《The Pulpit Commentaries–Daniel (Vol. 1)》(Joseph S. Exell)

Contents and the Editors

One of the largest and best-selling homiletical commentary sets of its kind. Directed by editors Joseph Exell and Henry Donald Maurice Spence-Jones, The Pulpit Commentary drew from over 100 authors over a 30 year span to assemble this conservative and trustworthy homiletical commentary set. A favorite of pastors for nearly 100 years, The Pulpit Commentary offers you ideas and insight on "How to Preach It" throughout the entire Bible.

This in-depth commentary brings together three key elements for better preaching:

  • Exposition-with thorough verse-by-verse commentary of every verse in the Bible.
  • Homiletics-with the "framework" or the "big picture" of the text.
  • Homilies-with four to six sermons sample sermons from various authors.

In addition, this set also adds detailed information on biblical customs as well as historical and geographical information, and translations of key Hebrew and Greek words to help you add spice to your sermon.

All in all, The Pulpit Commentary has over 22,000 pages and 95,000 entries from a total of 23 volumes. The go-to commentary for any preacher or teacher of God's Word.
About the Editors

Rev. Joseph S. Exell, M.A., served as the Editor of Clerical World, The Homiletical Quarterly and the Monthly Interpreter. Exell was also the editor for several large commentary sets like The Men of the Bible, The Pulpit Commentary, Preacher's Homiletic Library and The Biblical Illustrator.

Henry Donald Maurice Spence-Jones was born in London on January 14, 1836. He was educated at Corpus Christi, Cambridge where he received his B.A. in 1864. He was ordered deacon in 1865 and ordained as a priest is the following year. He was professor of English literature and lecturer in Hebrew at St. David's College, Lampeter, Wales from 1865-1870. He was rector of St. Mary-de-Crypt with All Saints and St. Owen, Gloucester from 1870-1877 and principal of Gloucester Theological College 1875-1877. He became vicar and rural dean of St. Pancras, London 1877-1886, and honorary canon since 1875. He was select preacher at Cambridge in 1883,1887,1901, and 1905, and at Oxford in 1892 and 1903. In 1906 he was elected professor of ancient history in the Royal Academy. In theology he is a moderate evangelical. He also edited The Pulpit Commentary (48 vols., London, 1880-97) in collaboration with Rev. J. S. Exell, to which he himself contributed the section on Luke, 2 vols., 1889, and edited and translated the Didache 1885. He passed away in 1917 after authoring numerous individual titles.

00 Introduction

Introduction.

THE subject of Biblical Introduction is one that has become growingly important. It is the study of the human side of the document of Divine revelation. The Scripture has been divinely inspired, but human instruments have been employed to record the Divine message. The Holy Spirit has not used them as mechanical instruments; the human authors have not been mere automata; their whole personality was used for the Divine purpose. The work of the Divine Spirit in inspiration has been compared to that of a musician with an instrument. Yet the music drawn from an organ by an organist is conditioned by the material, the shape, and length of the various pipes he brings into play; the reeds, the keys, the trackers, have all their effect, and colour the music. Introduction is laying down the elements that go to this colouring of the message. The contents of the book under consideration is of necessity the first subject to be taken up. The historical background, actual or assumed, is next. Then its relation as a book to other books.

THE CHARACTER AND CONTENTS OF THE BOOK OF DANIEL.

In perusing a book, the first thing we master is the matters treated, and the succession of topics brought under review. Although the reader apprehends in a general way the literary form the work he is studying assumes, whether it is prose or poetry, narrative or reasoning, and also recognizes the language or languages in which it is written — studying these matters, as distinct from simply apprehending what they are, comes after the general contents of the book have thus been grasped. Next there may be an investigation of the literary form of the book. Only after that has been studied does the mind direct itself to linguistic peculiarities.

1. The contents of the Book of Daniel. In the first verse we have Nebuchadnezzar, the young conqueror, receiving the submission of the city of Jerusalem and of its king Jehoiakim. Among the hostages of noble and royal blood which he takes to be sent to Babylon, there are a number of youths. From these he wishes to select certain to be educated so as to be fit attendants on his court. These are committed to the care of Ashpenaz, or, to give him the name he has in the Septuagint Version, Abiesdri. These youths are divided off into messes of four. In one of these there is a youth that draws the tender love of this chief of the eunuchs. It is the youth who gives his name to the book. Soon Ashpenaz has to observe this youth and his three companions for another reason. They have scruples, and will not eat of the meat from the king's table. He does not consent to the request of this youth, favourite though he is with him. He fears lest they appear inferior to their companions when they are brought before the king; so he will not grant their request, but shuts his eyes when the steward under him, after an experiment of ten days' duration, permits these youths to live on pulse. The result fully justifies the experiment. When they are presented before the king, they distance all competitors. Such is the prologue of the story of Daniel

The rest of the book is divided into two nearly equal sections. First, incidents detached from each other, but arranged in a chronological succession: this ends with the sixth chapter. Next visions: this section, beginning with the seventh chapter, continues to the end of the book, and is also arranged chronologically.

The section of incidents. The first of these relates to Daniel's telling the king his dream and its interpretation, when all other members of the sacred college had failed to do so. It is not absolutely certain, by the language used, whether the king had forgotten the dream or simply was obstinately determined to put the claims of the Babylonian soothsayers to the test. It is not impossible that this was the occasion when the four friends were brought before the king, narrated already compendiously in the preceding chapter. The second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar — the date of this incident — coinciding, according to Babylonian reckoning, to some extent, with the third year after his accession, and therefore coinciding with the end of the third year of the training of those youths. The result of this manifestation of power by Daniel, and ascribed by him to the God whom he worships, is that Nebuchadnezzar ordains that the God of Daniel be henceforth reckoned among the great gods, especially on account of his wisdom as Revealer of secrets.

The next incident, that related in the third chapter, refers only to Daniel's three friends, not to Daniel himself. The three friends who bad, at Daniel's request, been promoted to places of trust in the province of Babylon, refuse to bow down in worship to the golden image which Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up. In consequence of this act of insubordination and constructive treason — for so it seems to the Babylonian monarch — they are cast into a furnace of fire. God, whom they serve, for whose honour they have braved the wrath of the king, sends his angel and delivers them from the fiery furnace, and that angel, to the amazement of the king, is seen walking in the furnace with the three Hebrews. The king affirms his former decree with greater emphasis in regard to the God of Israel. His claims to be regarded as one of the great gods, — a god of gods — rests not only on his wisdom, but also on his power. As it is recognized that a God so great to deliver would be also great to destroy, to prevent his vengeance being poured forth on Babylon, the severest punishment is to be inflicted on any one who says anything derogatory of the God of the Hebrews.

While the former incident is dated by the Septuagint in the eighteenth year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar — the year, according to the reckoning of Babylon, when he took Jerusalem — the incident of the fourth chapter must be placed much later in his reign. The Septuagint dates this incident the same year. Ewald would place it ten years later; probably the real date is the thirty-eighth year. The king, great and prosperous, has another dream. According to the Septuagint, he at once summons Daniel, and tells him the vision he has seen. Seeing what is revealed by the vision, and having a love for the splendid tyrant, Daniel is overwhelmed with sorrow. At last, adjured by the king he foretells his madness. A year elapses, the vision is so fulfilled. For seven months he is a maniac, and one of his own household acts as king. The king at length is restored to his senses, and decrees yet further honours to the God of heaven, without, however, declaring that the gods of Babylon were no gods — that is to say, without at all becoming a monotheist.

The next incident occurs during the time that Belshazzar, the son of Nabunahid is fulfilling the duties of the throne, while his father is living in enforced retirement in Tema. The young viceroy makes a feast at the consecration of his palace — so the Septuagint informs us — to inspirit his lords — the rabbuti, with whom, the annals of Nabunahid inform us, he always was during the illness of his father. He orders the vessels of the temple of Jehovah to be brought forth, along with trophies from the temples of other gods. It was a proof of the superiority of the gods of Babylon over all other deities, that these trophies had been brought from the very temples of these gods. It was thus a challenge to Jehovah. Over against the golden candlestick from Jerusalem, which by the royal orders was on the table, appeared on the fresh plaster a fiery inscription. No one could read it, notwithstanding that the greatest rewards were offered. At last, on the advice of the queen-mother, Daniel, who had retired from the court, probably on the murder of Evil-Merodach, is brought and reads the message of doom. The young viceroy hates not a jot of his promise. Daniel is made third in the kingdom. The Massoretic text has, "That night was Belshazzar King of the Chaldeans slain" — a most improbable statement, and one that is not found in the Septuagint.

The next incident occurs after the fall of the Babylonian power. Gobryas (Darius) is the governor of Babylon under Cyrus. Daniel occupies a prominent place in the court of the new viceroy. Possibly induced by fear of the riots liable to ensue when so many shrines are dismantled in order to scud the idols of the cities plundered by the Babylonian monarch back to their original seats, Darius issues a decree that all religious worship is to cease for a month, on pain of being thrown to the lions. Daniel disregards this sentence, and is accordingly thrown to the lions, despite the governor's efforts. Daniel is delivered from the lions by his God, in whom he trusted. Gobryas then issues a decree, reaffirming the decrees of Nebuchadnezzar, but not establishing the sole worship of Jehovah.

Such are the contents of the first section of the Book of Daniel. These incidents clearly exhibit the supremacy of the God of Israel over the gods of Babylon — a supremacy which the overthrow of the Jewish kingdom and the destruction of Jehovah's temple might have seemed to have rendered not even doubtful. The monarchs of Assyria and Babylon were highly religious in their way, and regarded themselves as the instruments of their own gods; all their victories were victories of the gods they worshipped, and manifestations el their power. Hence the special point of these works of wonder narrated in the Book of Daniel.

The second section consists of visions revealed to Daniel. These, like the incidents of the first section, are arranged chronologically. To a certain extent the contents of the vision of Nebuchadnezzar in the second chapter might be regarded as belonging to this section, and has to be considered along with it.

The first vision is dated as given in the first year of Belshazzar. Daniel in vision sees the four winds of heaven striving for the mastery on the surface of the great sea, the Mediterranean; and four beasts, great and mystical, arose out of the sea. The first was a winged lion, whose wings were plucked, and a man's heart was given him. The second was a huge bear, that gnawed three ribs in its teeth. The third, a leopard having four wings. The fourth was a beast great and terrible, that had no likeness among the beasts of the earth. It had great iron teeth, and brake in pieces and stamped the residue with its feet. It had ten horns at first, but an eleventh horn sprang up in the midst of the ten, and dispossessed three of these. Then the Ancient of Days sat for judgment, and one like a son of man appeared, and a new Divine kingdom was established. Not only is the vision narrated, but the interpretation is given also.

The next vision is dated the third year of the reign of Belshazzar. Daniel is in fact or in vision in Susa, the capital of Cyrus, whose conquests were perhaps not yet causing anxiety in Babylon. He sees a ram having two horns, standing before the gate of the city, and pushing in all directions, and prevailing over all the beasts that were round about it. From the region of the sunset came against it a goat, having one noticeable horn. It seemed to skim along the ground rather than to tread upon it. Before the onslaught of the goat the ram is powerless. After a little, Daniel sees the single horn in the forehead of the he-goat broken, and in its place four horns spring up. From the side of one of these four horns sprouts out a little horn, which mounts up to the stars of heaven. This vision is interpreted of the fall of the empire of Persia before the Greek power which Cyrus may even then have been coming in contact with in his struggle with Croesus.

In the ninth chapter Daniel has been fasting and praying, as the seventieth year since he was carried away a hostage had come, and yet Israel was not saved. In answer to his prayer, Gabriel comes to him, and reveals to him the future of his people. Jeremiah had spoken of seventy years, but he is shown that seventy weeks of years are determined upon his people. A history of mingled disaster and glory, sun and shadow, is shown, but clearly revealed is the anointed Prince who is yet to be cut off. Strangely, the end of this vision of comfort is desolation.

The last three chapters contain the account mainly of one vision; but it appears to us that it has so suffered, alike from excisions and from interpolations, that the real vision is hardly to be recognized. In the tenth chapter we are told of the coming of Gabriel again to Daniel, and the curtain is faintly lifted, that we may discern a conflict among the powers in heavenly places — the angels of the different nations. It is probable that the vision, in its original condition, had much more of this, but there has been interpolated by some later hand an account of the conflicts between Syria and Egypt. At the end of the eleventh chapter there is a passage which seems to be a version of the history of Antiochus, earlier and more succinct than that in the preceding verses. The last chapter concludes the vision, and, though not of the nature of an epilogue, yet forms a fitting close to the whole book. "Go thy way till the end: for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days."

2. The literary form of the Book of Daniel. The Book of Daniel represented a new departure in the sacred literature of the Hebrews. It is the earliest example, and the only one in the Old Testament canon, of apocalypse. It had a long line of imitators in the inter-Biblical period, and the series was continued, and in a manner terminated, in the Christian Apocalypse of St. John.

It is closely related at once to history and to prophecy. Apocalypse may be regarded as in a sense the philosophy of history. Students of Plato know that when a philosophic thought was shaping itself in the brain of the great sage, the first form the thought assumed was a myth. Apocalypse is the philosophy of history in the mythic stage. The history it takes to do with is not that of one nation — although one nation, the people of God, is central — but that of the whole world. It is no limited terminus ad quem to which its purpose tends, but to the end of all things. And this is regarded as an orderly termination to a succession of events fixed beforehand. But while it is philosophy, it is philosophy in picture — in symbols of the imagination, not in propositions of the understanding. The symbols used show it is Eastern philosophy that is adumbrated — a philosophy which drew its symbols flora the grotesque combinations, human and bestial, which so liberally adorned the wails of the Assyrian and Babylonian palaces.