Today’s Passage: An Overview of the Whole Book
You are about to walk through one of the most loved and one of the most daring books in all the Bible, a book that opens with young men carried off in chains and closes with a vision of the dead rising to everlasting life. Daniel was a young man of Judah, likely still in his teens, when the armies of Babylon came and took him far from home, along with three of his friends, to be trained for the service of a foreign king. He would spend the rest of his long life, some seventy years and more, in the courts of the greatest empires the world had yet seen, first Babylon and then Persia, serving king after king while never once bowing his heart to their gods. The first half of the book tells the stories that children have loved for ages: the four young men who would not eat the king’s rich food, the fiery furnace that could not burn three faithful men, the proud king humbled to eat grass like an ox, the writing on the wall, the lions who kept their mouths shut all night long. The second half opens the heavens over Daniel’s own head and shows him visions of beasts and kingdoms and, at the very center of them, One like a Son of Man coming with the clouds to receive a kingdom that will never end. From the palace to the prophecy, one drumbeat sounds through every page, and you will come to know it by heart: the Most High rules over the kingdom of men.
As you read, hold this: Through the faith of exiles in a pagan court and visions of the ages to come, one truth stands unshaken: the Most High rules over the kingdom of men and gives it to whom He wishes, and His everlasting kingdom shall never be destroyed.
The name and what it means
The prophet’s name in Hebrew is דָּנִיֵּאל (daniyyel), pronounced daw-nee-YALE (Strong’s H1840), and it means “God is my judge” or “God is my Judge.” It is a fitting name to carry through a life spent among kings, for a man who bore it would be reminded every time he heard it that no earthly throne, however grand, was the highest court he answered to. The kings of Babylon and Persia could set the terms of his diet, they could throw him to the lions, they could raise him up or cast him down, but they could not be his judge. That belonged to God alone. And so the whole book of Daniel is, in a sense, the unfolding of the man’s own name, the long demonstration that above every ruler of the earth there sits a higher Ruler who judges rightly and reigns forever.
The world of the book
The story begins in the year 605 before Christ, when Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon carried off the first of Judah’s captives, Daniel among them, and it runs on through the fall of Babylon to the Persians under Cyrus, some seventy years later. These were the years of the exile, the long, hard chapter when God’s people lived far from the ruined city of Jerusalem, under kings who did not know the LORD. It was a time that could have swallowed a young man’s faith whole, and it swallowed many. Yet Daniel and his friends show us what it looks like to belong wholly to God in a land that belongs wholly to someone else, to serve an earthly master faithfully and well while never surrendering the one loyalty that mattered most.
One feature of the book will strike you the moment you look closely, and it is worth knowing from the start. Daniel is written in two languages. The opening chapter and the closing visions, chapters 1 and 8 through 12, are in Hebrew, the tongue of God’s covenant people. But the great middle section, from chapter 2 verse 4 all the way through chapter 7, is written in Aramaic, the common language of the wider empire, the language of the nations. It is as if the book itself speaks first to the household of faith, then turns and addresses the whole watching world in its own tongue, declaring to every kingdom under heaven that their days are numbered and their thrones are held on loan from a higher King.
The shape of the book
- The court narratives (chapters 1 through 6). Six unforgettable stories of faith tested and faithfulness rewarded. Four young men refuse the king’s table and are found healthier than all the rest; Nebuchadnezzar dreams of a great statue shattered by a stone; three friends walk unharmed through a blazing furnace; a proud king is brought low to graze like a beast until he learns who truly reigns; a hand writes doom on a banquet wall; and an old man is thrown to the lions and lifted out without a scratch. In every story the point is the same, that the Most High rules and will not share His glory.
- The visions of the end (chapters 7 through 12). The book turns from stories to sweeping visions of the ages: four great beasts rising from the sea and One like a Son of Man given everlasting dominion; a ram and a goat locked in struggle; the mysterious seventy weeks; and a final unveiling of kings and wars and the time of the end, closing with the promise of resurrection, when those who sleep in the dust will awake, some to everlasting life.
Because the visions in the second half of Daniel reach into matters where faithful, Bible-loving readers have long understood the details differently, we will read them the way Manna Praxis always reads such things, with an open hand. Where godly interpreters differ on the fine points, the timing of the seventy weeks, the identity of the little horn, the shape of the last kingdom, we will note honestly that faithful readers hold different views, and we will keep the full weight of our attention on what is certain and clear and Christ-ward. And a great deal here is certain. God’s kingdom triumphs. The proud are judged. The saints are vindicated. The Son of Man receives a dominion that shall not pass away. On those things the whole book stands like iron, and no honest reader can miss them.
The one thread to carry
If you carry one thing through all twelve chapters, carry this: the Most High rules over the kingdom of men, and the kingdom He is bringing will never end. Every proud empire in this book rises for its little hour and then falls, Babylon to Persia, Persia to those who came after, kingdom after kingdom crumbling like the great statue struck by the stone. But over them all, and after them all, God sets up a kingdom that time cannot touch.
Daniel 2:44 (BSB) — “In the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will shatter all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, but will itself stand forever.”
That everlasting kingdom is not a thing but a Person, and Daniel was given to see Him, in the night visions, coming on the clouds of heaven to receive from the Ancient of Days a dominion that will never fade. The New Testament will take up these very words and set them on the lips of Jesus Himself, standing before His judges, telling them plainly who He is.
Daniel 7:13–14 (BSB) — “In my vision in the night I continued to watch, and I saw One like the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into His presence. And He was given dominion, glory, and kingship, that the people of every nation and language should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and His kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.”
So read this book knowing where it leads. The furnace and the lions’ den are not merely brave old tales; they are windows onto a God who saves His own. The dreams and the beasts are not riddles to frighten us; they are the pulling back of a curtain to show that history is going somewhere, that it is held in the hand of the Most High, and that it ends not in the triumph of any empire but in the everlasting reign of the Son of Man. Learn the Word, hold the weight where it belongs, on what is sure and Christ-ward, and give thanks.