Daniel 7:1 Commentary and Bible Study

This vision occurs, we read, in the first year of Belshazzar, about ten years before 539 BC, the fall of Babylon, and we have gone back in time from the previous chapter. The seventy years of captivity in Babylon are coming to an end and at such a time the Lord is going to reveal to Daniel how long there is to go before Messiah comes, and some of the great events of history that will be unfolded. It is a vision which runs parallel with that in chapter 2. That was a dream to Nebuchadnezzar, which Daniels is given to interpret and it told us about the four world empires. This vision runs parallel, but it gives rather more information. It is most important that the people of God, the remnant of faithful people, should know how long they have to wait, and so Daniel receives this vision. It didn't say exactly how long they had to wait, but they knew how long empires lasted, and if they were in the first of four empires and there were three to go, they realised that Messiah was some way off. And yet the vision that Daniel is given is full of encouragement and certainty, and shows the power of God to surely bring about his purposes and to lay first one, then another, then the next, and finally the fourth empire aside. But there is more than just future history in this chapter.Now the image that was given to Nebuchadnezzar in his dream was human, and the four world empires were part of a human image or structure. But now the imagery changes because there will be four beasts, and one is so terrible that no animal ferocious enough is to hand to depict the fourth empire. So whereas there was a human side given to the history of four empires in chapter 2, now you see the fallen side and the vicious side with beasts come in to illustrate the very same empires. They are represented here in the same order as in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream.‘Daniel had a dream and visions of his head.’ There is a kind of double description; it's not just a dream. They are visions clearly imparted to Daniel by God upon his bed. ‘Then he wrote the dream.’ Why would he do that? No doubt he did it under inspiration and urging by the Lord, but he realised this wasn't just for him. This was something of tremendous importance that was to be learned and known by all the true people of God, to encourage them down the centuries, and then afterwards also. ‘And he told the sum of the matters’, and our translation is perhaps a little too general. The idea is that he told everything except the very secondary matters that were seen in this very vivid long vision. What it does not mean is that we only have a part of the inspired message.This is the last chapter of the Aramaic section of the book, which runs from early in chapter 2 to the end of chapter 7, and therefore chapter 7 seems to belong to the first half of the book. The Aramaic part of the book is written to the world at large; chapters 8 to 12 are for the Lord’s people.