seleucus not only recovered Babylon but also gradually won control of the rest of Antigonus’s empire. After Antigonus’s death at the battle of Ipsus in 301, Seleucus became “more powerful” than Ptolemy and exercised a particularly extensive rule: he controlled the largest of the post-­ Alexander empires. Its significance in the ancient world is reflected in the fact that the Seleucid era provided a new basis for chronology, used in 1 Maccabees. The Ptolemies, however, controlled Judea through the third century, which was a source of conflict between the Ptolemaic and Seleucid empires. 11:6 Half a century later, about 250, Ptolemy II attempted to mend relationships with the Seleucid empire by marrying his daughter Berenice to Antiochus II, who divorced his first wife, Laodice, and excluded their sons Seleucus and Antiochus from succeeding him. But after two years Antiochus II apparently went back to Laodice, who then had him killed, along with his son by Berenice (thus clearing the way for her own son Seleucus), Berenice herself, and a number of her Egyptian attendants. Berenice’s father also died in the same year. 11:7–9 Berenice’s brother, Ptolemy III, succeeded to their father’s throne in Egypt. In connection with the violent sequence of events involving his sister, his nephew, and his kingdom’s subjects, he invaded the Seleucid empire, gained control of considerable areas of Syria (including the kingdom’s capital, Antioch on the Orontes, and Seleucia, its fortified port on the Mediterranean) and of the lands farther east, avenged his sister by having Laodice killed, and took much plunder back to Egypt. Taking a nation’s gods (v. 8) was a sign of subjugation and the exercise of power. Despite his huge successes, Ptolemy did not press on to total conquest of the Seleucid empire. In the end he had to leave the throne there to Seleucus II (son of Antiochus II by Laodice) and return to Egypt to deal with an uprising at home. For two years there was no conflict between the two empires. Then in 242 Seleucus II attempted to invade Egypt (v. 9) but had to retreat, his army decimated. 11:10–12 Seleucus II was succeeded by his sons, Seleucus III (226–223) and—­on his murder during a campaign in Turkey—­A ntiochus III (223–187). The latter attempted to turn the tide of aggressive power between the Seleucids and the Ptolemies, beginning in 219 by recapturing Seleucia. He invaded Judea and conquered a large part of it. The talk in terms of a flood takes up the imagery of Isa 8:8 where it referred to the Assyrians, which “lends an epic quality to the description, . . . though it may also subtly indicate that these events are not, finally, the outcome of the autonomous will of the kings but are part of the divine plan.”85 In due course (v. 11) Ptolemy IV (221–203) sent 85 Newsom, Daniel, 342.

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an army to engage with Antiochus III at Raphia, the Egyptian stronghold on the border with Judea, in 217. According to Polybius (Histories 5.79), Antiochus took 62,000 infantry, 6,000 cavalry, and 102 elephants into battle against Ptolemy’s 70,000 infantry, 5,000 cavalry, and 73 elephants. Antiochus lost over 14,000 men in defeat (v. 12), but Ptolemy, despite the encouragement, still lacked his father’s instinct for warmaking. He was content with victory and the regaining of Judea and Phoenicia and did not press his advantage, making peace with Antiochus. The seer gives none of this exciting information; it is only by reading the verses in light of other sources that we understand more clearly what was going on. The seer is more interested in the typical nature of the event.86 11:13–15 Over the next fourteen years Antiochus III campaigned in Turkey and the east and regained much of the old Seleucid Empire, winning for himself the title “the Great.” He then raised an even larger army in alliance with Philip V of Macedon to invade the Ptolemaic kingdom. There were native Egyptian rebellions (v. 14a) against Ptolemaic rule from 207, a consequence, Polybius (5.107) suggests, of the encouragement of native Egyptian morale by the Egyptian victory over Antiochus. Ptolemy IV died in mysterious circumstances, to be succeeded by his infant son Ptolemy V (203–181). The country was actually ruled by Agathocles, a chief minister under Ptolemy IV; his oppressive regency provoked insurrection in Egypt and his assassination. But the “many” may also refer to the soldiers of Antiochus and Philip. The period was one of strife within the Jewish community (v. 14b). The high priest held supreme authority in both political and religious affairs, but Onias II had been forced to share actual political power with his brother-­in-­ law Tobias, and the Tobiads became significant political forces in Jerusalem. The Oniads were inclined to be anti-­Egyptian, the Tobiads to be pro-­Egyptian, though there was also conflict over policy within the Tobiad family.87 The assertiveness of the “wild men” (‫ )בני פריצים‬might refer to Jews—­presumably Oniads—­joining in the resistance to the southern king to which v. 14a refers. But it is odd to say that they failed or “fell.” Apart from one short-­lived victory on the part of the Egyptian general Scopas, the story of events from 201 to 198 is of Antiochus’s triumphant conquest of Judea. More likely the unsuccessful wild men are Tobiads.88 Further, “wild men” is a term used to suggest violation of the holy rather than suggesting polemic against violent action. The acts of violation take place in fulfillment of a “vision”; that word occurs more frequently in Dan 8 than in any other chapter in the OT. Were the violators unintentionally fulfilling Daniel’s revelation? But it is not obvious why this

86 Cf. Wildgruber, Daniel 10–12, 228–29. 87 See Schäfer, “The Hellenistic and Maccabaean Periods,” 571–78. 88 So Toll, “Die Wurzel prs· im Hebräischen.” Schlatter (“Die Bene parisim bei Daniel: 11, 14”) suggested that Daniel was referring to their involvement in anti-Seleucid resistance.

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Comment 535 motif in ch. 11 should be described thus. Nor is it likely that Daniel would use the term in the modern sense of the people’s political vision or policy.89 Was the vision one received within the community at the time (cf. Ezek 13:6)? Or was it a passage from the prophets (cf. 9:24; also Ezek 12:22–27; Hab 2:2–3)? OG assumes Amos 9:11;90 Jerome suggests Isa 19:19, connecting the passage with Onias’s building of a temple at Leontopolis,91 though this understanding clashes with the idea that v. 22 refers to Onias’s death (see 8:10–11 Comment). Daniel would then be implying a conscious or unconscious attempt to bring about the fulfillment of God’s plan expressed in these Scriptures, but an attempt that fails, because God’s time has not yet come. Daniel 11–12 will go on to indicate the further events that must take place before that End.92 But the reference to a vision is one of the passage’s points of contact with Ezek 7 (v. 26; see Form), where it refers to people in Jerusalem seeking some vision to encourage them. More likely, then, the vision is that passage in Ezek 7, which the violators unconsciously fulfill, and fall because God brings judgment on them as he warned there. Then, in 199 (v. 15) Antiochus defeated Scopas at Paneas (Caesarea Philippi), followed him to Sidon, an Egyptian fortified city, and laid siege to it. Next year Scopas and his troops, along with reinforcements sent from Egypt to relieve him, had to surrender. 11:16–19 Antiochus thus gained firm control of the Levant, including Judea, and also captured some of the areas on the Turkish coast that had been subject to Egyptian rule: Cilicia, Lycia, and Caria. He was in a position to invade Egypt itself and destroy the Ptolemaic Empire (v. 17), but he feared Roman intervention and instead made peace with Egypt in 197, betrothing his daughter Cleopatra to Ptolemy V. He hoped to further his designs on Egypt through her, but she (Egypt’s first Cleopatra) became loyal to her husband and new homeland and encouraged an Egyptian alliance with Rome, which frustrated Antiochus’s continuing designs on the Ptolemaic area of the old empire of Alexander. In the meantime (v. 18), Antiochus resumed his attacks on Egyptian-­held areas of Turkey and went on to invade Macedon, Thrace, and Greece itself. But in 191 the Romans defeated him first at Thermopylae, then decisively at Magnesia near Smyrna a year later, ending his pretensions to power in the west. Antiochus became a vassal of Rome and his younger son, the later Antiochus IV, was taken to Rome as a hostage. Antiochus thus returned to Syria (v. 19). He was assassinated at Elymais in 187 while attempting to pillage

89 Against Plöger, Daniel, on the passage. 90 See van der Kooij, “A Case of Reinterpretation in the OG of Daniel 11,” 75. 91 Jerome, Daniel, 125; cf. more recently Keil, “Onias III,” 228. 92 Cf. Täubler, “Jerusalem 201 to 199 B.C.E.,” 1–30; Lebram, “Apokalyptiek als keerpunt in hetjoodse denken,” 273–75.

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the treasury of Bel, one of his own gods, to pay the tribute imposed on him by the Romans after their victory. 11:20 His successor, Seleucus IV, was an unfortunate and unpopular ruler whose main concern had to be paying the tribute imposed on his father. The oppressor he sent around in this connection was his finance minister Heliodorus, whose acts included attempting to pillage the treasury of the temple at Jerusalem. This was the event of Seleucus’s reign not merely because of its unexpected thwarting (2 Macc 3) but because of its being an anti-­ fulfillment of an OT prophecy (see Form). Seleucus died in 175. According to Appian, Wars 11.8 [45], he was assassinated in a plot engineered by Heliodorus in which Seleucus’s younger brother Antiochus—­now on his way back from Rome—­may also have been involved (see on 7:24). There is perhaps a slur in the comment on his ignominious death, “not in the heat of battle.” 11:21–24 Rashi (for instance) assumes that Daniel moves on at this point to describe the activity of the Romans in the Hasmonean period and that vv. 21–35 cover the period from the beginnings of Roman involvement with Judea to the sacrilege of Titus, the fall of Jerusalem, and the faithful service of Johanan ben Zakkai and Judah Hanasi. But there is no indication in the vision of such a move. Jerome (for instance) assumes that the vision refers in the immediate sense to Antiochus but that the portrait is larger than life and implies that Antiochus is a type of the anti-­messiah.93 The vision’s omitting to name names encourages this approach to seeing the vision’s longer-­term significance, but again there is no positive indication in the vision of such a move. The prophecy describes its next and last northern king. The most prominent feature of the prophecy, the career of this king, forms a series of episodes marked by time references: vv. 21–24 (“until a certain time”), vv. 25–28 (“an end will yet await the set time”), vv. 29–35 (“at the set time . . . until the time of the end—­for it will still await the set moment”), vv. 36–39 (“until wrath is complete”; and see the beginning of v. 40), and vv. 40–45 (“at the time of the end”); cf. 12:1–3 (“at that time . . . to all eternity”). The successor of Seleucus IV was his younger brother, who became Antiochus IV (175–164). The prophecy begins with an account of his extraordinary rise to power, remarkable for its shrewdness. The description of him, like the epithet Epimanes, Madman (Polybius 26.1a [10]), contrasts with the claim expressed in his title [Theos] Epiphanes, [God] Manifest. There had been no reason to regard the exiled Antiochus as a potential successor to his brother. Seleucus’s heir should be his eldest son, eventually to reign as Demetrius I, but in 175 he had been sent to Rome to replace Antiochus as hostage there. 93 Daniel, 129–31. Alomía (Daniel 2:399–432) illustrates how ch. 11 as a whole can be related to European history from the Roman period to modern times. For the history of such understandings, see further the Introduction to this commentary.

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Comment 537 The details of Antiochus’s rise to power are uncertain. A plausible reconstruction is that while staying at Athens on his way home he heard that his brother had died and that Heliodorus was seeking to consolidate a position as regent, with Seleucus’s younger son, also called Antiochus, as puppet king. He hastened homewards. On the basis of being uncle to Seleucus’s son—­and thus a safeguard against usurpers from outside the dynasty—­he gained the support of King Eumenes of Pergamum and Attalus his brother, removed Heliodorus, and took power as guardian to and co-­regent with the young Antiochus. The “overwhelming forces” (v. 22) were perhaps rivals to the throne; but one of them was Ptolemy VI of Egypt, son of Seleucus’s and Antiochus’s sister Cleopatra, and the language here suggests a reference to the conflict with Egypt that is a main feature of Antiochus’s reign as vv. 21–45 describe it and a main feature of the Hellenistic period as ch. 11 as a whole describes it. The removal of “a covenant leader” belongs in the same context, if the phrase refers to the high priest Onias III (cf. 9:26), replaced because of his Egyptian sympathies (cf. 2 Macc 4) by Jason from the aristocratic, pro-­Syrian Tobiad party. It would be part of a logical policy on Antiochus’s part of putting his own nominees in key governmental positions within his empire.94 Thus, while Antiochus began with the support of only “a small group” (v. 23), in Judea he won over the “powerful ones of a province,” the Tobiads and Jason, Onias’s brother. They furthered his cause in Jerusalem; he made it possible for them to hold both civil and religious power there; and it is presumably they who are the beneficiaries of his well-­k nown liberality on the basis of plunder (v. 24; cf. 1 Macc 3:28–31). The Tobias who gave the Tobiad family its name came from across the Jordan. Whether they were gentilized Jews or Judaizing gentiles, Tobias and his family were not people of conservative attitude to the Torah. The account of events in 1 Macc 1 and 2 Macc 4 tells of Jason and his associates also proposing to Antiochus that they should establish a Hellenistic-­style community in Jerusalem. The sequence of events and the significance of the Antiochene measures affecting Jerusalem are disputed.95 While they may have been an aspect of a cultural or religious concern for the Hellenization of Judea or the broader empire, they seem likely also to reflect Antiochus’s political concern to exercise effective control of his empire and the Tobiads’ concern for power in Jerusalem. In other words, trouble in Jerusalem issued from the volatile interweaving of the external conflict between the Seleucids and the Ptolemies and the internal rivalry between the different powerful Judean families.96 94 Bunge, “‘Theos Epiphanes,’” 61; Lebram, “König Antiochus im Buch Daniel,” 751–52; less likely it denotes Ptolemy (Calvin, Daniel 2:307) or the young Antiochus (Rowley, “The ‘Prince of the Covenant’”). 95 See further Bickermann; Hengel; Tcherikover; Mørkholm; Goldstein (see Commentary Bibliography); Fischer, Seleukiden und Makkabäer. 96 Cf. Newsom, Daniel, 26.

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Since Artaxerxes’s decree in 458, the Torah had been the law of the land in Judea, a situation confirmed by Antiochus III when he made the Jews a people with internal self-­government on the basis of their own laws (Josephus, Ant 12.3.3 [12.135]). In accordance with the Torah, then, the government was in the hands of the priesthood, and the high priest was the means of implementing the king’s authority. He was thus naturally and quite legitimately appointed, from a priestly family, by the king. He had to see that Jewish affairs were conducted in accordance with the Torah, both because the king said so and because God said so. He would need the king’s permission to introduce practices differing from those in the Torah, because of the Torah’s place in the constitution approved by the king. The implication of 1 Macc 1 and 2 Macc 4, then, is that on Antiochus’s accession the authorities in Jerusalem petitioned him for a constitutional change whereby Jerusalem ceased to be the center of a community governing itself in accordance with its own law and became a Hellenistic city-­state whose citizenship would comprise those who accepted a Hellenistic way of life. From Antiochus’s perspective, the proposal would be welcome because such Hellenistic city-­states provided a means of controlling his empire, and the Jerusalem leadership presumably saw it as a wise move to conform their city’s constitution and life more to the imperial norm. It would involve no necessary contravention of the central tenets of Jewish religion, though by conservative Jews it would be seen as an abandonment of the Torah and of the terms of the people’s covenant relationship with Yahweh, which exclude covenants with other peoples. On the other hand, it would be quite in keeping with Daniel’s portrayal of events if initiative for the establishment of the city-­state came from Antiochus himself.97 While one might have expected Dan 11 to make this explicit, since it is inclined to emphasize Antiochus’s responsibility for events, equally one might have expected Daniel to mention the fact if the reformist Jews were responsible. So the rationale for Antiochus’s actions is a matter of debate.98 11:25–28 There now begins a more detailed account of Antiochus’s involvement with Egypt. In 170 an Egyptian army set off to attempt to recapture Judah. According to 2 Macc 4:21–22, Antiochus became aware of the need to defend Judah; indeed, according to 1 Macc 1:16 he had designs on Egypt that mirrored Ptolemy’s designs on the Seleucid realm. Antiochus defeated the Egyptian army, captured the border fortress of Pelusium, entered Egypt, took his nephew Ptolemy VI prisoner, and occupied much of the country (1 Macc 1:17–19). In some sense Ptolemy was the victim of treachery (v. 26). Perhaps the reference is to people who betrayed Pelusium to Antiochus, or perhaps to 97 So Goldstein, I Maccabees, 111–21. 98 See e.g., Gruen, “Hellenism and Persecution,” with comments and discussion.

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Comment 539 Ptolemy’s advisers who brought about the Egyptian defeat by urging the attack on Judah, brought about his capture by urging him to flee from Antiochus, and brought about his deposition by then crowning his brother as Ptolemy VII in Alexandria in 169. “These two kings” (v. 27), Antiochus and Ptolemy VI, were now united in desiring to regain the throne for the latter, as Antiochus’s puppet. Both are declared to be serving their own interests and deceiving each other but not achieving their conflicting ultimate purposes. In 169 Antiochus visited Jerusalem and appropriated part of the temple treasury (cf. v. 28). There are differences between the sources over events in Jerusalem and over Antiochus’s visit(s) there after his two Egyptian campaigns.99 Daniel 11 is more allusive than 1 Macc 1; 2 Macc 5; or Josephus, Ant 12.5 [12.239–50]; J.W. 1.1 [1.31–33], and not too exposed to the charge of finding prophecy difficult even after the event. It may be that Antiochus took action against Jerusalem in both 169 and 168 (cf. vv. 28 and 30) but that on the latter occasion he acted via Apollonius (cf. 1 Macc 1; 2 Macc 5 then conflates the two sets of events into a personal visit in 168). In a “temple-­state” such as Judaea100 the temple treasury functioned as bank and state exchequer; Antiochus could have viewed its plunder as potential tribute101 and could have acted thus because he simply needed the money. But he was thereby acting against a “holy covenant”; that phrase is a new one, here denoting the covenant people (cf. v. 30a; 1 Macc 1:15, 63).102 It takes up the “holy ones” of ch. 7 (especially v. 27); cf. also the “holy people” of 12:7 and the “covenant leader” of v. 22. They are the people who are endowed with a covenant relationship with God; there need be no suggestion of an anthropocentric view of the covenant as depending essentially on its human possessor and guardians.103 11:29–31 By the expression “at the set time,” the momentous, then painful, then horrifying events to follow are marked as within the control of God. After Antiochus’s departure from Egypt the two Ptolemies had made peace and agreed to reign jointly. In 168 Antiochus invaded again, but this time with disastrous results. The “ships from Kittim” or the west (v. 30) are a delegation headed by Gaius Popillius Laenas when Egypt had appealed to Rome in connection with the events of 169. They intercepted Antiochus on his way to Alexandria and ordered him off Egyptian territory (Appian 11.11 [66]). It was a turning point in Roman history, a mark of the extent to which internationally the

99 See Schäfer, “The Hellenistic and Maccabaean Periods,” 564–66. 100 See e.g., Horsley, Scribes, Visionaries, and the Politics of Second Temple Judea, 15–51; Grabbe, “The Hellenistic City of Jerusalem.” 101 Cf. Mørkholm, Antiochus IV of Syria, 143. 102 Jaubert, La notion d’Alliance dans le Judaïsme, 83; it hardly refers to the priesthood in this context (against Lebram, “Apokalyptik und Hellenismus im Buche Daniel,” 512–13; van der Kooij, “The Concept of Covenant [berît] in the Book of Daniel).” 103 Against Eichrodt, Theologie des AT 1:23 (ET 64).

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period from 200 to 150 is the story of the extension of Roman dominion in the Hellenistic Empire.104 Following on a rumor that Antiochus had been killed in Egypt, Jason—­ whom Antiochus had removed from the high priesthood—­returned to Jerusalem and led a violent rebellion against his successor Menelaus and the Tobiad ruling party (2 Macc 5:5–10), and presumably against the Syrian governor (2 Macc 5:21–23a). Conservative Jews may have supported his action; he was a less objectionable person than Menelaus, who had cooperated with Antiochus’s looting of the temple the previous year. To Antiochus, Jason’s action amounted to an attempt to overthrow the government he had appointed and replace it by one that could be presumed to be pro-­Egyptian if it was anti-­Syrian. Hence he had to “take harsh action against a holy covenant” (v. 30) to put down this rebellion (2 Macc 5:11–14), sending to Jerusalem Apollonius, the commander of his mercenaries from Mysia in Turkey (2 Macc 5:23b–27; 1 Macc 1:29–32). Antiochus thus reestablished the authority of the Tobiad leadership (v. 30b). He took steps to strengthen his position in Judaea (v. 31a) in the context of the conflict with Egypt and/or the resistance in Jerusalem by developing “the stronghold” from which his forces and members of the Hellenistic city-­ state could oversee temple and city. The “stronghold” will have been near the Temple Mount: compare the stronghold mentioned in Neh 2:8, and the later Antonia Fortress (see 1 Macc 1:29–40).105 While the earlier introduction of the Hellenistic city-­state in 175 would have been an affront to conservative Jews, it had not affected the temple. The imposition of this garrison, however, implies the temple’s desecration. The fortress would be a base from which gentile as well as Jewish “citizens” could enter the shrine in “their” city, which is effectively taken away from Jews who do not belong to the Hellenistic community (cf. 2 Macc 11:24–25, which records its return to conservative Jews).106 The gentile troops would naturally introduce there the worship of their god Baal Šamem, the Syrian equivalent to Zeus and—­a s they would see it—­to Yahweh (cf. 2 Macc 6; see Comment on 8:13). To judge from 1 Macc 1:41–64, the suspension of the sacrificial system (v. 31b) was a separate event from the desecration of the temple by the introduction of the “desolating abomination” just noted. Perhaps continuing conservative Jewish resistance to Antiochene/Tobiad rule and to the effects of the gentile garrison’s presence spurred Antiochus into a ban on the distinctive feature of Jewish religion. The reasoning behind the ban was thus local and 104 Mørkholm, Antiochus IV of Syria, 11. But Scolnic and Davis (“How Kittim Became ‘Rome’”) take Kittim still to refer to Cyprus here. 105 Cf. Goldstein, I Maccabees, 213–19; Schäfer, “The Hellenistic and Maccabaean Periods,” 555–56; Tsafrir, The Location of the Seleucid Akra in Jerusalem.” 106 Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews, 194–95; Lebram, “Apokalyptik und Hellenismus im Buche Daniel,” 508–9.

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Comment 541 political. Evidence from elsewhere does not suggest that Antiochus generally tried to abolish the various religions of his empire to make everyone worship Zeus, despite 1 Macc 1:41–42. 11:32–35 The sources do not say that the Jews who had sought the establishment of a Hellenistic community desired the abolition of the external distinctives of Jewish religion; 1 Macc 1 implies that they found themselves drawn into cooperation with a policy that had gone beyond their original expectations. The “people that acknowledges its God” comprises those who insist on still expressing their commitment to Yahweh in the ways specified by the Torah. They are the Hasidim, the committed, of 1 Macc 2:42. Their “firm resistance” (v. 33) presumably includes active attempts to prevent the implementing of Antiochus’s edict. “The discerning” (‫משכילים‬: see n. 33.a) are conservative leaders who possess the insight that consists in awed submission to Yahweh (the essence of the theological ethic of the book of Daniel),107 the understanding that has reflected deeply on his ways in history, and the insight that perceives how his cause will ultimately triumph.108 They use this discernment to “enlighten the multitude.” The verb (‫ )בין‬is common in Daniel, generally denoting insight into the meaning of dreams, visions, or prophecies.109 It implies that the ministry of the discerning is not teaching in general or exhortation to faithfulness but the interpretation of the prophetic Scriptures—­and no doubt of these Danielic visions—­for the persecuted community.110 “The multitude” suggests the body of the community as a whole (see on 9:27) and implies that the majority resist Antiochus; only the Tobiads and the Hellenistic community accept the edict. In Daniel’s thinking it is “the discerning” and “the multitude” who really make up “the people” (vv. 32, 33).111 While v. 35 will refer to the martyrdom of some of the discerning, many ordinary people also experience sword (1 Macc 2:9, 31–38), fire (2 Macc 6:11; 7:1–41), captivity (1 Macc 3:41), prey (1 Macc 1:31), and other afflictions (cf. 1 Macc 1:60–64). The terms “the discerning” and “the multitude” hint that the calling of the servant of Yahweh described in Isa 52:13–53:12 (see Form) is being fulfilled here, not only by the leadership but by the community as a whole who also suffer.112 The people offering a little help (v. 34) are hardly the Romans helping the Hasidim, though this will happen later.113 It may be the discerning encouraging the martyrs114 or other Jews coming to share the martyrs’ commitment,115 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115

So Barton, “Theological Ethics in Daniel.” Kosmala, “Mas´kîl.” Cf. Williams, Jesus’ Death as Saving Event, 60–61. Cf. Gardner, “‫ ׂשכל‬in the Hebrew Bible.” So Hasslberger, Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis. Brownlee, “The Servant of the Lord in the Qumran Scrolls,” 12–13. Against Buchanan, Hebrews, 47–48. So Hasslberger, Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis. So Collins, Daniel with an Introduction to Apocalyptic Literature, 101.

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if either would count as “help,” but more likely the expression refers to the successes of the first Jewish activists (1 Macc 2–4). It is “a little help” compared with the ultimate victory, deliverance, awakening, and exaltation that will come at “the set moment” (v. 35): see 11:40–12:3. One need not infer that the seer dissociates himself from the active resistance of the Maccabees (cf. v. 14 Comment).116 The Hasidim do fight (1 Macc 2:40–44), but their willingness to fight does not mean that they rely on human hands rather than on the acts of God (see 1 Macc 3:16–22, 52–53, 58–60; 4:8–11, 30–33), and we have no evidence for a pacifist group among them. To describe the achievement of the Maccabees as merely a little help might seem odd, as it is they who achieve Jewish independence, though arguably the rebellion ended in failure in 157.117 Whereas the Maccabean stance is taken up by the Zealots two centuries later, life for Judaism comes from the faith that Daniel was commending. The many who join the discerning with empty words (v. 34b) are people whose commitment to the resistance movement could not be trusted in the long run. Some may have joined out of fear of the Maccabees’ own ruthlessness (cf. 1 Macc 2:44; 3:5–8; 6:18–24). The martyrdom of some of the discerning (v. 35) tests how real is the commitment of people who have joined the resistance movement perhaps too lightly. That their “stumbling” is the means of their learning that violent resistance is a false path is hardly implied by vv. 32–35;118 in vv. 14 and 19 “stumble” (‫ )כשל‬does suggest the undoing of people who were on the wrong path, but not in vv. 33, 34, 35, 41. 11:36–39 Jews and Christians who do not see v. 21 as marking a transition from describing Antiochus to describing another figure have commonly assumed that v. 36 does mark such a transition to a future king such as John of Gischala, leader of the Jewish revolt in AD 66–70,119 or Constantine who turned the Roman Empire Christian,120 or a king who is yet to come,121 or the anti-­messiah: “after these remarks in reference to Antiochus Epiphanes, he [Daniel] then moves from the image to the archetype, . . . the antichrist.” 122 But there is again no indication that the identity of “the king” has changed. Rather, the quasi-­prediction in ch. 11 closes with an evaluative summary of Antiochus’s religious attitudes. It moves from the earthly plane of attacks on people and sanctuary to the heavenly plane of attacks on God himself, though 116 Indeed, Sweeney (“The End of Eschatology in Daniel”) sees the book of Daniel as designed to support the Maccabean revolt. 117 So Fischer, Seleukiden und Makkabäer, 193. 118 Against Lebram, “The Piety of the Jewish Apocalyptists,” 182–83. 119 Parry, “Desolation of the Temple and Messianic Enthronement in Daniel 11:36–12:3.” 120 So Ibn Ezra in ‫ מקראות גדולות‬on the passage. 121 Mercer, “The Benefactions of Antiochus IV Ephiphanes and Dan 11:37–38.” 122 Theodoret, Daniel, 304–5; so e.g., E.g., Hippolytus, Daniel, 4.49; Jerome, Daniel, 136; Luther, “Vorrede uber den Propheten Daniel,” 49 (ET 313); Harton, “An Interpretation of Daniel 11:36–45”; Steinmann, “Is the Antichrist in Daniel 11?” Lederach, Daniel, 306; MacArthur, The Future of Israel, 71; Adeyemo, “Daniel,” 1010. Again, see the survey in the Introduction to this commentary.

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Comment 543 the language of chs. 9 and 11 is more down to earth than that of chs. 7 and 8.123 The paragraph begins resumptively with a general statement in v. 36; more detail follows in vv. 37–39. That “the king will act as he pleases” (v. 36) is the standard description of apparently unchallengeable authority that presages unexpected disaster or at least the frustration and failure of the king’s plans (8:4; 11:3, 16). It thus adds to the sense of expectancy that Antiochus’s success cannot continue. The sense of expectancy is encouraged by the declaration that he “will exalt himself and magnify himself”: these verbs apply in the OT only to God and to one who impiously asserts himself against God and has judgment declared upon him (Isa 10:15; 33:15). Antiochus took the title Epiphanes, “[God] Manifest,” used the title Θεός, “God,” on coins, used divine symbols, plundered temples, and suppressed other religions than his own. These acts were not peculiar to Antiochus (see v. 5 Comment); Hellenistic kings regularly associated themselves closely with religion in various ways to support their position.124 They thus stood under the protection of particular deities, sometimes assimilated themselves to them, and sometimes encouraged worship of themselves. But other Hellenistic kings did not come into such sharp conflict with the “God of gods” concerning whom Antiochus uttered his “awesome statements,” edicts suppressing worship of Yahweh. If Antiochus took his divinity more seriously than most, the reason may again be political: it helped to bind his empire together and to him. For him, as for other kings, religion was the servant of his political position. He was more important than any god. Antiochus replaced Apollo by Zeus as the god of the Seleucid dynasty (v. 37), apparently again for political reasons: it provided religious support for the irregularity involved in his accession. “The one women love” is then plausibly taken as a god especially favored in Egypt, Adonis or Dionysus, who was slighted by Antiochus through his various encroachments on the southern kingdom; the reference to Tammuz as one worshiped by women in Ezek 8:14 seems less relevant. Antiochus had shown contempt for the key gods of both the Seleucid and Ptolemaic dynasties.125 The critique may presuppose that Yahweh himself allocated the nations their gods (Deut 32:8 in 4QDeut, LXX), so that Antiochus overreaches himself in changing them.126 But the seer may simply be expressing a theological distaste for what he sees as Antiochus’s subservience of religion to politics. The “stronghold god” (v. 38) will be Zeus, who replaced Apollo and was worshiped as Baal Šamem by the Syrian garrison. Zeus could also be identified 123 Joubert, “Power and Responsibility in the Book of Daniel,” 198, in critique of Collins, Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel, 135–36. 124 See Walbank, The Hellenistic World, 84–99. 125 Bunge, “Der ‘Gott der Festungen,’” with Lebram’s comment, “König Antiochus im Buch Daniel,” 755. 126 Clifford, “History and Myth in Daniel 10–12,” 25.

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with Jupiter, Herakles, or Yahweh, but this possibility seems less relevant.127 Antiochus’s dealing with a most secure stronghold (v. 39) will be a further reference to the development of the citadel near the temple (see on v. 31). And the people he regards will be the Tobiad leadership, which was favored by Antiochus (see on v. 24). 11:40–45 This passage is very obscure, and has consequently been explained in very opposite ways by interpreters. And whatever is obscure, is usually doubtful, and there would be little utility and no termination, if I were to narrate the opinions of them all. I shall therefore follow another method, and omitting all superfluous labor, I shall simply inquire the angel’s meaning. I must, however, refer briefly to opinions received by the consent of the majority, because they occupy the minds of many, and thus close the door to the correct interpretation. The Jews, for instance, are not agreed among themselves. . . . Some explain it of Antiochus, and others of the Romans, but in a manner different to that which I shall afterwards state. The Christian expositors present much variety, but the greater number incline towards Antichrist as fulfilling the prophecy. Others, again, use greater moderation by supposing Antichrist to be here obliquely hinted at, while they do not exclude Antiochus as the type and image of Antichrist. This last opinion has great probability, but I do not approve of it. . . . Antiochus did not long survive the pollution of the Temple, and then the following events by no means suit the occurrences of this time.128

Calvin goes on to see the verses as applying to Roman rulers in general. But the “him” again presupposes that “the northern king” is the same person as that in vv. 21–39. There is no hint of a transition to antichrist or to Antiochus V129 or to Pompey and his associates130 or to the Russians.131 Porphyry assumed that the quasi-­predictive historical account of Antiochus’s career continues,132 but “at the time of the end” (contrast v. 35) works against our taking the verses as simply a further résumé of Antiochus’s career, and vv. 40–45 cannot be correlated with events as vv. 21–39 can. “There are four somewhat different accounts of Antiochus’ final campaign and death” in Maccabees and

127 Against, e.g., Charles, Daniel, on the passage; Morgenstern, “The King-God among the Western Semites,” 167; Goldstein, I Maccabees, 157. 128 Calvin, Daniel 2:338. The Introduction to this commentary expands on these various approaches to the interpretation of the passage. 129 Fischer, Seleukiden und Makkabäer, 155. 130 Gurney, God in Control, on the passage. 131 So Tanner, “Daniel’s ‘King of the North.’” Cf. Knox, “The Watch Tower Society and the End of the Cold War.” 132 See Jerome, Daniel, 139; so e.g., Mayer, Commentary upon All the Prophets, 579–82.

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Comment 545 in Polybius, but nothing in them “bears any relation to what is said in Dan. 11:40–45.”133 Further, in vv. 40–45 scriptural phraseology becomes more pervasive than it was earlier (see Form). Verse 40 marks a transition from quasi-­prediction based on historical facts to actual prediction based on the Scriptures and on the pattern of earlier events.134 The seer is “using history’s deep structures to predict the future.”135 These verses, then, are not predictions in the sense of simply anticipatory announcements of fixed future events. Like the promises and warnings of the prophets, they paint an imaginative scenario of the kind of issue that God will ensure will come from present events. Their portrayal does not correspond to actual events in the 160s, as Jesus’s coming does not correspond in a straightforward way to other OT prophecies of future redemption (e.g., Isa 9:2–7 [1–6]). It is not the nature of biblical prophecy to give a literal account of events before they take place. So the seer imagines Antiochus’s deeds reaching even beyond anything we have already read. He attempts that ultimate victory over the Ptolemaic king that has been denied to so many of his predecessors and to break the shackles of the constraints that north and south have exercised on each other (v. 40).136 In doing so, he recapitulates Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion, once again sparing the old enemies who had taken advantage of Israel then (v. 41; cf. Ezek 25). He goes on to fulfill the prophecies that envisaged Nebuchadnezzar’s final defeat of Egypt itself—­hence the naming of Egypt and other southern countries, as in those prophecies; the southern king is unmasked as old Egypt, the northern king as Israel’s ancient Mesopotamian foe from the north (vv. 42–43). But the moment of triumph again heralds downfall, as so often in ch. 11. Disturbing reports alarm the northern king—­another motif from Ezek 7. His victory heralds the last great battle of this supreme world power against shady foes beyond the orbit of the Mesopotamia-­Egypt axis (v. 44). The final battle takes place, as it must, at the midpoint of that axis, at the center of the world, at the place where the Scriptures had therefore long expected the final conflict; it signifies the end of this apparently unassailable earthly power (v. 45). Antiochus schemes against an unsuspecting and vulnerable people but finds himself God’s victim.137 12:1 This form of “prediction” continues into 12:1–3. The phrase “at that time” indicates further continuity with what precedes and excludes the idea that the prophecy is moving to some far future moment. Indeed, the threefold “that time” reinforces the impression that the whole verse is resumptive 133 Lucas, Daniel, 290, 291. 134 Perhaps including the story of Cambyses (Lebram, “König Antiochus,” 769–70) as mediated by Herodotus (Niskanen, “Daniel’s Portrait of Antiochus IV”). 135 Newsom, Daniel, 320. 136 Newsom, “The Past as Revelation,” 43. 137 Davies, Daniel, 97.

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(as will the allusions to “the discerning” and “the multitude” in v. 3). The “time of trouble” is thus a resumptive summary reference to the troubles of 11:40–45, not a new event; it would in any case seem implausible to suggest that the seer writing from the midst of terrible suffering (11:21–39) offers people not only one (11:40–45) but a second further scenario of affliction. Like the descriptions beginning in 11:25 and 11:36, this description also overlaps with the one that precedes it. Chapter 11 has made clear how the time of trouble is “such as has not occurred since they became a nation until that time,” in that Antiochus was seeking to terminate the worship of the true God and to devastate his people. The reference to Michael and the description of him takes up 10:13, 21 (see Comment), and the arising of Michael is the event underlying the defeat of the northern king in 11:45. It is the heavenly side to that earthly event.138 Each nation has a representative in the heavenly court who fights its battles, legal and military, and Michael is the one who “stands by those who belong to your people.” By “your people” he means Israel insofar as it resists the pressure of Antiochus and the reformists, who hardly now count as Israel (cf. 11:32). Michael is “the supreme leader,” perhaps by implication the most powerful of those heavenly figures, as Israel is the most significant of the nations, the one whose destiny is guaranteed. So Michael will stand up in court, as in T. Dan 6.2 and Jude 9,139 to fight for Israel, and his victory there over Antiochus’s heavenly representative means that on earth Antiochus is defeated and that “your people will escape.” Michael will thus take up their cause and point out that their names “can be found written in the book.” The verse refers not to the “trustworthy book” of 10:21, which included the future acts of the wicked as well as those of the people of God, nor to one of the “books” mentioned in 7:10, which recorded the past basis for God’s judgment. Rather, it refers to a list of those who belong to God’s people, the citizen list of the true Jerusalem (cf. the lists referred to in Ezra 2; Neh 7); this book has become a metaphor in Isa 4:3; Ezek 13:9; Ps 87:6, and a mythic motif in Exod 32:32; Isa 48:19; Ps 69:28 [29]. Michael’s intervention establishes that these people belong to the people of God and have no business to be cast precipitously into the realm of death. That promise may mean they “escape” from the annihilation referred to in 11:44, avoiding death, unlike the martyrs of 11:33–35, or it may mean that they “escape” from the realm of death by breaking out from it, as v. 2 will elaborate; for comparable usage of ‫מלט‬, see Isa 49:24–25; Ps 116:3–4 (where ‫“ צרה‬trouble” also occurs); 4QDibHama (which also refers to people whose names are written in the book of life).140 138 Collins, “The Son of Man and the Saints of the Most High,” 57. 139 Nickelsburg, Resurrection , Immortality, and Eternal Life, 11–27. 140 Nickelsburg, Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life, 161.

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Comment 547 12:2 The meaning of v. 2 needs to be approached via its context in Daniel, not via the formulated doctrine of resurrection developed by groups such as the Pharisees and adopted by Christians. While in continuity with other notes in the OT, it is “the first transparent and indisputable prediction of the resurrection of the dead in the Hebrew Bible.”141 Its affirmation concerning resurrection is one expression of a conviction expressed in other writings of the period, especially in Enoch and in Qumran writings.142 It is not a piece of theological teaching but a vision or a flight of the imagination, and not a “fully developed” belief in resurrection; nor is it an awakening of the dead of nations other than Israel within its purview.143 “In an unprecedented developmental leap in Old Testament religion the persecuted body also becomes a means of subversion—­in this instance undermining the dire result of persecution. Death itself is defied and with it any attempt by political powers at subverting people by means of the gravest bodily punishments.”144 The seer continues to portray the future on the basis of the Scriptures, especially Isaiah (see Form); his imaginative portrayal need not be a literal prediction. Its message connects with the historical events related in its literary context in 11:21–12:3.145 It is not concerned with the eschatological restoration of the covenant people,146 if this understanding implies a future that is distanced from a present context. It does not reflect the seer’s withdrawal from history with its constraints, on the basis of a suspicion that Yahweh is not now acting in history—­an idea that can be thought characteristic of apocalyptic thinking. It is not concerned with “the transcendence of death” in itself; if this is the distinguishing mark of apocalyptic eschatology,147 then Daniel fails this test, even here, as it fails others. This resurrection promise by God is historically contextual, like his promise in Ezek 37 that in its context does promise the revival of the covenant people. Daniel is less explicitly contextual, though more clearly so than the prophecy in Ezek 38–39.148 And anyway, “it is not clear that the deaths of the faithful,” the problem that resurrection solves, “are the driving concern that motivates the final revelation” (in Dan 10–12 as a whole).149 The OT’s standard way of envisaging dying then coming back to life speaks of lying down to sleep then of waking and getting up. Dying is an extreme 141 Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel, 181. 142 See the survey in Collins, Daniel, 394–98; Newsom, Daniel, 361–63; Beyerle, Die Gottesvorstellungen in der antik-jüdischen Apokalyptik, 189–268. 143 Against Gese, Zur biblischen Theologie, 52 (ET 57). 144 Van Deventer, “The Bold, the Beautiful and the Beasts in the Book of Daniel,” 728. 145 Cf. Haag, “Daniel 12 und die Auferstehung der Toten,” 146 Against Preuss, “‘Auferstehung’ in Texten alttestamentlicher Apokalyptik,” 133, referring to J. Kammerer, “Die Auferstehung der Toten im Alten Testament als Element der eschatologischen Restauration des Bundesvolkes Israel” (PhD diss., Vienna, 1968). 147 Collins, “Apocalyptic Eschatology as the Transcendence of Death,” 30. 148 Contrast Erling, “Ezekiel 38–39,” 113–14. 149 Merrill Willis, Dissonance and the Drama of Divine Sovereignty in the Book of Daniel, 151.

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form of going to sleep, which thus provides the metaphor for it (2 Kgs 4:31; 13:21; Isa 26:19; Jer 51:39, 57; Job 14:12). It means lying down with one’s ancestors in the family tomb, which has Sheol as its nonmaterial equivalent; so coming back to life would mean leaving such a “land of earth” (cf. also Pss 49; 73). The image presupposes a restoring to life of the whole person with its spiritual and material aspects. What does the image of renewing earthly life refer to? People are to be revived to “lasting life” in a way that makes for a contrast with the destiny of “others” whose destiny is “utter shame” and “lasting abhorrence.” These others will be the apostate, the persecutors, and the blasphemers of 11:29–45. The promise of vv. 1–2 corresponds to motifs from the Psalms (e.g., 6; 69; 79). There supplicants pray for their vindication and for rescue from the realm of death and also for the exposure and punishment of their attackers, and the desired response to such a double prayer is a double promise. So here the seer promises renewal of life and the exposure of the faithless. Although the promise does not focus on the community in the manner of Ezek 37, there is both a community and an individual aspect to this awakening, as there is in the Psalms. Part of the sufferers’ affliction is that it deprives them of a place in the people of God, one way or another. Their awakening restores them to that place; Dan 12 promises the awakening of people individually, but with a view to their sharing a corporate destiny.150 It is an expression of the movement “From Dust to Kingship”151 envisaged in passages such as 1 Sam 2:6–8; 1 Kgs 16:2; Pss 22:15 [16]; 44:25 [26]; 113:7, that great reversal when the powerful are put down and the nobodies are given power. Like the awakening to renewed life, the exposure of the wicked has a this-­ worldly connotation. It was so in Isa 66:24, which v. 2 takes up: its picture of people in Jerusalem looking at the corpses of the wicked decomposing in the Valley of Hinnom suggests a metaphor for a feature even of the new Jerusalem. “Everything suggests that Daniel’s use of the [Jewish resurrection] imagery shows dependence on the book of Isaiah.”152 Vindication and exposure after this life cannot be literally described, as vindication and exposure in this life such as the Psalms seek can be, so the latter becomes a metaphor for the former. The reference to the exposure of the wicked brings out how vv. 1–3 as a whole is concerned with restoration to life not simply for its own sake, nor for the sake of communion with God, but as part of and as a means to vindication.153 Might this consideration underlie the promise that “many,” not all, will 150 Martin-Achard, “Trois remarques sur la résurrection,” 315–17. 151 Brueggemann, “From Dust to Kingship,” esp. 11–12. 152 Day, “The Development of Belief in Life after Death in Ancient Israel,” 242; cf. Day, “Resurrection Imagery from Baal to the Book of Daniel.” 153 Charles, Eschatology, 137–38; 211–13; Nickelsburg, Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life; Kleinknecht, “Der leidende Gerechtfertigte.”

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Comment 549 awaken, so that the faithful who lost their lives awake for vindication and the faithless awake for condemnation, while the regular mass of faithful Israel remain in Sheol?154 But “many” more likely contrasts with “few” rather than with “all,” and more likely the groups raised are the faithful in general and the unpunished wicked, with the already punished wicked remaining in Sheol.155 But the passage is handling a specific problem and the threefold division suggested by the metaphor must not be pressed to yield a technically precise doctrine of the afterlife. 12:3 “The discerning” who “set the multitude right” have had their teaching despised, and some of them have lost their lives. Their position will be reversed, not merely by their being restored to life but by their being given a position of pre-­eminent honor. Once again, it is difficult to tell how literal and how metaphorical is the description of their destiny. The stars can represent celestial beings (cf. 8:10; also Judg 5:20; Job 38:7; 1 En. 104; T. Mos. 10:9; 2 Bar. 51). Comparing the discerning with the stars need not imply that they will be located among them, still less that they will become celestial beings.156 A poetic couplet echoing an earlier scriptural passage (Isa 52:13; 53:11) within a visionary flight into the future cannot be pressed. We can ask about the significance of comparing the discerning to stars or of locating them among the celestial beings. In earlier OT thought the king has been characterized in these terms (Num 24:17; 1 Sam 29:9; 2 Sam 14:17, 20; Isa 9:6 [5]), against the background of an assumed correspondence or other linkage between heaven and earth and between heavenly powers and earthly powers such as we noted in connection with Dan 10. The last northern king had sought to storm heaven’s gates. In 12:3 such notions are not quite democratized, but they are applied more broadly to the “discerning” leaders of the community. We might compare the designation of prophets as Yahweh’s aides (‫)מלאכים‬. These “discerning” are given a place in Yahweh’s council.157 They receive the honor the last northern king vainly sought. Once again, it is inappropriate to be literalistic in interpreting the poetry: the vision relates to life on earth lived by beings who are still human. But neither is it appropriate to be prosaic in understanding the promise: it envisages life of a heavenly character, the life of the age to come. The discerning share in the theophanic glory of the new Jerusalem.158 The promise speaks not of resuscitation but of resurrection, which incorporates transformation. And it is not in heaven but on earth.159 154 Cf. Hobbins, “Resurrection in the Daniel Tradition and Other Writings at Qumran,” 414. 155 So Kaiser/Lohse, Tod und Leben (ET Death and Life). 156 On this question, see Nickelsburg, Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life, 26; contrast Collins, Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel, 136–38. 157 See Wifall, “The Status of ‘Man’ as Resurrection.” 158 Cavallin, Life after Death, 27; Martin-Achard, “L’espérance des croyants d’Israël face à la mort,” 449; Nickelsburg, Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life, 26. 159 Cf. Pace, Daniel, 337.

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12:4 Closing up and sealing suggest not merely conserving the words in the book but withholding them (cf. 8:26; sealing reminds us that the “book” is a scroll). This understanding is confirmed by the next words: because they are withheld, “many will hurry to and fro,” unable to find a word from God (see Amos 8:11–12). But the unsealing of Daniel’s book during the Antiochene crisis ends that famine.160 It also means that the words now become intelligible, “for every prophecy, before its fulfillment, appears to people to be full of enigmas and ambiguities. But when the time has arrived and the prediction has come to pass, the prophecies have a clear and certain meaning.”161 12:5–10 The scene returns to that of 10:2–19; again there is some unclarity about how many persons Daniel sees and about their relationship to the persons in ch. 10. The two other figures of v. 5 connect with 8:13–14 rather than Deut 19:15.162 The anonymous—­presumably celestial—­questioner’s “how long?” (v. 6) once more takes up the “how long” of Israel’s laments (see on 8:13–14). The awesome events (‫ )פלאות‬of which he enquires are the ones that came to a climax in 11:29–12:3, involving Antiochus’s laying his hand on the realm of God (cf. 8:24 as well as 11:36). Yes, “ ‘How long?’ implies that it has already been too long, that too many have perished.”163 Raising one’s hand to heaven in taking an oath (v. 7) acknowledges God as witness (cf. Gen 14:22), though elsewhere the expression is used only of God himself as if he acknowledges some other witness (e.g., Ezek 20:5–6). The doubling of the hands further underline the undertaking’s solemnity, though the imagery recalls Deut 32:40 (especially in the text form that may lie behind LXX).164 On the 3 1/2 “set periods” (‫ מועד‬here, not ‫)עדן‬, see on 7:25. The shattering of the power of the holy people is presumably the events of 11:21–45, or perhaps the whole period from the exile onwards; there is no particular reason to refer it to the crushing of Judas’s rebellion in 160, and the context goes against this understanding.165 “The style of the apocalypse forces the reader to become an interpreter as much as Daniel and the angelic mediators are.”166As in 8:15, the expert reader has become the baffled reader, and even more clearly than was the case there, he consoles and encourages subsequent readers who cannot understand his text. How could we be surprised?167 Daniel’s puzzled question (v. 8), natural for one set in the exile, facilitates a further restatement of what we have been 160 Lindenberger, “Daniel 12:1–4,” 184. 161 Irenaeus, Against Heresies IV, 26:1; cf. Stevenson/Glerup, Ezekiel, Daniel, 307. 162 Hasslberger, Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis, on the passage. 163 Berrigan, Daniel, 202. 164 See McGarry, “The Ambidextrous Angel (Daniel 12:7 and Deuteronomy 32:40).” 165 Against Goldstein, I Maccabees, 43. 166 Newsom, Daniel, 329. 167 See further Pyper, “Reading in the Dark.” Wiesel (“Daniel,” 114) thus expresses regret that Daniel heeded the angel’s instruction to seal the book and not divulge the secret of the ending.

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Comment 551 told (vv. 9–10), which also comes nearest to an explicit exhortation regarding conduct under the affliction that the seer’s hearers are experiencing. The faithful have no scope for action that will change history. Daniel is told simply to go his way; contrast chs. 1–6. The vocation of the faithful is to keep themselves pure in the context of the pressures of history. In the abb’a’ bicolon comprising v. 10, commitment to purifying, cleansing, and refining goes along with discernment, while faithlessness goes along with a turning away from insight. “The wise are antonymous to the wicked”; you can be righteous but not wise, but if you are wise you will be righteous, and if you are wicked you will not be wise.168 To put it another way, they are to wait: but waiting is active, not passive. “In waiting, the faithful are called to stay the course, to remain firm in Torah observance and the praxis of resistance outlined for them elsewhere in the book.” 169 12:11–12 The “how long?” receives a further answer, giving temporal precision to the more symbolic expression of v. 7, in terms of a number of days—­indeed two numbers, both different from the one in 8:14. The numbers can be related to 8:14 and to other numbers in Daniel by Pythagorean arithmology,170 but “the issue is clouded by uncertainty as to the method by which the numbers were calculated.”171 The possibility that they have some calendrical significance both clarifies and further complicates. Various calendars were in use in the seer’s day. The Babylonians used a lunar calendar that produced a year of 354 days, the Essenes a solar calendar of 364 days,172 the Hellenistic regimes a luni-­solar one of 360 days; in each case the calendar was corrected to the true length of the solar year by intercalating months. Evidence of familiarity with all three calendars has been found in the OT. The question of the right calendar was overtly a subject of dispute in the second and first centuries BC (see on 7:23–25), and Daniel’s periods of days have been seen as reflections of this dispute. They most straightforwardly fit the luni-­solar calendar,173 but they can be understood in the light of the other systems. When allowance is made for intercalation, 1290 days can represent 3 1/2 lunar years174 or 3 1/2 solar years;175 1335 days can also be reckoned to comprise 3 1/2 solar years.176 As Daniel’s figures can be related to several calendars, so they can be

168 Hebbard, Reading Daniel, 211–12. 169 Portier-Young, Apocalypse Against Empire, 265. 170 Mathews, “The Numbers in Daniel 12:11–12.” 171 Collins, Daniel, 400. 172 Cf. Van Goudoever, “Time Indications in Daniel that Reflect the Usage of the Ancient Theoretical So-Called Zadokite Calendar,” 533–38; Boccaccini, “The Solar Calendars of Daniel and Enoch.” 173 E.g., Beckwith, “The Earliest Enoch Literature and Its Calendar,” 377–78. 174 E.g., Cornill, “Die siebzig Jahrwochen Daniels,” 29–30. 175 Burgmann, “Die vier Endzeittermine im Danielbuch,” 545–46. 176 Eiss, “Der Kalender des nachexilischen Judentums.”

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related to several sets of events between 168 and 164. The beginning point of v. 11 could be the time of one of the edicts by Antiochus, the time of the temple desecration, or the time of the enforcement of the ban on the regular sacrificial order (11:31–33). The beginning point of v. 12 could be one of these moments or an earlier event such as Apollonius’s mission. More likely vv. 11–12 begin with the same event and v. 12 terminates later, suggesting that the promised release will have successive stages during which a continuing faithful expectancy is required. Thus vv. 11–12 could terminate with Judas’s victories, the temple rededication, Antiochus’s death, the arrival of news of his death, or the further events envisaged by 11:45–12:3. According to 1 Macc 1:59; 4:52–53, the period from the first pagan sacrifice to the altar’s rededication was exactly three years. 12:13 The concern of vv. 1–3 was the resurrection of people in the seer’s day, not figures from the past such as an exilic Daniel. Yet behind the figure of Daniel is the seer himself, a member of the group who might well lose their lives, so the man in linen’s encouragement to face both life (“go your way”) and death (“and rest”) with equanimity relates directly to the calling of the “discerning.” Although v. 13 differs from what precedes in its implicit rationale for resurrection and in its language,177 the picture of death as rest (cf. Isa 57:2; Job 3:13, 17) and of returning to life as rising from sleep picks up the imagery of v. 2. “Destiny” (‫ )גורל‬appears frequently in the Qumran literature as a term for the community’s fellowship with the holy ones (1QS 11.7; 1QH 11.11), but even there the word is used with other meanings (e.g., 1QS 1.10); OG nicely translates it δοξα (glory).178 “The final day” (‫קץ הימין‬, literally “the end of the days”) is not a technical term for the End (cf. similar expressions in 1:18; 11:6, 13; Neh 13:6); presumably it is the same time as “the time of the end” (‫ )עת קץ‬in v. 4.179

Explanation The seer might have drawn our attention to six main affirmations in this final vision, which provides keys to understanding the book as a whole with its emphasis on power, understanding, and time.180 (a) My message came by divine revelation. The main point of my narrative in 10:1–19 was to encourage my hearers to receive the message in 10:20–12:4 (and in 10:13, 20; 12:7–13) as a revelation from heaven. The overt basis on which it did so was the nature of the experience I related, an experience like Ezekiel’s that implied that my message could be accepted as Ezekiel’s was. 177 Cf. Stele, “Resurrection in Daniel 12”; he emphasizes the difference between the resurrection ideas in the two verses. 178 Raurell, “The Doxa of the Seer in Dan-LXX 12,13.” 179 Jones, “Ideas of History in the Book of Daniel,” 208–11. 180 So Wildgruber, Daniel 10–12, 280–93.

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Explanation 553 Heavenly beings—­so impressive and awesome that one of them might have been God himself—­had been in touch with me. While their appearing draws attention to the gulf between earth and heaven, which makes it necessary for revelation to be sought and granted, it also highlights the contact between earth and heaven, because revelation was sought and granted.181 I do not necessarily imply that either I or my audience took this argument to be conclusive. First, while I believed my message to have come by divine gift, I knew that it was not received by the exilic Daniel in the way I described it, and at least some of my contemporaries knew. Second, even if I was inviting people to believe that the message was received through a revelatory experience, “translated” into—­or experienced as—­an experience of the exilic Daniel, I and they also knew that a claim to revelatory experience is not to be accepted purely on the basis of the claim (cf. Jer 23:15–32).182 My account therefore implies some other reasons for accepting my message as a God-­g iven revelation. I could present it as an experience of a man of proven discernment and faithfulness. In chs. 1–6 these qualities appear in Daniel; in chs. 10–12 they also appear when we as the actual recipients of these visions become fleetingly visible (11:32–35; 12:10). And my message was presented not as a quite new revelation but in large part as a piece of scriptural exposition (see Form). Biblical prophecy and not merely personal insight provided the categories for my understanding of the events of Hellenistic history. Of course not everything in my vision was expressed in terms that are anticipated earlier in the OT; the revelation concerning the involvement of heavenly figures behind earthly events is an important exception, even though it has theological links with earlier Scriptures. And in any case, the use of Scriptures no more makes a message biblical and true than an account of an experience like that in ch. 10 makes a message a divine revelation. I was reapplying the Scriptures to Antiochus and the promised destiny of conservative Jews. I was not the only person who did so: others did, in the cause of expounding different perspectives on the Antiochene crisis, in 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, and 1 Enoch; some reformist Jews believed they had the Scriptures on their side, too (cf. 11:14?). Canons of exegesis cannot prove that my use of Isaiah reflects the spirit of Isaiah. Another obvious criterion for deciding whether a prophecy comes from God is whether it comes true (Deut 18:22). I might seem to fail that test. People such as my community may live with unfulfilled prophecies by reinterpreting the events that they experience (emphasizing that something did happen) or by reinterpreting the prophecy’s time reference (it hasn’t been fulfilled yet) or by reinterpreting the prophecy itself (it didn’t really refer to an actual event), 181 Joubert, “Power and Responsibility in the Book of Daniel,” 184. 182 On approaches to undertstanding the visionary experience, see DiTommaso, “Apocalypses and Apocalypticism in Antiquity,” 263–65.

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though in thus acquitting prophecies of failure they risk emptying them of cognitive content.183 It might also be said that while I was offering people a way of seeing order in the cosmos by promising that things would work out, it was a high-­risk enterprise: it could put the total order at risk in the long run.184 All these ways of living with prophecy have been found in my visions. First, the words of the OT prophets, who sometimes fail the test of fulfillment, commonly receive what people could see as a partial fulfillment, and perhaps it is this partial fulfillment that encouraged the community to hold onto words that were not fulfilled—­these words must also have come from God and must offer illumination for the future. My community, too, might not have preserved my words if they had experienced no spectacular deliverance in 164–163 BC. Hanukkah celebrates the fact that proleptically my words were fulfilled and that I did not prophesy falsely.185 Second, though 12:11–12 have been seen as successive reinterpretations of the prophecy’s time reference, in general I can claim that I avoided giving the impression that the End was imminent, even if I did sound interested in calculating its time.186 Third, some prophecies are intended “mythically.” They involve that “intersection of the ideal and the circumstantial” that features in the royal psalms; they are not purely eschatological.187 Even my quasi-­predictions, after all, offered not an objective historical account of Antiochus but an interpretive portrait of what he stood for, painted in light of scriptural archetypes. The actual declarations about the future, which also do something newly creative with old words from the Scriptures, are then more promise than prediction; 12:1–3, for instance, was a flight of my imagination comparable to Job’s (e.g., 19:23–27). The encouragement they offer can survive literal disconfirmation, and subsequent generations can feel that they directly address them in different but analogous crises in which the End approaches them as threat but that in their light can become promise. That dynamic suggests another way of establishing whether my message was a divine revelation. Does it look like one that can be lived with? At least some people in the second century BC found it so, preserved it, and shared it with subsequent generations, so that it found a place among those Scriptures that shaped the identity of Jews and Christians of all shades of belief and gave them the perspectives with which to view analogous crises. (b) Heavenly powers share in shaping the events of earthly history. I spoke of a struggle involving Israel’s leader, Michael, and the unnamed leaders of Persia and Greece, a struggle over whether God’s purpose for history should be revealed, which was also a struggle over whether it should thereby be put 183 See Carroll, When Propecy Failed, utilizing the work of Festinger, When Prophecy Fails. 184 Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, 510–11. 185 Gese, “Das Geschichtsbild des Danielsbuches und Ägypten,” 152. 186 Lebram, “The Piety of the Jewish Apocalyptists,” 183. 187 Carroll, “Prophecy and Dissonance,” 113, quoting Eaton, Kingship and the Psalms, 134.

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Explanation 555 into effect. That way of thinking does not mean that we should understand history in a dualistic way. God is sovereign in heaven and on earth; there is no other power to rival him (I do not refer to a satan). His purpose can be opposed and delayed, but not frustrated. I did not suggest a dualism of ultimate powers. Nor did I imply that the real decisions about history are made in heaven, so that human acts make no difference to what happens. My revelation concerning Hellenistic history made clear that human beings are responsible for history. Armies have to fight as if the battle on the earthly plane alone counts. On the other hand, monistic thinking about history is an oversimplification. I do not see history as the outworking of human decisions alone. There is “a synergism between human and divine history.”188 Not only do free human decisions unwittingly contribute to the working out of God’s purpose (see ch. 2 Explanation); what I said about the activity of the supernatural leaders of the nations (10:13; 10:20–11:1) presupposed that the purposes of kings and nations are more than merely the decisions of particular human beings. Something in the realm of the supernatural lies behind them. Compared with 1 Enoch I made only rather allusive reference to those heavenly beings, though I allowed more for this way of thinking than 1 Maccabees does. I said little or nothing about their nature or origin, about how many of them there are or how they are ordered, or about distinctions between good and evil beings among them.189 What I did say indicates that consideration of them requires more than jest or sentimentalism. They are not dainty figures in dresses, but figures whose very names draw attention to the uniqueness and the might of God, which they mediate. Historically, the idea of the leaders of the nations developed from the idea of many gods in polytheistic religions. We always knew that Yahweh was uniquely God; even Michael’s name draws attention to there being no one like God even in heaven.190 But we also knew that the life of heaven was more complex than might be implied by a bare affirmation that Yahweh alone was God. And the idea of the leaders of the nations provided a way of thinking about history as we experienced it. History involves conflicts between peoples that seem to reflect more than merely human factors—­for instance, it involves inexplicable defeats and inexplicable victories. This conflict is sometimes one that seems to have more than merely human significance, yet on other occasions it is one in which the hand of God cannot be discerned nor can promises such as those of Ps 2 be seen to be effective. The power of the leader of Persia mirrors Persia’s actual political power.191 The idea of the heavenly leaders of the nations is a way of expressing the fact 188 Towner, Daniel, 173. 189 Cf. Barth, CD iii, 3:410–11. 190 Barth, CD iii, 3:456. 191 Thus these supernatural figures are not territorial spirits (see Stevens, “Daniel 10 and the Notion of Territorial Spirits”).

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that there is more to history and to reality than we can see: both individuals and states are more than merely themselves as historical realities.192 While the leaders are somehow under God’s control, and they are not his demonic opponents, neither are they simply his heavenly obedient servants. The job of the leader of Persia is to represent Persian interests in a world in conflict; “it has a right to contest for the best interests of the Persian empire narrowly defined.” The leaders are not “idealized personifications” of their nations; “they represent the actual spirituality and possibilities of actual entities.”193 Not only is it often impossible to see the hand of God in history; it is often impossible to see the hand of the nations themselves. Events work out despite their intentions rather than through them.194 What nations do, for good or ill, is not always what they were planning to do. It is as if some power other than the powers themselves influences the shaping of their destiny. Another theological issue underlies this idea, or at least emerges from it. In referring to the figures who appeared to me, I did not use words such as “angel” that apply only to supernatural beings. I called them by phrases such as “a humanlike being,” or—­w ithout that qualifying “like”—­“a man in linen.” I emphasized that there was something special about these figures, but my language also stressed their kinship with humanity. I used the ordinary word “leader,” too, without qualification, both for celestial beings and for earthly ones (10:13, 20, 21; 11:5; 12:1; cf. 1:7–11, 18; 8:11, 25; 9:6, 8), and the ordinary word for “king” in 10:13 in a context where I was talking about supernatural figures. The NT uses the equivalent Greek words for “leader” for both material and spiritual/heavenly powers (e.g., Th.’s equivalent for ‫ שר‬in Daniel, ἄρχων, in Rom 13:3; 1 Cor 2:6, 8; the more common related noun ἀρχή, e.g., Rom 8:38; Eph 6:12; Col 1:16). Both the Hebrew and the Greek words generally denote human leaders but sometimes denote supernatural ones, and sometimes they are ambiguous (cf. Dan 10:13). Perhaps the fluidity and ambiguity in such usage reflects a duality about all entities that embody power.195 There is something human, earthly, structural, political, and visible about them. There is also something heavenly, invisible, suprahuman, immaterial, and supernatural. The powers have an inner and an outer aspect, an outer form and an inner driving self. They are not merely metaphors for structures of power within the nation itself, but neither do they exist in themselves, as independent persons or disembodied spirits. They have no profile of their own; their 192 Koch, “Vom profetischen zum apokalyptischen Visionsbericht,” 438. 193 Wink, Unmasking the Powers, 89. 194 Speaking as the author, I note that in the first edition of this commentary I made comments on the way the political events of the day might have illustrated the working out of Daniel’s perspective on international politics. I will not update these comments in this second edition; I simply note that Daniel’s perspective deserves to be applied to the international political situation whenever his vision is read. 195 Cf. Wink, Naming the Powers; Unmasking the Powers.

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Explanation 557 significance is only as agents of God and/or foci of human societies. Nations as such, then, have personalities and vocations.196 But even in a democracy power becomes embodied in individuals. “It is the fortuitous conjunction of a powerful personality in a powerful office that makes a powerful leader.”197 “Leaders,” human and heavenly, both focus that personality and vocation. Colossians 1:16–20 reaffirms what I presupposed, that all power in its visible and invisible aspects was created by God and exists for God. Overwhelmed by the significance of Jesus, Paul further affirms that all such power was created in him, through him, and for him. The powers “only have their being because of him; they are upheld, even in their defections, by him. They exist to serve the purpose of the whole creation as it comes to its focus in him. . . . Try as they will to become autonomous and set up their own interests as the highest good, the Powers must inevitably come to terms with the Power of the Powers.”198 In a context such as that of Dan 1–6, it is our task to call them back to their origins and destiny. Even in a context such as that of Dan 7–12, when there seems no likelihood that they will respond to such a call, my vision implies that it is our task to pray for them. It is still our way of confronting the supernatural realities of which the political is an embodiment. It was not my job to engage with these heavenly forces. It was my job to pray and to recognize that the reality of conflict in heaven was one factor that made things troublesome in the world.199 Presumably it is no coincidence that my period of prayer and the leaders’ period of conflict were coterminous. It implies that prayer can play a role in opening up the possibility of God’s purpose being fulfilled when human purposes conflict with it. There are sometimes reasons why prayers don’t get answered straightaway.200 But my cry “opened an aperture for God to act in concert with human freedom. It inaugurated war in heaven. It opened a way through the impenetrable spirituality of a foreign hegemony in order to declare a new and real divine possibility.”201 My vision did not provide a rationale for how this is so, but it expresses in narrative form the conviction that it is so. The celestial interrogators are a blessing to the persecuted. “Raise the questions, they imply . . .; raise them in groanings of spirit. . . . Shall faith permit of no perplexities? The angels deny it, urging perplexities of their own.”202 (c) The details of Israel’s history are within the control of God. My vision pictured a heavenly being revealing during the 530s events to take place over the subsequent four centuries up to the End, from the contents of 196 Wink, Unmasking the Powers, 93–94. 197 Wink, Naming the Powers, 66. 198 Wink, Naming the Powers, 64. 199 Cf. Wright, Hearing the Message of Daniel, 216–17. 200 Cf. Calvin, Daniel 2:251. 201 Wink, Unmasking the Powers, 91. 202 Berrigan, Daniel, 203.

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“a trustworthy book” (10:21). To say that history was pre-­w ritten was to affirm the belief that it is under control. It could seem to imply that history is an imposed destiny, fixed independently of the wills of its participants; the march of the kingdoms is the march of toy soldiers programmed by God.203 If it were so, even I might have reckoned that God could have programmed it better. To speak in terms of history’s being pre-­w ritten is not incompatible with speaking of God’s giving people responsibility so that they choose whether to walk in his way (cf. 1 Enoch). The stories of Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar (Dan 4–5) similarly treat heathen kings both as standing beneath an overarching determination of God and as responsible to him and to themselves for their destinies. In understanding the significance of the book image, one needs to keep reminding oneself that in respect of the vast bulk of the history that I described as pre-­w ritten, I was declaring it to be so only afterwards. I was describing events as inevitable (11:14, 27, 36) when they were inevitable, after they had happened. To describe them in this way at that point need not imply a more mechanical view of history than the prophets’ view, as if history is fixed and predetermined or self-­imposing as it happens. It is inappropriate to be literalistic in interpreting my visions, as if my message was other than a quasi-­prediction. The significance of describing past history as pre-­w ritten is to declare that God is in control even of the inexplicabilities of history—­the successes of the godless and the sufferings of the faithful—­and even at moments when evil is asserting itself in a particularly oppressive way. Given the difficulty of viewing history as it unfolds as the direct will of God, the books declare that it was foreknown by God and in some sense willed by him. It is part of some pattern and purpose rather than being random and meaningless. Like other parts of the Scriptures, however, I assume that God’s capacity to know about events before they happen and to stay in control of the way they develop is not incompatible with the reality of human decision making and responsibility for them. The really future events that are read out of God’s books are ones associated with the End, with the final defeat of evil and the final establishment of God’s rule in the world, which is part of the purpose for human history that God is determined to achieve. In this connection there is a fixed inevitability about history; human beings cannot frustrate God’s ultimate purpose, and in that sense they cannot alter what has been determined by God’s will. But the detailed portrayal of how the End will come is an imaginative scenario drawn in the light of Scriptures rather than a forecast of how things must be (see [a] above). (d) The details of Persian and Hellenistic history have no positive theological significance. “With a doggedness not found in any other part of the 203 So Towner, Daniel, on the passage.

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Explanation 559 Book of Daniel the concept of the divine predetermination of the times renders history essentially meaningless, even though this section devotes more space than any other to a review of history.”204 Actually, it is not the idea of predetermination that makes history meaningless. History is meaningless anyway. If we see “historiography as a way of knowing,”205 then what it enables us to know is something deeply discouraging. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time: . . . . . . . . . . . a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

(William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5.5.18–20, 25–27)

Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following upon another as wave follows upon wave, only one great fact with respect to which, since it is unique, there can be no generalizations, only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.

(H. A. L. Fisher)206 Or to put it more briskly I am unable to find any meaning in history.207

The implication is not that I suggest a mythical rather than a history-­ oriented view. While I denied that history is going anywhere and I did look forward to God taking decisive action to being about the victory of the good, I did not take a cyclic view of history nor did I see history as predetermined in a way that excludes human decision making and responsibility for what happens, nor did I lack interest in actual history.208 Yet “we cannot fail to 204 Towner, Daniel, 174. Cf. von Rad, Old Testament Theology 2:303–4. 205 Merrill Willis, Dissonance and the Drama of Divine Sovereignty in the Book of Daniel, 29. 206 A History of Europe (London: Arnold, 1910), v. 207 Fisher as quoted by Philip, By the Rivers of Babylon, on the passage. 208 See e.g., the “interchange on myth and history” (Merrill Willis, “Myth and History in Daniel 8,” 151) between Jindo (“On Myth and History”) and DiTommaso (“History and Apocalyptic Eschatology”); and D. D. Baldwin, “Free Will and Conditionality in Daniel,” 163–72.

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see or realise that humanity appears strangely lost in its history.”209 Is it at all possible to know what has happened and what does happen, in any sequence of empires or dynasties you care to name, from ancient times to the twentieth century. “We recall all the few or many things that we know of all the great and little powers which here rise and fall, of all the civilisations that come and go with all their transmutations, of all the treaties concluded and broken, and above all of all the wars which were fought, and ended.” We recall the great names and the acts associated with them. “We remember, too, the hopes and disappointments and sufferings and joys, more felt than known, of the anonymous millions of individuals recorded by history only in partial selection and brief outline yet also participating and contributing as they also live and die in the limits and under the pressure of the conditions imposed upon them. Whence and whither and to what end is all this? What does any of it mean?” Any hope lies not in some possibility inherent in the story but in a possibility one locates somewhere else. My vision implies a different interpretation of history from the one that predominates among OT historians, prophets, and psalmists. It constitutes an exposition of profane history, in contrast with the outline of sacred history in 9:24–27; it gives history more space than any other chapter in the book but indeed renders it essentially meaningless.210 Events unfold as a pointless sequence of invasions, battles, schemes, and frustrations. Military power and political maneuvering are central themes; but military issues are not always settled by the size of an army, and political schemes come to nothing, whether pursued by means of battle or by means of alliance.211 It is a tale of selfishness, irrationality, and chance. Human beings formulate far-­reaching plans but keep being frustrated by each other. Neither power nor politics take people anywhere. History is not the outworking of a just purpose, nor is the hand of God directly visible in it; God, indeed, for the most part remains in the gallery, only watching—­though no doubt noting the parallels in this history to earlier events involving Assyria and Babylon as the prophets commented on these events, and committed to bringing upon it a corresponding judgment. I was not suggesting that history was always hell-­bent on the disaster that emerges at the end of ch. 11. I was not negative about Alexander and the Hellenistic Empires in general (contrast 1 Macc 1). Even the eventual disaster, though it comes as determined, is a result of chance collocations of people and events. History is going nowhere. The interpretation of history that I was offering will turn out to match the way people experience history in more secular centuries. 209 Barth, CD IV, 3:694; from which the two subsequent quotations also come. 210 See Hanhart, “Kriterien Geschichtlicher Wahrheit in der Makkabäerzeit,” 82; Towner, Daniel, on the passage; Rappaport, “Apocalyptic Vision and Preservation of Historical Memory.” 211 Joubert, “Power and Responsibility in the Book of Daniel,” 191–92.

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Explanation 561 So “the details of the ensuing history [in 11:2–20] are without theological interest,”212 though the outworking of this history is not incapable of theological interpretation. While the four great empires contained one another by each terminating the rule of the last, the Seleucids and the Ptolemies mutually contained each other by frustrating each other’s aspirations to wider empire over a period of centuries, thus protecting each other from reaching the ultimate arrogance that must provoke God to intervene.213 That provocation is also offered when war and politics become interwoven with religion. Yet generally I was not concerned to offer any ethical judgment on history, though I did imply a negative judgment based on the imperial powers’ involvement in religious matters for their political reasons. Nor was I concerned to comment on Israel’s own involvement in history. Later works such as 1 and 2 Maccabees would do so, but they came from a period when there was the history of an independent Jewish state on which to reflect. They revived in different ways a historical perspective like that of 1 and 2 Kings, valuing the activism of the Maccabees though presupposing two different evaluations of martyrdom, miracle, prophecy, belief in resurrection, and the Hasmonean monarchy.214 Whether or not people took a quietist stance rather than resisting Antiochus by military means, I wanted to put the emphasis on the activity of God, not on what our own acts could achieve. I did not want people to blame themselves for the Antiochene crisis. Neither did I want to put the responsibility on some cosmic act of rebellion near the beginning of world history, as if people in our day were not responsible for their acts. “If the point of Genesis 1 was ‘In the beginning God . . .’, the point of Daniel 7 was ‘In the end God. . . .’ ”215 While the reformist Jews had been irresponsible fools, they had played into the hands of the person who was my real scapegoat, Antiochus. Readers will be able to see Antiochus in my story, but I do not name him or name any preceding kings or events. This omission helps to make the point that there is nothing unique about these kings or the events in which they are involved. I present their story in a way that schematizes it and implies a typology.216 The same things keep happening and I keep using the same phrases to describe them and keep making those links with earlier Scriptures that suggest a pattern that is being repeated here. (e) The destiny of the faithful—­a nd of the faithless—­is sure. The solemnity of my vision could be troubling and make it hard to be open to.217 While 212 Gowan, Daniel, on the passage. 213 Newsom, “The Past as Revelation,” 48; Lebram, “The Piety of the Jewish Apocalyptists,” 183. 214 See Goldstein, I Maccabees, 3–36. 215 Redditt, Daniel, 132. 216 Wildgruber, Daniel 10–12, 226–48. 217 Cf. Garber, “Resisting Daniel.”

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it could indeed seem troublesome that the people of God are under such pressure, it would be even worse if supernatural forces were not fighting on our behalf.218 And it would be even worse if it were not possible to look at these events in light of the Scriptures. My quasi-­prediction continued to be shaped by the Scriptures through ch. 11. The Assyrians provided one model for my portrait of the Seleucids: and as the former fell, so would the latter. The temple desecration was like the desecration by the Babylonians: and as that desecration had been reversed, so would this one be. The affliction was like that of Yahweh’s servant in Isaiah: and in this case, too, it would give way to triumph. As ch. 10 speaks of celestial figures who are the embodiments of earthly institutions, so ch. 11 speaks of earthly figures who are the embodiments of supernatural principles. I speak of no figure who embodies the fulfillment of God’s positive purpose—­no Messiah. Nor is there any indication in my vision that at some point it moves from talking about Antiochus to talking about an anti-­messiah or a satan, or begins to speak in words that refer both to Antiochus and to an anti-­messiah. It is not the case that “the interpretation of the book of Daniel has been sharply altered by those who edited it” in order to remove references to Antiochus and permit readers two centuries later to identify the fourth empire with Rome.219 But in the way I spoke of Antiochus I was suggesting that he—­like the king of Babylon in Isa 14 or Gog in Ezek 38—was the very embodiment of godless wickedness, so that the language used of him could be used of an anti-­messiah or a satan. I was indeed implying that he was such an embodiment of something bigger than him. So my vision could be understood typologically to throw light on the anti-­messiah or a satan.220 And such a use fits the way a “conversation between history and eschatology . . . is at the heart of these vision chapters of Daniel.”221 The trouble with Antiochus was that he treated religious questions as subordinate to political ones. Nationhood and kingship are not wholly bad, but they do have an irresistible tendency to self-­idolatry. Whatever is the right interpretation of Antiochus’s motivations in his relationships with Jerusalem, what counted for him was the stability of the Seleucid empire and its ability to play the international role for which it seemed to be destined. The state, or Hellenism, or he himself, had highest importance: it was God.222 Hope for the living, then, lay in the downfall of the one who epitomized godlessness and in the vindication of the people who resisted him. What of the people for whom this vindication would come too late? In my 218 Cf. Calvin, Daniel 2:253. 219 Against Childs, Introduction to the OT as Scripture, 619 (cf. Childs, “The Exegetical Significance of Canon for the Study of the OT,” 77). 220 Cf. Wildgruber, Daniel 10–12, 253. 221 Meadowcroft, “History and Eschatology in Tension,” 247. 222 See Wink, Unmasking the Powers, 87–88, 95–96.

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Explanation 563 vision I saw them brought back to life to resume the life they had wrongly lost, while those who led them in the way of faithfulness shine like stars. One version of the myth of the overweening king, which underlies the portrait of Antiochus, describes him—­ironically, in the end—­as wiser than Danel/Daniel. But I was the one who was granted an audience with heavenly beings, who was addressed as someone held in high regard by God (a royal epithet), who did have by God’s grace the discernment that the king was supposed to possess. As the king and his kind come to their end and know shame and abhorrence instead of the place among the stars to which they aspired, the people of discernment and faithfulness leave the land of dirt that is the overweening king’s destiny and rise to an inheritance, to lasting life, and to our own place among the stars. Like the vision in Isa 52:13–53:12, my vision affirmed a kingship ideal but radically reshaped it by presupposing that the way to royal glory is the way of martyrdom. It “provides a rationale for martyrdom.”223 It brings to a climax the ambivalent aspects to the portrayal of kingship that run through my story and my visions. Real power is recognized and can be affirmed, but in practice it tends to encourage a vainglorious arrogance that has to be turned to shame. Only those can enjoy royal glory who have already come to terms with shame. These images came to have more literal meaning for the Qumran community, who saw themselves—­in Johannine fashion—­a s already enjoying the life of heaven in the company of the angels. My vision was not that prosaic in its implications. I was speaking the language of hope, speaking of a future resurrection, not of a transition to a new sphere of life now;224 though it is the case that those who wait for Yahweh’s new act find new strength, and in a sense new life, even now (Isa 40:31). Several sorts of reasoning may have led to my affirmation of resurrection. One is the conviction that God will see that truth, commitment, and faithfulness are vindicated. “Daniel has taken the bold step to affirm that the God who is the source of all life, who can restore life to the dead if he wishes, will raise the dead so that justice may be done. For Judaism of this period resurrection was very much a justice issue, and the same seems to have been true of the earliest interpretations of Christ’s resurrection appearances. He had died a shameful death, apparently under a curse (Gal 3:13; Deut 21:23), but his resurrection was vindication (Acts 2:24–25; 5:30–31).”225 Another line of reasoning is that resurrection does relate to the fulfillment of God’s purpose for Israel. It is not simply an individual experience. Belief in a personal life after death does not replace belief in the final corporate and cosmic achievement of God’s ultimate purpose. Resurrection is an event associated with the final achievement of that purpose. It happens to individuals, 223 Collins, Daniel, 403. 224 Against Collins, “Apocalyptic Eschatology as the Transcendence of Death,” 34–37. 225 Gowan, Daniel, on the passage.

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but it does not happen to them individually in the meantime. It happens to individuals, yet it is not the means of their enjoying individual bliss but of their having a share in the new life and glory of the people of God. My concern was thus nationalist rather than individualist. It was also nationalist rather than universalist; other peoples were not within my concern. And it was nationalist rather than sectarian. I viewed reformist Jews as having lost their soul through their involvement with the gentile powers and as having forfeited their place within the true Israel; that attitude is an implicitly sectarian one, yet my vision was for the true Israel and the empirical Israel to be coterminous.226 A further related consideration is that surely God cannot simply let people who have suffered persecution and martyrdom end their lives in ignominious and painful suffering and in a death that so contrasts with the fate of the wayward (cf. 1 En. 102–4). Lasting life was God’s intention from the beginning, but humanity sacrificed it (Gen 2–3). Yet lasting life surely follows from God’s entering into relationship with people: God is not God of the dead but of the living (Mark 12:27). As a people, for many centuries we did not follow up on or develop those truths in the way other peoples did when they formulated mythic solutions to the problem of death.227 In fact, our affirmation of this life sat in tension with the pie-­in-­the-­sky beliefs of other peoples. Declarations about resurrection life had to be wrested from us through experiences that made the affirmation of this life difficult for people whose experience was not of life in fullness. Was this wresting simply an example of how “blissful illusions . . . not seldom prove to be effective opiates for patients whose condition is beyond rational cure”—­illusions opposed by realists like the writer of Ecclesiastes?228 In due course such a critique will be undermined by the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection of people who belong to Jesus follows from the fact of his resurrection (1 Cor 15). And as the earlier history of the Middle Eastern empires shaped my understanding of Antiochus and the fate he would experience, so my vision of the awakening and vindication of the holy and discerning martyrs shaped perceptions of Jesus, for Jesus himself and for his followers. They provided them with ways of thinking about the death of Jesus as something that would not mean his end and about the possibility of their own death as something that would not be the end. My vision had an anticipatory relationship with the death and resurrection of Jesus, the event that more than any other brought a realization within history of realities that belong to the End; and by a feedback process the death and resurrection of Jesus turned out to be the vindication of my own vision. Setting my vision in the context of

226 Collins, “The Mythology of Holy War in Daniel and the Qumran War Scroll,” 603. 227 Kellermann, “Überwindung des Todesgeschicks in der alttestamentlichen Frömmigkeit,” 261–62. 228 So Pfeiffer, “Wisdom and Vision in the OT,” 101.

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Explanation 565 the NT reveals that one martyr indeed awoke to such vindication. If you are called to walk the way that the discerning and holy of the Antiochene (and the Roman) period walked, you are promised that his experience is your key and your hope as you do so. My vision of resurrection also implied that the wicked’s simply dying the same death as the righteous is not enough. But what it promised for them was not eternal physical pain but eternal shame. That promise has been fulfilled, both for reformist Jews and for Antiochus and his empire. They have not been forgotten, like most of the dead. Wherever the gospel of Daniel has been preached through the whole world, what these people did has been spoken of, perpetuating their memory. Scholarship’s difficulty in attaining a more objective historical understanding of Antiochus and the reformist Jews is unconscious testimony to the fulfillment of Dan 12:2. (f) The faithful are challenged to steadfastness. So what was the purpose of offering people all this quasi-­and actual information about the past and the future? Information as such does people some good (the gnostics were not wholly wrong). It helps them formulate a mind on issues that confront them. But I also wanted to influence their behavior. I wanted to encourage the discerning to be steadfast in their faithfulness and to encourage others to join them. I went as near as I could to saying as much when I described the faithfulness of conservative Jews and described the positive significance our affliction can have. I did not say that suffering was redemptive or atoning or a means of provoking God to act on our behalf.229 I could see that it had a refining effect on the community. It forces people to make up their mind which side they are on. I did not need to encourage loyalist Jews to fight for the cause if necessary. If anything, they needed to be wary of overestimating what can be achieved through fighting. You would have thought our story over the centuries would have shown them, but it had not, and the subsequent believing communities have not been very good at learning it, either. But what I wanted to emphasize was the responsibility of the conservative leadership to teach people: to do what I was trying to do myself, passing on to people what God was revealing to us about the way he looked at past and present and future, and encouraging them in light of that revelation to refuse to collaborate with Antiochus and the reformist Jews. I wanted them to fight in that sense, and to stand their ground to the end if necessary (cf. Eph 6:10–18). I saw myself as having a position rather like Daniel’s, and I wanted the rest of the leadership to be Daniel-­like, too—­indeed, I wanted the whole people to be Daniel-­like. That is why I ended the way I did. In 12:11, Calvin comments, “I have no hesitation in supposing the angel to speak metaphorically” and in 12:12, “in numerical calculations I am no 229 Contrast Revelation: see Yarbro Collins, “The Political Perspective of the Revelation to John.”

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conjurer, and those who expound this passage with too great subtlety, only trifle in their own speculations,” but he adds “It is as if the angel had said, although half the time should be prorogued, yet the faithful ought constantly to persist in the hope of deliverance.” God will not in the end disappoint us.230 Further, “the promise of rest is a word addressed to the listener, right now.” It places the hearer in a moment of “urgency that demands acknowledgment and response.”231 The Puritan theologian John Owen preached on 12:13 at the funeral of Oliver Cromwell’s son-­in-­law Henry Ireton, who died in a plague during a campaign in Ireland. Ireton, Owen says, resembled Daniel in being a man of wisdom, of love for his people, and of uprightness; but, like Daniel, Ireton had to accept his dismissal when God said it was time, even if God says this word of dismissal before the work is all done. But how blessed we are if God declares that the time for rest has come, knowing that God himself will fulfill his purpose at the end. 232 Therefore we pray, Grant, Almighty God, as thou didst formerly appear to Daniel thy holy servant, and to the other prophets, and by their doctrine didst render thy glory conspicuous to us at this day, that we may reverently approach and behold it. When we have become entirely devoted to thee, may those mysteries which it has pleased thee to offer by means of their hand and labours, receive from us their due estimation. May we be cast down in ourselves and be raised by hope and faith towards heaven; when prostrate before thy face, may we so conduct ourselves in the world, as in the interval to become free from all the depraved desires and passions of our flesh, and dwell mentally in heaven. Then at length may we be withdrawn from this earthly warfare, and arrive at that celestial rest which thou hast prepared for us, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.233

230 Calvin, Daniel, 391, 392. 231 Sumner, “Daniel,” 220. 232 “The Labouring Saints Dismission to Rest”; cf. Sumner, “Daniel,” 220. 233 Calvin, Daniel 2:245–46.

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Conclusion The Book’s Form The distinctive formal feature of Daniel is its combining in nearly equal proportions a series of stories about Daniel and his friends and a series of visions attributed to Daniel. It is a bipolar book.1 The visions are especially influential in determining descriptions of Daniel’s form: Daniel is an apocalypse. The word comes from the Greek term used of “The Apocalypse” in Rev 1:1. Apocalypse as a genre of writing is usefully distinguished from apocalyptic eschatology as a form of belief about the future that may appear in writings of various literary forms (for instance, in the Gospels and in Paul’s letters) and from apocalypticism as a form of religious faith as a whole that can arise in particular social contexts and in which apocalyptic eschatology has a prominent place.2 In Rev 1:1 an apocalypse is a revelation by God through an intermediary to a seer concerning realities in heaven and events to come associated with the End, accompanied by exhortations that prepare the hearers to be open to the visions that occupy the main part of the book. Developing this understanding, an influential definition sees apocalypse as “a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial, insofar as it involves another, supernatural world.”3 The connection with eschatology marks the way an apocalypse will deal with things to come, but it may also deal with things above (heaven), as is the case in Revelation, with things below (Sheol and Gehenna), and with things before us (the past, including creation).4 Daniel is certainly concerned with things to come and with things above (see especially ch. 10). It tells us little about things below, but each vision shows considerable interest in what is past from the perspective of seer and audience, giving much space to interpretations of past historical events from the exile to the second century. As a visionary work, Daniel is thus illumined by both these definitions. These definitions also suggest pointers to the significance of the stories in Daniel. First, in preceding the bulk of the revelatory material, the stories may 1 2

Shea, “History and Eschatology in the Book of Daniel,” 195. See e.g., Hanson, IDBSup 27; Barker (“Apocalyptic”) notes that Daniel lacks most of the features of apocalyptic thought. 3 Collins, Apocalypse, 9. Collins considers the debate on this definition in Apocalypse, Prophecy, and Pseudepigraphy, 1–20. 4 Cf. Rowland, The Open Heaven.

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568 Daniel be seen as equivalent to the hortatory material in Rev 2–3.5 While Revelation thus incorporates this exhortation in its visions, Daniel presents its equivalent in story form, in keeping with OT precedents. Its stories implicitly urge upon their hearers the life of trust and faithfulness that will be difficult but vital in the circumstances to which the visions speak. Relating as they do to pressures similar to those of the second century (see on 11:33), the stories show this trust and faithfulness to be possible because it is undergirded by God’s faithfulness and power. Second, the stories comprise the bulk of the visions’ narrative framework. They introduce the visionary with his qualities of discernment and faithfulness that help to establish his authority and give him the right to urge faithfulness on others. Third, the stories, like the visions, portray a God who rules in heaven who is also sovereign over the realm of death, who is active in the past and trustworthy for the future. The space the stories occupy warns against interpreting them as wholly subordinate to the visions. Apocalypse may be an example of a genre that becomes simpler as it develops, and the subsequent development of the apocalypse form must not obscure the nature of this early example. It is a mixed form, as much a series of short stories to which visions are attached as a series of visions prefaced by some stories. The stories reflect historical experiences and events. But they are not historiography. The indications of this fact are not confined to their incorporating material that tells a different story from what we otherwise know of the period, such as the portrait of Nebuchadnezzar, the placing of a Median Empire between the Babylonian and the Persian, and the existence of Darius the Mede. The stories are not simply failed attempts at writing history. The book of Daniel hardly raises more historical problems than books such as Chronicles, and even if all such features are unhistorical, it is not this feature that marks the stories as not historiographical. The pointers to this conclusion lie in the way they manifest the positive features of short stories that make use of fictional features as well as historical ones in order to achieve their aim of telling an instructive and edifying and true story. It is not the case that “the tales in chapters 1–6 have a history-­like character, but they also present notorious historical problems.”6 Comparison with (say) the closing chapters of 2 Kings makes clear that they do not have a history-­like character, even on the basis of an OT understanding of “history-­like.” To imply that they are at fault if they contain unhistorical features is to judge them on alien criteria; to defend them by seeking to establish that at such points they are factual after all is to collude with such a false starting point.7 5 6 7

Cf. Koch, Das Buch Daniel, 25. Collins, “Inspiration or Illusion,” 29. The statement is puzzling because Collins earlier noted that the stories do not belong to the genre of history, partly on the basis of their having patterns typical of folktales (Daniel with an Introduction to Apocalyptic Literature, 41). Brant et al., Ancient Fiction, offers a discussion of how people think about stories that relate

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Conclusion 569 Ironically, it is the visions that have more in common with historiography.8 The visions are for the most part quasi-­prediction rather than actual prediction, and they are pseudonymous; we do not know who these visionaries were. The reasons for this conclusion are formal and theological rather than philosophical. It is not that prediction of second-­century events in the sixth century would be impossible; let its possibility be granted. Formally, it is not essential to or distinctive of apocalypses to be pseudonymous or quasi-­predictive. Both features are missing from Revelation and present in works of other genres. In general, pseudonymity can be a mark of humility and deference, though it can also be a way of commending a work. Not least in visions, pseudonymity may indicate a sense that one is inspired by the person to whom one refers. This person is God’s agent in mediating the vision. Isaiah ben Amoz contributed to the inspiration of the prophecies in Isa 40–55. Daniel 2 was passed down as a vision of Daniel and the visions in ch. 7–12 found part of their inspiration there. “The visionary of the Maccabean period must have identified with Daniel and seen history, as it were, through Daniel’s eyes.”9 More broadly, the midrashic aspect to both stories and visions, which presupposes the existence of some Scriptures and makes these Scriptures one of their starting points, suggests another consideration underlying the visions’ pseudonymity.10 Conversely, pseudonymity means making a deliberate choice not to identify oneself as author; the author “claims no authority for the self embedded within existing structures of domination.” It “chooses to claim only the authority of the pseudonymous hero (and the heavenly sources from which that hero’s revelation proceeds).”11 There are no OT parallels to the visions in Daniel, but ancient Near Eastern parallels to the visions in Daniel are pseudonymous quasi-­predictions, not actual predictions of known authorship. These parallels also suggest that there is no reason to assume that the authors were scoundrels perpetrating a scam and producing a forgery with the cynical intention of deceiving their hearers regarding the visions’ origin.12 It is just as likely that the immediate hearers would have known how to hear them. We must assume at least that the immediate circles of the authors were aware of the manner in which the works were actually produced. In contrast, the attribution of the apocalyptic books was apparently accepted by the general public, and there is no evidence that the literary convention things that happened and things that didn’t. See Niskanen, The Human and the Divine in History, on parallels with Herodotus; also Goldingay, “Daniel in the Context of OT Theology,” 641. 9 Collins, Daniel, 58. On the rationale for attributing one’s visions to a figure from the past, see Najman, “How to Make Sense of Pseudonymous Attribution.” 10 So Niditch, “The Visionary,” 157–58. 11 Portier-Young, Apocalypse Against Empire, 42. 12 Words used by Hamilton in With the Clouds of Heaven, 37–39. 8

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570 Daniel was generally recognized in Judaism or early Christianity. Yet these books, whether canonical or not, are all of high moral seriousness, and so it is difficult to dismiss them as mere forgeries or calculated deceptions.13

It is even more likely that their authors and readers would not have been preoccupied by the question. Our concern with it in the context of modernity parallels the similar development of a preoccupation with the difference between history and story.14 Actually, we do not know how many of the author’s contemporaries or how many of those among whom the book soon became popular misunderstood quasi-­predictions as actual predictions. Jude 14 instances the quoting of a quasi-­prediction as if it were actual prediction, and whatever view we take of that chapter may also be appropriate to Daniel. Perhaps 1 Enoch deceived Jude; a mistaken belief that Paul wrote Hebrews contributed to its inclusion in the NT, so that the church fathers there did the right thing for (partly) wrong reasons. Or it may be that Jude knew very well that 1 Enoch was a quasi-­prediction but colluded with the document’s own convention; the convention is too widespread for us to imagine all the people being fooled all the time, even if most people except Porphyry later forgot or refused to acknowledge it. Or it may be that the distinction between real prediction by a saint of old and quasi-­prediction by a later person “inspired” by him, obvious to us, was less sharp both to the author of 1 Enoch and to Jude. The theological support for this formal point that the visions in Daniel are quasi-­predictions is the fact that the God of the Bible characteristically speaks contextually, into situations rather than independently of them. Further, he reveals key truths about the End that are relevant to people’s present lives but declines to give information of a concrete or dated kind, insisting that people live by faith. It is difficult to see how the God of the Bible would reveal detailed events of the second century to people living in the sixth, even though he could do so.15 There are some common hesitations about such a conclusion.16 It may seem to imply that the “revelation” was nothing of the sort; yet concluding that the author knew of the historical events that the visions relate by the same means as other OT writers knew of historical events they related leaves quite open whether the chapters’ understanding of these events is God-­g iven in the same way theirs can have been. It may seem to imply that the preparation for the vision in ch. 10 was also fictional; yet this implication does not follow, though even if it were the case, it would not imply that it was merely “local color” from which we were not intended to learn theologically. It may seem to imply that

13 Collins, Daniel, 56. 14 See Frei in The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative. 15 Cf. Goldingay, “The Book of Daniel: Three Issues,” 49. 16 See e.g., Baldwin, Daniel.

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Conclusion 571 the chapters’ account of the efficacy of prayer or of the heavenly warfare it describes reflects only the writer’s subjective ideas; yet this inference also does not follow, since the account can be just as God-­g iven as other parts of the Scriptures. It may seem to imply that the author speaks parabolically when giving no indication of doing so; yet the opposite is the case, because the chapters use a way of speaking characteristic of quasi-­prediction, not of actual prediction. It may seem to imply that the seer is wrong in his prediction about how Antiochus died, which implies that he is no more likely to be reliable in his understanding of spiritual issues; yet this inference involves assuming that vv. 40–45 purport to offer literal prediction, which is questionable: see Form, Comment, Explanation; nor does the alleged implication follow. Stories and visions share an explicit stress on interpretation, in connection with dreams, portents, and visions, as well as with the Scriptures. Daniel is the mediator of interpretation in chs. 1–6 and its recipient in chs. 7–12. In each case there is a divine revelation, yet its meaning is a mystery (‫רז‬, ch. 2). It cannot be made to yield clear sense except by a divine gift of insight (‫בינה‬, a key word in Daniel),17 though this insight can be sought and prepared for. Its having this origin is then reflected in the fact that the interpretation (‫)פשר‬ stands on its own rather than emerging directly from the revelation in any obvious way.18 Stories and visions are characterized by repetition. Chapters 1, 3, and 6 relate the testing of the exiles and God’s faithfulness. Chapters 2, 4, and 5 tell of Daniel’s skill in interpretation and his revelations concerning the fall of kings. Chapters 2 and 7 report a vision of a sequence of four empires. Chapters 7, 8, 9, and 10–12 recount a quasi-­prediction of events up to the Antiochene crisis and a promise of its end. The effect of such repetition is both to highlight common features of each set of chapters and thus to emphasize these common features, and to draw attention to distinctive features of each member of a set that make it stand out from its fellows, and thus to emphasize these features (e.g., the different fates of Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar or the difference between visions coming by God’s initiative or by Daniel’s seeking). In the terms of information theory, “verbal repetition increases predictability, creates expectations, eliminates noise, persuades, and reduces alternative interpretations.” It “teaches the implied reader how to ‘read’ the text.”19 Stories and visions communicate in complementary ways.20 In neither do the authors speak directly, as happens with prophecy; they stand behind the narrator in the stories and behind the persons of Daniel and of heavenly beings 17 Beek, “Zeit, Zeiten und eine halbe Zeit,” 20–21. 18 Mertens, Das Buch Daniel 115–20. 19 Anderson, “Double and Triple Stories,” 84; cf. Collins, Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel, 116–17. 20 Davies, Daniel, 125–26.

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572 Daniel in the visions. In contrast to prophecy, neither stories nor visions directly address their hearers. The visions come nearer to doing so; in the stories the relationship between authors and second-­century hearers is particularly indirect. There, anonymous authors tell stories to unidentified hearers about another time and another place, setting up a contrast between what used to be and what is so that the book may function like a protest psalm.21 The visions do speak—­if cryptically—­about the situation in which authors and hearers live and more explicitly draw them into identification with Daniel himself. Though “these words” and “the book” that records them denote the message(s) of the man in linen recorded in 10:11–12:3, placing this vision at the end of Daniel hints at applying these terms to the book as a whole. There is no indication that the book has been shaped in order to function as a canonical document.22 On the other hand, the canonizing of Daniel may presuppose a reading of the book that differed from the authors’.23 If the authors believed they were providing the date(s!) of an imminent End that did not come about as they expected, the canonizers apparently read it in some more open way.24

Streams of Tradition behind Daniel The midrashic character of Daniel links it with a variety of streams of tradition in the OT and elsewhere. During the Second Temple period there was a variety of streams of tradition in Judaism. Like Chronicles, Daniel represents a creative amalgam of many of them.25 Yet it is not distinctively linked with any one of them. It begins with a virtual quotation from Chronicles, which makes a connection with the narrative works that occupy the first half of the OT.26 Chapters 1–6 then work through a sequence of reigns while incorporating story material in a way that also recalls this tradition. The same link is suggested by the historical accounts in quasi-­predictive form in the visions, especially ch. 11. The periodizing of history in chs. 2 and 7 parallels the periodizing of the Priestly strand in Genesis. Parallels with P and Chronicles hint at a background in worship traditions, which is also suggested by the psalmlike passages at key points in the stories, by the stress on prayer, and by the visions’ concern with worship and their longing for the cleansing of the temple defiled by Antiochus.27 There is no hint of hostility to the temple in Daniel (contrast 1 En. 89:73). Its background 21 Flesher, “Tricksters and Martyrs,” 155. 22 Koch, “Is Daniel also among the Prophets?” 128–30, against Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture, 613–22. 23 Cf. Koch, “Stages in the Canonization of the Book of Daniel.” 24 Bauckham, “Daniel with an Introduction to Apocalyptic Literature . . . by John J. Collins,” 165. 25 Cf. Hall, Post-Exilic Theological Streams and the Book of Daniel, 221. 26 Davies, “Apocalyptic and Historiography.” 27 Chary, Les prophètes et le culte à partir de l’exil, 236–74.

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Conclusion 573 in worship traditions might also underlie the mythic features of chs. 7 and 10–12 that make it possible to speak of remythologizing as a feature of Daniel.28 Neither stories nor visions are preoccupied with details of obedience to the Torah—­though ch. 1 presupposes the importance of diet and ch. 9 has links with Deuteronomistic thinking—­but they do identify with concerns the Torah shares with other parts of the OT such as faithfulness to the one God. They do not mention proscription of circumcision or of Sabbath observance, enforced eating of pork, or burning of Torah scrolls (contrast 1 Maccabees). There are prophetic features to the stories, though they do not call Daniel a prophet. Indeed, as a man held in high regard, in whom the divine spirit dwells, and to whom such extraordinary revelations are given, he may be more than a prophet rather than less.29 He confronts Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, speaking of sin and judgment in the manner of a preexilic prophet; the stories of these confrontations recall prophetic stories in Kings. The visions with their symbolism recall those of prophets such as Zechariah, and their mystical aspect recalls Ezekiel.30 They manifest prophecy’s focus on the interpretation of present history and on coming decisive events that will bring God’s judgment on pagan kings who have resisted God’s will, and they manifest the historical dualism—­in the sense of a contrast between this age and an age that God will bring about—­which features in prophecy such as Isa 40–55 and Ezek 38–39.31 Concern with the purity of the temple is a further theme of Second Temple prophecy.32 On the other hand, the visions (unlike the stories) do not confront people with a challenge to turn and thereby avert the judgment that threatens them. The hearers are not responsible for history; history seems to be predetermined rather than open, and God’s purpose is effected in it only negatively, not positively.33 Daniel’s utilizing of mythic motifs might also suggest links with the learning of the circles of scribes who were responsible for Israel’s great narrative works. An association with such groups coheres with indications that Daniel has points of connection with Israelite wisdom traditions, though this idea contains its ambiguities.34 Chapter 1 presupposes the significance of pragmatic wisdom as an Israelite royal ideal. The visions recall philosophical wisdom’s longing for an understanding of the whole (cf. Ecc 3:11), its conviction that 28 Delcor; Frost; F. M. Cross (see Commentary Bibliography). 29 Koch, “Is Daniel Also among the Prophets?” 124. 30 Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism, 29–3. 31 E.g., Rowley; Frost; Osten-Sacken; Hanson (see Commentary Bibliography). 32 Wanke, “Prophecy and Psalms in the Persian Period,” 180–83. 33 Buber, “Prophetie und Apokalyptik” (ET “Prophecy, Apocalyptic, and the Historical Hour”). 34 See Heaton, Daniel; von Rad, Theologie des AT; Gammie, “Spatial and Ethical Dualism in Jewish Wisdom and Apocalyptic Literature”; Smith, “Wisdom and Apocalyptic,” describing apocalyptic as a scribal phenomenon; but see the critiques of Michel (“Weisheit und Apokalyptik”), noting that it all depends on what you mean by wisdom and by apocalyptic, and of Wilson (“Wisdom in Daniel and the Origin of Apocalyptic”) who notes the relative limited use of wisdom vocabulary in Daniel.

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574 Daniel God’s knowledge and activity undergird all, and its sometimes pessimistic view of humanity. They also suggest a link with “mantic” or divinatory or predictive wisdom in the OT and elsewhere.35 Perhaps “the wise man who finds himself estranged from his own wisdom tradition has become an apocalyptist.”36 Yet philosophical wisdom itself also has room for visions (Job!) and the visions in Daniel manifest a concern with the possibility of grasping history on a large scale and by means of a grand scheme, if not of grasping the whole of history. Even the seer’s concern with the end appears in the Wisdom of Solomon, though the latter does not share his sense of the world’s being out of joint and of discontinuity between this age and the age to come.37 Daniel himself parallels Joseph in embodying the combination of pragmatic wisdom and prophetic wisdom. As someone who can interpret dreams and omens with the awareness that the future is in some sense set, the visionary operates in the same area and on the same basis as the Babylonian diviners, and the book’s symbolism has this background.38 Quasi-­prediction has its background in Akkadian prophecies that are influenced by Mesopotamian divination.39 Babylonian, Persian, and Hellenistic thinking, the first two in part already incorporated within the last, may be the source of other features of Daniel that are not evidenced elsewhere in the OT, such as the four-­empire scheme, the concept of revelation, and pseudepigraphy. OT ideas regarding angels and the various forms of dualism develop as they do in line with Hellenistic thought,40 and Jewish apocalypticism in general has been seen as a fruit of Hellenistic syncretism.41 But it is difficult to point to distinctively Hellenistic features in Daniel, and the dominant culture of Jerusalem up till Antiochus’s time has been seen as still Persian42—­though even the distinctively Persian features are few. Indeed, aspects of the visions parallel anti-­Hellenistic writings and traditions of Egypt and the East. In this sense the Antiochene crisis is part of widespread anti-­ Hellenistic reaction in the Middle East that contributed to the downfall of the Hellenistic Empires, though Daniel is more specifically anti-­A ntiochene than anti-­Hellenistic in principle.43 35 H.-P. Müller in ThWAT on ‫——— ;חכם‬. “Mantische Weisheit und Apokalyptik”; VanderKam, “Prophetic-Sapiential Origins of Apocalyptic Thought.”; Mastin, “Wisdom and Daniel.” Collins, Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel, 80–87; in critique, Wooden, “The Book of Daniel and Manticism”; Bedenbender, “Seers as Mantic Sages in Jewish Apocalyptic (Daniel and Enoch).” 36 Pinette, “The Lady Vanishes,” 172. 37 Cf. Collins, “Cosmos and Salvation.” 38 Porter, Metaphors and Monsters. 39 VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Legend, 62–69. 40 See Hengel; Eddy (see Commentary Bibliography). 41 Betz, “Zum Problem des religionsgeschichtlichen Verständnisses der Apokalyptik,” 409 (ET 155). 42 So Wacholder, The Dawn of Qumran. 43 Lebram, “König Antiochus im Buch Daniel”; Collins, “Jewish Apocalyptic against Its Hellenistic Near Eastern Environment.”

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Conclusion 575

The Book’s Structure In discussing the setting of each chapter, we have noted links between them. There are a number of ways of understanding the structure of the book as a whole. We cannot say whether any was in the mind of an author, but each enables us to perceive aspects of the book. In English, Daniel most obviously divides into a series of stories and a series of visions. The stories also involve three other young men, whereas in the visions Daniel alone features. The stories include a series of messages from God to kings, with Daniel interpreting them; the visions comprise a series of messages given to Daniel, with a celestial being interpreting them. These two series comprise chronological sequences corresponding to the schemes of four reigns: 1–4 5 6 6:28 [29]

Nebuchadnezzar Belshazzar Darius Cyrus

7–8 9 10 11–12

Babylon Media Persia Greece

To the person who reads Daniel in the original languages, another distinction is striking, that between sections in different languages: 1–2:4a Hebrew 2:4b–7:28 Aramaic 8–12 Hebrew44 Such chiastic structures feature in other ancient Near Eastern works.45 In Daniel, the linguistic distinction does not correspond to the literary one; linguistic continuity thus binds the book where distinction of form might divide it, while conversely formal continuity binds the book where distinction of language might divide it. Such structural features underline diversity in unity as an important feature of the book; compare the distinction between material that speaks about Daniel and the friends (1:1–7:1; 10:1) and material in which Daniel speaks (the remainder). They also draw attention to ch. 7 as the center of the book, belonging as it does to the first part by language, to the second by form. Chapters 2–7 form a chiasm,46 which holds together yet another sequence of chapters and further strengthens the bonds that hold together the diversity

44 On the significance of the switch, see ch. 2 Structure. 45 See Welch, “Chiasmus in Ugaritic,” UF 6 (1974) 425–28; see further Welch, Chiasmus in Antiquity. 46 Lenglet, “La structure littéraire de Daniel 2–7.”

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576 Daniel in the book. The rest of the book can then be seen as structured around this chiasm: 1  Exile and the questions it raises: story 2  A vision of four empires 3  A trial of faithfulness and a marvelous deliverance 4  An omen interpreted and a king challenged and chastised 5 An omen interpreted and a king challenged and deposed 6  A trial of faithfulness and a marvelous deliverance 7  A vision of four empires 8  Aspects of this vision developed 9  Exile and the questions it raises: vision 10–12  Aspects of this vision developed47 The stories themselves develop toward a climax. Nebuchadnezzar acknowledges Daniel’s brilliance (ch. 1), then prostrates himself to him (ch. 2); he acknowledges the God of the exiles as uniquely able to deliver (ch. 3), then as ruling through all ages (ch. 4); Belshazzar finds that this God cannot be defied (ch. 5), then Darius requires that the whole empire acknowledge him (ch. 6). The four men progress from being the most insightful sages (ch. 1) via being responsible for provincial affairs and being active at court (ch. 2) to the three friends’ being promoted in Babylon (ch. 3) and Daniel’s being the only interpreter in whom the spirit of deity dwells (ch. 4), and on to Daniel’s being deputy in the realm (ch. 5) and ultimately the most distinguished of the three most senior ministers of state (ch. 6). Their confession moves from private abstinence (ch. 1) through discreet revelation (ch. 2) and discreet noncooperation (ch. 3) to straight challenge (chs. 4–5) and open defiance (ch. 6). The visions also develop toward a climax, at least in the sense that the last of the four is the most detailed. They offer four perspectives on the future that are different in form: • Chapter 7 is a portrayal in symbol and myth • Chapter 8 is more concrete and it explicitly refers to specific empires • Chapter 9 alone explicitly refers to a specific Scripture and is dominated by a prayer • Chapters 10–12 is much the longest vision, giving a unique amount of detail, though naming no names.

47

Gooding’s tracing of an arrangement balancing chs. 1–5 and 6–12 (“The Literary Structure of the Book of Daniel and Its Implications”) is less convincing; likewise David’s double chiasm (Composition and Structure, 395) and Waters’s several chiasms (“The Two Eschatological Perspectives of the Book of Daniel”).

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Conclusion 577 The relationship between the visions may be expressed schematically. Chapter 7

Chapter 8

focus: kingdom following on: Apollonius revelation: dream form: myth content/portrayal: Babylon lion/eagle

temple desecration vision allegory

Media/Persia

ram with two horns

bear, then leopard

Greece: (a) Alexander horned ani-­ mal (b) Hellenistic ten horns empires (c) Antiochus small horn

Chapter 9 temple desecration auditory event midrash

Chapters 10–12 persecution resistance begins auditory event oracle in code

7 times 7 weeks

goat with big Horn four horns small horn

God’s act: (a) judgment beast killed last king broken (b) restoration new kingship temple vindicated

7 times 62 weeks

final week of horror

four/five Kings mighty king of Greece breaking of his kingship north-­south battles

northern king dies faithful delivered

Yet the book’s chiastic structure also suggests that it goes nowhere. There is more Sturm und Drang about ch. 7,48 but neither it nor the chapters that follow go much beyond ch. 2. The sequence of visions in Daniel do not “solve” the problem the book sets itself; in the manner of narrative, they rather explore it.49

The Book’s Origin The two halves of the book offer contrary indicators regarding their origin. Individually, at least, the stories suggest a setting in the eastern dispersion in the Persian period where there are specific pressures on Jewish faith but there is the possibility not only of survival but of success.50 The visions presuppose a setting in Jerusalem in the 160s where power lies in the hands of constitutionally hostile gentile authorities and a compliant Jewish leadership that has cooperated with the subversion and outlawing of traditional Jewish faith.51 It is natural to ask whether the visions in chs. 7–12 have a pre-­second-­century 48 49 50 51

Though in another sense ch. 11 is full of Sturm und Drang (cf. Towner, Daniel, 147). Cf. Goldingay, “Daniel in the Context of OT Theology,” 642. Humphreys, “A Life-Style for Diaspora.” Lucas argues for a dispersion origin for the visions (“Daniel: Resolving the Enigma”; “Akkadian Prophecies, Omens and Myths”).

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578 Daniel history, and indication of this has been found in ch. 7 and elsewhere, but the arguments for identifying earlier strata are not compelling. It is natural to ask conversely whether the stories were composed in a similar period to the visions, despite appearances, or were edited then.52 Specific indication has been found in 2:41–43, but intermarriage was a common phenomenon and we cannot infer that these verses refer to a particular instance. The chiasm formed by chs. 2–7 presumably came into existence in the second century and aspects of the stories would be relevant in that context, but they would not have come into existence in this form then.53 The geographically and contextually separate background of the stories and the visions in chs. 7–12 does not imply that they were produced independently of each other and were then later combined.54 The stories contribute important features to the visions, such as the person of Daniel himself and thus the feature of pseudonymity, the four empires, and the characterization of Babylon as a lion. The visions were written in the light of the stories: they have been seen as a pesher or actualization of earlier Aramaic material now appearing in chs. 2–7.55 Can we go behind the story cycle as we know it? There have been various attempts to trace the process where the story sequence developed, especially in connection with extrabiblical material relating to Nabonidus,56 but it is impossible to have any conviction about one reconstruction rather than another. In the vision cycle, the chapters are chronologically sequential, and as well as deriving features from the stories, each refers back to one or more of its predecessors. The visions manifest a generally consistent viewpoint, though this consistency need not suggest common authorship, which can be contested on stylistic grounds.57 Diversity of authorship might be one reason for diversity of language in the book; perhaps Hebrew-­writing authors added chs. 8, 9, and 10–12 to the Aramaic chiasm.58 They might also have been responsible for ch. 1 (though in their period one might have expected an introduction that was less friendly to foreign powers);59 as well as introducing the chapters that make up the chiasm, it is also Hebrew, and it has in common with chs. 10–12 the term “discerning,” the visionaries’ self-­designation, and a number of linguistic parallels with Gen 41. 52 Van Deventer (“Another Look at the Redaction History of the Book of Daniel”) suggests that they were written after the visions and after the temple rededication. 53 See Ginsberg, against Rowley (see Commentary Bibliography). 54 Against Hartman/Di Lella, Daniel. 55 E.g., Szörényi, “Das Buch Daniel, ein kanonisierter Pescher?” 56 See, e.g., von Soden, “Eine babylonische Volksüberlieferung von Nabonid in den Danielerzählungen”; Eissfeldt, “Daniels und seiner drei Gefärten Laufbahn im babylonischen, medischen und persischen Dienst”; Dommershausen, Nabonid im Buche Daniel; Müller, “Magisch-mantische Weisheit und die Gestalt Daniels,” 85–88; Davies, Daniel, 40–45; more generally and in detail, Stahl, Von Weltengagement zu Weltüberwindung 57 See Hasslberger, Hoffnung in der Bedrängnis. 58 Cf. Collins, Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel, 15–19. 59 Gammie, “The Classification, Stages of Growth, and Changing Intentions in the Book of Daniel,” 195.

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Conclusion 579

The Book’s Authors We have no direct information concerning the circles that might have generated these stories and visions. What follows is conjecture based on the unproved assumption that the information may lie between the lines of the work itself. The stories concern life at court in the dispersion and they speak most obviously to Jews with leadership positions there. They presuppose a situation in which Jews can do well in dispersion.60 A suspicious hermeneutic might view the stories as an upperclass text designed to justify the authors’ collaboration in exile. But they are stories of a popular kind and they may be designed to speak to Jews as an ethnic and religious minority more generally, the implicit argument being that if people like Daniel and his friends in their positions remained faithful and proved the faithfulness of God, ordinary people can do so too. In the structure of the book, however, ch. 7 belongs integrally with the stories in ch. 2–6. While the individual stories may have a background in the eastern dispersion, then, as an arranged sequence they belong in the second century, and there is no indication that they were collected as a sequence before that time.61 The visions presuppose a different audience, in second-­century Jerusalem. Their authors might also be people involved in the administration, but it is now the Seleucid administration in Jerusalem, an involvement which would explain their extensive knowledge of political affairs and the angle of their apparent sympathy.62 And in themselves neither apocalypse as a form nor apocalypticism as a phenomenon need suggest a situation of persecution or alienation; the one can exist without the other, in the ancient and in the modern world.63 But in these visions authors and audience seem to be people who feel ousted from power in their community, which is divided into people who support the foreign government and people who oppose it. They are persecuted by these foreign overlords and puzzled at their God’s failure to act in response to attacks on his sphere—­his sanctuary, its priesthood, its worship, its people. They are people who attach particular importance to matters of worship; the authors could belong to priestly circles, though their concern about the temple need not imply it. They feel themselves distinguishable from the more liberal Judaism of people prepared to cooperate with and share some of the ways of the Hellenistic imperial authorities, though the visions suggests no polemic against Hellenistic culture or lifestyle as such.

60 Bickerman, “The Babylonian Captivity,” 346–48. 61 Cf. R. Albertz, “The Social Setting of the Aramaic and Hebrew Book of Daniel,” in Collins/ Flint (eds.), The Book of Daniel, 1:171–204 (175–79). 62 Redditt, “Daniel 11 and the Sociohistorical Setting of the Book of Daniel.” 63 Burridge, “Reflections on Prophecy and Prophetic Groups,” 100, commenting on Wilson, “From Prophecy to Apocalyptic,” 84–86—with which cf. Hanson, IDBSup 27–31. See the survey on theories concerning the function and social setiing of the apocalypses in DiTommaso, “Apocalypses and Apocalypticism in Antiquity,” 250–63.

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580 Daniel If the authors appear in the book, they might be the “discerning” of 11:33– 35—and of 1:4, where they stand behind the figures of Daniel and his friends. They see themselves as called to a ministry of teaching and encouragement among the people who are inclined to faithfulness but are pressed to apostatize. Although the visions are less “popular,” more learned works than the stories, in their case, too, it would be unwise to infer that they were expected to interest only “learned” circles; again it is not so in the modern world. More likely the visions, too, were intended for all the faithful in their time of testing and were the means of the discerning teachers fulfilling their ministry.64 The authors will have belonged to the Hasidim if we take that term to denote people “committed” to traditional as opposed to reformist Judaism. But saying that the seer belongs to the Hasidim is not to say a great deal, since there were several ways of being Hasidim—­illustrated by the stances embodied in Enoch and in Daniel.65 Formulating a theory about the role of the Hasidim “stretches the brief passing references . . . far beyond anything indicated in the text.”66 While the visions may not oppose a willingness to fight for the right to remain faithful to the Torah, the particular calling of the “discerning” is to teach, not to fight.67 The “discerning” might be connected with circles that produced other philosophical or speculative wisdom such as the Enoch literature (rather than the Torah-­related wisdom of Sirach and the “scribes”). This interest seems to have developed in the dispersion; hence perhaps the linking of dispersion stories and visionary material of this kind and thus the bringing of the former as well as the latter to Jerusalem.68 Formulating a theory about the “discerning,” too, involves much inference. One has to conclude that it would be illuminating to identify the social setting of Daniel but that the variety of such identifications69 suggests that the paucity of evidence does not enable us to do so.

The Book’s Theological Significance The points of difference—­indeed, of tension—­between the stories and the visions are a key to recognizing the theological significance of Daniel as a whole. 64 Gardner (“‫ ׂשכל‬in the Hebrew Bible”) suggests that the “discerning” teachers would be priests. 65 Cf. Venter, “Daniel and Enoch: Two Different Reactions”—respectively simply resistant and militantly activist in their opposition to reformist Jews and to Antochus; cf. Venter, “Daniel 7–12 in sosiaal-wetenskaplike Perspektief.” 66 Horsley, Scribes, Visionaries, and the Politics of Second Temple Judea, 7. 67 See Davies, “H · asidim in the Maccabaean Period.” against Plöger, Theokratie und Eschatologie (ET Theokracy and Eschatology); Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus 319–94 (ET 1:175–218). 68 See Collins, Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel, 54–59; Davies, Daniel, 122–25; VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Legend. 69 See notably the work of Albertz, Beyerle, Davies, Grabbe, Knibb, and Lacocque in Collins/ Flint (eds.), The Book of Daniel, 171–265, and in van der Woude (ed.), The Book of Daniel, 315–61, 399–411.

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Conclusion 581 Readings that begin from one or from the other will suggest different understandings of God’s relationship with the world and our life in it. The significance of the book depends on the interaction between them.70 Perhaps the variety in the book’s placement in the Scriptures is linked to the diversity within the book.71 (a) The book suggests varying perspectives on God’s relationships with people and on his involvement in the world. It does so against the background of a consistent portrait of God as powerful, sovereign, and almighty: the special name Yahweh all but disappears in favor of terms that make explicit that he is not merely a peculiarly Jewish god but the God in/of heaven, King/ Lord of heaven, God of gods, Lord of Lords, great God, living God, God On High, august, awesome, and fiery. He controls history and can therefore reveal history. Myriads of heavenly aides fulfill and reveal his will in the world. There is no need to infer that this loftiness makes him remote: he is also our God, my God, your God, the God of the covenant, the fathers’ God, one who is compassionate and forgiving.72 Story and vision portray him as the hearer of prayer who is accessible to people even in dispersion and as the personal giver of revelations whose spirit indwells the servant he holds in high regard. While such revelations are transmitted via his heavenly messengers, the faithful are not confined to approaching these messengers: they approach God himself. While the revelations are expressed mysteriously and are communicated pseudonymously, these characteristics carry no implication regarding the remoteness of the God who reveals himself to the anonymous seer.73 The difference between story and vision relates to God’s acts rather than to his revelations. In the stories he is involved as the God of mercy and grace in the lives of the faithful, in person or through his aides. The God of Daniel is always there when you least expect him—­in a stone, in a crematorium oven, on a whitewashed wall, in a pit of ferocious beasts.74 In the visions his involvement in the present is harder to see. The stories share the prophets’ view of time; they see God’s purpose being realized in history. The visions can only look for God’s definitive intervention at the end.75 Nevertheless, “it was the same God of the three youths who was the God of the Maccabees. The former escaped fire, the latter were executed by fires; but both will conquer in the eternal God.”76 (b) The theme central to Daniel as to no other book in the OT is the kingdom of God.77 The book as a whole concerns how the rule of God becomes 70 Davies, Daniel, 81. 71 So Scheetz, “Daniel’s Position in the Tanach, the LXX-Vulgate, and the Protestant Canon.” 72 On “Who is God?” in Daniel, see further Goldingay, “Daniel in the Context of OT Theology,” 643–48. 73 Against Collins, Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel, 75. 74 Lacocque, Daniel, 108 75 Cf. Abadie, “Du temps prophétique au temps apocalyptique dans le livre de Daniel.” 76 Augustine, Expositions on the Book of Psalms, 77 (on Ps 34:17), but as quoted by Bickermann, Der Gott der Makkabäer, 7 (ET v). 77 Boehmer, Reich Gottes und Menschensohn im Buch Daniel, 16–17. Cf. Merrill, “Daniel as a Contribution to Kingdom Theology.”

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582 Daniel a reality of this world in contexts where Jews as such lack political power but where gentiles who do exercise political power are assumed to have a religious responsibility.78 The purpose of God is to be realized on earth, but by the transcendent power of heaven.79 In Daniel as a whole “the ideology of rule is in fact the theology of rule.”80 And throughout, the challenge of the book concerns a loyalty to God as king that refuses to acknowledge the final authority of the emperor as king.81 The stories portray God’s reign becoming a reality via the heathen ruler, who receives his kingly power from God and is responsible to act as his viceregent in his world, but they recognize that often the heathen ruler fails to exercise his power in a way that reflects this understanding of his calling. They picture the leaders of the people of God then challenging him to do so, sometimes with success, sometimes not. But they close with him acknowledging that lasting dominion indeed belongs to God. The stories invite readers to use their portrayal of this rule of God becoming reality to interpret the history for which we must accept responsibility. They imply that the cynicism and the deceit that often characterize politics will not have the last word. The incompetence and stupidity that we often perceive in our leaders will not have their way. The faithful under pressure can stand by their convictions sure that the powers that be will ultimately acknowledge where true power lies and who is its witness. The stories invite readers to set Daniel’s experience and testimony alongside the stories that emerge from their political experience and see what happens. The ambivalence in attitude to the empire in chs. 1–6 disappears in chs. 7–12: “any hint of deference or obligation to empire is withdrawn.”82 The kings’ exercise of their rule as the visions describe it keeps the rule of God from becoming reality. Only an act from heaven can bring God’s rule. The visions thus offer an alternative portrayal of how God’s rule becomes reality, one designed to help us live with history when we cannot control it. They begin (ch. 7) with God’s lasting dominion: rule is taken away from heathen rulers and given to the people of the holy ones on high. That rule is still to be exercised on earth. Even the judgment by the venerable figure of ch. 7 takes place on earth and is implemented here, while the restoration to life of ch. 12 is a restoration to earthly life of whole people, not of disembodied spirits in heaven. The millennarian movements were not unfaithful to Daniel in looking for a salvation that was collective, terrestrial, imminent, total, and miraculous.83 The whole book looks for the realization of the reign of God on earth; but apparently there is a time when we can see this coming through earthly 78 Joubert, “Power and Responsibility in the Book of Daniel,” 211–12. 79 Hall, “Post-exilic Theological Streams and the Book of Daniel,” 224–25. 80 Harrington, “The Ideology of Rule in Daniel 7–12,” 540. 81 Cf. Goswell, “The Ethics of the Book of Daniel.” 82 Collins, Apocalypse, Prophecy, and Pseudepigraphy, 297. 83 Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, 13.

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Conclusion 583 rulers and through us, in this age, and a time when that realization can be neither seen nor envisaged, but only hoped for as the direct act of God which brings a transition from this age to another age.84 There is a time when the present can be understood only in light of the past and the future. There is a time when the people of God experience conflict with the world, and a time when behind that conflict they perceive a conflict with supernatural powers.85 The focus on the future in chs. 7–12 insists on our being critical of the present, in the conviction that the promise of God demands a fulfillment that cannot be identified with this present; the focus on the present in chs. 1–6 forbids us to be escapist and insists we face the force of the observation that “apocalyptic is full of promises, but it has never kept one of them.”86 Between them they affirm both present and promise. Political powers stand between the perspective of chs. 1–6 and that of chs. 7–12, choosing which is applicable to them, and the faithful who are involved in politics have to discern which choice they are making. Subject to them, the faithful in general live as children of this age but also as children of an age to come. It is the conviction that the new age has come in Jesus that makes apocalypticism “the mother of all Christian theology.”87 It might be that the book of Daniel’s focus on God’s kingdom is key to the missional implications of the book.88 “The apocalypse, as a powerful discourse of liberative praxis, has implanted in [the Jewish community] a profound theological vision and radical hope in the ultimate victory of God and the establishment of His Kingdom, which would finally guide to the restoration and resurrection of God’s creation.”89 (c) The book of Daniel thus suggests two understandings of the meaningfulness or otherwise of political history. The book begins with a God involved in history, giving the Judahite king into the power of Babylon. He controls historical eras and removes and sets up kings. He rules human kingdoms and gives power to whomever he wishes. He evaluates the rule of kings and puts them down when they fail his assessment. The process of history thus has meaning; it sees the outworking of God’s grace, mercy, purposefulness, justice, and zeal, even if the way events reflect these characteristics is not always clear. The prophets concern themselves with international history insofar as it affects the history of Israel; Daniel is closer to having a philosophy of international history in itself. 84 Barth, Diesseits und Jenseits im Glauben des späten Israel; Newsom, “Political Theology in the Book of Daniel.” 85 Philip, By the Rivers of Babylon, on ch. 10. 86 R. Trevors Herford: see Kreuziger, Apocalypse and Science Fiction, 149 (quoting Koch), and further, e.g., 78–79, 158–62, 176 87 Käsemann, “Die Anfänge christlicher Theologie,” 180 (ET 40). 88 See Kim, “Proclamation in Cross-Cultural Context.” 89 Thomas, “The Book of Daniel: The Apocalypse with a Distinct Charter for Liberative Praxis and Theological Vision,” 303.

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584 Daniel In the visions the origins of human empires are more ambiguous: they arise out of the world itself rather than by the gift of God, and they resemble strange animals emerging from the sea—­even if it is a supernatural wind that stirs that sea. God has been active in Israel’s history in revelation, in grace, and in judgment and can be urged to be active there in mercy and m restoration (ch. 9); he is active in the nations’ history only by bringing an end to it. He is in control of their history, but in the manner of the prison governor who still controls the prison during a riot in the sense that the prisoners can only go so far (the visions’ quasi-­predictive form should not mislead us into thinking that Daniel sees God predetermining this history). Even in heaven there are conflicts between the agents of God’s will who personify earthly powers in conflict with each other. The details of history have little intrinsic meaning; meaning belongs to the End, not to the process. Daniel thus differs from 1 and 2 Maccabees, which in different ways rework the classic attitude to history of books such as Kings and Chronicles, and it differs from 1 Enoch, which extends its historical perspective back to embrace creation so that it extends from Beginning to End, and—­like some Christian thinking, though not the OT or the NT—­sees conflicts in heaven and in history as resulting from the rebellion of heavenly beings near the beginning. Neither stories nor visions see history as a whole or see it as progressing toward a goal. Daniel does not embody the apocalyptic view of history. The difference between stories and visions suggests that there are times when the hand of God can be detected in the processes of history and times when it has to be looked for at the End. “The book of Daniel contains a theology of history that is neither as deterministic nor as exclusively eschatological as scholars have portrayed it. . . . Daniel has a keen interest in both the human and the supernatural causes of historical events.”90 Daniel is seriously interested in history. (d) The book offers two paradigms of the leadership of the faithful in community life.91 In the stories this leadership can mean involvement in the work of government, which presupposes an affirming of those who exercise authority. By the will of God himself and by the nature of his commission to earthly rulers, human beings have a responsibility for urging them to fulfill that calling as before God; they can realistically be challenged to fulfill such a responsibility. The perspective matches that of Rom 13. The perspective of the visions compares rather with that of Rev 13. The visions cannot see God’s activity in history. Paradoxically, Jews back in Jerusalem in the second century experience something more like exile with 90 Niskanen, The Human and the Divine in History, 3 (Niskanen’s declaration emerges from a comparison of Daniel with Herodotus); cf. Hellberg, “The Determination of History according to the Book Daniel.” 91 On leadership in Daniel, see further Goldingay, “Daniel in the Context of OT Theology,” 648–58.

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Conclusion 585 its meaninglessness (see especially ch. 9) than did their brothers and sisters in dispersion in the Persian period. Faithfulness to God, which could cohere with participation in politics in the context presupposed by the stories, now demands critique of the governing authorities and rules out involvement in government.92 The visions are not specific about lines of action they expect of the faithful (military action? passive resistance? continuing obedience to the Torah? withdrawal from temple worship?). History is portrayed as closed and fixed, though this portrayal is a way of assuring people that history has been under God’s control even when it is difficult to recognize as the act of God. The possibility of leadership is to instruct the believing community on the significance of history, past, present, and future. Throughout the book the calling of the leadership is to pray to the God who controls and reveals history. But apparently there is a time to be active in the present and a time to teach about the End. The stories invite believers who live under oppressive regimes to allow for and to be encouraged by the possibility that there are contexts where one can be involved in the affairs of state without compromise. Given that for them “the witness of visibility” is succeeded by “the witness of vulnerability,”93 the visions invite believers in easier times than theirs to an empathetic act of identification—­perhaps of deed, not just of word—­if they are to enter into the pain of people who live under oppressive regimes and thus to be able to share the real meaning of their visions and not just the words. (e) The book has a vision for both life in dispersion and life in Jerusalem. The stories see dispersion life as the result of the act of God; it is neither meaningless nor the reflection of the greater power of other gods. Neither is it explicitly the result of an act of God in punishment for the sin of Judahites. It is simply his will. That fact in itself lays the foundation for the possibility that one can be a good Jew in dispersion. A Jew will remain distinctive, will remain faithful, and will continue to pray towards Jerusalem, but will do so in a dispersion setting and will prove that it can be the way to a successful life. There is no suggestion of “next year in Jerusalem.” The visions almost ignore dispersion life. Their concern is with the restoration of the city of Jerusalem, its sanctuary, its worship, and its priesthood. The dispersion explicitly features only once, and there it is the result of sin (ch. 9). North and south are the origins of enemies rather than the location of brothers and sisters. Jerusalem is the only natural Jewish place to live. The visions offer their own challenge to faithfulness, yet not one accompanied by an implicit promise that faithfulness will be rewarded by worldly success and promotion. The stories of the dispersion heroes both illustrate Jews being willing for faithfulness to be its own reward and also remind their hearers of 92 Joubert, “Power and Responsibility in the Book of Daniel,” 212. 93 Walters, “The End (of What?) Is at Hand,” 43.

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586 Daniel the power and the faithfulness of God himself who will see that faithfulness receives its reward in the age to come if not in this age.94 In the book’s portrayal, Jewish life is precarious and Jewish faithfulness is under pressure wherever it is lived. Both Babylon and Jerusalem are experiences of “desolation,” the latter a protraction of the former, of which it can thus be a paradigm, and people dealing with the former can be prototypes of people dealing with the latter.95 One might have expected it to be obvious that dispersion was a place of pressure: actually the pressures there are usually more subtle. One might have expected Jerusalem to be a place of safety: actually the pressures there are clear, to the seers at least. Neither dispersion nor Jerusalem is without danger. Each brings its challenge. Neither is called to judge the other. (f) The book suggests two different overall thrusts, summed up by its being located by the synagogue among the Writings and by the church among the Prophets.96 That ambiguity encourages two alternative readings of Daniel, as wisdom or as prophecy, as pedagogics or as eschatology, as halakah or as haggadah. While a location among the Prophets might seem superior to a location among the Writings, it is possible to put a positive spin on the latter location.97 Both story and vision exist to render a world. Story renders a world that is clearly one with our world, even though it points to signals of transcendence that suggest something beyond our world. It served the needs of the dispersion well. In the second-­century crisis “the time of narrative must now leave room for the time of vision.”98 Vision creates a radically different world that makes continuing life in this world possible on the basis of its not being the only world, or not being in the end the most important one. Daniel’s work is preserved even though the End of which he spoke did not come because in another sense that End did come. His vision brought the end of an old order’s power to lord it over his fellows because it opened up an alternative world that people were prepared to believe would endure as the old order would not, a world in which what seemed at present to be weakness was revealed to be true power and what looked like death was revealed to be the gateway to life.99 Daniel as a whole invites people to live this life in the light of such convictions about that life.

94 Joubert, “Power and Responsibility in the Book of Daniel,” 210. 95 Davies, Daniel, 13. 96 Koch, “Is Daniel Also among the Prophets?” 127; cf. also the reflections in Haas, “The Book of Daniel.” 97 Cf. Warhurst, “The Associative Effects of Daniel in the Writings.” 98 Lacocque, “Apocalyptic Symbolism,” 8. 99 Barr, “The Apocalypse as a Symbolic Transformation of the World,” 39–50; cf. Schlüssler Fiorenza, “The Phenomenon of Early Christian Apocalyptic.”

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Scripture and Extrabiblical Index Old Testament Genesis 1. . . . . 206, 229, 249 (4:15.e), 249, 316, 347, 356, 375, 387, 394, 422, 427, 466, 561 1–2. . . . . . . . . . . 181, 202, 389 1–3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .252, 343 1–11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214 1:1–2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387 1:1–3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 1:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386 1:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 1:5–31. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425 1:27–28. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120, 156 2–3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 564 2:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375, 421 2:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 2:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337, 386 2:21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427 3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518 3:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514 5:21–24. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 6:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337 7:11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356 8:21. . . . . . . . . . . 182 (2:46.b) 9:8–17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325 10–11. . . . . . . . . . . . . 130, 388 10:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 11. . . . 151, 236, 252, 268, 325 11:1–9. . . . . . . . . . . . 154, 184 11:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 11:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268 12:1–9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 13:3–4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403 14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 14:1, 9. . . . . 154, 179 (2:14.b) 14:18–20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 14:18–24. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462 14:22. . . . . . . . . . . . . 235, 550 15:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465 15:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427 15:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431 15:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 507 16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527 16:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403 18:17–33. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495 19:17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514 19:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464 21:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306

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21:16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356 21:22. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422 21:22–32. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 22:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403 24:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336 24:27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 24:55. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 27:44–45. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 28:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446 31:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 31:21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476 37. . . . . . . . . 140–42, 151, 165 37–41 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 37:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278 37:6–9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349 37:11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399 38 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 38:24. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 38:28. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514 39–47 . . . . . 140–42, 151, 165 39:1–6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 39:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234 39:21. . . . . . . . . . . . . 142, 170 40–41 . . . . . . . . 178, 183, 185 40:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 40:20–22. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294 41. . . . . . 142, 177 (2:1.b), 177, 182–83, 182, 183, 188, 190, 190–91, 191, 195, 196, 251, 419, 578 41:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .507, 514 41:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 41:4–5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 41:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 41:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 41:25. . . . . . . . . . 249 (4:16.a) 41:33. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 41:38. . . . . . . 248 (4:8.c), 258 41:39. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 41:39–46. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 41:41–42; 41:42. . . . . . . . . 279 41:42–43. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 42:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 42:15–16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 43:1, 11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 43:14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 43:30. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466 43:34. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 47:29. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464 48:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405

49 . . . . . . . . . . . 120, 388, 412 49:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 508, 517

Exodus 1. . . . . . . . . 158, 170, 182, 477 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .465 3:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 3:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240 3:13–16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 7:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 7:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421 8–9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 9:15. . . . . . . 182 (2:48.a), 182 9:27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465 9:33. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475 10:17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467 11:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446 12:36. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 14–15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387 14:19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527 15:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387 19:3–6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 19:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369 19:10–16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 526 19:16–18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 19:21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 20:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 20:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 23:20–23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527 24:17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 24:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369 29:38–39. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 29:38–42. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422 30:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 30:26–29. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487 31:18 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296 32:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 470 32:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474 32:32. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546 32:34; 33:2 . . . . . . . . . . . . 527 33:20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 526 34:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464, 467 34:6–7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466 34:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 470 34:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 34:28. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477 40:9–11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487

Leviticus 1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .427

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588 Daniel 2; 4:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488 6:20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 9:24. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427 11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 11:37–38. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 17:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336 19:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 20:14; 21:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 23:32. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477 25–26 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451 25:1–7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450 25:8–17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451 25:29. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 26. . . . . . . . . . . . 451, 481, 485 26:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468 26:18–21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451 26:22. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474 26:24–28. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451 26:28. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495 26:31–35. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450 26:31–43. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474 26:39–40. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469 26:39–45. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454 26:40. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469 26:40–45. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 26:42. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490 26:43. . . . . . . . . . . . . 450, 468 26:46. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468

Numbers 1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317, 549 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .506 4:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 4:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 4:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 4:20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 6:25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 8:24–25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506 10:35–36. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527 12:6. . . . . . . . . . .160, 171, 211 12:6–8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290 14:18–19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466 14:22. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 16:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 16:27–33. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324 17:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407 22–24. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 22–25 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 22:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 22:26–33. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317 24:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 24:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 24:17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549 24:20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513 24:24. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518 25:10–13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 25:11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479

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28–29 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422 30:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481 33:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421

Deuteronomy 1. . . . . . . . . . . . 298, 342, 362 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324 3:11. . . . . . . . . . . 250 (4:35.b) 4:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421 4:24. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 4:27–28. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 4:28. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282 4:31. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467 4:33. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 526 4:34. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 4:36. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 5:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444 5:26. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322 6:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 6:22. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 6:25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465 7:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 7:21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462 8:2–3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 8:11–14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 10:8. . . . . . . . . . . 249 (4:15.d) 10:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 10:17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462 11:1, 22 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 12:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471 12:23–25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 12:28. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 13:4–5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 13:17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467 15:2–3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 511 17:11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474 17:14–20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 17:17, 20 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474 18:9–15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 18:22. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 553 19:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 550 19:16–21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324 21:23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 563 24:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465 24:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324 26:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 26:16–17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468 26:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376 28:6 [5]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 28:48. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260 29 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475 29:1–29. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 29:2–3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 29:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 29:20–27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468 29:26. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527 29:29 [28]. . . . . . . . . 200, 210

30:1–10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454 30:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . 468, 472 30:20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 31:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475 32:1–4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366 32:8. . 235, 376, 519, 527, 543 32:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 32:29. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 32:39. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298 32:40. . . . . . . . . . . . . 501, 550 33. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .388 33:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342, 362 33:2–3. . . . . . . . . . . . 375, 527 34:11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 38:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

Joshua 1. . . . . . . . . . . . .322, 463, 477 1:6–9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 508 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .452, 480 2:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 2:14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464 3:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322 5:13–15. . . . . . . . . . . 422, 446 5:14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427, 446 5:14–15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527 6:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481 6:19. . . . . . . . . . 153, 184, 201 6:24. . . . . . . . . . 153, 194, 201 7:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477 7:7–15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480 7:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 7:20–21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452 7:21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 7:24–25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324 7:25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 8:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513 9:3–20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 9:20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476 15:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509 22:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 22:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184, 201 24:19. . . . . . . . . . . 248 (4:8.c)

Judges 1. . . . . . . . .273, 452, 463, 477 1:24. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252, 315 3:20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 4:21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427 5:11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465 5:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 5:17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513 5:19–20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527 5:20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421, 549 5:30. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426 6:22–23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 526 6:25–26. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424

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8:23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 8:35. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 9:6–15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266 9:8–15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 10:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452 11:31. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336 11:36. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481 12:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509 16:21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 20:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473 20:26. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477

Ruth 1:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

1 Samuel 1. . . . . . . . . . . . .316, 463, 548 1:28. . . . . . . . . 139 (21.a), 139 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164, 281 2:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360 2:6–8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548 2:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488 2:27–36. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 2:30. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 2:35. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488 3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 3:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 3:21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506 4:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 508 5–6; 6:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 9:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488 9:25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 10:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488 12:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465 12:24. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420 13:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473 13:13. . . . . . . . . . 182 (2:48.a) 14:27, 29. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 14:41. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 508 15:17–26 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 16:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 16:14–15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407 16:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 17:34–37. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358 18:5, 14–15. . . . . . . . . . . . 166 20:8, 14–16. . . . . . . . . . . . 463 22:17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234 25:17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 512

2 Samuel 1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .453, 465 1:2, 12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477 1:23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357 3:31–35. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477 7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120, 453 8:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465 9:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427 11:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156

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12:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214, 267 12:15–23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477 12:17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214 12:20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525 12:28. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480 13:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477 14:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525 14:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427 14:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446 14:17, 20 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549 14:25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 17:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358 20:21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509 21:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444 23:21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404 25:23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427

1 Kings 2. . . . . . . . . . . . .289, 472, 477 3:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294 4:33. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 5:9–14 [4:29–34] . . . . . . . 166 6:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451 6:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278 8. . . . . . . . . . . . .316, 454, 468 8:23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 8:30, 33. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444 8:35. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 8:45. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444 8:46, 53. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454 8:47, 49. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444 8:50. . . . . . . . . . 138, 170, 467 8:54. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 9:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376 10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431 10:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 10:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 507 11:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278 13:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448 13:7–9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 13:33. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 15:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 19:5, 7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427 20:31–32. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477 21:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316, 487 22:19–22. . . . . . . . . . 260, 361 22:20–22. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291

2 Kings 1:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .463 2:24. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358 3:5, 7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430 3:27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428, 476 4:31. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548 5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196, 197 5:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 5:18–19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

6:17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 12:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280 12:17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476 13:21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548 16:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469 18–19. . . . . . . . . . . . . 232, 319 18:26. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 18:28–35. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 18:33–35. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238 19:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322 19:10–13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238 19:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446 22:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469 23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 23:1–3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 24. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 24–25 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 24:12, 14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468 25:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 25:29–30. . . . . . . . . . 156, 158

1 Chronicles 2. . . . . . . . . . . . .184, 200, 422 5:25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 9:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 470 12:17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 17:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338 18:11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 22:14–16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 23:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447 23:30. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 24:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422 29:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 29:10–11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 29:11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298 29:25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518

2 Chronicles 2:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 2:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 2:7–2:14 [6–13]. . . . . . . . . 184 5:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 7:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427 9:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 15:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 15:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 16:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260 20:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476 20:14, 20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 26:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 33:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 35:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 36 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450 36:6–7. . . . . . . . . . . . 137, 152 36:7, 10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 36:17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 36:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 36:19–20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

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590 Daniel 36:20–23. . . . . . 149, 153, 161 36:22. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513 36:22–23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172

Ezra 1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 1:1–3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525 1:1–4. . . . . . . . . . . . . 250, 488 1:7–11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 1:9–11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 2. . . . . . . . . . . . .463, 475, 546 2:1; 2:63. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471 3:3–5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425 3:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422 3:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525 3:9. . . . . . . . . . . . 181 (2:35.a) 4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .460, 528 4:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460 4:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 4:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 4:13–14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309 4:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 4:15, 22. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 4:24. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525 5:11. . . . . . . . . . . 226 (3:16.c) 5:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336 5:17. . . . . . . 226 (3:16.c, 17.b) 6:1–6:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .488 6:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231 7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 7:12–7:26. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488 7:14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314 7:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280 7:23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476 8:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369 8:24; 8:29 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422 9. . . . . . . . 452, 454, 457, 458, 462, 471 9:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 9:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316, 480 9:6–9:15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452 9:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469, 475 9:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465 10:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 10:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422 10:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448 13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364

Nehemiah 1. . . . .454, 457, 458, 471, 488 1:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403, 419 1:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471, 475 1:4. . . . . . . . . . . 139, 458, 525 1:4–11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457 1:5. . . . . . . . . . . 462, 463, 472 1:5–11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452 1:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469, 470 1:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 458

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1:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468 1:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471 2:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322 2:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 540 4:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 4:14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462 5:14–15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471 7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .546 7:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 470 8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142, 157 8:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471, 525 9. . . . 316, 454, 457, 458, 467, 468, 471, 479 9:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477 9:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469 9:5–38. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452 9:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 9:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468 9:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469 9:16–33. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467 9:17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466, 467 9:25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 510 9:27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468 9:32. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463, 468 9:33. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464, 465 9:34. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468 9:35. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142, 157 10:33. . . . . . . . . . . . . 422, 423 11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471 11:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471 11:11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488 12:22. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531 13:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 552

Esther 1. . . . .287, 289, 294, 313, 449 1:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313 1:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403, 419 1:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 1:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278 1:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 1:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156, 211 1:14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314 1:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315, 481 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514 2:17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464 2:19, 21. . . . . . . . 182 (2:49.b) 3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 3:2–3. . . . . . . . . . 182 (2:49.b) 3:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 4:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 4:1–4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477 4:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449 4:11. . . . . . . . . . 178, 198, 289 4:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477, 526 6:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 7:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305

7:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 7:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481 7:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324 8:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315, 316 8:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 8:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289, 362 8:17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514 9:25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324 10:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 14:17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158

Job 1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .549 1–2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260, 527 1:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 1:21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 3:13, 17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 552 3:24. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475 4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 4:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199, 427 4:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 5:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 5:11–16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 7:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506 8:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 11:19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473 12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 12:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 12:12–24. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 12:22. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 13:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 14:7–9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 14:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548 14:14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506 15:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 16:21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337 19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 19:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 21:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336 22:28. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 22:29. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360 24:23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 25:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365 26:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356 26:12–13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342 28 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 28:1–2. . . . . . . . . . . . 184, 201 29:24. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 30:16–20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 31. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 31:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 31:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292 31:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 32:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184, 258 32:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 33. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 33:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . 199, 427 34:14–15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291

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Scripture and Extrabiblical Index 591

34:16–30. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282 34:20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449 34:35. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 36:5–14. . . . . . . . . . . 252, 282 36:26. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 38–41 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486 38:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549 38:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342 38:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 40–41 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387 40:23; 41:1–34 . . . . . . . . . 342

Psalms 1. . . . . . . . .259, 361, 449, 527 2. . . . . . . . 302, 327, 341, 347, 362, 367, 468, 479, 518, 555 2:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 2:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205, 471 5:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .480 6:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 7:3–7:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 7:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325 8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .202, 343 8:4–8:6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365 8:6–8:8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .342 9:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336 10:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326 11:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 12:3–4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360 12:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449 12; 13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480 16:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 17:10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360 18:2 [3]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 18:27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360 18:32. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 18:8–13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 18:9–12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364 19:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481 22 . . . . . . . . . . . 341, 342, 480 22:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . 308, 323 22:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548 22:18 [19]. . . . . . . . . . . . . 234 22:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462 22:21. . . . . . . . . . . . . 308, 323 23:4–5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240 25:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464 25:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 25:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464 25:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467 25:6–7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466 27:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 28 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480 28:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 29 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342

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29:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326 30 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251, 264 30:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376 30:6–7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 31:18 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360 31:2–3 [3–4]. . . . . . . . . . . 205 31:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464 32. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 33:10–17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433 33:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465 33:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421 33:14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405 34:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240 34:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 34:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 34:17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 581 35:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431 35:26. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420 36:5–10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465 36:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465 37:35. . . . . . . . . . . 248 (4:4.c) 38:13–16 [14–17]. . . . . . . 239 40 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476 40:3 [4]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 40:10–11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464 40:11. . . . . . . . . . . . . 464, 467 40:17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 42–79 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462 42:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322 44:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475 45:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473 46 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342, 518 48 . . . . . . . . . . . 342, 471, 518 48:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471 48:1–2 [2–3]. . . . . . . . . . . 205 48:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161, 421 49 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548 49:12, 20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271 50 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342 50 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 50:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421, 471 51. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452 51:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466, 467 51:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 52:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248 55:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420 55:14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 55:17. . . . . . . . . . . . . 316, 320 60 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480 62:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292 65:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 66 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 66:10–12. . . . . . . . . . 229, 240 66:20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 68 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362, 527 68:17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 68:20; 68:36 [19, 35] . . . . 185 69:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475

69:23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 69:28. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546 72:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 72:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 72:18–19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 73. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548 74. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342 74:9–10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424 74:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356 75. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341, 342 75:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298 76. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518 78:51. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513 78:70–71. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 79. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 79:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424 80 . . . . . . . 330, 343, 367, 479 80:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424 80:17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337 82. . . . . . . . 260, 361, 376, 527 82:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376 83. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 83:2–3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 87:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546 89 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342 89:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 89:5–7 [6–8]. . . . 249 (4:13.b), 260 89:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 89:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356 89:27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376 89:28. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 90:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 90:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292 91:9–13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323 91:10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460 91:10–13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323 91:11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 92. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 92:14 [15]. . . . . . . 248 (4:4.c) 93. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .342 93. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393 93:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 94:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509 95 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 95:7–8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 96–99 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393 96:10–13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 97:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405 100. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 102:24–27. . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 103:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465 103:12–13. . . . . . . . . . . . . 467 104:1–2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 104:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369 104:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 104:29. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 105:27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258

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592 Daniel 105:36. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513 106. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452, 472 106:23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 106:24. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421 106:35. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 106:46. . . . . . . . . . . . 138, 170 107:16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260 109:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464 110. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342 110:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . 161, 367 111:7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464 112:2. . . . . . . . . . 226 (3:20.a) 112:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 113. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 115. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282 115:1–8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296 116:3–4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546 118:22. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218 119:58. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473 119:62. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449 119:164. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 121:1–2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 121:3–4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260 122:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 123:1–2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 126:2, 3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420 130:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . 466, 467 135:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 135:15–18. . . . . . . . . . . . . 282 136:24. . . . . . . . . 249 (4:27.b) 137. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 139. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .200 139:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529 141:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 141:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 144:3–4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365 145. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252, 366 146:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . 343, 365 147:19–20. . . . . . . . . . . . . 468 148:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 149. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366

Proverbs 1:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 3:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464 3:6; 4:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 6:12–19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308 6:16–19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360 8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .343, 368 9:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 9:10–11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 10:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427 10:27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 11:13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 14:27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 14:30, 32, 35. . . . . . . . . . . 308 15:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479

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16:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 16:5–7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 16:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464 16:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 16:14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 16:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 17:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358 19:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473 19:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324 19:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473 19:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324 19:12, 20; 20:2 . . . . . . . . . 198 20:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 20:28. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464 21:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360 21:21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465 21:28. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324 23:29–35. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 24:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308 25:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 26:11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236 26:16, 25. . . . . . . 226 (3:19.a) 28:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358 29:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 29:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427 29:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308 30 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531 30:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 30:13–17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360 30:30. . . . . . . . . . 226 (3:20.a)

Ecclesiastes 3:11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 573 8:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

Song of Songs 4:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359 5:11, 15 . . . . . . . . 507 (10:5.b) 6:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . 278 (5:2.b)

Isaiah 1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .499 1:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 1:26. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 2:2–3. . . . . . . . . . . . . 202, 205 2:2–4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435 2:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481 2:11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360 4:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 4:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546 5:1–7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 5:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360 5:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465 5:30. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356 6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342, 517 6:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260 6:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427

6:11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411, 424 6:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 7:5–7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518 7:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 511 7:14 . . . . . . . 240, 249 (4:15.d) 8:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385 8:7–8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517 8:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533 8:11–15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 8:14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218 8:14–15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517 8:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385 9:2–7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 545 9:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549 9:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 10. . . . . 214–15, 214, 215, 301, 411, 518 10:5–19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 10:5–11:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 10:12–13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360 10:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412 10:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . 162, 543 10:21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452 10:22. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465 10:22–23. . . . . . . . . . 452, 491 10:22–26. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518 10:25. . . . . . . . . . . . . 476, 513 11:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 11:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 11:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359 11:6–9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317 11:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358 11:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 11:11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 12:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 13:3–6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 13:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341 13:15–16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324 13:17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293 13:17–18 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346 13:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466 13:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421 14. . . . 252, 270, 410, 411, 562 14:1–2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 14:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376 14:4–23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 14:9. . . . . . . . . . 361, 411, 420 14:12–15 . . . . . . . . . . 378, 391 14:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . 268, 421 14:13–14 . . . . . . . . . . .314, 319 14:13–21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232 14:14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 14:24–25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518 16:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464 17:12–13 . . . . . . . . . . 371, 387 17:12–14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342 17:14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518

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19:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364, 369 19:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 535 21; 21:1–10 . . . . . . . . . . . . 282 21:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293 21:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 22:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 23:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460 24:21. . . . . . . . . 272, 423, 527 26:17–21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518 26:19. . . . . . . . . 499, 518, 548 27:1. . . . . . . . . . 342, 356, 363 28:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218 29 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342 30:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475 30:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385 30:33. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 31. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518 31:3. . . . . . . . . . . . 178 (2:11a) 33:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488 33:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543 34:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421 36–37 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314 36:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 37:23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360 39:2, 4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 39:5–7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 39:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 39:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231 40–41 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 40–48. . . . . . . . . . . . 184, 383 40–55 . . . .166, 168, 184, 204, 209, 209–10, 211, 216, 216–17, 217, 219, 219–20, 220, 233, 314, 394, 483, 518, 569, 573 40–66. . . . . . . . 129, 184, 195 40:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260 40:1–2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486 40:1–11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517 40:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405, 506 40:12–26. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272 40:12–31. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296 40:17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 40:18–20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 40:19. . . . . . . . . 184, 201, 231 40:25–26. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 40:27. . . . . . . . . . . . . 291, 481 40:31. . . . . . . . . . . . . 172, 563 41. . . . . 204, 212, 212–13, 213 41:1–7. . . . . . . . . . . . 184, 296 41:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420 41:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359, 420 41:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 41:6–7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 41:11–12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324 41:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 41:12–16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 41:15–16,

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41:21–41:29. . . . . . . . 184, 281 41:25. . . . . . . . . . . . . 184, 201 41:35. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 42:1–12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325 42:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518 42:9–10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 43 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 43:1–3. . . . . . . . 229, 235, 240 43:17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 44 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 44:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407 44:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 44:6–20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296 44:6–28. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 44:9–20; 44:15–19 . . . . . . 229 44:24–45:7 . . . . . . . . 172, 204 44:25. . . . . . . . . . . . . 156, 209 44:25–26. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 45 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204 45:1. . . . . . 267, 289, 488, 517 45:1–7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 45:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184, 201 45:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153, 184 45:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184, 200 45:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487 45:14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 45:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 45:23. . . . . . . . . . . . . 326, 481 45:24. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465 46:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 46:1–7. . . . . . . . . . . . 229, 281 46:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 47. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .171, 213 47:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 47:9–13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 47:9–15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 47:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 47:12–13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 47:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 48:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481 48:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 48:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546 49:1–7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325 49:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518 49:13–15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466 49:14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481 49:22–23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 49:23. . . . . . . . . 184, 205, 343 49:24–25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546 49:25–26. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324 50:11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 51:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481 51:6, 8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465 51:9–10. . . . . . . . . . . 342, 363 51:10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356, 387 52:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 52:11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 52:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . 518, 549

52:13–53:12. . . .365, 452, 518, 541, 563 52:14. . . . . . . . . . . . . 412, 518 53:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259, 481 53:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 511 53:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 53:11. . . . . . . . . . . . . 518, 549 53:12. . . . . . . . . 412, 432, 449 54:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475 54:6–8; 54:7–10 . . . . . . . . 466 54:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 55–66 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204 55:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 55:11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481 56–66. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204 56:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404 57:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 552 58:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477 58:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480 59:1–15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411 59:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474 59:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411 59:12–15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452 59:13; 59:14–15. . . . . . . . . 411 59:16–17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465 59:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474 60 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343 60:6–7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 60:7; 60:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . 365 60:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . 363, 376 60:14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 60:14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 60:17. . . . . . . . . . . . . 184, 465 61:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365 62:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260 63:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467 63:7–11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411 63:7–12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 63:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412 63:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411 63:15–16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466 63:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411 63:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480 64:5–12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452 64:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411 64:11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336 65:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480 65:11–12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292 65:24. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481 65:25. . . . . . .181 (2:35.a), 317 66:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525 66:24. . . . . . . . . . . . . 514, 548

Jeremiah 1. . . . . . . . . 371, 421, 468, 517 1:1–3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 1:2–3. . . . . . . . . . 139 (1:21.a) 1:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427

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594 Daniel 1:11–12 . . . . . . . . . . . 281, 476 1:18. . . . . . . . . . 260, 444, 469 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .463 2:35. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 3:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 3:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421 3:21–4:2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480 3:25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469 4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .490 4:7, 13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357 4:27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474 5:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341, 359 6:11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .490 7:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 7:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475 8:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421 10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 10:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 507 10:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322 10:23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 13:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 13:23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359 14:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444 14:1–15:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480 14:7–9; 19–22. . . . . . . . . . 452 14:20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469 15:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453 15:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 15:17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 16:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 510 16:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477 16:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474 17:5–8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426 18:1–12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 18:7–11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 18:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 512 18:20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 20:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488 20:4–5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 22:13–19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271 22:14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 22:15–16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 23:3, 8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474 23:9–40. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 23:14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 23:15–32. . . . . . . . . . 209, 553 23:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 23:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260 23:20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 23:25–32. . . . . . . . . . 205, 206 23:36. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322 24. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 24:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475 25 . . . . . . .152, 301, 429, 450, 461, 491 25:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 25:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272 25:11. . . . . . . . . 451, 481, 495

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25:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . 202, 204 25:12–14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491 26:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203, 215 27:5–7. . . . 184, 214, 215, 252 27:5–7 184 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27:5–8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 27:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272, 394 27:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202, 204 28:14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260 29 . . . . . . . 215, 320, 450, 461 29:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320 29:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491 29:10–14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454 29:11–14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320 29:12–13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461 29:14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474 29:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475 29:21–23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228 29:22. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 30:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385 30:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518 30:24. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 31:20. . . . . . . . . . . . . 466, 467 31:28. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476 31:29–30. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469 31:31–34. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 32:16–25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 34:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 510 34:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469 34:21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468 35:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 36:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385 36:3, 7. . . . . . . . . . . . 472, 474 36:31. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474 38:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509 38:6–13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 39 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 39:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 39:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278 39:5–6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 39:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260 39:13, 19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 43:8–13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518 43:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272 44 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490 44:2–3, 5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474 44:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445 44:7, 9, 11. . . . . . . . . . . . . 474 44:17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481 44:17–19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 44:21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469 44:22–23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445 44:27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476 46 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518 46:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 46:7–8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371 48:26. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420

48:45. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407 49:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475 49:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357 49:19–22. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341 49:22. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357 49:35. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513 49:38. . . . . . . . . . . . . 342, 361 50:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 50:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420 51. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282 51:11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293 51:27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358 51:28. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293 51:28. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491 51:39. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548 51:42. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356 51:44. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 51:51. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475 51:57. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548 51:59–64. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230 51:60. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385 51:64. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382 52:11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260 52:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 52:17–23. . . . . . . . . . 137, 153 52:29. . . . . . . . . . . . . 152, 224

Lamentations 1:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472, 474 1:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420 1:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 1:13, 16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474 1:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465, 474 2:6, 7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 2:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421, 471 3:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358 3:22. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467 4:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466 4:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429 4:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357 4:20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 5:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475 5:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469 5:8. . . . . . . . . . . . 249 (4:27.b) 5:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474

Ezekiel 1. . . . 337, 342, 347, 365, 368, 392, 446, 526, 527 1–3. . . . . . . 130, 342, 411, 517 1:1–3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410 1:5–6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359 1:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341 1:26. . . . . . . . . . 343, 368, 427 1:28–2:2 . . . . . . . . . . 411, 427 2:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410 3:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409

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Scripture and Extrabiblical Index 595

3:19–20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 3:23–24. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411 4:9–17. . . . . . . . . . . . 143, 158 5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .490 5:14–15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475 6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .490 7. . . . . . . . . . . . .490, 535, 545 7:1–7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429 7:19–27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517 7:26. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444 8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409, 411 8:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343, 410 8:3, 5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410 8:14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543 9–10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517, 526 11:16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480 12:22–27; 13:6. . . . . . . . . . 535 13:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546 13:22. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 14:12–20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453 14:12–23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 14:14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 470 15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412 16:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 511 17. . . . . . . . . . . . 252, 341, 412 17:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290 17:22–24 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 17:23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469 18:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465 18:24. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 19. . . . . . . . . . . . 308, 341, 412 19:10–14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 20:5–6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 550 20:6, 15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421 21:6–7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 22:17–22. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475 22:25–29. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469 24:17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477 25 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 545 26:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 26:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 27:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421 28 . . . . . . . 252, 270, 451, 527 28:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488 28:2–5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412 28:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 28:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 29 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341 29–32 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518 29:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342 30:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518 31. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 32. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341 32:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342 33:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 33:30. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481 34:17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419

9780310526155_WBC_Daniel_329-600.indd 595

35:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360 35:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404 36:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406 36:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475 36:34–36. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474 37. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547, 548 38 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 562 38–39 . . . .383, 431, 489, 499, 518, 547, 573 38:22. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 40–48. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371 43:11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385 46:1–15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422

Daniel 1. . . . . . . . 107, 120, 134, 140, 141, 143, 144, 145, 148, 151, 157, 159, 160, 162, 195, 230, 419, 523 1–2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 1–3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .105, 499 1–4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501 1–5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 1–6 . . 104, 140, 141, 151, 154, 184, 218, 251, 263, 313, 325, 367, 371, 372, 557 1–7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 1–14. . . . . . 331, 348, 357, 364 1:1. . . . . . . 134, 152, 153, 498 1:3–4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 2. . . . 107, 108, 119, 129, 156, 172, 174, 178, 183, 184, 186, 188, 190, 191, 194, 196, 199, 200, 202, 204, 211, 218, 257, 339, 341, 354, 569 2–5 . . . . . . . . . . 231, 256, 262 2–6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355 2–7. . . 178, 194, 243, 276, 353, 575 2–14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330, 344 2:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .174, 178 2:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481 2:17–23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320 2:21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298 2:25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 2:34. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122, 376 2:34–35. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 2:38. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389, 394 2:41–43. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 2:44. . . 107, 108, 117, 174, 205 2:44. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 2:44–45. . . . . . . . . . . 107, 376 2:46. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174, 205 3. . . . 103, 104, 105, 108, 111, 112, 186, 221, 227, 228, 229, 230, 232, 238, 241, 242, 302, 307, 363, 500

3–6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195, 354 3–7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 3:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314 3:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221, 226 3:16–18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 3:25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243 3:29. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221, 227 4. . . . 101, 156, 185, 202, 236, 243, 250, 252, 253, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 263, 266, 268, 272, 273, 274, 339, 500 4–5 . . . . . . . . . . 103, 243, 558 4:7–14. . . . . . . . 243, 252, 255 4:17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298 4:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 4:20–22. . . . . . . . . . . 389, 394 4:24–32. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 4:36. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298 5. . . . 103, 185, 258, 274, 276, 284, 285, 287, 296, 302, 311, 330 5–7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385 5:2–3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 5:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276, 290 5:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314 5:11–12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377 5:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276, 290 5:23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184, 263 5:25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274, 302 5:25–28. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 6. . . . . . . . 130, 228, 274, 294, 302, 306, 309, 314, 315, 317, 319, 323, 326, 417 6:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313 6:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546 6:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 458 6:11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444 6:20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302, 307 6:27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 7. . . . 101, 102, 104, 106, 107, 108, 110, 112, 114, 119, 121, 134, 185, 292, 323, 328, 330, 331, 332, 335, 336, 337, 338, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343, 344, 345, 346, 347, 348, 349, 351, 352, 353, 354, 355, 357, 359, 361, 363, 364, 365, 367, 369, 370, 371, 373, 374, 376, 377, 378, 379, 380, 382, 385, 386, 387, 389, 390, 392, 393, 397, 398, 399, 409, 412, 419, 561 7–11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 7–12. . . . . . 100, 104, 110, 385, 514, 557, 580, 582 7–14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243, 255 7:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328, 356 7:4–5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335

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596 Daniel 7:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341 7:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420 7:7–8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373 7:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332 7:13. . . . . .102, 106, 108, 332, 366, 392 7:13–14. . . . . . .106, 332, 364, 365, 384, 398 7:14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 7:18. . . . . . . . . . 122, 330, 375 7:21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 7:22. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 7:22. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 7:24–25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 7:25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106, 375 7:26–27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 7:28. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 8. . . . .108, 116, 119, 120, 227, 302, 339, 374, 400, 403, 410, 411, 412, 413, 418, 420, 424, 426, 427, 428, 461, 534, 559 8–12 . . . . . 371, 406, 449, 507 8:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359 8:11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411, 412 8:12–13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411 8:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412 8:14. . . . . . 124, 400, 411, 425 8:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411 8:17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337 8:19. . . . . . . . . . 411, 429, 513 8:24–25. . . . . . . . . . . 411, 412 9. . . . . 101, 103, 107, 111, 118, 120, 152, 320, 375, 411, 416, 428, 429, 439, 441, 444, 448, 449, 450, 451, 452, 454, 456, 457, 458, 459, 461, 462, 463, 467, 468, 471, 472, 473, 477, 478, 480, 482, 483, 484, 485, 486, 487, 492, 495, 496, 498, 499 9:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204 9:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411 9:3–19. . . . . . . . . . . . 439, 450 9:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 9:4–19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454 9:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464 9:21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 9:24. . 441, 447, 482, 483, 485 9:24–25. . . . . . . . . . . 439, 487 9:24–27. . . . . . . 101, 110, 200, 426, 439, 441, 451, 452, 482, 483, 485, 489, 498 9:25. . . . . . . . . . 441, 448, 451 9:26. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488 9:27. . . . . . . . . . 104, 441, 483 10. . . . 107, 409, 502, 549, 555 10–12. . . . .102, 125, 272, 369, 373, 416, 426, 499, 501,

9780310526155_WBC_Daniel_329-600.indd 596

515, 516, 517, 518, 522, 527, 530, 543, 547 10:2–3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 524 10:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419 10:5–6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 10:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . 423, 556 10:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476 10:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427 10:20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 11. . . . 101, 110, 302, 306, 379, 501, 502, 509, 516, 517, 523, 535, 538, 539, 542, 579 11–12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 535 11:16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421 11:19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379 11:22. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488 11:26. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 11:30. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428 11:31. . . . . . . . . . . . . 103, 157 11:36. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462 11:36–45. . . . . . 120, 501, 542 11:41, 45. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421 12. . . . 107, 115, 239, 242, 324, 331, 499, 501, 502, 547, 548, 552 12:1. . . . . . . . . . 382, 499, 518 12:1–4. . . . . . . . . . . . 501, 550 12:2. . . . . . . . . . 499, 518, 565 12:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421, 502 12:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121, 487 12:5–7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419 12:5–13. . . . . . . . . . . 501, 523 12:7. . . . . . . . . . 382, 501, 550 12:9. . . . . . . . . . 487, 501, 515 12:11–12 . . . . . . . . . . 501, 551 13. . . . . . . . 104, 331, 332, 337 13–14. . . . . . . . . 104, 330, 337 14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102, 332 24–27 . . . . . . . . . . . . 439, 451 29 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501

Daniel (G) 1:2.c,e, 3.a,b, 5.c,d, 7.a, 10.a, 16.a, 17.a, 20.a. . 137–39 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 (2:4.c) 2:1.c. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 2:14.a, 14.c, 23.a,c, 24.a, 34.b, 35.c, 38.a, 40.a, 41.d, 45.a,b. . . . . . . . . 178–82 3:1.a, 3.b, 16.c, 17.a, 28.c. . . . . . . . . . . 224–27 3:[24]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230 3:28.c. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 4:12.a, 15.e, 27.b,c . . . 248–49 5:25.a,c. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280 6:6.a, 11, 15. . . . . . . . . . . . 306 7:1.c, 5.a,b, 6.a, 9.c, 11.a. . . . . . . . . . . 335–36

7:22.a,b. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338 7:23–25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381 8:5.d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404 8:11.d, 12.a, 14.a,b, 19.a, 21.a, 22.b, 23.b, 24.a, 27.b. . . . . . . . . . . . 405–8 9:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460 9:1.a, 5.a, 8.a, 20.c, 21.a, 23.b, 24.d,f, 25.b, 26.c, 27.c, 27.d,e. . . . . 444–48 9:27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490 9:27.f. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449 10:6.a, 13.b. . . . . . . . . . . . 507 10:11.a, 19.b . . . . . . . . . . . 508 11:2.d,e, 16.c, 18.c, 33.d. . . . . . . . . . . 508–12 12:13.a. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515

Daniel (OG) 1:1–2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 1:2.f, 3.a, 4.e, 5.c,d, 6.a, 10.d, 11.a, 13.a, 15.a. . 137–39 1:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 1:20.c. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 2:1.a, 2.2a. . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 2:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 2:5.b, 7.a, 9.b, 13.a. . . . . . 178 2:17–19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 2:18.a, 20.a,b, 23.c, 33.a . . . . . . . . . . 179–80 2:25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 2:40.d, 2:41.a,b, 2:42.a, 46.b. . . . . . . . . . . 181–82 3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .103–4, 228 3:1.a,b. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224 3:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152–53 3:8.a, 12.a, 18.a, 25.b. 225–27 4:4 [1]. . . . . . . . . . . . . 152–53 4:4.a,b, 15.a, 16.a. . . . 248–49 4:34–37. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256 5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .284 5:7.a, 25.a. . . . . . . . . . 279–80 5:29–31. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293 6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228 6:1–2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313 6:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319 6:16–24. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317 7–12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 7:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 7:8.d, 9.c, 13.a,c. . . . . 336–37 7:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 8:2.a,c, 3.d . . . . . . . . . . 403–4 8:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 8:4.a, 8.c. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404 8:25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415 8:25.c, 27.a. . . . . . . . . . . . 408 9:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460

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Scripture and Extrabiblical Index 597

9:3.a, 10.a, 17.a, 91.d, 22.a, 23.e,j. . . . . . . . . . 444–47 9:24–27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 9:25.f, 26.a,d,f . . . . . . 448–49 10:1.a,e. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506 10:9.a,d, 10.d, 11.a. . . . . . 507 10:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 11:1.b, 4.c, 5.a, 6.c,g, 10.b. . . . . . . . . . . 508–10 11:17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 11:30.a. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 512

Daniel (Sym.) 1:3.e. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 2:1.c. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 2:27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 5:11.a. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 9:26.h . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449 11:41.a. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513

Daniel (Syr.) 1:2.c,e,f, 3.a,e, 5.b,c,d, 7.a. . . . . . . . . . . . 137–38 1:9–14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 1:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 1:11a, 15.a, 17.a. . . . . . . . . 139 1:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 20.a. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 (2:4.c) 2:14.c, 2:16.a. . . . . . . . . . . 179 2:31.a, 35.c, 40.c,d, 45.b. . . . . . . . . . . 180–81 3:8.a, 16.c. . . . . . . . . . 225–26 3:24.a. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 4:5.b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248 4:6.b, 9.c, 12.a, 27.c,e. . 248–49 5:3.c, 11.d, 12.a, 14.a, 17.a, 23.a, 25.a. . . . . . 278–80 6:6.a, 12.a, 21.a. . . . . . . 306–7 7:4.e, 5.a, 6.a, 11.a . . . 335–36 7:22.a. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338 8:2.a,c. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403 8:9.e, 11.b, 12.a, 14.a. . . . 405 8:24.a, 25.c. . . . . . . . . . . . 408 9:1.a, 8.a, 16.a, 17.a, 20.c, 21.c,d, 22.a, 23.b, 24.e,f,j, 25.b, f, 26.c,f,h. . .444–49 10.1.e, 4.a, 9.a,d 10.c, 13.b, 19.b. . . . . . . . . . . . 506–8 11:1.b, 2.e, 6.g, 10.b, 15.c, 16.c, 18.c, 20.c . . 508–11 11:41.c. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513

Daniel (Th.) 1:3.a,d, 3.e, 5.c,d, 9.b., 10.d, 11.a . . . . . . 137–39 1:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 15.a. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

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1:12, 3:23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 2:5.b, 6.a, 9.b, 10b, 13.a, 15.a, 18.a, 20.e, 29.c, 31.a, 33.a,b, 35.d, 40.d, 44.b. . . . . . . . . . .178–82 17–19a. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 3:7.a, 8.a, 15.e. . . . . . . 225–26 3:23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 3:25.b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 4:4.b, 5.b, 8.c, 15.a, 27.e, 36.b. . . . . . . . . . . 248–50 5:1.b, 3.a,c, 5.b, 11.a,d, 14.a, 17.a, 23.a,b . . . . 278–80 6:2.b, 4.a, 7.a, 17.a, 18.b, 26.a. . . . . . . . . . . . 305–7 7:1.c, 2.a, 8.d, 9.c, 13.a, 23.a. . . . . . . . . . . 335–38 8:2.a,c, 8.c. . . . . . . . . . . 403–4 8:16.a, 19.b. . . . . . . . . . . . 407 9:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460 9:17.a, 21.d, 22.a, 23.c, 24.e, 25.e, 26.f,h, 27.a. . . . . . . . . . . 446–49 10:1.d, 9.d, 10.d, 13.c, 16.b. . . . . . . . . . . . 506–9 11:6.d,g, 15.c, 20.c, 29.a. . . . . . . . . . . 509–12

Daniel (Vulg.) 1:2.c,e, 3.a,b, 5.c,d, 6.a, 7.a, 9.b, 10.d, 11.a, 15.a, 17.a, 20.a . . . . . . 137–39 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 (2:4.c) 2:1.c, 5.b,d, 6.a, 9.b, 10.b, 13.a, 14.a,c, 15.a, 18.a, 23.a, 24.a, 33.a, 34.b. . 177–80 2:27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 2:35.c,d, 2:38.a, 2:40.c, 2:41.b,d, 44.b. . . 181–82 3:7.a, 17.a, 25.b. . . . . . 225–27 4:4.b, 8.c, 12.a, 15.e, 27.b,c,e. . . . . . . . 248–49 5:3.b,c, 11.a, 14.a . . . . 278–79 6:6.a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306 6:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319 6:11, 15. . . . . . . . . 306 (6:6.a) 7:5.b,e, 8.d, 11.a. . . . . 335–36 7:22.a. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338 8:2.c, 5.d, 11.b, 12.a, 14.a, 14.b, 22.b, 25.c, 27.b. . . 403–8 9:10.a, 20.c, 21.c, 22.a, 24.e,j, 25.a, 26.c,f, 27.a,d,e. . . 445–49 9:27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490 10:1.d, 6.a, 10.c, 13.b, 16.b, 19.b. . . . . . . . . . . . 506–8 11:1.b, 2.e, 3.a, 6.g. . . . 508–9 11:20.c, 30.a. . . . . . . . . . . 511

Hosea 1–2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466, 467 1:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322 2:18–23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466 2:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465 4:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464 8:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 9:3–4. . . . . . . . . . . . . .137, 157 9:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 13:5–7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359 13:7–8. . . . . . . . 341, 345, 392 13:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358 14:1–8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480 14:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466 14:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479

Joel 2–28 [3:1]. . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 2:20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420, 518 3. . . . . . . . . . . . .342, 361, 448

Amos 1–2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207, 531 1:11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466 3:7. . . . . . . . . . . 210, 212, 491 4:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509 4:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405 5:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358 6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301 6:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513 7–8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371 7:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356 7:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474 7:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 7:17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 8:1–2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 8:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429 8:11–12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 550 8:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444, 518 9:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509 9:11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 535 9:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480

Obadiah 12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360

Jonah 1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .386 1:5–6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427 3:5–9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477 3:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472

Micah 3:5, 11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 4:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260 5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .343 6:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465

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598 Daniel Nahum 2:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 3:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518

Habakkuk 1:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357, 359 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270 2:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385 2:2–3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 535 2:3. . . . . . . . . . . 411, 429, 518 3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527 7:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 7:5–8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429 7:8, 14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

Zephaniah 1:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421 2:8, 10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420

Haggai 1:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293, 471

1:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 2:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469 2:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293

Zechariah 1. . . . . . . . . . . . .428, 450, 459 1–6 . . . . . . .199, 339, 371, 517 1:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293 1:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 1:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293 1:7–17 . . . . 406, 411, 423, 424 1:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517 1:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428, 450 1:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386 1:18–21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 1:21; 2:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386 2:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325 3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527 3:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406 4:4–5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517 4:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260

4:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517 4:14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488 5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 5:5–10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 5:5–11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 5:11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 6:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517 7:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293 7:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464 7:14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421, 474 8:23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160, 336 9:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518 10:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420 12–14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342 14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518 14:1–5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 14:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375

Malachi 1:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473 2:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 512 3:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421

New Testament Matthew 1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .438 1–2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 1:1–17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433 3:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 4:1–2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477 4:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490 5:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 5:11–12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242 6:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 6:5–6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319 10:24–33. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 11:25–27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 11:28–30. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270 13:43; 16:37–39. . . . . . . . . 107 19:28. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 21:25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 22:21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319 23:32. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438 24:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 24:30. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337 24:38–39. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301 25:46. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 26:64. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337 27:11–14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 28:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 28:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 28:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . 332, 398 28:20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240

Mark 1:11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263

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1:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218, 398 2:1–12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208 2:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 4:30–32. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268 6:21–28. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294 6:26. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321 7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 8:31, 38. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 9:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 9:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 10:45. . . . . 106, 328, 367, 398 11:25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 12:17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 12:27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 564 13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 13:26. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337 14:60–61. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 14:62. . . . . . . . . . . . . 106, 337 15:4–5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 15:24. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234 15:43. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218

Luke 1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .239, 426 1–2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483 1:52. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 1:68. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 1:77. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428 2:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338 9:51. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476 11:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 12:16–21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271

12:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 12:20. . . . . . . . . . . . . 260, 301 15:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 17:20–21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 18:11, 13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 20:17–18 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218 20:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 21:19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242 21:27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337 22:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 22:41. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 23:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239

John 3:27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 5:28–29. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

Acts 1:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369 1:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 2:17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 2:24–25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 563 3:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 4:18–20. . . . . . . . . . . 319, 322 4:19–20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 4:26–28. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327 5:19–20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322 5:20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 5:29. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239, 319 5:30–31. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 563 7:60. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 9:17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235

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Scripture and Extrabiblical Index 599

9:37, 39. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 9:40. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 10:3, 9, 30. . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 12:1–10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322 12:22–23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270 12:23. . . . . . . . . . . . . 271, 296 13:2–3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477 15:20, 29. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 16:19–26. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322 20:36; 21:5 . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 24–26 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239

Ephesians

Romans

Colossians

1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 556 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323 2:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 2:4–9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270 6:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397 8:36–37. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323 8:37. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240 8:38. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 556 9:13–14, 33. . . . . . . . . . . . 302 11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 11:17–22 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438 12:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 13. . . . . . . . . . . . 219, 388, 584 13:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237, 267 13:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 556 14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 14:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240

1 Corinthians . . . . . . . . . . . .

3:1–12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398 6:10–18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 565 6:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 556

Philippians 1:12–20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323 1:21–26. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324 2:5–11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398 2:10–11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326 3:20; 4:6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320 4:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 1:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361, 556 1:16–20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557 2:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396

1 Thessalonians 4–5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 4:17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369

2 Thessalonians 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107, 110 2:1–12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437

Hebrews 6:4–8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298 11:33. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324 11:33–34. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312 11:33–38. . . . . . 108, 221, 302 11:34. . . . . . 241, 241–42, 242 13:14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320

1:27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271 8–10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158, 168 10:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 13:3. . . . . . . . . . . 227 (3:28.c) 15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 564 15:23–28. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

1 Peter

Galatians

1 John

3:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 563

2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

2:22–23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 4:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242

2 Peter 3:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218

2:18, 22. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437 18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

Jude 9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .546 14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 570

Revelation 1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 1:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 566 1:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337 1:11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385 1:14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336 1:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385 2–3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 568 2:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 2:14, 20. . . . . . . . . . . 158, 168 3:14–22. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 4–5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 4:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 5:6. . . . . . . . . . . 218, 219, 398 6:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434 13. . . . 108, 237, 388, 391, 584 13:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 13:1–4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359 13:1–7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386 13:5–6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 13:18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231 15:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325 17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 17:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386 17:14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218 18:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271 19:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 20 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .107, 514 20:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338, 361 20:11. . . . . . . . . . 181 (2:35.d) 21:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356 21:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219, 385 21:26. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325 22:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 22:26. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325

Deuterocanonical Works Tobit

Judith

1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 1:10–11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 3:11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 12:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427 12:9. . . . . . . . . . . 249 (4:27.c) 12:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 13:7, 11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 14:11 . . . . . . . . . . 249 (4:27.c) 14:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460

1:6. . . . . . . . . . . . 179 (2:14.b) 3:8. . . . . . . . . . . 232, 309, 319 6:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319 8:5; 9:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 10:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525 10:5; 12:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158

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Wisdom of Solomon 10:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375

19:1–19:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431

Ecclesiasticus 8:18; 8:18–12:11; 12:11. . . 210 17:17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527 25:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336 36 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430 39:1–39:4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290 42:17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375

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600 Daniel Baruch 5.7; 9.2; 12.5; 20.5–6; 47.2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477 51. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549

Bel and the Snake 3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 7. . . . . . . . . . . . . .180 (2:33.b)

1 Maccabees 1. . . . . 537, 538, 539, 541, 560 1–4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380, 489 1:1–4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420 1:10–28. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381 1:11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490 1:11–15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428 1:15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539 1:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 538 1:17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359 1:17–19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 538 1:20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381 1:20–24. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 1:20–64. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284 1:24. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 1:24–32. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431 1:29–30. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431 1:29–32. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 540 1:29–38. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421 1:29–40. . . . . . . . . . . 352, 540 1:29–53. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381 1:31. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541 1:38–39. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474 1:39. . . . . . 406, 424, 472, 526 1:39–40. . . . . . . . . . . 423, 475 1:41–42. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541 1:41–43. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 1:41–59. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490 1:41–64. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 540 1:43. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428 1:45. . . . . . . . . . 423, 480, 526 1:45–47. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472 1:47. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 1:52–53. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428

1:54. . 103, 381, 424, 425, 482 1:56. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 1:59. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424, 552 1:60–64. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541 1:62–63. . . . . . . . . . . 158, 490 1:63. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539 1:64. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428 2. . . . . 158, 261, 380, 431, 539 2–4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542 2:7–12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475 2:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541 2:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421 2:29. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425 2:31–38. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541 2:40–44. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542 2:42. . . . . . 366, 376, 524, 541 2:44. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542 2:59. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242 2:59–60. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 3:5–8; 3:16–22 . . . . . . . . . 542 3:18–19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 3:28–31. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537 3:34. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359 3:41. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541 3:44–46. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477 3:45. . . . . . . . . . 423, 424, 474 3:52–53, 58–60; 4:8–4:11. . 542 4:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 4:30–33. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542 4:36–59. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487 4:38. . . . . . . . . . 406, 424, 474 4:42–61. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 496 4:52. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381 4:52–53. . . . . . . . . . . 425, 552 6:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381 6:18–24. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542 7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .425 7:13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376 9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .425 10:20; 14:43. . . . . . . . . . . . 289

2 Maccabees 3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .284, 536 4. . . . . . . . .422, 489, 537, 538

4–5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489 4:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 4:7–29. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431 4:21–22. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 538 4:33. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489 5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527 5:5–14, 21–23. . . . . . . . . . 540 5:27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 6. . . . . . . . . . . . 380, 423, 540 6:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424 6:11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541 6:13–16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431 7. . . . 233, 238, 239, 242, 380 7:34. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421 9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256 9:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421 9:17. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 11:24–25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 540 13:4–8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233

4 Maccabees 5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158

1 Esdras 1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 3–4 . . . 142, 182, 182–83, 183 3:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314 4:46. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 4:58. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 4:58. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263

2 Esdras 2; 5:13, 20; 6:31, 35. . . . . . 477 6:59. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424 7:32–44. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514 9:24. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 11–12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 11–13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339 12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391 12:10–12. . . . . . . . . . 373, 374 12:11–12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 12:51. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 13. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 13:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386

Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2 Baruch 39 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

1 Enoch 1–36 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 1.5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260 1:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .364 6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421

9780310526155_WBC_Daniel_329-600.indd 600

6:7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427 9–10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .426 9:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369 10:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260 10:12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451 10:15; 12:4; 13:10 . . . . . . . 260 14. . . . . . . . . . . . 336, 343, 364 14:8–22. . . . . . . . . . . 336, 362 14:20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362

14:23. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376 20 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426 20:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369 33:3–4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385 37–71. . . . . . . . . . . . . 102, 364 37–82 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 39 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377 46–48. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 71:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369

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Scripture and Extrabiblical Index 601

81. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 81:93. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529 85–90 . . . . . . . . . . . . 339, 343 86 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421 89 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358 89–90 . . . . 357, 368, 419, 451 89:73. . . . . . . . . . . . . 423, 572 90 . . . . . . . . . . . 102, 411, 432 90:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426 90:20–27. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 90:38. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377 91:1–17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451 91:12–17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 93:1–3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 93:1–10. . . . . . . . . . . 200, 451 93:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 102–4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 564

103:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 106:2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336

Jubilees 19:8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160

Sibylline Oracles 3:265–94. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489 3:388–400. . . . . . . . . 373, 380 4. . . . . . . . . . . . . 187, 360, 373

Testament of Joseph 2:7; 3:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160

Testament of Judah 15:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158

Testament of Levi 1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 2:5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427 3:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 6:2; 8:19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338 16:1; 17:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451 18:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 18:11, 14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375

Testament of Reuben 1:10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158

Testament of Moses 1:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385 2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .385, 549 10:9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549

Mishnah, Talmud, and Rabbinic Works Mishnah ’Abot

Mishnah Uqtzin

1:3, 11; 2.12. . . . . . . . . . . . 261 3:16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300 4:4, 11, 12. . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 5:1–6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160

3:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

Mishnah Berakhot 4:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316

Mishnah Makshirin 1:1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

Babylonian Talmud Berakhot

38 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 92b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252, 257 96 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 98a. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .398 98 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

55–57 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 55b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197, 212

Pesiqta Rabbati

Babylonian Talmud Yoma 4a. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369

Mishnah Sanhedrin

Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin

6:3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234

22a. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289

20:4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369

Leviticus Rabbah 33:6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

The Dead Sea Scrolls 1Q20 (1QapGen; Genesis Apocryphon) 2.1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 2.10. . . . . . . . . . . . 337 (7.15.b 21.8. . . . . . . . . . . 306 (6:14.a) 21.16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356 22.2. . . . . . . . . . . 336 (7:11.a)

1Q71 (1QDana) 1:10–17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 1:[12], 16. . . . . . . . . 139 (12.a) 2:2–6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 2:4.a. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177

1Q72 (1QDanb) 3:22–30. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

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1QHa (Thanksgiving Scroll) 2.25. . . . . . . . . . . 449 (9:27.a) 3.21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382 5.1–19. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308 8.35. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449

1QM (War Scroll) 1.2. . . . . . . . . . . 512 (11:32.a) 1.5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376 3.4–5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 9.15–16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426 10.10. . . . . . . . . . . . . 375, 382 12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527 12.8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382 12.8–9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376 12.14–16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376 15.14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375

17.5–8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369 17.6–8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376

1QS (Community Rule) 1.10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 552 1.22–2.1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452 6.20–23. . . . 432, 449 (9:27.b) 10.1–3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 11.7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 552

1QSa (Rule of the Congregation) 1.1. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201

1QpHab (Habakkuk Commentary) 7.5–8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429

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602 Daniel 7.5, 8, 14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 12.1, 7. . . . . . 180–81 (2:34.b) 7.14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

4Q112 (4QDan ) a

1:16–20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 1:20.a,c. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 2:9–11, 19–49. . . . . . . . . . . 99 2:24.a. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 2:35.c. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 3:1–2, 4:32–33 [29–30], 5:5–7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 5:7.a. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 5:12–14, 16–19, 7:5–7, 25–28, 8:1–5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 8:3.b,c. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403 8:4.a. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404 10:16–20, 11:13–16. . . . . . . 99

11:15.b. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 510

4Q113 (4QDan ) b

2:20.b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 2:29.b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 5:10–12, 14–16, 19–22, 6:7–21, 26–28 [8–22, 27–29] . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 7:1.c. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 7:1–6, 11(?), 26–28, 8:1–8. . 99 8:3.b,c. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403 13–16. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

4Q114 (4QDanc) 10:5–9, 11–16, 21, 11:1–2. . 99 11.1.b. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 508 11:15.b. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 510 13–17, 25–29. . . . . . . . . . . . 99

4Q174 (4QFlor, 4QFlorilegium) 12:10.b. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515

4Q242 (4QPrNab; Prayer of Nabonidus) 1.4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

6Q7 (6QpapDan) 8:16–17 (?), 20–21 (?), 10:8–16. . . . . . . . . . . . 99 10:10c, 13.c, 15.a, 16.b . . 507–8 11:33.d. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 512 11:33–36, 38.8 . . . . . . . . . . 99

CD (Damascus Rule) 4.4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 20.8. . . . 337–38 (7:18.a), 375

Classical and Ancient Christian Writings Against Apion 1.17 [113] . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424 1.19 [128–41]. . . . . . . . . . 262 1.20 [1.146]. . . . . . . . . . . . 253 1.151–53 [1.20]. . . . . . . . . 286

Cyropaedia 1–8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293 1.21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204 4–7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286 8.2.10–12 . . . . . . . 224 (3:2.c) 8.5.17–20. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204 8.11. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314

Histories (Herodotus) 1.55–56. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204 1.86. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 1.86–87. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230 1.95, 130. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 1.107–8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186 107–9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .204 1.108. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 1:181–83. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 1.183. . . . . . . . . . . . . 186, 231 1.185–87. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 1.186–88. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289

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1.186. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 1.188. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288 1.190–91. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286 1.195. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316 1.209–10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186 3.140. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 3.30. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186 3.68–79. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 3.71, 76, 83–84. . . . . . . . . 314 3.86–79. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 3.89. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313 3.128. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314 3.140. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 4.69. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 7.10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262 7.12–19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186 7.19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 8.12–14. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 8.98. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259

Histories (Polybius) 26.1.4. . . . . . . . . . . 225 (3:5.f)

Jewish Antiquities

10.10.2 [10.200]. . . . . . . . 183 10.10.3 [10.198]. . . . . . . . 198 10.10.4 [10.210] . . . . . . . . 108 10.11.3 [10.243–44]. . . . . 280 (5:25.c) 10.11.7 [10.276]. . . . 108, 403 11.8.5 [11.329–39]. . . . . . 205

Jewish War 1.1 [1.31–33]. . . . . . . . . . . 539 6.5.4 [6.310–14]. . . . . . . . 108

Preparation for the Gospel 9.41.6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252

Problemata 919b. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225

To the Romans 5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317

Works and Days 106–201 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187

10.10.1–10.11.7 [10.186–281]. . . . . . 108

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Subject Index Abed Nego, 136, 138, 167, 177, 223–24, 228, 243, 274. See also renaming abomination, 103–4, 107, 109, 121, 383, 424, 440, 443, 449, 482, 489–80, 497, 504, 517, 531, 540 Abraham, 162, 198, 214, 431, 470 Ahiqar, 141, 155, 182, 188, 198, 263, 308 Akkadian Akkadian (Hellenistic) Dynastic Prophecy, 187, 409, 516 language, 135, 155–56, 279, 289, 513 (10:45.a). See also under Daniel. texts, 152–53, 155–56, 186–87, 203, 253, 256, 262, 286, 309, 344, 409, 412, 574. Alexander, 110, 126, 205, 346, 359–60, 371–74, 379–80, 415, 417, 420, 431, 450, 531–33, 535, 560, 577 ancient of days, 102, 103, 337, 393 angel, 107–8, 227, 272, 317, 370, 400, 481, 526, 544, 556, 565–66 Daniel, 142 Gabriel, 107, 371, 407, 415–16, 426–27, 446 (9:21.a,c, 22.a), 450, 457, 478, 480, 482, 484–90, 496–98, 527 Michael, 119, 369–70, 382, 422, 426, 505, 519, 526–28, 531, 546, 555 animal, See beast antichrist, 110, 114–15, 119–21, 124, 391, 420, 433, 436–37, 536, 542, 544, 562 Antiochus IV, 98, 99, 101, 103–4, 107–8, 110, 114–15, 118–20, 122, 124, 127, 131, 136–37, 225 (3:5.f), 256, 284, 312, 340, 344, 346, 350, 352, 359, 373, 377–81, 384–85, 389–92, 396–97, 401, 405, 406, 408, 411–12, 416–17, 420–24, 426, 428–33, 435–38, 480, 482, 486, 489–91, 496, 500–02, 510–12, 520, 523–24, 526, 529–546, 550, 552–54, 561–65, 571, 574, 577. See also Seleucid. apocalypse, 107–8, 121, 125–26, 141, 212, 397, 409, 550, 567–69, 579 Aquila, 105, 177 (2:1.c), 447 (9:24.d), 506 (10:1.d), 507 (10:10.c), 509 (11:2.e) Arabic Empire, 114, 117–18, 126 translation of Daniel, 116, 139 (1:10.b), 278 (5:2.b), 306 (6:18.b), 335–36 (7:4.d, 5.e, 7.a), 338 (7:25.a), 447 (9:24.g) Aramaic language, 192, 250, 278 (5:3.d). See also under language under Daniel, book of

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Arabian Nights, 207 aretalogy, 142, 182–83, 227–28, 241, 251, 308, 312 Artaxerxes, 124, 284, 293, 460, 484, 488, 531, 538. See also Cyrus; Darius; Persia; Xerxes Aryok, 175–76, 179 (2:15.a, 16.a) 189, 195, 209, 283, 285 Ashpenaz, 139 (1:10.b), 147–48, 165, 167, 169, 170 Asshurbanipal, 156, 186, 419. See also Assyria; Esarhaddon; Sennacherib assimilation, 150, 159, 165, 168–69, 225 (3:7.a), 230, 280 (5:25.a,c), 447 (9:24.f), 507–8 (10:9.d, 13.c, 16.b) Assyria, 120, 127, 161, 164, 187, 197, 232–33, 261, 314, 319, 346, 360, 373, 451, 492, 515–18, 529, 533, 560, 562. See also Asshurbanipal; Esarhaddon; Sennacherib Azariah, 9, 136, 157, 175. See also Abed Nego; renaming Baal, 187, 199, 344–47, 364, 368, 424, 490, 500, 524, 540, 543, 548. See also Canaanite religion; Danel; El Babylon Babylonian Chronicles, 152–53, 286, 294 city, 270, 272, 286–89, 294, 356, 357, 421, 458, 507 (10:4.a), 532–33, 576, 586 empire, 97–98, 110, 114, 117, 120, 123, 126, 136–37 (1:1.a,b, 3c), 143, 149–55, 161–68, 171–72, 186–89, 191, 193–98, 203–4, 209, 215, 217, 231, 238, 247, 252, 261–62, 270, 282–83, 285–86, 293–96, 300, 313, 322, 324, 340–41, 354, 358, 363, 374, 383, 419, 460, 516, 560, 568, 578. See also the four under empire experts, 144, 155–56, 182–83, 196, 209, 210–13, 220, 233, 245, 276, 574. See also magician language. See Akkadian literature. See texts under Akkadian people, 144, 147, 157, 166, 179 (2:14.b). See also Kasdite period, 156, 161, 171, 216, 228, 233, 314, 372, 374, 384, 417–18, 424, 426, 428, 430, 433, 445 (9:31.b), 458, 470, 472, 480, 486–87, 489, 491, 497 religion, 160, 162–63, 165, 166, 168, 184, 186, 197–98, 203, 211, 213, 220, 230,

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604 Daniel 231, 233, 253, 260, 262, 285–86, 295–96, 345, 356, 378, 412, 461, 551. See also Bel; divination; Marduk symbol, 259, 271, 396, 411 temple, 161, 186, 262 See also Belshazzar; Nabonidus; Nabopolassar; Nebuchadnezzar II; Shinar; Bahman Yasht, 187 beast, 107–8, 110, 111, 119, 122, 237, 271, 323, 347, 355, 420, 577, 581 See also End, The; horn; the four under empire Bel, 103, 138 (1:7.b), 154, 158, 162, 180 (2:33.b), 186, 231, 278, 280 (5:30.a), 316. See also Marduk; religion under Babylon Belshazzar, 101, 125–26, 151, 203–4, 257, 278–80 (5:3.c, 7.c, 11.d, 26.a, 31.a), 282–301, 312, 319, 353, 356, 358, 374, 383, 385, 392, 416, 418–19, 433, 558, 571, 575–76 Belteshazzar, 136, 167, 176, 213, 309. See also renaming Cairo Genizah, 115, 132, 138, 142 Canaanite religion, 125, 187, 199, 260, 344–45, 462, 520, 527. See also Baal; Danel; El canon, 99–100, 102, 109, 134, 430, 460, 482, 562 Chaldeans. See Kasdite. clay, 176–77, 180 (2:33.b), 181 (2:41.b,e), 182 (2:45.a), 184, 192, 201, 204, 238, 282, 316 court tale, 141–43, 146, 182–83, 188, 229, 241, 281, 308 Cuthaean Legend of Naram-­Sin, 251 Cyrus Cylinder, 285–86 Cyrus (Koresh), 136, 149, 151, 161, 172, 203–4, 212, 216–17, 219, 230, 232, 275, 278, 280, 285–88, 292–94, 305, 307, 313–15, 356, 372, 374, 383, 419–20, 484, 488, 502, 508, 517, 525, 531, 575. Artaxerxes; Daris; Persia; Xerxes Danel, 142, 563. See also Baal; Canaanite Religion; Danel; El Daniel, book of date of composition, 98–103, 122–23, 125, 127–28, 131, 134, 150, 194, 204, 216, 230, 232, 256, 284, 311–12 form criticism. See Form/Structure/ Setting sections language Akkadian, 98, 136 (1:1.a), 137 (1:3.b), 138 (1:7.b), 139 (1:11.a), 147, 193, 187, 197, 224 (3:2.a), 227 (3:29.a), 231, 515

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Aramaic, 98, 100, 103–4, 112, 115, 123, 133, 139 (1:21.b), 144, 175, 192–93, 279 (5:6.a), 314 Egyptian, 197 Greek, 98, 102–5, 123, 132, 224 (3:2.a), 230, 284, 460, 506 (10:1.a), 567. See also Old Greek Text; Theodotian Hebrew, 97–8, 100–1, 103–5, 112, 115–16, 131–33, 136, 192–93 See also Masoretic Text; Qumran Persian, 97, 98, 137 (1:3.a), 138 (1:3.e, 1:5.b), 147, 150, 178 (2:5.c, 2:9.a), 179 (2:14.b), 199, 224–25 (3:2.a,b, 4.a), 279 (5:6.a, 7.b, ) 284, 314, 460, 513 (11:45.a) pseudonymity, 134, 461, 569, 578, 581 reception history, 91–131, 133 source criticism, 186–88, 202–3, 224 (3:2.c), 256-57 textual criticism, 131–33, 194, 256-57, 312. See also Notes sections and Arabic; Cairo Genizah; Hexapla; Masoretic Text; Old Greek Text; Theodotian; Qumran; Symmachus; Syriac; Vulgate Darius Artashata; Codomannus; III, 315 Hystaspis, 293 Ochus; Nothus; II, 459 the Great; I, 280 (5:31.a), 289, 292, 309, 313–14, 419, 459, 484, 488, 531 the Mede, 151, 204, 258, 283, 284, 293–94, 300, 303, 306–7 (6:16.b, 25.a,b), 308–19, 321–22, 324–28, 355, 358–59, 372, 374, 383, 395, 459–460, 508 (10:11.a), 568, 575–76 See also Artaxerxes; Cyrus; Persia; Xerxes David, 106, 161, 166, 214, 218, 235, 252, 263, 298, 361, 366–67, 382, 470–71, 523; See also David; Jehoiakim; Jehoiachin; Jerusalem; Josiah; Judah; Solomon Dead Sea Scrolls. See Qumran diet, 135–36, 143, 145, 148, 150, 152, 157–59, 164, 167–70, 210, 249, 261, 573. See also food diaspora. See dispersion dispersion, 98, 149, 157, 194, 206, 210, 219, 230, 236, 237, 240, 241, 242, 256, 284, 309, 312, 319, 458, 577, 579–81, 585–86. See also exile divination, 136, 149, 155, 166, 168, 171, 174–76, 178 (2:4.c), 196–98, 207, 245, 277, 279 (5:7.a), 345, 574. See also religion under Babylon dream Daniel, 136, 151, 174–78 (2:1.b, 9.a), 183– 90, 195–203, 205–13, 217–18, 220–21, 231, 236, 242, 245–46, 248–49

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Subject Index 605 (4:9.c, 19.a), 254–55, 257, 258–59, 261, 264–69, 274, 277, 290–91, 294, 296–97, 332, 334–35 (7:1.b,c) 338–41, 346, 352–54, 359–60, 365, 370, 384, 399, 450, 460, 524, 571, 577 form criticism, 185–90, 192, 195–96, 251, 254, 264 Joseph, 142, 177 (2:1.c), 183, 185, 188, 190, 197, 251, 349, 399, 419 parallels (extra–­Biblical), 186–87, 196–201, 206, 251, 253, 340, 344, 346, 384, 449, 574 prophecy, 108, 160, 171, 178 (2:4.c), 183, 185–86, 189, 194, 196, 198–201, 206, 211–12, 259, 265, 290–91, 296–97, 384, 409, 461, 541 See also under statue; tree

Egypt, 154, 160–61, 183, 186, 191, 197, 233, 243, 252, 314, 325, 344, 371, 379, 419, 442, 465, 472, 479, 480, 509 (10:4.c), 512 (10:30.b), 514–15, 518, 520, 523, 531, 532–35, 537–40, 543–545, 574 El, 235, 344, 345. See also Baal; Canaanite Religion; Danel; El empire the four, 108, 110–11, 113–14, 117–21, 123, 125–26, 187, 194, 346, 372–74. See also beast; End, The; horn See also under Babylon; Greece; Persia; Rome End, the, 99–103, 107, 109–11, 114, 119–21, 123–245, 162, 172, 176, 187, 190, 201, 204, 212, 217, 300, 305, 347, 355, 368, 373, 383, 392, 400, 402, 408 (8:19.b), 411, 415–16, 424, 428–40, 432, 426, 437, 443, 449 (9:26.g,h, 27.g), 451, 458, 483, 490, 496–98, 503, 505–6, 508 (10:11.a), 510–11 (11:13.b, 16.c, 26.a), 515 (12:13.a), 518, 521, 524, 528, 530, 536, 544–45, 552, 554, 557–58, 564, 567, 570, 574, 581, 584, 585–86. See also beast; horn; the four under empire Enoch, 102, 106, 126, 142, 200, 343, 347, 353, 361, 362, 366, 369, 376, 409, 412, 426, 454, 547, 553, 555, 558, 570, 574, 580, 584. See also 1 Enoch under Scripture Index Esarhaddon, 186, 261, 460. See also Asshurbanipal; Assyria; Sennacherib; eschatology. See End, The Essenes, 101, 158, 551. See also Qumran exile experience, 117–18, 120, 136, 143–44, 147, 149–52, 158–59, 161–64, 167 event, 98, 172, 191 history, 143, 153, 172, 108

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period, 140, 142–43, 150–51, 161 prophecy, 142, 165 See also destruction under Temple of Jerusalem, First; dispersion; food, 156, 159, 168, 245–46, 248–49 (4:12.a, 15.d), 304, 306 (6:18.b), 319, 477. See also diet. form criticism. See Form/Structure/Setting sections God, 98, 112–13, activity, 98, 127, 128, 144–47, 149, 152, 162, 172, 183, 185, 216, 227 faithfulness, 113, 126, 150, 200, 227 grace, 199 love, 185 might, 184–85, 212 name, 198–200 omniscience, 134 provision, 185, 199 reign, 107, 117, 120, 122, 124, 183–84, 190, 194–95, 200, 206, 211–14 source of discernment, 152, 155, 160, 171, 175–76, 183, 189–90, 200 the Father, 112 wisdom, 184, 212 See also aretalogy; messiah; son of man Greece culture, 98, 169, 187, 219, 224, 230–31, 389–90, 412, 416, 424, 433, 490, 496, 515, 524 empire, 110–11, 117, 123, 126, 187, 231, 292, 340, 346, 359, 363, 371–74, 380, 384, 389–90, 396, 402, 407 (8:21.c), 414, 417, 420, 422–23, 528, 531, 554, 575, 577. See also Antiochus IV; Seleucid; the four under empire language. See under language under Daniel, book of See also Hellenistic period Hananiah, 9, 136, 157, 175. See also renaming; Shadrak Harran Nabonidus inscriptions (ANET, 305–16, 560-63), 249 (4:16.a), 253, 285, 356 Hebrew language, 192. See also hendiadys; also under language under Daniel, book of Hellenistic period, 98, 102, 105, 131, 134, 140, 156, 171, 194, 203, 216, 230, 233, 284, 309, 312, 363, 372–73, 417, 451, 458, 491, 506 (10:1.b), 529. See also Greece hendiadys, 180, 192, 247 (4:2.a), 279–80 (5:11.b, 18.b), 311, 338 (7:25.b), 349, 447 (9:23.d), 449 (9:27.g), 453, 464, 522

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606 Daniel Herodotus, 98, 155, 182, 186–87, 198, 200, 204, 207, 230, 231, 233, 259, 262, 282, 286–87, 288–89, 313–14, 316, 246, 545, 569, 584. See also Histories under Scripture Index Hexapla, 103, 105. See also Old Greek text; Origen; Symmachus horn anatomy, 110, 114, 118–23, 125, 202, 234, 278 (5:1.b), 333–34, 335–36 (7:4.e, 8.c), 340–43, 345–46, 348–52, 355, 359–60, 365, 371–73, 378–81, 386, 390–397, 401–5, 409–16, 419–21, 430, 432, 433, 437, 439, 490, 532, 577 instrument, 223, 225 (3:5.a), 228 See also beast; End, The; the four under empire idol, 137, 151, 163, 167–68, 186–87, 201, 225 (3:12.a), 229, 232, 237–38, 266, 281–82, 284, 288, 295, 299, 301, 319, 434, 523, 562. See also idol of Nebuchadnezzar under statue; inspiration, 101, 104, 114, 133–34, 170, 242, 252, 272, 297, 393, 461, 495, 519, 526, 569–70 irony, 140, 146, 193, 207, 214, 283, 311, 485, 490 Jehoiakim, 135, 145–46, 152, 157, 161, 163–64, 172, 271. See also David; Jehoiachin; Jerusalem; Josiah; Judah; Solomon Jehoiachin, 156, 158, 161; See also David; Jehoiakim; Jerusalem; Josiah; Judah; Solomon Jerusalem fall, 142, 144–46, 149, 152–53, 161–65, 170, 214, 224 (3:1.a), 231, 235, 248, 252, 390, 411, 415, 428, 454, 458–60, 468–69, 474–75, 477, 483, 488, 490, 495–98, 517, 536, 548 (place), 98, 119, 150, 131, 137, (1:1.b), 150, 161, 209, 230, 276, 301, 316, 320, 326, 352, 367, 411, 416, 422, 431, 458, 470–72, 474, 476, 485, 489, 493, 513 (11:39.b), 518, 525, 534–35, 537–40, 562, 574, 577, 579–80, 584–86 restoration, 149, 151, 172, 218, 293, 459, 477, 487, 491, 496–97, 525, 546, 548–49 Jesus, 103, 106–9, 11–13, 117, 120, 123–24, 127, 133, 143, 160, 208, 218, 239–40, 242, 260, 265, 269, 327, 369, 396–99, 435, 437–38, 483–84, 497–98, 541, 545, 557, 564, 566, 583 Joseph, 129, 140–42, 151, 154, 157, 160, 165, 169, 183, 188, 190–91, 197, 290, 318, 349, 399, 507, 514 (12:5.a), 574. See also under dream; also Old Testament under prophecy and under prophet

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Josephus, 108–9, 183, 198, 205, 252, 280 (5:25.a,c), 286, 301, 325, 369, 403, 424, 431, 529, 538–39. See also Against Apion, Jewish Antiquities, and Jewish War under Scripture Index Josiah, 151. See also David; Jehoiakim; Jehoiachin; Jerusalem; Judah; Solomon Judah, 136, 145–46, 149–50, 154, 161–62, 166, 204, 214–16, 273, 297, 341, 390, 421, 432, 450, 460, 469–71, 474, 493, 538. See also David; Jehoiakim; Jehoiachin; Jerusalem; Josiah; Solomon Kasdite (Kasdim), 125, 147, 155, 161, 167, 174–75, 177–78 (2:2.a, 7.a), 197, 204, 233, 237–39, 245, 276–78, 442. See also people under Babylon kingdom of God. See reign under God Kittim. See under Rome Ludlul Bēl Nēmeqi (ANET 596–600), 309 Maccabee family, 110, 353, 366, 581 rebellion, 242, 339, 366, 432, 542 period, 311, 569 magician, 168, 183. See also experts under Babylon Masoretic Text, 100, 103–5, 115–16, 121, 132–33, 138 (1:4.d,e, 7.a,b), 146, 153, 177–82 (2:2.a, 4.c, 5.a, 10.b, 15.a, 38.a, 40.a,d, 43.b, 45.a), 189, 199, 225–29 (3:3.b, 15.e, 16.a, 23.a, 30.a), 248–49 (4:12.a, 15.b), 256–57, 274–75, 280 (5:23.b, 25.c) 284, 303 (6:7.a, 26.b), 306–7, 317, 319, 335–36 (6:4.e, 5.b,d, 8.d, 9.c), 403–9 (7:4.a, 8.c, 12.a, 13.e, 14.a, 15.a, 19.b), 423, 444–49 (9:3.a, 17.a, 24.h, 25.b,f, 26.c,f,h, 27.d,e), 490, 507–12 (10:7.b, 9.d, 11:1.a,b, 5.b, 6.g, 28.b, 30.c) 520, 522. See also Hebrew under languages under Daniel, book of Marduk, 145, 154, 162, 203, 253, 262, 285, 288, 292, 347, 396, 460. See also Bel; religion under Babylon Meshak, 136, 138, 167, 177, 223–24, 228. See also Mishael; renaming messiah, 101, 106, 108, 110, 112–20, 126, 219, 366–67, 391, 396, 398, 420, 433, 437, 447–48 (9:24.j, 25.b), 484, 489, 497, 536, 542, 562. See also antichrist; Jesus miracle, 99, 140, 143, 234, 239, 242, 308, 318, 324–26, 352–53, 525, 561, 582 Mishael, 9, 136, 157, 175. See also Meshak; renaming

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Subject Index 607

Moses, 167, 200, 237, 353, 366, 369, 442, 453, 464, 468, 493. See also Old Testament under prophet Nabonidus, 101, 125, 186, 198, 203, 230, 249 (4:16.a), 251–53, 256, 267, 279 (5:7.c), 282, 285–89, 292, 295, 301, 352, 356–57, 578. See also Babylon, Belteshazzar; Nabopolassar, 154–55, 161, 177 Nabu, 136, 154 Nebuchadnezzar II, 111, 119, 135–37, 144–46, 149, 151–56, 159, 161–67, 169, 171–72, 176–77, 181 (2:38.a), 182 (2:46.b), 186, 188–91, 195–97, 199, 201–9, 211–15, 217–221, 224, 226, 228–41, 246, 248–74, 279, 283–85, 287–92, 294–99, 301, 307, 315, 322, 325–28, 341, 353–54, 357–58, 360, 365, 370–72, 374, 383, 388–89, 392, 395, 530, 545, 558, 568, 571, 573, 575–56; See also Babylon; Nabopolassar; Nebuchadnezzar II numerology, 136–37, 160, 203–4, 231, 485, 490, 565–66 Old Greek Text, 100, 102–6. See also Daniel (OG) under Scripture Index Origen, 103, 105, 112, 485. See also Hexapla Paul, 107, 120, 167, 237, 239, 270, 316, 324, 375, 385, 397–98, 437, 557, 567, 570 Persia culture, 126, 150, 187, 204, 209, 233, 259, 260, 309, 314–15, 318, 344, 359, 519–20, 574, empire, 110, 113, 117, 120, 123, 126, 162, 186–87, 194, 202–4, 231–32, 252, 262, 282–83, 286–87, 292–93, 300, 312, 323, 327, 340, 346, 363, 373–74, 383–84, 402, 404 (8:4.a), 412, 414–15, 417, 419–20, 422–23, 432–33, 471, 516, 527–28, 531, 554–56, 568, 575, 577. See also the four under empire language. See under language under Daniel, book of period, 97–8, 102, 150–51, 155–56, 171, 178, 199, 216, 228, 230, 233, 241, 278 (5:2.b), 284, 287, 309, 312, 314, 372, 426, 428, 451, 458, 491, 529, 577, 585 religion, 260. See also Zoroastrianism See also Artaxerxes; Cyrus; Darius; Xerxes Peshitta. See Syriac postcolonialism, 130, 140, 164, 193–94, 206–7, 262, 322-23, 326 postexile, 151, 163, 319. See also Temple of Jerusalem, Second postmodernism, 128–31

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pottery. See clay prayer Daniel, 183, 185, 189–90, 195, 209–11, 304, 308, 311, 315–16, 319–22, 328, 442–43, 444–46 (9:3.b, 4.a, 11.c, 21.c), 452–59, 461–62, 465, 470–81, 485–86, 491–498, 557, 572, 576, 581 deliverance, 230 form, 148, 308, 452–56, 461–62, 467, 478, 548 law, 311–12, 315–16 rite, 156, 166 revelation, 211 prophecy Daniel, 101, 108–11, 116, 118, 121–24, 126–27, 160, 186, 189, 215, 258, 281–83, 290, 296, 301, 324, 339, 374, 384–85, 410, 450–51, 455–58, 461, 481–83, 487, 495–96, 515–16, 518, 520–21, 525, 531, 536, 539, 541, 544–45, 547, 550, 553–54, 573, 586 Ezekiel, 518, 547, 573 Isaiah, 165, 168, 282, 491, 518, 573 Jeremiah, 152, 204, 287, 451, 459, 483, 487, 495–96, 525 Jesus, 112–13, 160 Joel, 518 Maccabees, 561 Near East, 186, 187, 409, 516 Old Testament, 123, 217, 264, 266, 342, 366, 385, 462, 483, 491, 518, 536, 545, 553 phenomenon, 133–34, 206, 239, 550, 553–54, 571–72 Zechariah, 428, 450, 459, 518, 573 See also under dream; exile prophet Daniel, 100, 109, 114, 123, 171, 211–12, 214, 219, 268–69, 290, 297–98, 339, 342, 495, 573, 566, 573, 586 Old Testament, 109, 150, 154–55, 160, 190, 196–97, 200, 209–10, 214, 217–18, 228, 265, 281, 293, 298, 325, 339, 341–42, 371, 376, 385, 387, 418, 427, 429, 432, 453, 458, 460, 462, 468, 470, 471–72, 464, 480, 482–83, 487, 491, 518–19, 535, 545, 549, 554, 558, 560, 573–74, 581, 583. See also Moses; New Testament, 160, 218, 398 Pseudo–­Saadia, 116, 118, 138 (1:5.d), 226 (3:16.b), 249 (4:16.a), 306 (6:18.b), 336 (7:9.a). See also Saadia. pseudonymity. See under Daniel, book of Qumran, 98–104, 109, 132, 185, 193, 199, 200–1, 244, 251, 253, 256, 308, 330–32, 352, 356, 361, 369, 377, 382,

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608 Daniel 410, 412, 421, 426, 429, 440, 447, 451–52, 485–87, 501, 512, 514, 517, 518–19, 541, 547, 549, 552, 563, 564, 574. See also under Scripture Index reader actual reader, 110, 111, 123, 127–28, 130–31, 133, 150, 153, 169, 192–93, 220, 238, 272, 300, 347, 355, 395–96, 400, 438, 570 implied reader, 113, 116, 128, 130, 134, 145, 150, 189–90, 192–93, 196, 204, 216, 218–20, 232, 234, 239, 263–64, 267–68, 274, 281, 296, 340, 370, 372, 386–87, 396, 398–99, 410, 418, 439, 499, 550, 561–62, 571, 582 renaming, 136, 138, 143, 146, 150–51, 157, 164–65, 167–68, 200, 213. See also Abed Nego; Belteshazzar; Meshak; postcolonialism; Shadrak repetition, 132, 138 (7.a), 141, 146–49, 178 (2:7.a), 180–82 (2:31.a, 40.a, 46.a), 189, 194, 225–26 (3:3.a, 23.a), 227–29, 231, 239, 249 (4:15.c), 255, 279 (5:11.d), 282–83, 290, 295, 311–12, 314, 335–36 (7:1.b, 7:11.a), 347, 349–52, 378, 384, 387, 403 (8:2.a), 415, 417, 448, 453, 457, 466, 472, 487, 507–10 (10:8.b, 19.b; 11:6.d, 10.a, 13.a), 523–24, 530–31, 561, 571 resurrection, 104, 107, 112, 239–40, 242, 324, 497, 514 (12:2.b,c), 520, 525, 547–49, 552, 563–65, 583 reversal, 112, 145, 147–48, 162, 172, 213, 236, 242, 260, 299, 384, 396, 416, 440, 482–83, 530, 548–49, 562 Rome city, 237, 379, 421, 535–36 empire, 108, 110–11, 113, 117–18, 123–24, 126, 187, 371, 373, 391, 396, 398–99, 420, 512 (11:30.a), 535, 539. See also the four under empire Kittim, 504, 518, 539–40 period, 102, 105, 109, 116 Saadia, 116–18, 139 (1:16.a)m 224, 234, 306 (6:18.b), 335–36 (7:5.a, 9.b), 508 (10:19.b). See also Pseudo-­Saadia Seleucid dynasty, 98, 202, 309, 374, 379–80, 390, 398, 419–20, 425, 448, 502, 516, 524, 530, 532–43, 538, 540, 543, 562, 579. See also Antiochus IV; Greece period, 103, 218, 448. See also Hellenestic period Sennacherib, 185, 238, 436. See also Asshurbanipal; Assyria; Esarhaddon

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Septuagint, 104–5, 109, 376, 519, 527, 543, 550. See also Hexapla; Old Greek Text; Theodotian; Shadrak, 136, 138 (1:7.b), 167, 177, 228. See also renaming Shinar, 137 (1:2.f), 146, 151–55, 162. See also Babylon Solomon, 155, 161, 169, 186, 231, 316, 431, 464, 470, 574. See also David; Jehoiakim; Jehoiachin; Jerusalem; Josiah; Judah son of man, 102, 106, 108, 112, 337 (7:13.b,c), 364–69, 397–98, 427 statue dream of Nebuchadnezzar, 114, 176–77, 181 (2:40.d), 183–89, 192, 195, 201–204, 213–14, 354, 360, 363 idol of Nebuchadnezzar, 223–41, 258, 273, 354. See also idol See also Temple of Babylon Sumerian, 156, 179 (2:14.b) Symmachus, 105, 138, 197. See also Daniel (Sym.) under Scripture Index Syriac, 103, 105, 113–14, 132, 263, 335 (7:4.e). See also Daniel (Syr.) under Scripture Index Temple of Babylon. See temple under Babylon Temple of Jerusalem, First articles, 135, 137, 146, 149, 151, 153, 161–63, 166, 172 desecration, 342, 355, 372, 405 (8:11.d), 411, 413, 416, 421–22, 424–25, 438, 472, 474, 486, 504, 517, 579. See also Antiochus IV destruction, 153, 161, 172, 235, 494 place, 146, 152, 316, 326, 367, 442–43, 447, 469–71, 480, 489, 493, 512 (11:31.a), 522, 542 restoration, 429, 435, 456, 479, 486, 496, 585 See also Temple of Jerusalem, Second Temple of Jerusalem, Second, 99, 107, 114, 122, 126, 133, 142, 151–52, 157, 171–72, 231, 347, 428, 435, 445, 445 (9:13.c), 448 (9:25.f), 451, 452, 454, 459, 467, 469, 470, 478, 482–83, 486, 492, 497, 572–73. See also Temple of Jerusalem, First Theodotion, 100, 103, 104–5. See also Daniel (Th.) under Scripture Index Torah, 100, 131, 158, 315, 341, 356, 418, 423, 450, 460, 468–69, 490, 537–38, 541, 551, 573, 580, 585 Turkey, 105, 119–20, 126, 391, 419, 531–35, 540 tree, 187, 245–47, 248–49 (4:11.a, 15.b) 252–55, 259–71, 274, 375

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Subject Index 609

Ugartitic. See Baal; Canaanite mythology; Danel; El

220–21, 252–53, 302, 327, 343, 368, 376, 412, 473, 520, 566, 573–74, 580, 586

Vespasian, 108, 373. See also Rome Vulgate, 104, 112, 132, 257. See also Daniel (Vulg.) under Scripture Index

Xerxes, 200, 284, 293, 313, 419, 460, 531. See also Artaxerxes; Cyrus; Darius; Persia

wine, 135–36, 148, 158, 276–77, 490, 502 wisdom, 141–42, 154, 160, 171, 180, 183–84, 191, 199, 200, 205, 209, 212–13,

Zand-­i Wahman yasn, 216 Zoroastrianism, 187, 197, 199. See also religion under Persia

9780310526155_WBC_Daniel_329-600.indd 609

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9780310526155_WBC_Daniel_329-600.indd 610

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Author Index Abadie, P., 19, 581 Abbott, E. A., 19, 329 Abel, F.-­M., 19, 500 Ackroyd, P. R., 19, 135, 161 Adeyemo, T., 19, 542 Adler, W., 19, 91, 107, 441, 482 Aejmelaeus, A., 19, 445 Africanus, J., 111 Albertz, R., 19, 91, 103, 140, 256, 284, 311, 579, 580 Albo, J., 19, 118 Albrecht, O., 19, 91 Alexander, J. B., 19, 222, 233 Alexander, P. S., 19, 250 Alfrink, B., 19, 135, 275, 293, 500, 514 Allen, S., 19, 401 Allen, L. C., 19, 500, 518 Alomía, M., 19, 125, 162, 164, 232, 237, 272, 317, 312, 366, 420, 536 Alon, A., 19, 357 Alonso Díaz, J., 19, 244 Alonso Schökel, L., 19 Alt, A., 19, 173, 275, 289 Altheim, F., 20, Altpeter, G., 20, 329 Anderson, G. A., 20, 249, 447 Anderson, J. G., 20, 571 Anderson, R., 20, 440, 483 Anderson, R. A., 20, 211, 213, 291, 297, 319, 325, 486, 521, 525, 526 Anderson, R. B., 20, 500 Anderson, S. D., 20, 275, 293 Andreasen, N.-­E ., 20, 289 Andrews, D. K., 20, 199 Angel, A. R., 20, 91, 107, 329, 356, 364 Anklesaria, B. T., 20, 173 Anon., 20, 500 Ap-­T homas, 20, 473 Aphrahat., 20, 110, 113, 327, 373 Appler, D., 20, 91, 130, 244, 262 Archer, G. L., 20 Armerding, C., 20, 500 Armistead, D. B., 20 Arnold, B. T., 20, 91, 129, 135, 147, 173, 193, 275, 278, 303, 311 Ashby, G. W., 21, 91 Ashley, T. R., 21, 91, 104, 284, 290, 294 Aspinwall, W., 21, 121, 122, 329 Astour, M. C., 21, 222 Asurmendi, J., 21, 91 Athas, G., 21, 440, 484 Atzerodt, I., 21, 216, 300

Auberlen, C. A., 21 Auchincloss, W. S., 21, 275, 460 Audet, J.-­P., 21, 91, 109 Augustine of Hippo, 21, 59, 95, 110–11, 118, 241, 581 Aukerman, D., 21, 268, 270, 301, 302, 390, 391 Auscher, D., 21, 222, 230 Avalos, H. I., 21, 222, 229, 238, 440, 487 Avravanel, I., 21, 117–118, 218, 399 Backus, I., 21, 91, 118 Baeck, L., 21, 329 Bailey, D. P., 21, 70, 500, 518 Baillet, M., 21, 91, 99, 101 Baker, D. W., 21, 307 Balcer, J. M., 21, 224 Baldwin, D. D., 21, 559 Baldwin, J. G., 22, 125, 134, 159, 186, 188, 206, 232, 238, 263, 288, 489, 516, 570 Ball, C. J., 22, 244, 253 Baltzer, K., 22, 440, 453 Balz, H. R., 22, 329, 343 Bampfylde, G., 22, 422, 500, 527 Bardenhewer O., 22, 91 Bardy, G., 22, 91, 111 Bar-­Hebraeus, 22 Baris, S. D., 22, 91, 125 Barker, K. L., 22, 127 Barker, M., 22, 567 Barkhuizen, J. H., 22, 91, 113 Barnes, A., 22 Barnes, R. B., 22, 91, 120 Barr, D. L., 22, 586 Barr, J., 22, 149, 179, 184, 250, 301, 354, 380, 431, Barrett, C. K., 22, 329, 367, 398 Barrett, D. S., 22, 500 Bartelmus, R., 22, 139 Barth, C., 22, 217, 218, 523, 583 Barth, K., 22, 126, 266, 272, 301, 426, 464, 555, 560 Barthélemy, D., 22, 91, 99, 105, 132, 446, 509, 511, 514 Barton, G. A., 22, 307, Barton, J., 22, 460, 541 Basson, A., 22, 244, 263 Bauckham, R. J., 23, 91, 119, 212, 397, 500, 572 Bauer, H., 23, 275 Baumgarten, J. M., 23, 440, 487 Baumgartner, W., 23, 91, 98

Daniel

9780310526155_WBC_Daniel_329-600.indd 611

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612 Daniel Bayer, E., 23, 440, 457 Beale, G. K., 23, 91. 107, 108 Beasley-­Murray, 23, 329, 346, 361, 377 Beaulieu, P.-­A ., 23, 222, 233, 244, 253, 287 Becker, J., 23, 424 Becking, B., 23, 244, 248 Beckwith, C. L., 23, 91, 235, 498 Beckwith, R. T., 23, 91, 99, 101, 102, 440, 448, 451, 484, 500, 551 Bedenbender, A., 24, 574 Beegle, D. M., 24 Beek, M. A., 24, 203, 329, 381, 571 Begg, C. T., 24, 91, 109 Behrmann, G., 24, 226, 445, 484 Belardi, W., 24, 279 Bellamy, J., 24 Benedictine Monks of St. Jerome’s Pontifical Abbey, 24, 91 Ben-­Ezra. See Laczuna, 24 Bentzen, A., 24, 139, 158, 160, 187, 227, 264, 278, 281, 303, 307, 309, 329, 342, 343, 408, 447, 449, 509 Berger, K., 24, 91, 113, 142, 183, 257 Berger, P.-­R ., 24, 135, 136, 138 Bergman, B. Z., 24, 173, 180 Bergsma, J. S., 24, 153, 326, 440, 461, 480 Berner, C., 24, 440, 451 Bernstein, M. J., 24, 91, 101, 193 Berquist, J., 24, 135, 150 Berrigan, D., 24, 130, 162, 167, 206, 210, 214, 289, 297, 321, 323, 390, 400, 434, 436, 498, 550, 557 Bertholet, A., 24, 500, 519 Bertholdt, L., 24, 125 Betz, H. D., 24, 574 Betz, O., 24, 91, Bevan, A. A., 25, 139, 158, 306, 307, 338, 373, 405, 408, 445, 447, 448, 489, 507, 509, 513 Bevan, E. R., 25, 500, Beyerle, S., 25, 91, 102, 173, 199, 329, 351, 547, 580 Bhabha, H. K., 25, 140, 314 Bietenhard, H., 25, 91, 108, 329 Biggs, R. D., 25, 186 Birkeland, H., 25, 500, 520 Birks, T. R., 25, 173 Black, M., 25, 91, 106, 329, 339, 340, 343, 368 Blaising, C. A., 25, 429, 440 Blasius, A., 25, 329, 379, 401 Blau, J., 25, 445 Blayney, B., 25, 440 Bledsoe, A. D., 25, 91, 105, Bleek, F., 25 Blenkinsopp, J., 26 Bludau, A., 26, 91 Bobzin, H., 26, 91, 114 Boccaccini, G., 26. 478, 500, 551

9780310526155_WBC_Daniel_329-600.indd 612

Bock, D. L., 26, 91, 106 Boda, M. J., 26, 440, 452 Bodenmann, R., 26, 91, 105, 110 Boehmer, J., 26, 171, 581 Boer, P. A. H. de, 26, 322 Bogaert, P.-­M., 26, 91, 103 Bohnet, A., 26, 153 Bonora, A., 26, 500 Bonwetsch, G. N., 26, 91 Boogaart, T. A., 26, 303, 323 Borger, R., 26, 186 Borsch, F. H., 26, 329, 344 Bosanquet, J. W., 26, 440 Botha, P. J., 26, 91, 113 Botterweck, G. J., 26, 38, 250, 357, 500 Bousset, W., 26, 329 Boutflower, C., 26, 125, 275, 293, 303, 517 Bowker, J. W., 26, 440, 471 Bowker, J., 26, 329 Bowman, J., 26, 329 Boyarin, D., 26, 91, 106, 329, 352 Boyce, M., 27 Boyer, P. S., 27 Boyle, W. R. A., 27 Braaten, C. E., 27 Bracht, K., 27, 91, 112, 113 Brant, J.-­A ., 27, 151, 568 Braverman, J., 27, 92, 112 Breed, B. W., 27, 65, 110, 111, 129, 242, 319, 366, 437 Brekelmans, C. H. W., 27, 329, 375, 377, 382 Brenner, A., 27, 82, 130, 362, 507 Brensinger, T. L., 27, 222 Briant, P., 27, 232, 278, 285, 287, 314, 315, 374, 420 Briggs, C. A., 15, 27, 128 Briggs, R. S., 27, 92, 130, 328, 495 Bright, J., 27, 371 Brightman, T., 27, 121–22, 500 Bringmann, K., 27, 500 Brock, S. P., 27, 92, 113, Brockington, L. H., 27, 139, 337, 405, 446, 506 Broida, M., 27, 275, 291 Brongers, H. A., 27, 160, 360 Brooke, G. J., 27, 173, 185 Broughton, H., 27, 118–122 Brown, F., 15, 128 Brown, J. P., 27, 292 Brown, R. E., 27, 199 Brownlee, W. H., 27, 92, 44, 92, 412, 452, 518, 541 Brox, N., 28 Bruce, F. F., 28, 92, 101, 104, 108, 135, 152, 153, 329, 337, 365, 448 Bruce, L. P., 28, 151 Brueggemann, W., 28, 224, 262, 265, 272, 399, 548 Bruston, C., 28

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Author Index 613

Buber, M., 28, 238, 573 Buchanan, G. W., 28, 130, 153, 201, 366, 378, 451, 541 Buchanan, H., 28, 92, 119 Bucheim, J. G., 28, 244 Buis, P., 28, 440, 453 Bullinger, E. W., 28, 124, 440, 451 Bullinger, H., 28, 92, 120 Bulman, J. M., 28, 275 Bultmann, R., 28, 126, 217 Bunge, J. G., 28, 500, 513, 537, 543 Bunta, S. N., 28, 244, 259 Burgmann, H., 28, 425, 526, 551 Burkholder, B., 29, 244, 273 Burnier-­G enton, J., 29, 329, 338 Burridge, K. O. L., 29, 579 Burrows, E., 29, 92, 107, 440 Burton, A. H., 29 Busto Saiz, J. R., 29, 92, 105 Buth, R., 29, 279 Butler, S. A. L., 29, 186, 196, 198 Butterworth, C. C., 29, 92, 121 Buzy, D., 29, 329, 374 Buschhaus, M., 29, 259 Bush, G., 29, 87, 122, 173 Byington, S. T., 29, 234 Calvin, J., 29, 117–18, 120, 122, 153, 159, 164, 170, 185, 208, 211, 212, 218, 219, 236, 240, 257, 268, 273, 295, 317, 319, 320, 321, 323, 324, 336, 337, 393, 399, 400, 407, 437, 466, 467, 470, 482, 491, 528, 537, 544, 557, 562, 565, 566 Campbell, J., 29, 500 Campbell, J. Y., 29, 329 Campi, E., 29, 92, 120, Camping, H., 29, 127 Capp, B. S., 29, 92, 121, 122 Caquot, A., 29, 293, 329, 345, 357, 365, 370 Caragounis, C. C., 29, 329, 368, 372, 374, 378 Carey, J. S., 29, 124 Carmignac, J., 29, 92, 197, 201, 404 Carpzov, J. B., 30, 329 Carroll, R. P., 30, 500, 523, 554 Carvalho, C. L., 30 Casey, [P.] M., 30, 92, 106, 110, 114, 118, 329, 336, 343, 345, 351, 364, 365, 373, 377 Caspari, W., 30, 173, 329 Cassin, E., 30, 303 Cathcart, K. J., 30, 92, 103 Cavallin, H. C. C., 30, 500, 518, 549 Cerceau, J.-­A ., 30, 275 Charles, R. H., 30, 103–4, 125–26, 137, 139, 179, 181, 225, 335, 377, 403, 407, 418, 444, 449, 486, 490, 511, 523, 544, 548 Charlesworth, J. H., 30, 469 Chary, T., 30, 572 Chazan, R., 30, 92, 110, 115, 440, 483

9780310526155_WBC_Daniel_329-600.indd 613

Chester, A. G., 92, 103, 121 Cheyne, T. K., 30, 329 Chia, P. P., 30, 135, 164, 170 Childs, B. S., 30, 131, 424, 495, 562, 572 Chrysostomus, J., 31, 112–13 Ciraolo, L. J., 31 Clark, E. G., 95, 115 Clay, A. T., 31, 275 Clerget, J., 31, 173 Clerice, J., 31, 275 Clermont-­G anneau, C., 31, 275, 292 Clifford, R. J., 31, 500, 522, 530 Cocceius, J., 31 Coats, G. W., 31 Cohen, D. R., 31, 217 Cohen, G. D., 31, 92, 117 Cohn, N., 31, 92, 119, 187, 582 Colless, B. E., 31, 275, 293 [Collins, A.], 123, 482 Collins, J. J., 31, 92, 97, 101, 103, 126, 127, 128, 129, 131, 134, 137, 139, 140, 149, 152, 168, 173, 186, 187, 195, 199, 201, 203, 224, 226, 241, 242, 256, 258, 260, 284, 291, 296, 300, 307, 308, 311, 312, 329, 335, 337, 342, 344, 345, 351, 352, 360, 361, 369, 370, 373, 375, 377, 381, 382, 407, 410, 414, 423, 428, 450, 458, 461, 482, 486, 500, 508, 510, 514, 516, 519, 520, 523, 524, 528, 541, 543, 546, 547, 549, 551, 563, 564, 567, 568, 569, 571, 572, 574, 578, 580, 581, 582 Colpe, C., 32, 329, 345 Conrad, D., 32, 500, 509 Cook, A., 32 Cook, E. M., 32, 222, 224, 279 Cook, J. M., 32, 280, 286, 287, 293, 306, 314, 315, 419, 513, 531 Cook, S. A., 32, 222, 226 Cook, S. L., 32, 244, 259 Cooper, D. L., 33, 440, Coppens, J., 33, 219, 329, 335, 343, 345, 351, 359, 365, 368, 369, 377 Cornill, C. H., 33, 136, 440, 451, 551 Couroyer, B., 33, 275, 278 Courtray, R., 33, 92, 112 Cowe, S. P., 33, 92, 105 Coxon, P. W., 33, 98, 222, 226, 229, 230, 234, 236, 244, 249, 252, 275, 278 Crafer, T. W., 34, 92 Cranfield, C. E. B., 34, 158 Creed, J. M., 34, 330 Cross, F. M., 34, 92, 244, 573 Cryer, F. H., 34, 196 Cumont, F., 34, 401, 412 Cyril of Alexandria, 34 Dahood., 34, 510 Dalman, G. H., 34, 330

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614 Daniel Danby, H., 34, 159 Daube, D., 34 , 77, 92, 108 David, P., 34, 523, 500 David, P. S., 34, 353 Davidson, R. M., 34, 401, 406 Davies, G. I., 34, 62, 572 Davies, P. R., 34, 81, 92, 95, 130, 141, 173, 183, 186, 194, 203, 205, 284, 303, 313, 318, 326, 382, 500, 523, 545, 571, 578, 580, 581 Davis Bledsoe, A. M., 34, 244 Day, J., 34, 135, 330, 548 Debel, H., 35, 101 Deines, R., 35, 485 Deissler, A., 35, 330, 377 Delcor, M., 35, 92, 101, 198, 222, 322, 330, 357, 456, 487, 490, 500, 510, 512, 514, 529, 573 Delgado, M., 35, 92, 123, 129 Del Medico, H. E., 35, 500 De Long, K. P., 35, 440, 457 Denis, A. M., 35, 92, 113 Dequeker, L., 35, 330, 351, 377, 410, 440, 459 Derrett, J. D. M., 35, 92, 303, 327 Dexinger, F., 36, 92, 109 [Ps-­­] Dexter, F. L. [? = J. R. de la Higuera], 36, 330 Dhanis, E., 36, 330 DiTommaso, L., 36, 92, 97, 130, 553, 559, 579 Diakonoff, I. M., 36, 278 Dietrich, W., 36, 218 Di Lella, A. A., 36, 92, 104, 105, 150, 194, 208, 213, 231, 242, 244, 252, 255, 279, 280, 306, 307, 311, 335, 358, 371, 377, 383, 395, 404, 405, 407, 408, 418, 444, 447, 448, 488, 506, 507, 513, 514, 522, 531, 578 Dimant, D., 36, 440, 451 Dobberahn, F. E., 36, 275, 302 Dodd, C. H., 36, 330, 398 Dommershausen, W., 36, 244, 578 Donahue, J. R., 36, 330 Donaldson, T. L., 36, 303, 317 Doty, W. G., 36, 250 Dougherty, R. P., 36, 275, 285 Douglas, M., 36 Doukhan, J. B., 36, 168 Downing, F. G., 36, 210 Dressier, H. H. P., 36, 135 Driver, G. R., 36, 137, 177, 178, 248, 335, 336, 345 Driver, S. R., 15, 18, 37, 125, 128, 196, 197, 262, 286, 287, 301, 306 Dubarle, A.-­M., 37, 500 Duckworth, H. T. F., 37 Düsterwald, F., 37 Dulaey, M., 37, 92, 100, 220, 230, 303, 320 Dumbrell, W. J., 37, 300

9780310526155_WBC_Daniel_329-600.indd 614

Dunbar, D. G., 37, 92, 93, 100 Dunn, G. D., 37, 93, 110, 483 Dunn, J. D. G., 37, 93, 106, 483 Dupont-­Sommer, 37, 197 Du Toit, D. S., 37, 92, 107, 129 Dyer, C. H., 37, 222, 232 Eaton, J. H., 37, 554 Eddy, S. K., 37, 173, 574 Edlin, J., 37 Eerdmans, B. D., 37, 203 Efird, J. M., 37 Eggler, J., 37, 330, 340 Ego, B., 37, 93, 110 Ehrlich, A. B., 37, 137–38, 178, 220, 226, 278–79, 403, 405, 408, 446, 508, 510 Ehrlich, E. L., 37, 173, 183, 191, 196–97, 207, 224 Eichhorn, D. E., 37, 222 Eichhorn, J. G., 37, 125 Eichrodt, W., 37, 235, 260, 362, 539 Eisenbeis, W., 37, 508 Ellington, J., 68 Eusebeus, 38, 111–12, 252, 288, 440, 483, 484 Eshel, E., 38, 93, 101 Evans, C. A., 38, 93, 107 Ewald, H., 39, 125, 338 Fabre d’Envieu, J., 39 Farrar, F. W., 39, 125, 183 Farrell, R. T., 39, 93, 114 Farrer, A. M., 39, 93, 106 Feigin, S., 39, 278 Feinberg, C. L., 39 Feldman, L. H., 39, 93, 109 Ferch, A. J., 39, 93, 109, 330, 345, 348, 351, 364, 377, 394 Ferguson, P., 39, 244, 253 Festinger, L., 39, 124, 500, 523, 554 Feuillet, A., 39, 300, 343, 365, 368, 396 Fewell, N. D., see Noland Fewell, D. Fiebig, P., 39, 330 Filmer, W. E., 39, 126 Finegan, J., 39 Finesinger, S. B., 39, 222 Finkel, A., 39, 173, 185, 401, 407 Finkelstein, J. J., 39, 401, 407 Finley, T. J., 39, 109 Firth, K. R., 39, 93 Fischer, T., 39, 500, 537, 542, 544 Fischer, U., 39, 93, 109 Fishbane, M., 39, 93, 129, 454, 516, 519, 529, 554 Fisher, H. A. L., 39, 559 Fitzmyer, J. A., 39, 93, 101, 181, 250, 330, 451 Flesher, L. S., 40, 440, Fletcher-­Louis, 40 Flint, P. W., 40, 92, 93, 454, 485, 492, 572

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Author Index 615

Flusser, D., 40, 173, 187, 216, 360, 373 Folmer, M. L., 40, 279 Ford, D., 40, 440, 490 Fox, D. E., 40, 430 Fraidl, F., 40, 93, 111, 440 Frank, R. M., 40, 330, 335 Freedman, D. N., 40, 244, 292 Frei, H., 40, 570 Frerichs, W. W., 40, 440 Frischmuthus, J., 40, 440 Frisch, A., 40, 93, 130, 268, 314, 325, 354, 390 Fritz, V., 40, 187 Fröhlich, I., 40, 173, 184, 371 Froom, L. E., 40, 93, 128 Frost, S. B., 40, 239, 573 Fruchan, P., 40 Fruchtman, J., 40, 93 Frye, R. N., 40, 150, 289, 293, 314–15, 460 Füller, J. L., 40 Gadd, C. J., 40, 244, 249, 253 Gaebelein, A. C., 40 Gall, A. G., 40, 330, Gallé, A. F., 40, 419 Galling, K., 41, 275, 294 Gammie, J. G., 41, 93, 157, 195, 203, 229, 252, 282, 301, 325, 388, 526, 573, 578 Garber, D. G., 41, 500, 561 García Martínez, F., 41, 93, 100, 101, 244 Gardner, A. E., 41, 330, 341, 344, 356, 500, 518, 541, 580 Garrison, D., 41, 397, 540, 543 Gaster, M., 41, 330, 366 Gaston, L., 41, 93, 330 Gaussen, F. S. R. L. 41 Geffcken, J., 41, 173 Geissen, A., 41, 93, 103 Gellinek, C., 41, 93, 114 Gelston, A., 41, 330 [Geneva Bible]., 41, 121 Genouillac, H., 41, 275 George, J.-­A ., 41, 114 Gerhardt, O., 41, 440 Gerleman[n], 41, 179, 330, 337, 507 German, H. S., 42, 93 Gershevitch, I., 42, 224, 306 Gese, H., 42, 330, 500, 518, 547, 554 Gevaryahu, H. M. Y., 42, 222 Gianto, A., 42, 173, 118 Gibbs, G. L., 42 500 Gibson, M. D., 42, 275, 288, 345 Gilbert, M., 42, 440, 453, 458 Gillingham, S., 42, 342 Ginsberg, H. L., 42, 125, 173, 178, 181, 194, 227, 249, 282, 292, 305, 330, 335, 337, 351, 363, 378, 403, 406–7, 416, 418, 500, 578 Ginzberg, L., 42, 93

9780310526155_WBC_Daniel_329-600.indd 615

Gladd, B. L., 42, 173, 199, 200 Glasson, T. F., 42, 93, 173, 180, 330 Glerup, M., 77, 96, 550 Glessmer, U., 43, 93, 108 Glueck, N., 43, 138, 463 Gnuse, R., 43, 93, 109, 182, 196, 206 Goard, W. P., 43 Goettsberger, J., 43 Goeing, A.-­S., 43, 93, 120 Goez, W., 43, 93, 112–13 Goldingay, J., 43, 93, 127, 129, 131, 135, 137, 330, 338, 445, 569, 570, 577, 581, 584 Goldstein, J. A., 43, 93, 104, 378, 405, 422, 511, 537–38, 540, 544, 550, 561 Goldwurm, H., 43, 257, 420, 425 Good, E. M., 43, 141, Goodenough, E. R., 43, 93, 356 Gooding, D. W., 43, 576 Gordis, R., 43, 249 Gosling, F. A., 43, 127 Goswell, G., 43, 275, 417, 501, 525, 582 Gottwald, N. K., 43, 469 Gowan, D. E., 43, 150, 194, 236, 244, 302, 315, 383, 398, 418, 435, 440, 458–59, 475, 561, 563 Grabbe, L. L., 44, 93, 160, 275, 288, 293, 440, 456, 483–84, 501, 539, 580 Gradon, P., 44, 93, 114 Graetz, H., 44, 408 Graham, D., 44, 93, 110 Graham, E. A., 44, 330 Grainger, J. D., 44, 501, 529 Granot, M., 44, 501 [Graves, R. H.], 44, 124, Gray, J., 44, 330 Grayson, A. K., 44, 152, 177, 186–87, 251–52, 286, 516 Greenberg, N., 44, 93 Greenspoon, L. J., 44, 501 Gregor, 44, 144, 125, 495 Gregory Thaumaturgus, 44, 495 Greidanus, S., 45, 93, 126 Grelot, P., 45, 93, 104, 179, 211–12, 220, 222, 244, 261, 275, 284, 330, 336, 343, 440, 501 Gressmann, H., 45, 330, 344, 347, 365, 371 Gribben, C., 45, 93, 121 Griffiths, J. G., 45, 501 Grimm, W., 45, 91, 93, 107 Gross, E., 45 Gross, H., 45, 330, 367 Grotius, H., 45 Gruen, E. S., 45, 173, 275, 372, 374, 440, 501, 538, 573 Gruenwald, I., 45, 372, 573 Gruenthaner, M. J., 45, 173, 275, 374, 440 Grynaeus, J. J., 45 Guenther, D. A., 45

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616 Daniel Guglielmo, A., 46, 275 Guinness, H. G., 45, 124 Gulley, N. R., 45, 330, 391 Gundry, R. H., 45, 93, 107 Gunkel, H., 45, 281, 309, 344, 440, 452 Gunn, D. M., 46, 222, 228–29 Gurney, O. R., 46, 251 Gurney, R. J. M., 46, 358, 544 Güterbock, H. D., 45, 154 Gzella, H., 46, 193, 401, 403, 407, 418, 420 Haag, E., 46, 135, 137, 152, 173, 185, 22, 229, 244, 256, 284, 320, 325, 330, 343, 351, 392, 403, 501, 527, 547 Haas, P. J., 46, 586 Hävernick, H. A. C., 46, 125 Halévy, J., 46, 275 Hall, R. A., 46, 126, 150, 284, 572, 582 Hall, R. G., 46, 214, Haller, M., 46, 125, 292, 330, 351 Hallo, W. W., 46, 187, 340, 454 Hamerton-­K elly, R., 46, 423 Hamilton Jr., J. H., 46, 569 Hamm, W., 46, 93, 103, 139 Hammer, R., 46, 161, 196, 406 Hanhart, K., 46, 330, 359, 371, 377 Hanhart, R., 46, 93, 330, 382, 459, 501, 512, 560 Hanson, J. S., 46, 173, 185 Hanson, P. D., 47, 126, 345, 397, 567, 573, 579 Happ, H., 47 Hardt, H. von der, 47, 202, 330, Harlow, D. C., 47 Harrington, D. J., 47, 582 Hartman, L. F., 47, 93, 102, 105, 107, 150, 173, 194, 244, 279–80, 306–7, 335, 358, 371, 377, 395, 404–5, 407–8, 418, 444, 447–48, 488, 506, 507, 513–14, 519, 522, 531, 578 Hartman, S., 47, 173 Harton, G. M., 47, 85, 22, 501, 542 Harvey, J., 47, 440, 452–53 Hasel, G. F., 47, 100, 173, 188, 252, 330, 356, 377, 401, 419, 501 Hasslberger, B., 47, 401, 403, 407–8, 412, 434, 432, 501, 507–12, 514, 517, 523–24, 541, 550, 578 Haupt, P., 47, 330, 337, 366 Hawkins, J., 47, 173 Haydon, R., 47, 440, 450, 485 Hays, C. B., 47, 155, 244, 263 Heard, W. J., 48, 440, 501 Heaton, E. W., 48, 142, 229, 342, 347, 363, 436, 458, 498, 527, 573 Hebbard, A. B., 48, 93, 131, 162, 164, 193, 196, 207, 213, 236, 268, 297, 299, 382, 399, 418, 439, 499, 551 Helberg, J. L., 48

9780310526155_WBC_Daniel_329-600.indd 616

Heller, B., 48, 173, 197 Heller, R. L., 48, 222, 226 Hellholm, D., 48, 187 Helms, D., 48, 303, 311 Hendel, R., 48, 93, 132 Hengel, M., 48, 98, 158, 183,186, 188, 471, 516, 523, 537, 574, 580 Hengstenberg, E. W., 48, 125, 440, 448, 489 Hennecke, E., 48, 316 Henze, M., 48, 93, 113, 130, 150, 244, 256, 451 Herrmann, J., 48, 481 Herrmann, W., 48, 501 Hertlein, E., 48, 330, 373 Herzfeld, E., 48, 330, 365 Hess, R. S., 48, 441, 485 Hieke, T., 48, 93, 108 Hieronymus of Stridon [Jerome], 49, 104, 110–14, 170, 189, 211, 219, 233, 260, 263, 269, 287, 378, 391, 399, 424, 437, 459, 483–65, 527, 529, 535–36, 542, 544 Higgins, A. J. B., 49, 330 Hilgenfeld, A., 49 Hill, A. E., 49, 153, 160, 233, 295 Hill, B. V., 49, 93, 114 Hill, C., 49, 93, 122 Hill, D., 49, 330 Hill, R. C., 49, 93, 113 Hillers, D. R., 49, 345 Hilton, M., 49, 275, 287 Hippolytus., 49, 111, 112, 124, 165, 170, 210, 231, 240, 249, 256, 265, 296, 319, 324, 358, 437, 483–84, 542 Hitzig, F., 49 Hobbins, J. F., 49, 94, 101, 501, 549 Hobbs, T. R., 49, 152 Höffken, P., 49, 94, 109, 187 Hoehner, H. W., 49, 441, 483 Hölscher, G., 49, 125, 351, 410 Hoffmann, G., 49, 275 Hoffmann, Y., 49, 201 Hofius, O., 49, 94, 104, 330, 337 Hoftijzer, J., 49, 452 Hogeterp, A. L. A., 49, 94, 101 Holm, T. L., 49, 151, 222 Hommel, F., 49, 330, 344 Hooker, M. D., 49, 330, 367–68 Horbury, W., 49, 94, 106, 330 Horgan, M. P., 49, 173, 178 Horne, E. H., 49, 124, Horner, J., 49, 275, Horsley, R. A., 49, 135, 169, 539, 580 Howie, C. G., 50 Hudson, A., 44, 93, 114 Hüffken, P., 50, 173 Huffmon, H. B., 50, 512 Huit, E., 50, 122 Hultgård, A., 50, 344

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Author Index 617

Humphreys, W. L., 50, 141, 182–83, 577 Hunger, H., 50, 186 Hunt, B., 50, 501 Hunter, E. C. D., 50, 173 Hunter, P. H., 50 Hurtado, L. W., 50, 94, 106 Hurvitz, A., 50, 244, 261 Husser, J.-­M., 50, 173, 190, 194, 353 Ibn Ezra, 50, 116–18, 261, 306, 359, 425, 483, 507, 542 Ibn Yachya, J., 50, 117 Irmscher, J., 50, 173 Ironside, H. A., 50 Irving, E., 50, Isenberg, S. R., 50 Ishodad of Merv., 50 Jacob, E., 50, 58, 157, 399, 470 Jahn, G., 50, 94 Janowski, B., 50, 485 Janssen, E., 50, 459 Jaubert, A., 50, 501, 539 Jeffers, A., 50, 197 Jeffery, A., 50 137, 179, 257, 316, 362, 444, 509 Jellicoe, S., 50, 94, 105 Jenner, K., 50, 94, 105 Jenni, E., 51, 179, 508 Jepsen, A., 51, 204, 307, 441, 464, 467 Jeremias, C., 51 Jerusalmi, I., 51 Jindo, J. Y., 51, 559 Jobes, K. H., 51, 94, 105 Jones, B. A., 51, 94, 130 Jones, B. W., 51, 173, 190, 201, 214, 217, 429, 441, 456, 486, 501, 552 Jones, D. R., 51, 94 Jonge, M., 51, 370 Joubert, W. H., 51, 170–71, 205, 226, 230, 233, 240–41, 270, 283, 299, 301, 308, 445, 543, 553, 560, 582, 586 Joüon, P., 51, 250 Joye, G., 51, 92, 120–21 Junker, H., 51 Käsemann, E., 51, 107, 126, 583 Käser, W., 51, 94 Kaiser, O., 51, 501 Kalafian, M., 51, 441, 483 Kallarakkal A., 51, 94, 105, 137, 280, 336 Kamphausen, A., 51 Kaufmann, Y., 52, 181 Kearns, R., 52, 329–30, 336–37, 345, 351, 361 Kee, H. C., 52, 94, 108 Keel, O., 52, 330, 357 Keil, C. F., 52, 125, 137, 182, 231, 248, 279–80, 287–88, 314, 317, 374, 381, 425,

9780310526155_WBC_Daniel_329-600.indd 617

427, 431, 446, 449, 487, 489, 508–11, 512, 528 Keil, V., 52, 256, 501, 535 Kellenberger, E., 52, 105 Kellermann, U., 52, 564 Kelley, W., 52 Kelly, W., 52, 423 Kennedy, G., 52 Kennedy, J., 52, 239, 241, 268, 325 Kepler, T. S., 52 Kessler, W., 52 Kim, D., 52, 94, 130, 184, 252, 330, 342, 517 Kim, S., 52, 94, 331 Kim, S. I., 52, 583 King, G. R., 52 Kirchmayr, K. P., 52, 275, 289 Kirkpatrick, S., 52, 94, 128, 130, 164, 207–9, 211, 233, 258, 287 Kitchen, K. A., 52, 98 Klausner, J., 52 Klein, G., 52, 366, 490 Kliefoth, T., 52 Kleinknecht, K. T., 52, 501, 520, 548 Kline, M. G., 52, 441, 453 Knierim, R., 52, 473 Knibb, M. A., 52, 94, 101, 382, 441, 458, 580 Knowles, L. E., 53, 94, 441 Knox, J., 53, 121 Knox, Z., 53, 94, 127, 501, 544 Kobelski, P. J., 53, 331 Koch, K., 53, 94, 102, 105–6, 108–9, 111, 114, 120, 122, 124, 128–29, 137, 144, 146, 155, 160, 163, 174, 177–80, 183, 189, 194, 198–200, 202, 207, 209–10, 213–15, 224, 226, 233, 244, 249–50, 253, 256, 259, 275, 281, 294, 300, 331, 369, 391, 395–96, 401, 413–14, 435, 437, 441, 451, 459, 473, 485, 491, 556, 568, 572–73, 583, 586 Koller, 24, 91, 101, 193 Köbert, R., 54, 94, 401 König, E., 54, 275, 331, 441 König, F. W., 54, 275 Koep, L., 54, 331, 363 Kohler, K., 54, 135 Koldewey, R., 54, 262 Kopf, L., 54, 139, 315 Korner, R. J., 54, 331, 373 Kosmala, H., 54, 201, 426, 501, 512, 541 Kossen, H. B., 54, 501, 518 Kraeling, C. H., 54, 331 Kraeling, E. G. [H.], 54, 275, 292, 331 Kraft, R. A., 55, 94, 97 Krappe, A. [H.], 55, 275, 281, 307 Kratz, R. G., 55, 194, 467 Krauss, S., 55, 401 Kreuzer, S., 55, 71, 182 Kreuziger, F. A., 55, 583

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618 Daniel Krey, P. D. W., 55, 94, 115 Kristensen, W. B., 55, 331 Kritzinger, J. P. K., 55, 94, 112 Kronasser, H., 55, 279 Krüger, T., 55, 94, 120 Kruschwitz, R. B., 55, 217 Kruse, H., 55, 331, 351 Kuhl, C., 55, 186, 222, 228–29 Kuhn, K. A., 55, 94, 101 Kuhrt, A., 55, 152, 156, 203–4, 232, 262, 314–15, 374, 420 Kutscher, E. Y., 55, 98 Kvanvig, H. S., 55, 94, 102, 217, 331, 343, 348, 351, 357, 364 Laato, A., 55, 441, 458 Labonté, G. G., 55, 174 183 Lacocque, A., 56, 94, 108, 137–39, 152, 157, 159, 183, 205–6, 226, 249, 290–92, 298, 300, 319, 321–22, 331, 337, 344, 354, 367, 382, 393, 403, 405–6, 419, 422, 432, 438, 441, 444, 446,451, 454, 458, 461, 488, 490, 507, 513, 517, 526, 580–81, 586 Lagrange, M. J., 56, 374, 441 [Lacunza, M. =] Ben–­­Ezra, J. J., 56 Lamberights, S., 56 Lambert, G., 56, 441 Lambert, W. G., 56, 156, 186, 275, 285, 516 Lampe, P., 56 Lamy, T.-­J., 56, 94 Landsberger, B., 56, 278 Lang, G. H., 56, 238, 241 Langdon, S., 56, 259, 262, 269 Langlois, M., 56, 327 Larriba, T., 56, 94, 112 Larssen, G., 56, 135, 153 Lash, N., 56, 135, 498 Lattey, C., 56, 174, 182 Laurentin, R., 56, 94, 107, 441, 453 Lawee, E., 56, 94, 117 Lawson, J. N., 56, 174, 209 Layton, S., 56, 476 Leatherman, D. W., 56, 94, 125 Lebram, J. C. H., 56, 94, 171, 174, 220, 344, 358, 412, 431, 441, 480, 490, 515, 520, 535, 537, 539, 542–43, 545, 554, 561, 574 Le Déaut, R., 57, 471, 481 Lederach, P. M., 57, 130, 194, 210, 275, 320, 322, 323, 473, 478, 542 Lee, P. Y., 57 Leichty, E., 57, 156 Lenchak, T. A., 57, 331, 389 Lengerke, C., 57, 125 Lenglet, A., 57, 353, 575 Lenzi, A., 57, 174, 210 Leung Lai, B. M., 57, 78, 130 Lester, G. B., 57, 94, 130, 360, 452, 476, 518 Leupold, H. C., 57

9780310526155_WBC_Daniel_329-600.indd 618

Levenson, J. D., 57, 501, 547 Levinger, J., 57, 303, 315 Levine, B. A., 57, 447 Li, T., 57, 178, 180, Licht, J., 57, 200, 253 Lightner, R. P., 57, 127 Lindenberger, J. M., 57, 501, 550 Linder, J., 57, 135–36, 138, 275, 285–86 Liptzin, S., 57, 94, 126, 275 Lister, J. M., 57, 276, 294 Lloyd Jones, G., 57, 94, 118 Löhr, M., 57, 94 Loisy, A., 57 Long, B., 57, 179 Longman III, T., 58, 127, 162, 169, 236, 251, 297, 320, 323, 425 Lopez, K. [M.], 58, 331, 361 Lucas, E. C., 58, 167, 178, 186–87, 212, 219, 228, 242, 265, 269, 295, 315, 331, 341, 388, 399, 419, 428, 460, 485, 514, 516, 545, 577 Luckenbill, D. D., 58, 460 Lurie, D. H., 58, 441, 483 Lust, J., 58, 94, 103–4, 244, 331, 337, 401, 424 Luther, M., 58, 119–20, 167, 257, 275, 303, 331, 425, 437, 542 Lüthi, W., 58, , 125, 171, 216, 236, 239, 268, 298, 317–18, 433, 437, 439, 492, 530 Lüwinger, S., 58, 174 Luzarraga, J., 58, 364 Lys, D., 58, 259 MacArthur, J., 58, 542 McComiskey, T. E., 58, 441, 448 Macdonald, J., 58, 445 Macé de La Charité., 58 MacLaurin, E. C. D., 59, 197 Macler, F., 59, 95 Macumber, H., 59, 331, 389 Maddox, R., 59, 331 Magny, A., 59, 95, 111 Maier, G., 59 Mainz, E., 59, 95 Makiello, P., 59, 524 Makujina, J., 59, 174, 178 Mandelbrote, S., 59, 95, 123, 126 Mann, J., 59, 95, 116 Manson, T. W., 59, 331 Margoliouth, D. S., 59, 88, 222 Markus, R. A., 59, 95, 107, 111 Marlow, R., 59, 331 Marsch, E., 59, 95, 114, 331 Marshall, I. H., 59, 86, 331 Marsham, J., 60, 482 Marti, K., 60, 98, 125, 306, 404, 445 Martin-­Achard, 60, 501, 548–49 Mason, E. F., 60, 502 Mason, R. A., 60, 130

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Author Index 619

Mason, S., 60, 95, 109 Massyngberde Ford, J., 60, 341, 356, 368, 419 Mastin, B. A., 60, 174, 177, 180, 205, 222, 226, 244, 250, 331, 334, 574 Matheson, P., 60 Mathews, S. F., 60, 501, 551 Mayer, J., 60, 110, 235, 385, 400, 417, 435, 544 Mayer, R., 60, 303, 306, Mays, J. L., 60 McAllister, R., 58, 174, 181 McComiskey, T. E., 58, 441, 448 McDowell, J., 58 McFall, L., 58, 441, 483 McGarry, E. P., 58, 501, 550 McGinn, B., 59, 94, 111 McHardy, W. D., 59, 94, 501 McEntire, M., 59, 361 McLay, R. T., 59, 94, 103, 105, 256 McNamara, M., 59, 186, 244 Meade, D. G., 60, 134 Meadowcroft, T. J., 60, 95, 103, 106, 168, 182, 230, 231, 235, 244, 256, 262, 278, 289, 311, 314, 319, 331, 337, 355, 399, 441, 447, 501, 515, 528, 562 Méchoulan, H., 61, 95, 123 Meek, T. J., 61, 137, 181, 251, 269, 316 Meinhold, J., 61, 125 Melanchthon, P., 61, 119–21, 498 Menasce, P. J., 61 Mendels, D., 61, 174 Mercer, M., 61, 501, 542 Mercer, M. K., 61, 135, 153, Merling, D., 61, Mermelstein, A., 61, 400 Merrill, E. H., 61, 581 Merrill Willis, A. C., 61, 129, 216, 218, 359, 362, 370, 381, 401, 410, 420, 461, 547, 559 Mertens, A., 61, 95, 101, 186, 244, 253, 377, 571 Metzger, B. M., 61, 134 Metzger, M., 61, 244, 252 Meyer, R., 61, 95, 101, 244, 256 M’G, J., 61 Miceli, V. P., 61, 95, 124 Michael, M., 62, 168 Michel, D., 62, 573 Miegge, M., 62, 95, 118 Milán, F., 62, 109, 174, 194 Milgrom, J., 62, 474 Milik, J. T., 62, 91, 95, 99, 101, 244, 451 Millar, F., 62, 127, 174, 205, 276, 285 Millard, A. R., 62, 174, 205, 276, 285 Miller, P. D., 62, 401, 512 Miller, S. R., 62, 162, 290 Miller, J. E., 62, 351 Miller, W., 62, 95, 124, 435 Mills, M. E., 62, 141, 150, 162

9780310526155_WBC_Daniel_329-600.indd 619

Mitchell, G. C., 62, 135 Mitchell, T. C., 62, 135, 142, 222, 225, 232 Moloney, F. J., 62, 331 Moltmann, J., 62, 217, 384, 392, 397 Momigliano, A., 62, 174, 346 Montgomery, J. A., 63, 95, 125, 137–38, 160, 179–81, 213, 231, 248–49, 269, 280, 284, 287, 289, 303, 305, 307, 335–37, 371, 407–8, 420, 441, 445–47, 454, 489, 507–9, 513 Moore, C. A., 63, 441, 450, 454 Moore, G. F., 63, 401 Moore, M. S., 63, 501, 520 Moran, M. L., 63 More, H., 63 More, J., 63, 331 Morenz, S., 63, 331, 346 Morgenstern, J., 63, 331, 344, 501, 544 Mørkholm, O., 63, 537, 539–40 Morrison, C. E., 63, 95, 113 Morrow, W. S., 63, 95, 115 Mosca, P. G., 63, 331, 345 Moskowitz, N., 63, 95, 109 Moule, C. F. D., 63, 331, 367 Mowinckel, S., 64, 184, 331, 365, 367 Müller, H.-­P., 64, 160, 197, 202, 207, 212, 220, 248, 284, 290, 431, 574, 578 Müller, K., 64, 95, 331, 343, 351, 369, 370 Müller, M., 64, 95, 106 Müller, U. B., 64, 95, 331, 370 Muilenburg, J., 64, 331 Munnich, O., 64, 95, 97, 103–4, 331, 337, 351 Munoa III, P. B., 64, 95, 108 Müntzer, T., 64, 119, 122 Muraoka, T., 64, 179, 225, 248, 335 Murdock, W. R., 64, 214, 340, 363 Murphy, J. G., 64, 124 Murray, I., 64, 95, 122 Murray, R., 64, 244, 248, 260 Myers, T. A., 64, 501 Najman, H., 64, 569 Naor, B., 64 Nel, M., 64, 127, 129, 135, 162, 174, 182, 196, 199, 441 Neteler, B., 64, Nestle, E., 64, 401, 424, 441 Neujahr, M., 64, 516 Newman, J. H., 64, 124 Newman, R. C., 64, 441 Newport, K. G. C., 64, 124 Newsom, C. A., 65, 129–30, 139–40, 144, 154, 159, 164, 181, 190, 213, 220, 228, 233, 235, 244, 253, 258, 263, 273, 278, 284, 288, 293, 305, 316, 320, 347, 353, 356, 361, 370, 378, 384–85, 394–95, 415, 418, 423, 430, 433–34, 438, 529–30, 533, 537, 545, 547, 550, 561, 583

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620 Daniel Newton, B. W., 65, 174 Newton, I., 65, 114, 123, 126 Nickelsburg, G. W. E., 65, 73, 501, 415, 546, 548–49 Nicol, G. G., 65, 411 Nicolaus de Lyra, 65 Niditch, S., 65, 134, 174, 182, 191, 194, 331, 339, 349–50, 395, 401, 409–12, 431, 569 Niebuhr, H. R., 65, 165 Nikolainen, A. T., 65, 501 Niskanen, P., 65, 98, 187, 346, 497, 501, 519, 545, 569, 584 Nissinen, M., 65, 186 Nober, P., 65, 244, 250 Noegel, S. B., 65, 174, 211, 293 Nöldeke, T., 65, 276, 280 Nötscher, F., 65, 250, 501, 520 Nolan Fewell, D., 65, 129–30, 135, 149, 162, 206, 222, 228–29, 239, 267, 273, 285, 295, 314–16, 326, 498 Nolland, J., 65, 441, 489 Noth, M., 66, 125, 135, 214, 216, 331, 338, 351, 377, 382, 416, 467 Novak, M., 66, 169 Nuñez, S., 66, 401, 413 Nyberg, H. S., 66, 222, 226 Oden, R. A., 66, 84, 87, 91, 93, 105, 110, 186, 199, 230, 244, 279, 356, 488, 501, 518, 574, 578 Oecolampadius, J., 66, 121 Oegema, G. S., 66, 95, 110 Ogden, G. S., 66, 117 Oliver, W. H., 66, 95, 123, 566 Olmstead, A. T., 66, 205, 315–16, 419, 513 Olojede, F., 66, 174, 191, 214 Olyott, S., 66 Oppenheim, A. L., 66, 136, 156, 158, 174, 178, 185–86, 196–97, 202, 225, 232, 244, 251, 253, 278, 289, 314, 316 Orchard, J. B., 66, 95 Origen, 66, 103, 105, 112, 485 Orrieux, L.-­M., 66, 331 Osswald, E., 66, 186, 516, 519 Osten-­Sacken, 66, 195, 209, 573 Ouro, R., 66, 441, 483 Owen, J., 66, 331, 388, 501, 566 Owen, P., 94, 106 Owens, J. J., 66 Ozanne, C. G., 67, 448, 511 Pace, S., 95, 100, 167, 227, 231, 242, 258, 269–70, 274, 279, 315–16, 337, 361, 400, 418, 480, 506, 510, 526, 530, 549 Padley, J., 67, 95, 130 Paget, J. C., 67, 95 Pannenberg, W., 67, 126, 217 Pannkuk, J. L., 67, 276, 284

9780310526155_WBC_Daniel_329-600.indd 620

Parente, F., 67, 422, 441 Park, J. H., 67, 441, 451 Parrot, A., 67, 262 Parry, J. T., 67, 95, 118, 501, 542 Pascal, B., 67, 271, 498 Patterson, R. D., 67, 150, 331, 353 Paul, S. M., 67, 222, 227, 276, 290 Paulien, J., 67, 95, 127 Payne, J. B., 67, 88, 127, 441, 487 Perrin, A. B., 67, 384 Perrin, N., 67, 95, 106, 331, 340 Pesch, R., 68, 78, 85, 578 Péter-­C ontesse, R., 68 Peters, J. P., 68, 126, 222, 228, 276, 491 Petersen, P. B., 68, 126, 491 Pfandl, G., 68, 95, 108, 174, 205, 429 Pfann, S., 68, 95, 100 Pfeiffer, R. H., 68, 87, 501, 564 Philip, J., 68, 240, 242, 324, 490, 559, 583 Pierce, R. W., 68, 484 Pinches, T. G., 68, 276 Pinette, S. B., 68, 574 Pinker, A., 68, 174, 210 Piscator, J., 68 Pitkin, B., 68, 95, 118 Plöger, O., 68, 126, 139, 148, 150, 152–53, 167, 195–96, 198, 212, 261, 278–79, 281–82, 285, 290–91, 306, 291, 306, 322, 334, 336, 347, 354, 358, 405, 416, 427, 433, 435, 441, 445, 447–49, 479, 514–15, 525, 528, 535, 580 Polak, F. H., 68, 95, 98 Polaski, D. C., 68, 276, 279, 326 Polin, C. C. J., 68, 222 Polychronius, 113 Polzin, R., 68, 98 Poole, M., 68, 161, 280 Pope, M. H., 68, 174, 187 Porteous, N. W., 68, 237, 342, 370, 444, 484, 489, 494 Porter, P. A., 68, 331, 399, 340–41, 345–56, 356–59, 401, 406, 410, 422, 424, 426, 574 Portier-­Young, 68, 130, 193, 418, 432, 518, 523, 551, 569 Portnoy, P., 68, 95, 114 Poythress, V. S., 68, 331, 377, 441, 488 Prado, J., 68 Preiswerk, H., 68 Prete, S., 68, 95, 174 Preuss, H. D., 69, 182, 501, 547 Price, J. R., 69, 93, 230, 244, 265, 272, 441, 484, 494 Prince, J. D., 69, 276, 288, 292 Prinsloo, G. T. M., 69, 174, 211, 222, 241, 303, 310 Procksch, O., 69, 95, 331, 343, 368, 377, 398 Pröbstle, M. T., 69, 401, 406

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Author Index 621

Proudman, C. L. J., 69, 311 [Pseudo-­­]Sa‘adia, 69 Provan, I., 69 Puech, É., 69, 95 Pusey, E. B., 69, 125, 134 Pyper, H. S., 69, 95, 130, 370, 550 Quervain, A., 69, 441 Raabe, P. R., 69, 331, 348 Rabinowitz, I., 69, 178 Rabinowitz, J. J., 69, 244, 261 Rad, G. von, 69, 441, 452, 559, 573 Rahner, K., 69, 498 Rappaport, A., 69, 174 Rappaport, U., 69, 501, 560 Rashi, 70, 115, 116, 118, 120, 177, 226, 231, 261, 270, 289, 294, 321, 420, 483, 506, 536 Raurell, F., 69, 501, 552 Reaburn, M., 69, 95, 111 Redditt, P. L., 70, 128, 138, 217, 285, 441, 501, 523, 561, 579 Redford, D. B., 70, 182 Reed, W. L., 70 Regalado, F., 70 Reichel, H. L., 70, 174 Reid, S. B., 70, 95, 130, 353, 438, 524 Reider, J., 70, 278 Reif, S. C., 70, 250 Rendtorff, R., 70, 305 Resch, A., 70, 174, 196, 206, 244 Reventlow, H. G., 70, 95, 121 Reynolds III, B. H., 70, 95, 101, 252, 340 Rhodes, A. B., 70, 186, 231, 331 Richter, H.-­F., 70, 244, 255 Ricoeur, P., 70, 340 Riessler, P., 70, 95 Rigaux, B., 70, 96 Rigger, H., 70, 441, 457 Rimbach, J. A., 70, 331, 345 Rinaldi, G., 70, 96 Rinaldi, J., 71, 96, 201 Rindge, M. S., 71, 174, 190 Ringgren, H., 71, 186, 469 Robinson, A. C., 71, 276 Roca-­P uig, R, 71, 96, 103 Röcke, W., 71, 96, 119 Röllig, W., 71, 244, 253 Rogerson, J. W., 71, 368 Rohling, A., 71 Rollocus, R., 71 Ron, Z., 71, 222, 229 Rösel, M., 71, 96, 103 Rosén, H. B., 71, 250 Rosenmüller, E. F. C., 71 Rosenthal, E. I. J., 71, 96 Rosenthal, F., 71, 96, 98

9780310526155_WBC_Daniel_329-600.indd 621

Rosenthal, L. A., 71 Rosscup, J. E., 71, 441, 495 Rost, L., 71, 331, 345, 501 Rowe, R. D., 71, 331, 347, 367, 392, 527 Rowland, C., 71, 96, 119, 122, 343, 515, 567 Rowley, H. H., 72, 98, 125, 135, 155, 174, 275–76, 287, 290, 293, 335, 351, 363, 380, 406, 501, 537, 573, 578 Roxas, A., 72, 331 Royer, W. S., 72, 96, 112 Rüger, H. P., 72, 182 Rule, W. H., 72 Rundgren, F., 72, 174, 178 Rupert of Deutz, 72, 271, 301 Russell, D. S., 72, 158, 300, 432, 529 Sabourin, L., 72, 354 Sachs, A. J., 72, 156, 379, 432 Sack, R. H., 72, 24 Saggs, H. W. F., 72, 136, 156, 158, 197, 231, 253, 357 Sahlin, H., 73, 331, 366, 369, 398 Sakenfeld, K., 73, 138, 464 Sanctius, G., 73 Sanders, B. G., 73, 222, 233 Sanders, E. P., 73, 467 Sang Tin Uk, 73, 130, 135, 164 Sänger, D., 73, 96 Sappington, T. J., 73, 218 Sarachek, J., 73, 96 Satran, D., 73, 96, 108 Sadler, R., 73 Sawyer, J. F. A., 73, 441, 444, 473, 501 Sawyer, L. A., 73 Saydon, P. P., 73, 445 Schaberg, J., 73, 96, 331 Schäfer, P., 73, 96, 106, 501, 534, 539–40 Schafer, B. E., 73, 510 Schalit, A., 73 Schedl, C., 73, 203, 401, 425, 501 Scheetz, J. M., 73, 130, 461, 581 Scheible, H., 73, 96, 119 Scheifler, J. R., 73, 331 Schell, J., 73, 397 Schlatter, A., 73, 501, 534 Schlenke, B., 73, 256, 284, 312 Schmid, H., 73, 331, 366 Schmid, W. P., 73 Schmidt, J. M., 73, 94, 96 Schmidt, N., 73, 303, 331, 369 Schmidtke, F., 73 Schmithals, W., 74 Schmitt, A., 74, 96 Schmitz, B., 74, 96 Schmoldt, H., 74, 96 Scholl, F. X., 74 Schoors, A., 74, 445 Schorch, S., 74, 96, 117

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622 Daniel Schrader, E., 74, 244, 252 Schreiner, J., 74, 174, 194, 204, 220, 284 Schreiner, P., 74, 96, 107, 218 Schubert, K., 74, 501 Schüssler Fiorenza, E., 74 Schwantes, S. J., 74, 401, 425 Schweizer, E., 74, 331 Scolnic, B., 74, 332, 379, 501, 540 Scott, R. B. Y., 74, 332, 337 [Seeley, R. B.], 74 Seeligmann, I. L., 74, 517, 529 Segal, A. F., 74, 96, 106 Segal, J. B., 74, 153 Segal, M., 74, 138, 174, 194, 253, 276, 282, 296, 368, 441, 484 Segert, S., 74, 410, 456, 522 Seiss, J. A., 74 Sel, M., 74, 96, 96, 114 Selby, P., 75 Seow, C. L., 75, 164, 171, 174, 214, 221, 237, 239, 250, 291, 314, 383, 399, 407, 436, 498 Sérandour, A., 75, 174, 194 Setio, R., 75, 332, 340 Seybold, K., 75, 473 Shaked, S., 75, 96, 116 Shea, W. H., 75, 222, 230, 244, 276, 288, 294, 303, 332, 377, 401, 420, 441, 448, 501, 567 Shepherd, M. B., 75, 96, 106, 130, 332, 366 Shinan, A., 75 Shirres, D. L., 75 Siegman, E. F., 75, 174, 218 Silberman, L. H., 75, 185, 292 Silver, A. H., 75, 96, 117–18 Sims, J. H., 75, 96, 107 Singer, K. H., 75, 201 Sjöberg, E., 75, 300, 332, 337, 342 Skilton, J. H., 75 Slotki, J. J., 75 Smith, J. Z., 75, 573 Smith, M. S., 76, 332, 364 Smith, S., 76, 276 Smith, U., 76, 124–25 Smith-­Christopher, 76, 96, 107, 110, 113–15, 127, 129–30, 159, 169, 172, 194, 206–7, 238, 261, 291, 315, 319, 325, 355, 393, 477 Snell, D. C., 76, 174, 177, 193 Snobelen, S. D., 76, 96, 123 Snow, R., 76, 96, 106 Soesilo, D. H., 76, 135, 159 Sokoloff, M., 76, 332, 336 Sörries, R., 76, 303, 323 Sostmannus, A., 76, 441 Spangenberg, I. J. J., 76, 96, 103, 441, 482 Sparkes, S., 76, 502 Sparks, H. F. D., 76, 276, 293

9780310526155_WBC_Daniel_329-600.indd 622

Spinoza, B., 76, 122–23 Spronk, B., 76, 502, 514, 520 Staerk, W., 76, 201 Stahl, R., 76, 127, 332, 381, 578 Stander, H. F., 76, 96, 113 Staub, U., 76, 330, 332, 346, 359 Stauffer, E., 76, 96 Steck, O. H., 77, 149, 194, 211, 216, 428, 441, 486 Stefanovic, Z., 77, 98, 276, 288 Steinmann, A., 77, 245, 253 Steinmann, A. E., 77, 502, 542 Steinmann, J., 77, 345 Stele, A. A., 77, 244, 253, 502, 552 Stemberger, G., 77, 96, 109–10, 117, 502 Steudel, J. C. F., 77, 441 Stevens, D. E., 77, 502, 555 Stevenson, K., 77, 96, 550 Stevenson, W. B., 77, 174, 203 Steyl, C., 77, 276 Stier, F., 77, 369 Stinespring, W. F., 77 Stoebe, H. J., 77, 139, 463 Stokes, R. E., 77, 96, 102, 332, 336 Stonard, J., 77, 441 Stone, M., 77, 135, 138 Stott, W., 77, 332 Strawn, B. A., 77, 309 Streck, M., 77 Strohm, S., 77, 96, 120 Strømmen, H. M., 77, 130 Strong, L., 78 Strugnell, J., 78, 421 Stuckenbruck, L. T., 78, 96, 101–2, 106, 332, 337, 361 Stuhlmacher, P., 78, 398 Süring, M. L., 78, 332 Suh, D. K., 78, 96, 130 Sumner, G., 78, 131, 162, 167, 215, 232, 271, 355, 362, 391, 478, 566 Sun, C., 78, 130 Sutcliffe, E. F., 78, 502 Swain, J. W., 78, 174, 502 Swart, G. J., 78, 96, 105 Sweeney, M. A., 78, 130, 542 Szörényi, A., 78, 454, 578 Szold, B., 78, 502, 524 Talmon, S., 78, 92, 141, 308, 514 Tamcke, M., 78, 96, 127 Tanner, J. P., 78, 96, 126–27, 353, 441, 483, 502, 544 Tatford, F. A., 78 Täubler, E., 78, 502, 535 Tawill, H., 78, 513 Taylor, R. A., 79, 96, 105, 114, 137, 179, 248, 306, 507 Tcherikover, V., 79, 150, 537, 540 Teeter, A., 79, 130, 502, 517, 529

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Author Index 623

Theisohn, J., 79, 96, 332 Theodoret of Cyrus, 79, 113 Theodorus bar Koni, 79 Theophilos, M., 79, 96, 107, 490 Thiering, B., 79, 425, 451 Thomas, M. C., 79, 130, 583 Thomas, D. W., 79, 248, 502, 514 Thomson, H. C., 79, 502 Tiefenthal, F. S., 79 Tigay, J. H., 79, 174, 187, 461 Tigchelaar, E. J. C., 93 Tillinghast, J., 79, 122 Tillmann, F., 79, 332 Tilly, M., 79, 96, 105 Tisdall, W., 79 Todd, A., 79, 130 Toll, C., 79, 502, 534 Toon, P., 79, 96, 122 Torrey, C. C., 79, 138, 203, 225, 249, 278–79, 358–59, 441, 460, 489, 502, 509 Tov, E., 79, 96, 103, 116, 113 Towner, W. S., 80, 96, 133, 135, 154, 157, 167, 184–85, 207, 211, 219, 238–39, 351, 269, 272, 284, 289, 313, 324, 326, 332, 355, 392, 394, 434–35, 441, 454, 468, 475, 478, 480, 555, 558–60, 577 Trakatallis, D., 80, 96, 112 Tranter, N., 80, 268 Tregelles, S. P., 80 Trever, J. C., 80, 96 Trible, P., 80, 466 Trotter, J. R., 80, 97, 102 Tsafrir, Y., 80, 502, 540 Tübach, J., 80, 97, 113 Tucker, W. D., 80, 112 Tuckett, C., 80, 332 Turpo, J., 80, 441, 447 Ulrich, D. R., 80, 97, 441, 451, 482, 498 Ulrich, E., 81, 97, 99, 100, 101, 103, 177 Valdez, M. A. T., 81, 123 Valenti, C., 81, 112 Valentinus, B. P., 81 Valeta, D. M., 81, 97, 129, 130, 140, 169, 193 Van Bebber, J., 81, 441 Van der Kooij, A., 81, 97, 114, 502, 535 Van der Leeuw, G., 82, 259 Van der Ploeg, J. P. M., 82, 201 Van der Toorn, K., 82, 303, 309 Van der Woude, A. S., 82, 192, 303, 306, 370, 502, 519 Van Deventer, H. J. M., 82, 97, 129, 130, 135, 144, 222, 232, 276, 289, 303, 308, 441, 450, 454, 459, 547, 578 Van Goudoever, J., 82, 502, 551 Van Henten, J. W., 82, 97, 108, 222, 303, 332, 389

9780310526155_WBC_Daniel_329-600.indd 623

Van Hoonacker, A., 82, 174, 204, 374 Van Liere, F., 82 Van Peursen, W., 82, 97, 110, 114 Van Selms, A., 82, 136, 248–49, 448 VanderKam, J. C., 82, 97, 380, 441, 482, 574, 580 Vasholz, R. I., 82 Vattioni, F., 82, 261 Vaucher, A.-­F., 82, 97 Vaux, R., 82, 469 Veldkamp, H., 82 Venter, P. M., 83, 135, 159, 174, 184, 211, 441, 450, 456, 496, 580 Vermes, G., 83, 97, 100, 109, 332, 369 Vetne, R., 83, 97, 127 Victorinus, 111 Viviano, B. T., 83, 332, 398 Völter, D., 83, 332 Vogel, W., 83, 97, 120, 153, 316 Vogt, E., 83, 199, 245 Volp, U., 83, 97, 111 Volz, H., 83, 97 Volz, P., 83, 365 Von Soden, W., 83, 186, 230, 578 Vriezen, T. C., 83, 445 Wacholder, B. Z., 83, 150, 441, 502, 532, 574 Wade, L., 83, 332, 392 Wächter, L., 84 Wagner, M., 84, 332 Wagner, M., 84, 513 Wahl, H. M., 84, 141, 142, 332 Walbank, F. W., 84, 503, 529, 543 Walker, W. O., 84, 332, 384 Wallace, R. S., 84, 174, 231, 238, 295, 302, 318 Wallis, O., 84, 159 Walter, D. M., 84, 97 Walters, S. D., 84, 97, 124, 149, 585 Waltke, B. K., 84 Walton, J. H., 84, 174, 303, 314, 332, 344, 373 Walton, W., 126 Walvoord, J. F., 84, 127, 441 Wambacq, B. N., 84, 441, 445 Wanke, G., 84, 573 Warhurst, A., 84, 109, 586 Waterhouse, S. D., 84, 276, 293 Waterman, L., 84, 332, 335, 358, 401, 403 Waters, B. V., 84, 576 Watts, J. W., 84, 174, 211 Webb, J. R., 84, 97, 115 Wegner, M., 84, 97, 222 Weimar, P., 84, 332, 351, 353 Weinfeld, M., 84, 517 Weisberg, D. B., 85 Welch, A. C., 85 Welch, J. W., 85, 575 Wells, S., 85 Wengert, T. J., 85, 97, 119

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624 Daniel Wenham, D., 85, 107 Wenham, G. J., 85 Werline, R. A., 85, 459, 496 Wernberg-­Møller, P., 85, 509 Werner, E., 85, 222 Wesselius, J.-­W., 85, 130, 178, 225, 256 West, E. W., 85, 174 Westermann, C., 85, 185, 454, 477–78, 480, 488 Wharton, J. A., 85, 222 Wheelwright, P. E., 85 Wheeler, B., 85, 114 Whitcomb, J. C., 85, 276, 294, 307 Whitehead, A. N., 85, 267 Whitla, W., 85, 97, 126 Whybray, R. N., 85, 154 Widder, W. L., 85, 191 Widengren, G., 86, 259, 314, 471 Wieder, N., 86, 97, 116 Wiesel, E., 86, 441, 481, 550 Wieseler, C., 86, 441 Wifall, W., 86, 332, 343, 365, 549 Wigand, J., 86 Wikgren, A. P., 86 Wiklander, B., 86, 449 Wilch, J. R., 86, 429 Wildavsky, A., 86, 191 Wildberger, H., 86, 307 Wilder, A. N., 86, 209, 301, 447, 465, 472 Wildgruber, R., 86, 502, 523, 534, 552, 561–62 Wilke, A. F., 86, 441, 457, 478 Wilkie, J. M., 86, 252 Willet, A., 86, 118 Williams, J. G., 86 Williams, S. K., 86, 451 Williamson, H. G. M., 86, 452, 470 Willi-­Plein, 86, 199 Willis, A. C. M., 86, 129, 216, 218, 359, 362, 370, 381, 401, 410, 420, 461, 547, 559 Willis, J. T., 86, 201 Wills, L. M., 86, 141, 246, 284 Wilson, B. R., 86, 352 Wilson, F. M., 86, 332 Wilson, G. H., 86, 441, 444, 461, 573 Wilson, R. D., 87, 109, 125, 135, 153, 276, 307, 502, 506

9780310526155_WBC_Daniel_329-600.indd 624

Wilson, R. R., 87, 281, 332, 387, 388, 579 Winckler, H., 87, 135 Wink, W., 87, 238, 267–68, 320, 323, 325, 556–57, 562 Winston, D., 87 Wintle, T., 87 Wiseman, D. J., 87, 125, 135, 152, 161, 262, 276, 379, 432 Wittstruck, T., 87, 332, 345, 371 Wolf, C. U., 87 Wolff, H. W., 87, 531 Wolters, A., 87, 276, 287, 289, 292, 502, 514 Wood, L., 87 Woodard, B. L., 87, 140 Wooden, R. G., 87, 574 Wright, C. H. H., 87 Wright, C. J. H., 87, 162, 237, 269–70, 272, 295, 355, 428, 461, 478, 557 Wright, N. T., 87, 107 Würffel, S. B., 87, 97, 125 Wycliffe, J, 87, 121 Wyngarden, M. J., 87, 97, 105 Xeravits, G. G., 87, 303, 320 Yakubovich, I., 88, 279 Yamakazi-­R ansom, K, 88, 151 Yamauchi, E. M., 88, 97, 222, 230 Yarbro Collins, A., 88, 97, 106, 502, 565 Young, E. J., 88, 125, 143, 160, 231, 263, 293, 332, 359, 377, 485, 486, 489 Young, I., 88, 276, 284 Zacharias, H. D., 88, 106 Zadok, R., 88, 135, 138, 154, 179 Zamora, P., 88, 502, 522 Zeitlin, S., 88 Zevit, Z., 88, 332, 369, 401, 403 Ziegler, J., 88, 97, 103, 104, 337 Zier, M., 88, 97, 115 Zimmerli, W., 89, 343, 406, 488 Zimmermann, F., 89, 98, 276, 280, 406, 418, 444, 507 Zissu, B., 89, 97, 303, 320 Zoeckler, O., 89, 280 Zuiddam, B. A., 89, 301, 427, 441

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