THE BOOK OF DANIEL
FOREWORD - by F.F.Bruce
THIS IS EMPHATICALLY A BOOK FOR THE PRESENT DAY. IT would
at any time be a pleasure to commend this work of my highly esteemed friend Mr.
G. H. Lang, but under present circumstances it is doubly a pleasure to commend
a work so calculated to quicken the readers' interest in the Old Testament
Apocalypse and assist their understanding of it. Apocalypses have been called
"tracts for the times, especially for bad times." It is indeed very natural
that in times of crisis and upheaval many should turn to those inspired
writings which paint the human scene in the most sombre colours imaginable, and
yet throughout the darkest hours look forward to the certain dawn of the new
day when "the God of heaven shall set up a kingdom, which shall never be
destroyed."
Mr. Lang is concerned with the spiritual and prophetic
lessons of Daniel rather than with critical and historical questions, though he
makes plain his belief in the authenticity of the book as against the view that
it is a pseudepigraphic work of the Maccabean age. His treatment of the
historical chapters is unusual and valuable, showing how aptly the moral
principles there illustrated apply to the life of the Christian today,
particularly in the totalitarian states, and how they may be expected to apply
increasingly as time goes on. The exposition of the prophetic chapters is
largely new, forming an original and independent contribution to their study.
In particular, he leaves the beaten track in Chapters VII and XI, his treatment
of these being in part a development of suggestions made in earlier days by Dr.
S. P. Tregelles and Sir Robert
Anderson.
The work is highly topical. Mr. Lang's emphasis on the
central place occupied by the eastern Mediterranean in prophetic geography
loses none of its force in view of the increasing importance of that region in
our own day. As he describes the character of Nebucadnezzar and his successors,
and paints the portrait of the predicted Antichrist, we cannot fail to be
struck by the many features which regularly reproduce themselves in tyrants and
dictators, not least in those of the present day. Indeed, in April, 1940, a
British Cabinet Minister found no words more suitable to describe a
contemporary European potentate than those of Daniel ii : 21 if. For these and
other reasons this book ought to make a special appeal at such a time as this.
It is the fruit of much thoughtful study, and its presentation of many fresh
ideas in a style at once reasoned, moderate, and free from dogmatism forms a
gratifying contrast to the superficiality, loose thinking, and unfounded
assertion which mar too many popular works on Biblical prophecy. If some of the
interpretations here offered fail to carry conviction, we need not conclude
that they are therefore to be rejected, but should give heed to the advice of
Francis Bacon: "allowing, nevertheless, that latitude which is agreeable and
familiar unto Divine prophecies; being of the nature of their Author with whom
a thousand years are but as one day, and therefore are not fulfilled punctually
at once, but have springing and germinant accomplishment throughout many ages,
though the height or ful-ness of them may refer to some one age."
F. F.
BRUCE,
University of Sheffield.
BY THE GRACE OF GOD, MY INTEREST IN
PROPHETIC STUDIES
was kindled in my youth, and by that grace it has been
maintained and deepened for sixty years. Some results of this reading and
reflection are here offered to my fellow-pilgrims in this waste, howling
wilderness for the end of which we long. I say results rather than conclusions.
Let no one conceive that he has concluded his study of prophetic scripture. For
myself, I know that I know "not yet as I ought to know." The mass of details is
so vast that it is more than a life-work to co-ordinate it, and the overlooking
or the wrongly estimating of even one statement may lead to a false opinion,
just as the omission or misreading of one figure will falsify a calculation. If
a book be only a repetition of positive and well-known truth it may still be of
use, by introducing that truth to some not acquainted with it. But this book is
offered as, it is hoped, a contribution to the study of Daniel.
More
space than is usual is given to treating the historical chapters, on the
grounds that actually these too are prophetical and also are full of urgent and
practical lessons, lessons without which the prophetical chapters will never be
rightly used. Upon the more obviously prophetic parts some interpretations are
offered not yet common, but which seem to me to follow closely the statements
of the book, and to give them a more powerful practical bearing.
Of
writers on prophecy known to me the most helpful are G. H Pember, B. W. Newton,
R. Govett, and, on Daniel, S. P. Tregelles. The last-named book is happily
still to be obtained, from Mr. G. H. Fromow, 9, Milnthorpe Road, Chiswick,
London, W.4. The book by Pember here quoted (except on p. i 8o) is The Great
Prophecies of the Centuries concerning Israel, the Gentiles, and the Church of
God (Ed. 1941). Numbers in brackets after quotations are the pages of the work
quoted. Other simple numbers in brackets are the verses of the chapter of
Daniel under consideration. This can be easily remembered, because each chapter
of this book deals with the corresponding chapter of Daniel.
The
Revised Version is generally followed, not the Authorized. The inexact
renderings of the latter put exact study quite out of the question; and in
prophecy pre-eminently exactness of rendering is indispensable to exact
knowledge, and exact knowledge to learning distinctly the landmarks the pilgrim
needs to see on his journey so as not to miss the way, and how he shall walk
and act so as to please God. If this book shall help any in so walking its
chief end will be served.
These pages were written in the summer of
1938. Matter in square brackets.[ ]-is mine. G. H. L.
August, 1940.
Note to the Fourth Edition. Sundry minor changes have been made necessary by
lapse of time and the cessation of war. Some rearrangement and amplifi-cation
will be found in Chapter VII. The exposition remains as before.
THE PROPHET HIMSELF
THE TOOL
MUST FIT THE HAND OF THE WORKMAN, THE SWORD
the hand of the soldier. God's
instrument must be adapted to His use, His co-worker must correspond to
Himself. The character of the prophet must represent worthily the God before
Whom he stands and for Whom he speaks.
This first chapter delineates
Daniel himself. It shows his status in society, the discipline that developed
him, the sphere of his service, the temptations that tested him, his
associates, his strength of character. It reveals the secret overruling by God
of his affairs, the direct divine enduement granted, the superiority over
worldly men thus conferred, and the feature, altogether and miraculously
exceptional in those lands and times, of his preservation to extreme old age,
in spite of the changes and dangers of an eventful public career amid world
upheavals.
We are not told who penned the description, but it is so
masterly, so comprehensive though brief, as itself to manifest the
heart-knowing God as its author, revealing the qualities He valued in the man
who was to bear His name before kings and to describe to them, and to all
succeeding generations, the course of world history. His messages were to be an
exhibition of man and of God: of the one in his greatness and weakness, his
skill and folly, his vice and cruelty, his pride and doom; and of the Other in
His divine wisdom, unfailing power, inflexible justice, His mercy and
faithfulness, His present and final supremacy.
So special a service
demanded a special servant. This prophet was to stand before kings in the
highest offices pf State, so he was chosen from royal, or at least noble, blood
(ver. 3). For certain purposes there are advantages in aristocratic birth and
inheritance. The training, culture, physical well-being (ver. 4), instinctive
and acquired skill in ruling, the wide outlook, the ease in handling large
affairs, make a man either more useful, o; of course, more hurtful to mankind.
Every society, the kingdom of heaven included, must have leaders, if it is to
prosper. Happy is the land that rears them, miserable the country denuded of
them, as by decay or revolution. The mismanagement of affairs public by men
unversed in great matters has produced vast miseries, of which awful examples
exist today, as heretofore. But when God needs a servant He chooses one
suitable to the work in view, and trains him thoroughly. Such an one was
Daniel.
He must learn to stand as a rock amidst the fury of vast and
violent public changes and grave personal perils. Therefore as a youth he was
permitted to endure the horrors of invasion; to witness the degradation of his
king being bound with fetters. He himself, with others of his rank, was dragged
from home and country to servitude in the land of the invader and oppressor,
and, as far as we know, he never again saw the land of his birth (II Kings 24).
He watched the rifling of the house of God itself, a plain token that Jehovah
was abandoning His people to the consequences of their apostasy. This lad, who
was already " skilful in all wisdom, and endued with knowledge" (ver. 4), could
not but have reflected much upon all these terrible happenings, and have seen
in them the dread fulfilment of Jeremiah's contemporary prophetic warnings, the
solemn, yet to faith the strengthening, assurance that God keeps His word to
the letter.
Arrived in Babylon he is quickly put into a new school,
with hard lessons and frightful perils. He is taken into the royal household to
be trained for service at court. And what a court! At its head a terrible
oriental despot, capable of most fiendish cruelties, as was usual in those
days, and as can be matched, alas, in these days. He could slay a captive's
sons before their father's eyes, and then put out the latter, so leaving the
wretched parent with this as the last memory (Jer. 39: 6,). He could throw his
chief officers into a furnace to watch them burn (Dan. 3); yea, could roast his
victims in a slow fire (Jer. 29: zz). Yet modern poison gas and liquid fire are
not much behind this for barbarousness. Such a man Daniel must study to please!
How shall the youth maintain his godliness? How shall a young officer of State
preserve his probity in a court permeated with bribery, corruption, and fraud?
How shall a young man keep clean his way amidst the filthy immoralities
habitual in heathendom, and pre-eminently in its court life? And how shall a
captive courtier resist the terrible pressure of the temptation to secure
toleration and advancement by worshipping the gods of the tyrant in whose hand
is his future, yea, his life? (Comp. II Kings 5: 17, i8).
Indeed, apart
from formal prostration before the gods in the temples, there was the daily
dedication to the palace deity of all the food to be eaten. One who ate of it
did thus publicly acknowledge the false god and partake at his altar, for all
the viands on the table were consecrated by the firstfruits portion being
placed on the household shrine (I Cor. 8 ; 10: 27, z8).
This vitiated
atmosphere Daniel must breathe all day long: how shall his soul not be
poisoned? Through these snares he must pick his way: will his feet not be
caught? This pressure, powerful and constant, he must meet: will he succumb? We
may believe that the story of his ancestor Joseph, in the court of Egypt,
guided and nerved him. The psalms of his royal father David must have directed
and inspired him. God's word written has saving power, when believed and
obeyed. Perhaps it was Daniel who afterwards wrote: "'Wherewithal shall a young
man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to Thy word," and "Thy
word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path" (Ps. ii: 9, io). At any
rate, no other life down to his time yields so many situations that correspond
to statements in this eulogy of the Word of God.
The first crisis came
immediately with the first entrance upon palace life, and it at once revealed
the stamina already developed in the soul of the youth. "Daniel purposed in his
heart that he would not defile himself" (i : 8). The actual occasion was
secondary, the essential matter was the purpose to remain undefiled. Daniel
will be holy because his God is holy. So the law commanded; so shall it be with
him, at whatever cost (Lev. ii 44, 45; I9; etc.).
This is the dominant
lesson of the chapter. Oh, to learn it well! For this is the primary, the
vital, the indispensable qualification for high service to the Holy One.
"Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out thence, touch no unclean thing . . . cleanse
yourselves ye that bear the vessels of Jehovah," was the call Daniel had heard
through the words of God by Isaiah (52: II). It is repeated to us (II Cor. 6:
14; 7i): "Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and
touch no unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be to you a Father,
and ye shall be to me Sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. Having
therefore these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement
of flesh and spirit, [persistently] perfecting holiness in the fear of God."
Daniel kept clean from defilement of the flesh by resolving not to eat of the
king’s dainties, seeing these were dedicated to his false god; for we
assume that this was at least the principal reason, though doubtless there was
the further ground that the food included articles prohibited by the law of
Moses, as swine’s flesh, etc.
And by keeping clean the flesh he at
the same time, and thereby, kept clean the spirit also; for thus he preserved
himself from a bad conscience toward God, from the corrupting principle of
disobedience to His law, from a compromise which must have lowered moral
stamina, enfeebled the will, dissipated courage, and blurred his spiritual
vision for both the will of God and the depravity of the world. How pressing is
the duty of bodily purity, and with what fabulous usury it recompenses! Hence
Paul, that he might be approved of the Judge and win the incorruptible crown,
enslaved his body (I Cor. 9: 27). No wonder that our Lord included fasting in
His early instruction on practical righteousness (Matt. 6: i 6, x 8). Cleanness
of body will be the measure of cleanness of heart, and defilement of the body
involves defilement of heart. John Wesley truly said that God commonly
retrenches the superfluities of the soul in the same measure that we do those
of the body.
It was not that Daniel became an ascetic or was morbidly
scrupulous, for we learn later (io: 2, 3) that ordinarily he ate pleasant food;
but he would not touch defiling food. Wisely did he face this issue at once,
and win the battle at the first brush with the foe. Thus he asserted
immediately the supremacy of duty over apparent self.interest, of obedience
over danger, of faith over fear, of the fear of God against general custom, of
the spirit over the body, of the will over appetite, and above all, of the
supremacy of God over man, whether himself or the king. To have shirked this
fight would have lost the campaign, and after ages would never have heard of
him; the winning it was the start of life-long victory, of final triumph; and
Daniel stands in Scripture as one of the very few, whose lives are told at
length, against whom no fault is recorded. He is an instance of what is meant
by being "without blemish."
Nor was it that he had to depart from the
world as to bodily presence. He could not, for he was a captive. Where a
believer can leave a yoke with an unbeliever he is peremptorily commanded to do
so, by words before quoted. "Come ye out from among them and be ye separate,"
is imperative. But it may not always be rightly possible. Slaves could not
escape that yoke, and were directed how to adorn the Christian teaching while
under it. A believing husband or wife may not break the already accepted yoke
with an unbeliever (I Cor. 7). We are not called to go out of the world
physically to secure our sanctification (I Cor. 5 : 9, io), as monks and
hermits would fain do. Indeed, it is precisely what the Lord did not ask for
His followers, but rather that they, being sent by Him into the world as His
representatives and to be the salt of the earth, should be kept from its evil
and its evil prince (John I7 is). So Daniel shall live seventy long years at
Babylon, the centre of the world, yet not be of it, nor be tarnished by it. And
the grace that sufficed for him is more abundantly available for us, since
Jesus went to the throne and the Spirit of holiness came down to dwell in us.
Only we, like Daniel, must be, and must abide, in the place and calling clearly
appointed of God for each; and in this dispensation, unlike that, political
office is not ~ a sphere of God for us, as it was not for our Lord when here.
Not till He rules should we.
Now the real, the God-intended separation
from the world involves practical difficulties. For Daniel these were literally
insurmountable, a mountain he could in no wise himself remove. The great king
had prescribed a certain arrangement of life: who would dare to vary it? To do
so would "endanger the head" of the presumptuous officer that sanctioned it (i:
io). But God is supreme, and will open a way for him who is determined to be
holy. The very will of God is our sanctification (I Thess. 4:3), and He will
make it possible. In Daniel’s case He
(i) disposed the heart of the
heathen official concerned to be kind and compassionate towards the captive
youth, a very rare circumstance that must have comforted and emboldened Daniel.
Then
(2) He gave Daniel tact and courage as to the test to be applied in
the practical handling of the matter.
(3) He made Daniel and his three
friends to flourish physically on the spare diet. Thousands of Christians might
well note this to their advantage.
(4) He wrought in them humble submission
to the official under whom they found themselves by His permission (i: 13),
coupled with secret and firm faith that God would endorse their course. With
this sure confidence in God the believer can with quietness let his forbearance
and yieldingness be known unto all men. Apparently he leaves the situation to
them, while actually he commits it into the hand of God, knowing that He is at
hand and is working. (Phil. 4: 4-7). "Wherefore let them also that suffer
according to the will of God commit their souls [better, their lives] in
well-doing unto a faithful Creator" (I Pet. 4: 19).
That Daniel’s
three friends were with him in this faithfulness which God endorsed, shows that
this course of life was not for a specially great servant of God alone, but is
for all. Indeed, as yet Daniel was not great, but lowly in station. What is
before us was the first step to true greatness. Their adherence to the will of
God brought accession of knowledge, skill, and understanding; so that these men
of God proved vastly superior counsellors, even in practical and weighty human
affairs, to the cleverest men of the world (zo).
Thus purposing at all
cost to please God, to be pure, thus endowed, and educated in the divine school
of discipline, the young man set forward on the journey of life, thick beset
with perils and trials; and it was given to him to show to after-generations,
to us, that God is El Shaddai, the All-sufficing; for seventy years later, in
extreme old age (9: I, 2) he was still, by his understanding and his prayers, a
pivotal co-worker with his God and for the people of God. Such as will be holy
must
". . . climb the steep ascent of heaven
Through peril, toil, and
pain.
O God, to us may grace be given
To follow in their
train!"
And the qualification for being a prophet is the qualification
for understanding prophecy. The reader must be one with the prophet in this at
least, the resolute purpose to be holy. For the immediate end of all prophecy
is practical, moral: "every one that hath this hope set on Christ purifieth
himself, even as He is pure" (i John 3: 3). Merely mental study of Scripture is
idle, and being idle is mischievous; but "if any man intendeth to do God’s
will, he shall know of the teaching whether it is of God" (John 7 17).
Therefore, as we proceed to consider the visions and messages of Daniel let
each ask himself, Am I a man of Daniel’s moral purpose and resolve? If so,
the Spirit of truth will open the meaning of what He showed and said to Daniel;
if not, Daniel’s book will remain a sealed book, even when the time of the
end may have come (Isa: 9).
CHAPTER
II
THE EMPEROR’S
DREAM
Section I. The World Crisis that occasioned it
SUPREMACY OVER THE HUMAN RACE WAS SECURED BY SATAN
when Adam and
Eve accepted his counsel in defiance of the will of God. He thus became the
Prince of the world, and history exhibits two main purposes: that of Satan to
maintain his rule, and that of God to regain His sovereignty. Satan rules in
disregard of the true welfare of man: "The thief cometh not but that he may
steal, and kill, and destroy" : God aims at the well-being of His creatures: "I
came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly" (John 10: io). He who
is a murderer from the beginning loves to destroy (John 8 : 44); but to God
destruction is a strange work (Isa. 28: 21): "I have no pleasure in the death
of him that dieth, saith the Lord Jehovah " (Ezek. i8 : 23, 32); and His
judgements are executed as part, though an unavoidable part, of the process of
restoring good government and peace among men (Matt. 13: 41—43); for the
true Ruler rules for the good of the ruled.
B.C. 1921. A chief step
towards this divine end was the selecting of a portion of mankind to act as a
nucleus of the recovery of the whole race and earth. For this purpose God chose
Abraham, of Ur in Chaldea, and announced to him, "in thee shall all the
families of the earth be blessed" (Gen. iz :3). B.C. 1451. In pursuance of this
purpose and promise Abraham’s descendants were multiplied into a nation,
and became the pivotal people on earth, in reference to whom as a people
national and international relationships are regarded and regulated by God .
The divine installing of Israel in this position is the first key to the puzzle
of international history, and the placing them at the geographical centre of
the ancient world, Palestine (Ezek. 5 : 5), was an epoch-marking event. Their
return there as the allotted period of Gentile domination ends, at which time
international affairs will, as at the beginning, be found centred in those
regions, will mark a corresponding epoch. B.C. 1015. A further chief step in
the divine plan was the elevating of that people to national supremacy under
David.
END of this extract.