I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.  

Today, I am reading and commenting on Daniel 11-12.

The account which the messenger from yesterday’s passage gave Daniel matches up loosely to the interactions between the Ptolemaic and Seleucid empires.  I have read accounts which state that there are significant discrepancies between the historical record and what is recorded here.  However, every time I have tried to compare this with what happened as historians know it, I get lost in the weeds.  As part of my preparations for writing this I read a blog which compares the passage to history.  It does a good job of showing how this passage matches up with actual history.  I tend to believe that the linked blog reflects the conclusion I would reach from a closer examination because the things I have read which claim this account cannot be reconciled with history also hold that it was written after the events it purports to prophecy.  My personal belief is that there are probably discrepancies between this passage and the historical record which a historian would consider major, but which from the perspective of those living through it would be of no significance.  In fact, that those living through it would consider the historical record to miss the point of what was going on while this passage hit the mark.  

The most important part of this passage comes at the end.  The messenger tells Daniel that those whose names are written in the book will be rescued.  The wise will shine brightly and those who lead others to righteousness will shine like stars.  In troubled times let us seek to be wise and to lead others to righteousness.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Daniel 9-10.

When Daniel read that Jeremiah had prophesied that Jerusalem would lie in ruins for seventy years and that those seventy years were almost up, he began to fast and  pray for Jerusalem’s restoration.  In his prayer, Daniel focused on the sins of his people, on their failure to obey God’s commands.  However, he did not list specific sins of which they were guilty.  Instead, he prayed for God’s mercy despite their sins.  His prayer was an acknowledgement that Jerusalem’s restoration would not occur because the Jewish people deserved it, but rather would be because God was merciful.  God does not bless us because we deserve it.  He blesses us in order to bring honor to His name.  If we live our lives in order to bring glory to God, He will bless us.  That last statement is an absolute truth.  However, those blessings may not be the type which those who preach “prosperity gospel” would recognize.  As an example, Jim Elliot was blessed by God (if you do not know who Jim Elliot was, look him up).

When I read the portion of today’s passage about Daniel’s vision of the messenger I read the translation notes.  It strikes me that the attempt by the translators to make the passage make sense leads us to fail to realize just how confusing the entire vision really was.  In particular chapter 10 verse 13, which reads in the New Living Translation as:

But for twenty-one days the spirit prince of the kingdom of Persia blocked my way. Then Michael, one of the archangels, came to help me, and I left him there with the spirit prince of the kingdom of Persia.

This is an example of where the King James Version actually contains a much better translation:

But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia.

Notice how in the KJV it refers to the one who blocked the messenger merely as “the prince” of the kingdom of Persia, not the “spirit prince”.  It refers to Michael a “one of the chief princes”.  And finally, even after Michael arrived the messenger remained with the “kings of Persia”.  If the messenger remained with the kings of Persia, how did he come to speak with Daniel?  More importantly, the KJV translation allows us to see that Michael is a superior version of the same sort of being who initially blocked the messenger from coming to speak with Daniel.  There is another important fact we learn from the end of Chapter 10.  Michael, one of the chief princes, is prince of Israel in much the same way that there is a prince of Persian and prince of Greece.  All of this takes us into interpretations and ideas which go way beyond the scope of this daily Bible study.