What the book is
Daniel has two halves. The first six chapters are stories about Daniel and his friends, young men of Judah taken to Babylon: the king’s food they refuse, the dream of the great statue, the fiery furnace, the writing on the wall, and the lions’ den. The last six chapters are Daniel’s own visions: four beasts rising from the sea, a ram and a goat, a prophecy of seventy “sevens”, and a long revelation of wars between kings that ends with the resurrection of the dead. Through both halves runs one conviction, that God rules over the kingdoms of this world:
As I watched in the visions of the night, I saw one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven. He came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before Him.
Jesus’s favourite name for himself, “the Son of Man”, comes from this vision. See “Son of Man”: Daniel 7, Ezekiel and the words of Jesus.
Who wrote it, and when
The stories are set in the sixth century BC, from the exile under Nebuchadnezzar to the reign of Cyrus of Persia, and the visions are told in Daniel’s own voice. Jewish and Christian tradition has long held that Daniel wrote the book in that century. Many scholars think instead that it was completed around 165 BC, when the Greek king Antiochus IV persecuted the Jews and defiled the temple, because the visions of chapters 8 and 11 describe the events of his reign in close detail. Others hold that the stories are old and the book was shaped over time. The draft takes no side on these questions; they do not change how a sentence is translated.
Two languages
Daniel is written in two languages. It begins in Hebrew, changes to Aramaic in the middle of 2:4, when the king’s advisers answer him, and returns to Hebrew at the start of chapter 8. A decision at 2:4 marks the change. The Greek translation adds the Prayer of Azariah, the story of Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon; these are not in the Hebrew and Aramaic text the draft translates.
The verses are numbered as in the Hebrew and Aramaic text: Nebuchadnezzar’s letter that begins at 3:31 here is 4:1 in most English Bibles, and 6:1 here is 5:31.
How the book is laid out
- Daniel and his friends at court (1).
- The king’s dream of the statue (2).
- The fiery furnace (3).
- The king’s madness (3:31–4:34).
- The writing on the wall (5).
- The lions’ den (6).
- The four beasts and the one like a son of man (7).
- The ram and the goat (8).
- Daniel’s prayer and the seventy sevens (9).
- The last vision (10–12): the kings of the north and the south, the time of distress, and the dead who will awake.
How Open Word Bible translates Daniel
One like a son of man (7:13). In Aramaic, “son of man” means a human being: after four beasts comes one who looks human, coming with the clouds of heaven. The draft keeps “one like a son of man”, and the decisions explain how the vision interprets him, as standing for “the holy ones” (7:18, 27), and how the Gospels take up the title for Jesus.
A son of the gods (3:25). Nebuchadnezzar sees four men in the fire, “and the fourth looks like a son of the gods”. The words are a pagan king’s, so the draft keeps “a son of the gods”, a heavenly being, and the footnote gives “the Son of God”, the reading of older English Bibles.
The seventy sevens (9:24–27). These four verses are among the most debated in the Bible. Where the Hebrew sentence divides in 9:25 changes how the “sevens” are counted, and the verses have been read of the Maccabean crisis, of Christ, and of the end of the age. The draft translates the Hebrew as it stands, marks each hard decision uncertain, and footnotes the readings.
The resurrection (12:2). “Many who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, these to everlasting life, and those to shame and everlasting contempt.” It is the clearest promise in the Old Testament that the dead will rise, and a decision explains it.
The divine name. Daniel uses God’s personal name only in chapter 9, in Daniel’s prayer. Elsewhere it speaks of “the Most High”, “the God of heaven” and “the Ancient of Days”.