Daniel 10

Today’s Passage: Daniel 10

We come now to the last great vision of the book, and before it opens the curtain is drawn back for a moment on things ordinarily hidden from our eyes. It is the third year of Cyrus, and Daniel, by now a very old man, has been mourning and fasting for three full weeks, weighed down by a message of great conflict. As he stands on the bank of the Tigris he lifts his eyes and sees a man clothed in linen, dazzling and terrible, and at the sight of him every ounce of Daniel’s strength drains away. Then a hand touches him, a heavenly messenger raises him from the ground, and tender words are spoken that carry us to the very heart of this chapter: his prayer had been heard from the first day, and the answer had been on its way all along, delayed only by a struggle he could not see. This chapter is the doorway into the final vision of chapters eleven and twelve, and it teaches us how to wait.

As you read, hold this: The prayer of God’s people is heard from the very first day, though the answer comes through unseen conflict.

Daniel 10:1 (BSB)

¹ In the third year of Cyrus king of Persia, a message was revealed to Daniel, who was called Belteshazzar. The message was true, and it concerned a great conflict. And the understanding of the message was given to him in a vision.

The chapter opens by vouching for what follows. The message was true, and it concerned a great conflict, and Daniel was given not only the words but the understanding of them. Here is an old man who had served through the whole span of the exile, who had seen Babylon fall and Persia rise, still being entrusted by God with things to come. Age had not set him on a shelf. The Lord who had spoken to him as a young captive was speaking to him still, for the God who begins a work in His servants does not abandon them in their gray years but keeps them useful to the very end.

Daniel 10:2–3 (BSB)

² In those days I, Daniel, was mourning for three full weeks. ³ I ate no rich food, no meat or wine entered my mouth, and I did not anoint myself with oil until the three weeks were completed.

Before the vision came the mourning. For three full weeks Daniel set aside the comforts of the table and gave himself to grief and to prayer, laying his people’s plight before God with a heaviness he would not shake off. There is something to learn simply from this, that the great revelations of Scripture were not given to careless hearts but to a man who cared enough to fast and weep. He did not yet have his answer, but he kept seeking, and he kept his soul low before God while he waited. That is the posture in which heaven’s help so often finds us.

Daniel 10:4–6 (BSB)

⁴ On the twenty-fourth day of the first month, as I was standing on the bank of the great river, the Tigris, ⁵ I lifted up my eyes, and behold, there was a certain man dressed in linen, with a belt of fine gold from Uphaz around his waist. ⁶ His body was like beryl, his face like the brilliance of lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of polished bronze, and his voice like the sound of a multitude.

Then, on the bank of the Tigris, Daniel lifts his eyes and sees him: a man clothed in linen, girded with gold, his body gleaming like precious stone, his face like lightning, his eyes like flame, his voice like the roar of a great crowd. It is a description that reaches for every bright and burning thing and still falls short, and the reader who knows the New Testament cannot help but hear its echo in the vision of the risen Christ in Revelation, whose face shone like the sun and whose voice was like the sound of many waters. Here is a being of surpassing glory, and we are meant to feel, before we are told anything else, how small a man stands in the presence of the holy.

Daniel 10:7–9 (BSB)

⁷ Only I, Daniel, saw the vision; the men with me did not see it, but a great terror fell upon them, and they ran and hid themselves. ⁸ So I was left alone, gazing at this great vision. No strength remained in me; my face grew deathly pale, and I was powerless. ⁹ I heard the sound of his words, and as I listened, I fell into a deep sleep, with my face to the ground.

The companions with Daniel saw nothing, yet even so a great terror seized them and they fled to hide, so that he was left alone before the vision. And the glory that would have been joy to a soul made perfect was, to a man still in the flesh, more than he could bear. His color drained, his strength failed utterly, and he sank helpless to the ground. We should not be quick to think ourselves ready to stand unshaken before God. The saints of Scripture who drew nearest to His glory were the ones most undone by it, and it is a sign of a true encounter with the holy that a man is emptied of every last claim to strength of his own.

Daniel 10:10–11 (BSB)

¹⁰ Suddenly, a hand touched me and set me trembling on my hands and knees. ¹¹ He said to me, “Daniel, you are a man who is highly precious. Consider carefully the words that I am about to say to you. Stand up, for I have now been sent to you.” And when he had said this to me, I stood up trembling.

Now comes the tenderness, and it comes as a touch. A hand reaches down to the fallen man and lifts him, first to his hands and knees and then, at the word of the messenger, to his feet, though he stands there trembling still. And the first thing spoken over him is that word of surpassing worth: Daniel, you are a man who is highly precious (חֲמֻדוֹת) chamudot, pronounced khah-moo-DOHT. Strong's H2532, precious things, treasures, greatly desired things. It is a striking word to speak over a man lying face down in the dust, emptied of all strength. The very term is used elsewhere in Daniel for treasures and precious things, and now it is laid like a crown upon a trembling old man. When Daniel is at his weakest, with nothing in himself to commend him, heaven names him not by his failure but by his worth in the sight of God, a man greatly loved, a treasured one. This is how God regards His own. He does not prize us for the strength we bring but holds us dear as His own delight, and He is never nearer to telling us so than when we have come to the end of ourselves. . Consider how gently God deals with the weak. He does not scold Daniel for collapsing, nor demand that he compose himself before being addressed. He raises him with His own hand and steadies him with a word of love. The God before whom the strongest man falls down is the same God who stoops to lift that man and call him treasured.

Daniel 10:12–13 (BSB)

¹² “Do not be afraid, Daniel,” he said, “for from the first day that you purposed to understand and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. ¹³ However, the prince of the kingdom of Persia opposed me for twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I had been left there with the kings of Persia.

Here is the sentence to carry home from the whole chapter, and I would have you read it slowly. From the first day that Daniel set his heart to understand and to humble himself, his words were heard, and the messenger was sent in response to them. Not on the twenty-first day, when the answer at last arrived. On the first day, when he first bowed his head. The three long weeks of waiting were never a silence from heaven; the answer had been dispatched at once, and was making its way to him through a conflict he could not see, a struggle in which “the prince of the kingdom of Persia” withstood the messenger until Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help. We are told this much and no more, and we should be content with no more, resisting every temptation to build a whole hidden world out of a single verse. But what we are told is enough to steady a waiting soul forever. Your prayer is heard the day you pray it. The delay you feel is not the measure of God’s attention, and unseen realities you know nothing of may lie behind the answer that seems so slow in coming.

Daniel 10:14 (BSB)

¹⁴ Now I have come to explain to you what will happen to your people in the latter days, for the vision concerns those days.”

The messenger states his errand plainly: he has come to make Daniel understand what will befall his people in days still far off. This is the hinge that opens onto the long vision that follows, and it tells us why heaven took such pains to reach this one praying man. God meant to unfold to His servant something of the road ahead, that His people, then and in every generation, might know that history is not a runaway thing but is held and known by their God. What lay hidden in the future was already written in heaven, and the God who saw it all was the God to whom Daniel prayed.

Daniel 10:15–17 (BSB)

¹⁵ While he was speaking these words to me, I set my face toward the ground and became speechless. ¹⁶ And suddenly one with the likeness of a man touched my lips, and I opened my mouth and said to the one standing before me, “My lord, because of the vision, I am overcome with anguish, and I have no strength. ¹⁷ How can I, your servant, speak with you, my lord? Now I have no strength, nor is any breath left in me.”

Even after being raised and reassured, Daniel is overwhelmed again. He bows his face to the ground, struck speechless, until a hand touches his lips and gives him back the power of speech, and then all he can say is a confession of his own utter weakness: I am overcome with anguish, I have no strength, no breath is left in me. There is no pretense in this old saint, no false composure. He tells the truth about himself, that he is emptied and undone, and lays that emptiness openly before the messenger of God. It is often the honest confession of our weakness, rather than any show of strength, that opens the way for God’s help to come.

Daniel 10:18–19 (BSB)

¹⁸ Again the one with the likeness of a man touched me and strengthened me. ¹⁹ “Do not be afraid, you who are highly precious,” he said. “Peace be with you! Be strong now; be very strong!” As he spoke with me, I was strengthened and said, “Speak, my lord, for you have strengthened me.”

And so, a second time, the touch comes and strength flows in. Do not be afraid, you who are highly precious; peace be with you; be strong (חֲזַק) chazaq, pronounced khah-ZAK. Strong's H2388, to be strong, grip tight, fasten firmly. It is worth noticing that the strength here is both commanded and given in the same breath. Be strong, the messenger says, and in the very act of speaking it he makes it so, for Daniel is strengthened as the words are spoken. This is the way of God with His people all through Scripture. He does not merely order the weak to be strong and then leave them to find the strength alone; He supplies what He summons. The same word rings out over Joshua on the threshold of the promised land and over the exiles rebuilding the temple, and always it comes wrapped in the promise that the LORD Himself is the one who makes it good. Our part is to take hold; His part is to give the very grip by which we hold. now, be very strong. Hear how the same tender name is spoken over him again, and see what those words accomplish, for as they are spoken Daniel is strengthened, and the man who had no breath left in him is able at last to answer, Speak, my lord, for you have strengthened me. This is the great mercy of the chapter made plain. The strength Daniel could not summon from within was given to him from without, poured into a weak and trembling servant by the God who loved him. What God requires of us He supplies to us, and He meets the one who has come to the end of his own strength with strength that is not his own.

Daniel 10:20–21 (BSB)

²⁰ “Do you know why I have come to you?” he said. “I must return at once to fight against the prince of Persia, and when I have gone forth, behold, the prince of Greece will come. ²¹ But first I will tell you what is inscribed in the Book of Truth. Yet no one has the courage to support me against these, except Michael your prince.

The messenger closes by pointing forward on two horizons at once. He must return to the unseen struggle, where the prince of Persia will give way in time to the prince of Greece, the very succession of empires the coming vision will trace; and he will first make known to Daniel what is written in the Book of Truth. That is a phrase to rest in. Before ever these things unfold on the stage of the world, they stand already inscribed in a book that cannot lie, kept by the God who orders the ages. Godly readers have long differed over the finer details of the vision that follows, and Scripture leaves room for that humility. What is not in doubt is the ground beneath it all: that history is written before it is lived, that God’s purposes are sure, and that His trembling servants are upheld by help far greater than they can see. Michael, “your prince,” stands with the messenger, and the weak old man by the river is not so alone as he feels.