Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Daniel gets really strange (Daniel 10-12)


The last few chapters of Daniel are strange and complex.  They invite lots of questions and provide few answers.

In chapter 10, Daniel is fasting for three weeks.  He sees a vision of an angelic being.  The other people around him cannot see it, but they are spooked and they run off.

The angel tells Daniel that he was dispatched earlier but was held up by the Prince of Persia until Michael came to help him.  He then he has to go fight against the Prince of Persia and when he goes, the Prince of Greece will come.

Chapter 11 describes a long series of battles and drama.  A king will arise from Greece, which we can probably interpret it to mean Alexander the Great.  The king will not pass the kingdom to his children, but it will be divided.  This happened to Alexander the Great as well.  

The chapter then describes a bunch of wars and activities between the king of the north versus the king of the south.  If we stick with the idea that these events follow the death of Alexander the Great, then it seems to describe wars between the generals that divided up Alexander's empire.  I do not know how these relate to anything in actual history.  This chapter might be talking about events in history that we can point to, but it is also seems the most mysterious.

In chapter 12, the angel tells Daniel about the end of times.  The connection with the previous chapter suggests on one hand something big would happen following the events of Chapter 11.  On the other, we know that the world did not end with the breakup of the Greek Empire, so that cannot be it either.  Likewise, other portions of Daniel predict the rise of other empires.

A few things that these chapters do suggest:

1.  "soul sleep" for the dead followed by a resurrection of sorts.  Some sleeping souls will awaken to everlasting life while others will awaken to everlasting shame (12:2).  Daniel even asks when this will happen and the angel does not answer but rather instructs him to seal the book.

2.  The angelic world is weird.  Angels can be detained by "Princes" until they are reinforced.  (chapter 10).  We can probably even conclude the reason the Prince of Persia fought so hard was to maintain its own power, for after all, it was to be replaced by the Prince of Greece.

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