The book of Daniel is unique in the Old Testament due to its content and the pivotal role it plays between the Old Testament prophecies about the restoration of Israel and the New Testament fulfillment of those prophecies in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. The book is rich in complexity and depth, a richness that makes it hard to summarize in brief. There are, however, three aspects of the book that open it up to the modern reader.
1. The opening stories (chs. 1–6) give credence to the later prophecies of the book (chs. 7–12).
The stories in the opening chapters of Daniel, written mostly in Aramaic, paint a picture of a generation of young Judahites who are taken into captivity in Babylon in 605 BC. There they face terrible persecution from their captors as well as incredible successes at the hand of the Lord, in whom they put their trust. The story about Daniel and his friends Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego makes clear literary and linguistic connections to the story of Joseph in Egypt. For example, both are described as good-looking (Gen. 39:6; Dan. 1:4), both involve the interpretation of kings’ dreams that create distress for these kings and reveal God’s plan for the future, and many of the same Hebrew words are used throughout each story to link them together. Like Joseph, Daniel and his friends are faithful to God’s call while serving in a foreign court, and as a result, they are lifted up to positions of incredible affluence, even receiving a gold chain around the neck (Gen. 41:42; Dan. 5:29).
Their faithfulness in the face of persecution bolsters Daniel’s prophetic message about the restoration both to the Israelites in the diaspora and the returnees who had gone back to Jerusalem in 536 BC after the fall of Babylon to the Medo-Persian coalition. This would have been particularly important in light of Daniel’s primary message that the restoration from exile is going to be postponed sevenfold (Dan. 9:24).
2. The sevenfold postponement of the restoration of Jerusalem, announced in Daniel, creates a bridge between the events of the Old Testament and those of Jesus’ ministry.
Ever since the time of Moses, a national exile and restoration of some kind was held out in front of Israel (Deut. 28:64–68; 30:1–10). Throughout Leviticus 26, the Lord tells Moses that if Israel does not repent in the event of exile, He withholds the right to extend the discipline sevenfold (Lev. 26:18, 21, 24, 28).
By the time of Jeremiah, the threat of exile had developed from being a possible outcome to an impending doom. The time for repentance had passed (Jer. 19) and the prophet declared that not only was the exile approaching but that it would last for seventy years (Jer. 25:11; 29:10). Daniel is reading passages like these, which inspire him to offer the prayer of repentance that we find in Daniel 9. He knows that exile will not come to an end until the people of Israel repent for their sins and wholeheartedly return to the Lord of their salvation. Because of his righteous prayer, the Lord sends a messenger (Gabriel) to Daniel to convey the news that the exile has been extended sevenfold. It will not be seventy years to the end of the “desolations of Jerusalem” but seventy times seven, or 490 years. The rest of the book offers a series of visions that describe the events that will take place between Daniel’s time and the coming of the kingdom of God.
3. The visions of chapters 7 through 12 encourage the people of God to trust in the Lord’s plan for restoration even as the global events of the intertestamental period take place.
One thing that’s striking about the second half of Daniel is how specific and detailed the visions are concerning the events that will take place before the coming of Messiah in the restoration. Why would the prophet lay out in such fine detail the course of future events? Other prophets were much more vague and impressionistic in their predictions about the future, but Daniel is remarkably precise. The answer must lie in the message of the book concerning the sevenfold postponement of the restoration. By laying it out in detail, the prophet is encouraging the covenant community to continue to trust in the Lord even as empire after empire rises and falls in the succession of global history. The Lord is still sovereign over human history, so His people should be faithful in their duties and enjoy the privileges that they have as God’s covenant people. Throughout it all, they should trust in the Lord of their salvation and know that one day He will restore them.
Just as the righteous remnant of Israel must continue in spite of the ebb and flow of history, the followers of Messiah today should find hope in the prophecies of Daniel. We too have duties and privileges as the people of God awaiting the return of our king and the fulfillment of the restoration program that He began two thousand years ago (2 Peter 3:1–13). We are also considered exiles who have seen the messianic King and serve Him in the midst of unfolding global events (1 Peter 1:1; see James 1:1). Like Daniel and his friends, we will not be ground up in the gears of geopolitical powers, because we serve a greater King who has freely and unchangeably ordained whatsoever comes to pass (Westminster Confession of Faith 3.1).
This article is part of the Every Book of the Bible: 3 Things to Know collection.
Ligonier Ministries