Old Testament · Major Prophets · World English Bible
Daniel
"My God has sent his angel, and has shut the lions’ mouths, and they have not hurt me."
— Daniel 6:22 
The Reading LensEvery verse pulled to the top of a book is chosen by three questions: Where is God’s heart here? Who is He protecting? Who is being saved by the action? It marks the place where those answers come into clearest focus — a “look at this, in this book.”
About the Book
Two halves in two languages. Chapters 1 and 8–12 are Hebrew; chapters 2–7 are Aramaic. The court tales and the visions do not divide along the same line the languages do, which is one of the standing puzzles of the book.
In the Hebrew Bible, Daniel sits among the Writings rather than the Prophets. Christian Bibles place it with the Major Prophets, which is where this archive files it.
It is the Old Testament’s principal apocalyptic book — beasts, kingdoms, sealed words and an end — and its date is contested: traditionally the sixth century under the exile, and in most critical scholarship the second, under the persecution of Antiochus IV.
12 Chapters
The Diet
Four young men taken into Babylonian service, retrained and renamed. Daniel asks to be excused the king’s food and proposes a ten-day test rather than a confrontation — and the official who could have refused is moved to allow it.
The Statue
Nebuchadnezzar demands that his advisers tell him the dream before interpreting it, on pain of death. Daniel is given both — a statue of four metals, and a stone cut without hands that breaks it — and asks for the other wise men to be spared.
The Furnace
The golden image and the command to bow at the sound of the music. Three men refuse, and their answer is that God is able to deliver them and that they will not bow whether he does or not. A fourth figure is seen walking in the fire.
The Tree
Nebuchadnezzar’s own account, in the first person and addressed to all peoples, of the felled tree and the seven periods he spent driven out among the animals — with Daniel’s advice first: break off your sins by showing mercy to the poor.
The Writing on the Wall
Belshazzar’s feast, the temple vessels used for drinking, the hand, and four words that come to being weighed and found wanting. The city falls that night.
The Lions’ Den
A decree engineered by officials to trap the one man they could not catch any other way. Daniel opens his windows toward Jerusalem and prays as he always had. Darius fasts all night and runs to the den at first light.
The Four Beasts
The hinge of the book. Four beasts out of the sea, the Ancient of Days seated with the books opened, and one like a son of man given a dominion that will not pass away.
The Ram and the Goat
Media and Persia, then Greece, then the horn that grows exceedingly great and takes away the daily sacrifice. Gabriel is named here as the interpreter, and Daniel is left sick for days.
The Seventy Weeks
Daniel reads Jeremiah’s seventy years and prays a confession for his people that never excludes himself — we have sinned. The answer comes measured in sevens, and has been argued over ever since.
The Man by the River
Three weeks of mourning, then a figure by the Tigris, and an account of resistance met on the way — the one passage that describes the journey of a message rather than only its content.
Kings of the North and South
The most detailed political prophecy in the canon: a long chain of marriages, betrayals and campaigns between two dynasties, ending with a king who desecrates the sanctuary and takes away the daily offering.
The End
Deliverance for everyone found written in the book, and one of the clearest statements of resurrection in the Old Testament — many who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake. Daniel is told to seal the words, and says plainly that he did not understand them either.