Daniel 10:4 Commentary and Bible Study

Daniel notes the exact day and place of this very significant vision. He has got this carefully chronicled. He is by the great river, Hiddekel, or Tigris; he is still in Babylon. This is not a vision, as previously when he was by a river in Persia; this is literal, because he describes his location before the vision begins. ‘Then I lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and behold a certain man clothed in linen, whose loins were girded with fine gold of Uphaz.’ As we read the description of this man, it is inevitable we come to the conclusion that this is a theophany; this is an appearance of Christ before his incarnation. He comes as the preincarnate God Man, and in this glorious form he reveals himself to Daniel. Now there are some statements in this chapter that would suggest just a first or a leading angel. But this description is very powerful, and you have all the aspects of a divine person in these verses: one who is a priest, clothed in the linen of priests, whose loins were girded with fine gold, which is the apparel of a king. ‘His body also was like the beryl’, carved, as it were, or fashioned from a gemstone, ‘and his face as the appearance of lightning,’ so bright, so dazzling, ‘and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in colour to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude.’ The Hebrew could be ‘a great crowd’ which our translators have chosen here, or it’s equally used, this very term, to describe mighty waters. When you come to the Book of Revelation, chapter 1 and verses 13 to 15, the apostle John is inspired to take this very passage in Daniel as a description of Christ the Lord who appeared to him in Patmos in a vision. So it is hard to resist the conclusion that this is not an angel, but it is the Lord himself. There are several points of similarity between the two visions. Both had eyes as flames of fire, both had feet like burnished bronze, both had a voice like the sound of many waters. Besides, nowhere else does the Bible go into this amount of detail to describe a mere angel.