One), who would be a descendant of King David and preside in the future over an That nation, with ever increasing clarity, of a coming King, the Messiah (Anointed Living God? Had not God spoken to the patriarchs, priests, prophets, and kings of Jerusalem his capital, and whose son Solomon had built a unique temple to the Was it not also the nation of David, the great consolidating king, who had made Was it not the nation that that same Moses had led out of the slave labor camps ofĮgypt and brought to the land that God had promised them as an inheritance? Was it not the nation of Moses, who had been given the law directly by God? The big question for someone with Daniel’s background was: why had GodĪllowed such a thing to happen? After all, was not his nation a special nation? JerusalemĬity itself survived at that time, until Nebuchadnezzar eventually destroyed it in 586 BC. Judah became a vassal, and the first wave of deportations to Babylon began. Power involved, the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Rebelliousness chafed the emperor and so he set siege to it. Nebuchadnezzar turned his military attention to Jerusalem at the edge of his empire. Daniel chooses to start with the events of the year 605 BC, when Judah, and nothing of the sorry political intrigue and turmoil in the years leading up to hisĭeportation. For instance, there is nothing at all about his childhood in Many things that Daniel could have mentioned, which we would have liked to read about,Īre tantalizingly omitted. He starts his book with a terse description of what was for him the momentous siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and his subsequent deportation to that most illustrious of ancient capital cities, Babylon on the Euphrates. How did they come to terms with it? Daniel’s explanation of how they did finally adjust is the fruit of a lifetime’s reflection on the key events that shaped his life and made him what he was. They had to cope not only with the emotional trauma of forcible removal from their parents, but also with the sheer strangeness of their new surroundings - new language, new customs, new political system, new laws, new education system, new beliefs. As part of his policy for dealing with conquered nations, Nebuchadnezzar took the best of their young men to Babylon in order to have them trained to serve in his administration.ĭaniel and his friends were judged to be suitable material for that training, and so they were taken from their families, society, and culture, and transported to a strange and unfamiliar land many miles away. It was one of those visits that permanently changed the trajectory of the lives of Daniel and his friends.Ģ.
Thereafter he made regular visits to his conquered territories in the west, in order to take tribute and personnel from them and to dispense justice. Not long after that signal military triumph, Nebuchadnezzar’s father Nabopolassar died and Nebuchadnezzar returned to Babylon as king. Egypt won the battle and imposed a tribute of a hundred talents of silver and one of gold.Įarlier, in the summer of 605 BC, Nebuchadnezzar had defeated the Egyptians at the decisive battle at Carchemish on the Euphrates far to the north-east of Jerusalem.
Josiah full-heartedly joined forces with the Babylonians to fight against Egypt and lost life inīattle. Egypt in the south was also a constant threat to Judah. Sennacherib withdrew, and Jerusalem was temporarily spared.Įventually the great Assyrian capital city of Nineveh fell in 612 BC to the Babylonian and Mede armies, who subsequently continued to threaten to destroy Judah. In the days of Hezekiah (one of the better kings of Judah),the Assyrian emperor Sennacherib marched on Judah in 701 BC. There was a constant threat of invasion by the neighboring superpowers of that age.Ībout half a century before Daniel was born, the world was dominated by the superpower Assyria. The relatively small state of Judah was located at a geographical center in the ancient Middle East, where the interests of the great powers frequently clashed.
#Date of the book of daniel pdf#
Session 1, Study date: 11-20-2019 PDF Format: Daniel ġ. For our study of the book of Daniel, we have study notes for each session.