The Book of Daniel: Expository Commentary from Sermons by Dr Peter Masters

Bible Commentary on the Book of Daniel

by Dr Peter Masters, Metropolitan Tabernacle, London (adapted from sermons) with content from Bible Notes

The setting for the Book of Daniel is primarily the land of Babylon (ancient Shinar, Daniel 1:2), the land ruled by Nebuchadnezzar, from where he sought to extend his empire across the Middle East. It was here that Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were brought from Jerusalem as young men on the instructions of Nebuchadnezzar, and by the overruling of God, and where the events described at least in the first part of the book took place. At last, after centuries of warning, God had allowed his covenant people to be taken away from their own land and to go into exile. Even before they entered Canaan, at the very birth of the nation, Moses had warned of this possibility if they failed to respond to the corrections and discipline of the Lord. In Leviticus 26 there are a series of increasingly severe judgments threatened against Israel if they persist in their idolatry, the last of which is the threat that they will be scattered throughout the nations and their land taken away from them, and Moses implies that this will indeed happen. The Lord warns them through Moses, ‘I will bring the land [which they had not yet entered] into desolation: and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it. ³³ And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste’ (Leviticus 26:32-33). The same warning had been repeated (Deuteronomy 4:27; 28:36), and Deuteronomy 28 describes in remarkable detail the misery that they would experience in exile. Other Old Testament prophets also refer to this. Nehemiah confirms that it was according to this prophecy of Moses that they had suffered as a nation (Nehemiah 1:8), and Zechariah speaks of them being scattered by a judgment of God (Zechariah 7:14). Prior to the exile God had sent his servant Jeremiah, who spoke in greater detail than any other prophet of the judgment that would come on the nation through Babylon and Nebuchadnezzar its king. He even foretold the length of time they would remain in Babylon (Jeremiah 25:11-12), and it was through studying this prophecy that Daniel was encouraged to set his face to the Lord in prayer, and to ask for Israel’s recovery (Daniel 9:2-3).

The exile took place in stages. Nebuchadnezzar attacked Jerusalem three times, and the book opens with the first of these attacks in 605 BC, when the utensils of the temple were carried away, and Daniel and his three friends were transported to Babylon to be indoctrinated in the Chaldean way of life. Further attacks and transportations occurred in 597 BC when ten thousand Israelites were carried away (2 Kings 24:14-16), and in 588 BC when a long siege began which ended in 586 BC and was marked by the destruction of the temple and the city of Jerusalem. This third attack left only the poorest in the land (2 Kings 25:11-12) and it was certainly then that the largest number of people were taken away. Israel was to be in captivity in Babylon for seventy years, and in the mercy of God this period began with the first of these attacks. Following the return, the second temple began to be built in 537 BC and its foundation stone was laid in 536 BC.

The Book of Daniel is a favourite book of the Old Testament. The history is easy; it is biographical and compelling. Most of the Old Testament is in context of a covenant people, but the Book of Daniel describes God’s people transported into an unbelieving culture and so gives us instruction not found anywhere else. The prophecy is amazing and so clear. Daniel 11 contains some of the most detailed prophecy in the Bible, describing Alexander the Great’s conquest of the nation of Israel and the subsequent breakup of his empire into four parts. So detailed is the prophecy in the Book of Daniel that unbelieving scholars who cannot accept the reality of Biblical prophecy have felt justified in post-dating the entire book, and setting it long after the events described had taken place. They cannot allow that Daniel could have knowledge of the three great world empires which would follow the Babylonian Empire (the Medo-Persian, Greek, and Roman Empires). Daniel maps out future events with such perfect accuracy right up to the time of Christ, and long before these empires appeared on the pages of history. That, the critics say, means that the book was written after the events described.

One powerful refutation of this redating of the book has come with the discovery of the Nabonidus Cylinder now in the British Museum. Daniel 5 verses 5 and 30 record, ‘In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the king's palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote … In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain.’ Daniel gives an account of the events in the Babylonian palace just before the Medes seized and occupied the city, taking over its empire in the year 539 BC. Belshazzar is named as the feasting king who promised Daniel that he would be the third ruler in the kingdom if he could interpret the writing on the wall. Before the mid-1800s many scholars claimed that this was sheer fiction on the part of the Bible, because the last King of Babylon was known to be Nabonidus, and the name ‘Belshazzar’ was unheard of outside the Book of Daniel. Even Herodotus, the Greek historian who wrote up the history of Babylon in 450 BC, had evidently never heard of Belshazzar. There seemed little hope for the accuracy of the Book of Daniel. Inevitably, however, in 1854 Babylonian inscriptions began to yield up their evidence. These tell us that Nabonidus entrusted the kingship to his eldest son while he himself lived in Tema in Arabia for ten years. The Nabonidus Chronicle 556-539 BC says at one point, ‘The king was in the city of Tema; the king’s son, courtiers and army were in Babylonia.’ Daniel’s record has therefore been vindicated as truly historical, and we now know why Belshazzar (as co-regent) could only offer Daniel the ‘third-place’ in the kingdom. We now have 2 clear confirmations that the book was written in the 6^th century BC. Firstly, the author of Daniel knew about Belshazzar, whose name had been completely forgotten by 450 BC when Herodotus wrote, and remained unheard of until the archaeological discoveries of our time. Secondly, the author also knew that Babylon had been rebuilt by Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 4:30), another fact that was unknown to later historians until the excavations of more recent times.

The book of the prophet Daniel makes a gentle start. It proceeds into depths of theology and prophecy, and of course narrative concerning the proving of the Lord, and his provision for his people, but it starts so beautifully and so gently. There are magnificent things in the book of Daniel. In fact, there is fresh Old Testament revelation touching on themes unseen in any earlier books in the Old Testament. You can't really study the theology of angels without the Book of Daniel, introducing new knowledge. You can't think very deeply about the doctrine of the resurrection of the body without the Book of Daniel, which is the first clear – not the first announcement, but the first description – of these things in the Old Testament. So to Daniel was given tremendous privileges of revelation, quite apart from this book demonstrating God's sovereign power to bless the survival of his people and their integrity through the ages.