Daniel
Purpose
Daniel is set among the Judean nobility carried off to Babylon in 605 BC, and it answers the question God's people faced in exile: when a pagan empire seems to control everything, who really rules the kingdoms of the world? The book's answer is unmistakable — "the Most High God rules the kingdom of men and sets over it whom he will" (4:17). The opening court narratives show Daniel and his friends staying faithful to the LORD amid idolatry: refusing the king's food, surviving the fiery furnace rather than bow to the image, and facing the lions' den rather than give up prayer. Each crisis reveals that God, not Nebuchadnezzar or Darius, holds the true power. The latter half of the book opens these truths into sweeping apocalyptic visions of successive kingdoms, the judgement of the "Ancient of Days," the coming of "one like a son of man" who receives an everlasting kingdom, the "seventy weeks" that frame the destiny of Jerusalem, and the final triumph of the saints of the Most High. Daniel teaches a beleaguered people to live faithfully under foreign rule while looking past every earthly empire to the indestructible kingdom God will establish.
Author
Traditionally Daniel
Time Period
Events of the 6th c. BC; date of writing disputed (6th or 2nd c. BC)
Key Themes
- God's sovereignty over kingdoms
- Faithfulness in exile
- Apocalyptic visions
- Son of man
- Judgement
- Resurrection
- The saints of the Most High
Outline
Court narratives (ch. 1–6): Daniel and the royal food; the youths' wisdom; Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the four-kingdom statue and the stone cut without hands; the fiery furnace and the fourth man in the fire; Nebuchadnezzar's humbling and restoration; Belshazzar's feast and the writing on the wall; and the lions' den under Darius. Apocalyptic visions (ch. 7–12): the four beasts and the Ancient of Days; the son of man receiving the kingdom; the ram and the goat and the rise of the fierce king who exalts himself; the "seventy weeks" decreed for Jerusalem; the long struggle of the kings of the north and south; and Michael the great prince, the time of distress, the resurrection to everlasting life or shame, and the sealing of the book "until the time of the end."