Holman Old Testament Commentary - Daniel

Kenneth Gangel, Max Anders, Max Anders

• Publisher: Holman Reference
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781433674242
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

One in a series of twenty Old Testament verse-by-verse commentary books edited by Max Anders. Includes discussion starters, teaching plan, and more. Great for lay teachers and pastors alike.

Daniel 1:1–21

Lessons from Kidnapped
Children

I. INTRODUCTION

Emergency Interruption

II. COMMENTARY

A verse-by-verse explanation of the chapter.

III. CONCLUSION

Courage for Public Service

An overview of the principles and applications from the chapter.

IV. LIFE APPLICATION

Prioritizing Parenting

Melding the chapter to life.

V. PRAYER

Tying the chapter to life with God.

VI. DEEPER DISCOVERIES

Historical, geographical, and grammatical enrichment of the commentary.

VII. TEACHING OUTLINE

Suggested step-by-step group study of the chapter.

VIII. ISSUES FOR DISCUSSION

Zeroing the chapter in on daily life.

“Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
lest we forget—lest we forget!”

Rudyard Kipling

PERSONAL PROFILE: JEHOIAKIM

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• Son of Josiah who reigned in Jerusalem from 607 to 597 B.C.
• An oppressive and wicked king whose name was changed from Eliakim by the king of Egypt
• Died in disgrace while a captive (Jer. 22:19)
• Followed by Jehoiachin his son (2 Kgs. 24:8)

PERSONAL PROFILE: NEBUCHADNEZZAR

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• Ruled the Neo-Babylonian Empire from 605 to 562 B.C.
• Mentioned in Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel
• His name means “Nabu, protect the boundary” and is sometimes seen with the spelling Nebuchadrezzar
• One of the greatest monarchs of the ancient world whose empire extended over Egypt, Syria, and Palestine

GEOGRAPHICAL PROFILE: BABYLON

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• The name, likely derived from the Akkadian, means “gate of God”
• Most important city of the Babylonian Empire
• Situated in central Mesopotamia on the Euphrates River about fifty miles south of the contemporary city of Baghdad in Iraq
• May have been twenty-four hundred years old before Daniel arrived

GEOGRAPHICAL PROFILE: JERUSALEM

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• According to the Roman historian Pliny, “By far the most famous city of the ancient Orient”
• The name is built on the Hebrew word salem which means “peace”
• The name Jerusalem occurs six hundred times in the Old Testament
• Captured by David approximately one thousand years before the birth of Christ, it became David's capital

GEOGRAPHICAL PROFILE: JUDAH

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• The fourth son of Jacob from whom a tribe of the same name descended
• A member of the tribe of Judah, David united the entire Israeli kingdom, a union that stayed in place during the reign of Solomon
• After Solomon the nation split into two parts, commonly called the Northern Kingdom, Israel, and the Southern Kingdom, Judah
• The Southern Kingdom, Judah, was approximately half the size of the Northern Kingdom and also held approximately half the population (about three hundred thousand)

Wherever life takes us, whatever it brings us, however difficult our problems, we must remain faithful to God.

Lessons from
Kidnapped Children

I. INTRODUCTION

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Emergency Interruption

When I agreed to write this commentary on Daniel, I had no idea that the opening verses of the first chapter would be prepared in the surgical waiting room of our local hospital. But here I sit, separated from the Coke machine by about twenty yards of pale gray carpet, the outdated magazines arranged neatly on a table to my right. Down the hall and around the corner a team of surgeons and nurses perform major surgery on my wife of forty-four years—a large mass in her uterus must be removed, and we will learn today whether it is malignant and how that will change our lives. Four days ago she was a vibrant, healthy woman, busily preparing a dinner party for eighteen people from our church which was scheduled for this evening. Then a 3:00 A.M. rush to the emergency room realigned all the priorities in our lives.

How could this happen so quickly? Why did we not see symptoms earlier? What does one say to one's wife as the anesthesia is injected and she begins to drift slowly out of consciousness? Her last words before closing her eyes formed a question: “Do you have anything to say to me before I go to surgery?” Such a moment calls for no platitudes or plaque rhymes, no Christian clichés or technical theology. I simply said, “Yes, I do. I love you, and God is in control of everything.”

The Book of Daniel is not about Daniel. Like Abraham, Moses, and Joshua, Daniel was God's vessel, a tool in his hands to accomplish his eternal purpose on earth. In the Pentateuch and historical books, God's sovereignty appears as the backdrop, an assumption about the God of the universe. In Daniel it becomes the central theme, a message to be shouted to God's people Israel and to the pagan nations surrounding them: There is a God, and he is in charge of his world. We'll explore sovereignty in greater theological depth later in this book, but here let's just define it very simply by saying God knows what he's doing, and he's doing it.

II. COMMENTARY

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Lessons from Kidnapped Children

MAIN IDEA: God's people, whether Israel or the church, always stand as the countercultural opponents of the systems of this world. Never was that reality more poignantly lived out than in the Old Testament captivity and exile, and particularly the dominance by Babylon. That national struggle will emerge early in our book, but the first chapter primarily teaches us that righteousness begins with a firm commitment to God.

Attack by Babylon (1:1–2)

SUPPORTING IDEA: God's plan is often accomplished in ways his people do not understand such as through oppression, suffering, and captivity.

1:1. Throughout this book we should expect a high level of scholarly writing since Daniel was one of the most educated people of the Bible. When we think about the New Testament, the apostle Paul rises to the surface among intellectual Christians. In the Old Testament we think of Moses and Solomon, but Daniel would probably hold no lower than third place in the ranks of those thoroughly trained for God's role for them in history and ministry.

Daniel begins by telling us when he first went to Babylon—in the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah. Scholars agree that this was 605 B.C., and we see parallel accounts in 2 Kings 24:1–2 and 2 Chronicles 36:5–7. It helps us to remember that there were three distinct deportations— this first one in 605 when Daniel and a few others were taken captive to Babylon; the second in 598 B.C. when Jehoiachin and the royal family were captured along with Ezekiel and all the treasures of the temple (2 Kgs. 24:10–17); and the third in 587 B.C. when Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed and Judah ceased to be the Southern Kingdom (2 Kgs. 25:1–21).

Critics love to point out what appears to be a discrepancy between Daniel's account and a statement of Jeremiah (Jer. 25:1) which seems to indicate the first year of Nebuchadnezzar was in the fourth year of Jehoiachin. But this problem is easily solved by observing that Daniel used Babylonian reckoning whereas Jeremiah used Egyptian reckoning. The Babylonians considered the first year of a king's reign the year of accession and the second year would be the official “first year.”

Indeed, there are many more elaborate arguments and even different options offered for this explanation (see Leupold and Keil). Walvoord reminds us that “the evidence makes quite untenable the charge that the chronological information of Daniel is inaccurate. Rather, it is entirely in keeping with information available outside the Bible and supports the view that Daniel is a genuine book” (Walvoord, Daniel, 32).

Because of his prominence throughout this book, we must explore further this giant ruler, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. Some years later this name was spelled Nebuchadrezzar, but we find it with the “n” in Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, and parts of Jeremiah. Different spellings of ancient names hardly present a stumbling block, especially when one considers the transliteration of Babylonian cuneiform into either Hebrew or Aramaic. Actually his name was Nabu-kudurri-usur, which means something like, “Nabu, protect the boundary.”

But some will ask, was Nebuchadnezzar really king at this time? After all, his father Nabopolassar was not yet dead. Both Jeremiah 27:6 and extra-biblical sources call him king, and almost every reputable scholar agrees that the two men shared the throne for some years before Nabopolassar's death.

To get a better handle on the kingdom of Babylon, let's go back to the year 625 B.C., likely the year of Daniel's birth (though Archer chooses 620 B.C.). In that year Ashurbanipal, the last great king of Assyria, died, and his son Ashuruballit attempted to continue the kingdom. But the power of Assyria passed to the king's viceroy, and Nabopolassar took all of Babylonia out of the Assyrian Empire. Daniel was a young teenager during the fall of Nineveh in 612 B.C., an event which gave Babylon control of western Asia. At the end of his teen years, Daniel was taken captive to Babylon, and the great story of our book begins.

But before we leave this first verse, let's remember that the godly influence on Daniel took place very early in his life. The great and good king Josiah had already reigned for fifteen years when Daniel was born, and for the next sixteen the revivals he brought to Judah surely touched the young man's life. We can assume the godliness of Daniel's parents, and history shows us the godliness of the national leadership he enjoyed.

W. A. Criswell captures the downward spiral after that fateful day of Josiah's death at the hands of Pharaoh-Necho at Megiddo in the Valley of Jezreel: “Following Josiah's death and the plunging of the nation into rampant idolatry, he [Daniel] formed attitudes of faithfulness to God that never changed. The sudden and extreme contrast now introduced into his political and moral surroundings made the decision to serve God the more meaningful in his life. As the kingdom of Judah reeled dizzily in want and idolatry and wickedness, Daniel...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Editorial Preface
• Holman Old Testament
• Holman New Testament
• Holman New Testament
• Introduction to Daniel
• Daniel 1:1–21
• Daniel 2:1–23
• Daniel 2:24–49
• Daniel 3:1–30
• Daniel 4:1–18
• Daniel 4:19–37
• Daniel 5:1–16
• Daniel 5:17–31
• Daniel 6:1–28
• Daniel 7:1–14
• Daniel 7:15–28
• Daniel 8:1–27
• Daniel 9:20–19
• Daniel 9:1–29
• Daniel 10:1–21
• Daniel 11:1–45
• Daniel 12:1–13
• Glossary
• Bibliography