Old Testament
Daniel
12 chapters
Start reading: Daniel 1About this book
Daniel is the story of faithful people living inside an empire that does not share their God. Taken to Babylon as a teenager, Daniel and his three friends serve foreign kings while refusing to give up their loyalty to the Lord. The first half is made of vivid stories: a king's troubling dream, a fiery furnace, a writing on a palace wall, and a night in a den of lions. In each one, God shows that he rules over kings and rescues those who trust him. The second half records visions of beasts, kingdoms and a heavenly court, where one like a son of man receives an everlasting kingdom. Christians have long read these visions as pointing toward Christ, though they interpret the details in different ways. The book also contains a moving prayer of confession. Daniel encourages believers who live as minorities to stay faithful, to pray, and to trust that history is in God's hands.
- Author
- Traditionally Daniel himself; some scholars argue the book reached its final form in the second century BC.
- Date
- The stories are set in the sixth century BC, during the exile; scholars date the book's writing from then to about 165 BC.
- Audience
- Jewish exiles and later faithful Jews living under foreign rule, and all believers who face pressure to compromise.
Themes
Outline
- 1:1–1:21Daniel and his friends in Babylon
- 2:1–2:49Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the statue
- 3:1–6:28The furnace, the writing on the wall and the lions' den
- 7:1–8:27Visions of beasts, a ram and a goat
- 9:1–9:27Daniel's prayer and the seventy weeks
- 10:1–12:13The final vision and the hope of resurrection
Key verses
Chapters of Daniel
- 1Daniel 1Daniel and three friends, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, are taken from Judah to Babylon after Nebuchadnezzar's siege and chosen for training in the royal court.
- 2Daniel 2Nebuchadnezzar has a troubling dream and demands that his wise men both tell him the dream and interpret it, threatening death if they fail.
- 3Daniel 3Nebuchadnezzar builds a huge golden statue and orders everyone to bow when the music plays.
- 4Daniel 4The chapter is presented as Nebuchadnezzar's own testimony.
- 5Daniel 5King Belshazzar throws a great feast and orders that the gold and silver vessels taken from the Jerusalem temple be brought for drinking, praising the gods of gold and stone.
- 6Daniel 6Under Darius, Daniel excels so much that other officials, unable to find fault, persuade the king to sign a decree banning prayer to anyone but the king for thirty days.
- 7Daniel 7Daniel sees four great beasts rising from a stormy sea: a lion with eagle's wings, a bear, a leopard with four wings, and a terrifying beast with iron teeth and ten horns, one of which speaks boastfully.
- 8Daniel 8In a vision in Susa, Daniel sees a ram with two horns charging in every direction until a goat with a single prominent horn from the west knocks it down.
- 9Daniel 9Daniel studies Jeremiah's prophecy that Jerusalem's desolation would last seventy years, and turns to God with fasting and a long prayer of confession.
- 10Daniel 10After three weeks of mourning and fasting, Daniel sees a man dressed in linen with a body like gold, a face like lightning and eyes like flames, whose voice sounds like a multitude.
- 11Daniel 11The messenger unfolds a detailed sequence of conflicts between kings of the south (Egypt) and the north (Syria) after the fall of Persia and the breakup of Alexander's empire, with alliances, marriages, betrayals and shifting borders.
- 12Daniel 12The book's final chapter promises that Michael, the great prince, will arise in a time of unparalleled distress, and God's people whose names are written in the book will be delivered.