Book of Daniel Summary

Daniel is two books in one. The first half holds some of the Bible's best-known stories: four young exiles who refuse the king's food, a statue of four metals, a blazing furnace, a king who eats grass, a hand writing on a palace wall, and a night with lions. The second half turns cosmic, with beasts rising from the sea, a heavenly throne, the Son of Man, and a countdown of seventy weeks. Both halves say the same thing: God, not any empire, runs history.

Daniel at a glance

Who was Daniel, and when was the book written?

In 605 BC, the third year of King Jehoiakim, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came against Jerusalem and carried off temple treasures and young men from Judah's leading families (1:1-3; 2 Chronicles 36:6-7). Daniel, probably a teenager, was one of them. Trained in Babylon's language and literature (1:4-5), he served under Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Darius the Mede and Cyrus of Persia. He was still alive in the third year of Cyrus, about 536 BC (10:1), so his career spanned the whole exile.

Ezekiel named him with Noah and Job as a model of righteousness (Ezekiel 14:14); Jesus called him a prophet (Matthew 24:15). In the Hebrew Bible, though, the book sits among the Writings, because Daniel served as a royal official, not a preacher to Israel.

Dating is the book's biggest debate. The traditional view holds that Daniel wrote it in the sixth century BC. Most critical scholars date the final book to 167–164 BC, under the Greek king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and read the detailed visions as history presented as prophecy. Conservative scholars reply that God can reveal the future in detail.

How Daniel is structured

By genre, chapters 1–6 are stories and chapters 7–12 are visions. By language, the Aramaic middle forms a mirror: four kingdoms (chapter 2), rescue from fire (chapter 3), a proud king judged (chapter 4), a second proud king judged (chapter 5), rescue from lions (chapter 6), and four kingdoms again (chapter 7). The visions break story order: chapter 7 and chapter 8 date to Belshazzar's first and third years (7:1; 8:1), before the feast of chapter 5.

chapter 1: faithful at the king's table

Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah are chosen for royal service and renamed Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego (1:6-7). Daniel resolves not to defile himself with the king's food and wine (1:8) and asks for a ten-day test of vegetables and water (1:12). They end up healthier than the rest (1:15). God gives them learning and Daniel the ability to understand visions and dreams (1:17), and the king finds them ten times wiser than his magicians (1:20).

chapters 2–4: Nebuchadnezzar learns who rules

In chapter 2 the king demands that his wise men tell him both his dream and its meaning, or die (2:5). Daniel and his friends pray, God reveals the secret, and Daniel praises the God who deposes rulers and installs others (2:19-21). The dream was a huge statue: gold head, silver chest and arms, bronze belly and thighs, iron legs, and feet of iron mixed with clay (2:32-33). A stone that no human hand has carved smashes it and grows into a mountain filling the earth (2:34-35). Babylon is the gold head (2:38); three lesser kingdoms will follow; then God will set up a kingdom that can never fall (2:44).

In chapter 3 Nebuchadnezzar orders everyone to bow to a gold image ninety feet tall (3:1; 3:5). Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego tell him their God can rescue them, and even if he does not, they still will not serve his gods (3:17-18). The furnace is heated seven times hotter (3:19), yet the king sees four men walking unbound in the fire, and the fourth looks divine (3:25). The three come out without even the smell of smoke (3:27).

Chapter 4 is the king's own letter. He dreams of a great tree cut down to a stump (4:14-15). Daniel explains that the king will live like an animal until he learns that God Most High is sovereign over human kingdoms (4:25). A year later, while admiring the great Babylon he has built (4:30), Nebuchadnezzar is driven out to eat grass like cattle. When he looks up to heaven, his sanity returns and he praises God, who humbles the proud (4:34; 4:37).

chapters 5–6: the writing on the wall and the lions' den

King Belshazzar throws a feast and drinks from the gold cups taken from God's temple while praising idols (5:2-4). A hand appears and writes on the plaster wall (5:5). The terrified king offers to make the reader third ruler in the kingdom (5:7). That fits history: Belshazzar ruled alongside his father Nabonidus, so third place was the highest available. Daniel reads the words mene, tekel and peres: God has counted the days of his reign and ended it, weighed him on the scales and found him too light, and divided his kingdom between the Medes and Persians (5:26-28). That night Belshazzar is killed (5:30), and Babylon falls in 539 BC.

Under Darius the Mede, jealous officials look for a charge against Daniel and find none (6:4). They persuade the king to ban prayer to anyone but himself for thirty days (6:7). Daniel keeps praying toward Jerusalem three times a day (6:10). He is thrown to the lions, and the king cannot sleep (6:18). At dawn Daniel calls out that God's angel kept the lions' jaws closed (6:22), and Darius orders his empire to honor Daniel's living God (6:26).

chapter 7: four beasts and the Son of Man

Daniel dreams of four beasts rising from the sea: a lion with eagle's wings, a bear with ribs in its mouth, a four-headed leopard, and a terrifying fourth beast with iron teeth and ten horns (7:3-7). A little horn with human eyes and an arrogant mouth uproots three others (7:8). The Ancient of Days takes his seat in bright white clothing on a throne of fire (7:9), judgment begins, and the beast is destroyed (7:10-11).

Then one like a son of man arrives on heaven's clouds and receives authority, glory and a kingdom that lasts forever, with all nations serving him (7:13-14). The beasts are four kingdoms (7:17), and the holy people of the Most High will receive the kingdom (7:18) after the little horn persecutes them for three and a half "times" (7:25).

chapters 8–9: the ram, the goat and the seventy weeks

In chapter 8 a two-horned ram is trampled by a goat with one large horn (8:3-7). The horn breaks into four, and from one grows a small horn that stops the daily sacrifice (8:8-11). Gabriel identifies the ram as Media and Persia and the goat as Greece (8:20-21). History fits closely: Alexander the Great, his empire split four ways, and Antiochus IV, who defiled the temple in 167 BC. The sanctuary would be restored after 2,300 evenings and mornings (8:14), and it was rededicated in 164 BC, the event behind Hanukkah.

In chapter 9 Daniel reads in Jeremiah that the exile will last seventy years (9:2; Jeremiah 25:11). He fasts and confesses Israel's sin, appealing to God's compassion, not their righteousness (9:18). Gabriel answers: seventy weeks, or seventy sevens, are set to end sin and bring in everlasting righteousness (9:24). An anointed ruler will come after sixty-nine weeks and then be cut off (9:25-26). Christians have long seen Jesus here; others link it to the high priest Onias III, killed in 171 BC, or place the final week in the future.

chapters 10–12: the final vision and the resurrection

In the third year of Cyrus, Daniel sees a man in linen with a face like lightning (10:5-6). The messenger was held up twenty-one days by the prince of Persia until Michael came to help (10:13), a glimpse of unseen spiritual battles.

Chapter 11 traces the wars between the kings of the south (the Ptolemies of Egypt) and of the north (the Seleucids of Syria). A contemptible man takes the throne by intrigue (11:21) and sets up the "abomination of desolation" in the temple (11:31), yet people loyal to their God will hold firm (11:32).

In chapter 12 Michael arises in a time of unmatched distress, and everyone written in the book is rescued (12:1). Multitudes of the dead will rise from the dust, some to life without end and some to lasting disgrace (12:2), the Old Testament's clearest statement of resurrection. Daniel is told to seal the book (12:4), given the numbers 1,290 and 1,335 days (12:11-12), and promised that he will rest and rise at the end (12:13).

Daniel chapter by chapter

Click any chapter number to read it.

Main themes of Daniel

God's sovereignty over kingdoms

God deposes rulers and installs new ones (2:21), and pagan kings end up confessing it (4:34; 6:26).

Faithfulness in exile

Daniel and his friends serve a pagan state well without compromising their worship (1:8; 6:10).

Pride and humility

Proud rulers become beastlike and fall (5:20-21).

Prayer

Daniel prays in crisis (2:18), under threat (6:10) and in confession (9:3-4).

The coming kingdom

Empires pass; God's kingdom, given to the Son of Man, never ends (2:44; 7:14).

Lessons from Daniel

• Decide early. Daniel settled his loyalty before the pressure peaked (1:8).
• Serve well where you are. His enemies could find no fault in his work (6:4).
• Trust God without a guaranteed rescue. The three friends obeyed whatever the outcome (3:18).
• Keep praying. Daniel kept his routine when it became illegal (6:10).
• Pride invites a fall. Judgment came while Nebuchadnezzar was still admiring his city (4:30-31).

How Daniel connects to the rest of the Bible

Jesus' favorite title for himself, Son of Man, comes from chapter 7. At his trial he said they would see the Son of Man arriving on heaven's clouds (Mark 14:62). He warned of the abomination of desolation Daniel described (Matthew 24:15) and taught that the dead will rise at his voice (John 5:28-29). Hebrews honors believers who silenced lions and survived raging fire (Hebrews 11:33-34).

Revelation borrows Daniel's imagery: one like a son of man with snowy hair (Revelation 1:13-14) and a beast that combines leopard, bear and lion (Revelation 13:2). Gabriel and Michael reappear in the New Testament (Luke 1:19; Jude 1:9). Catholic and Orthodox Bibles also include three Greek additions: the Prayer of Azariah, Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon. Hosea, the next book, begins the twelve Minor Prophets.

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