At That Time
At That Time
Daniel 12:1-13
by William Klock
Daniel 12 begins with the words, “At that time”, which means we need to remind ourselves what time Daniel’s vision was talking about. Remember that these last three chapters of the book are one long vision. It began with Daniel lamenting what he could see. Pagan kings, instead of being judged for their wickedness, were getting strong and stronger. And his own people, an awful lot of them, seemed apathetic about the end of the exile. They’d made lives for themselves in Babylon and simply weren’t interested in returning to Jerusalem. And those who did return were facing opposition at every turn as they worked to rebuild the city and the temple. Daniel was losing hope. And so an angel appeared and in the first part of the vision the angel explained that there was more to things than what Daniel could see. Unseen forces fought a battle in the heavenlies that somehow corresponded to events on earth. In fact, Daniel was told, the angel Michael fought for the people of God. Even if he couldn’t see any of it, Daniel had reason to hope.
And then, in Chapter 11, the angel gave Daniel of vision of things to come, as if to show how God is sovereign even in the wars and intrigues of pagan kings. First the Persian kings and then the Greeks, as they squabbled and fought over the land of Judah. That was most of Chapter 11. Things would get worse before they would get better, but here was a chance to hope—to put into practise that truth that sometimes there’s more going on than what we can see. Even in the intrigue, the subterfuge, the assassination of those Greek kings of Egypt and Syria, even in all that, the God of Israel remained sovereign. Even as the worst of them came to power. And that was the heart of Chapter 11: this evil king who wanted to convert the Jews into pagan Greeks. Antiochus made it illegal to live by God’s law, he desecrated the Lord’s altar, and he forbade the daily offerings made in the temple. 1 and 2 Maccabees tell us how he tried to force Jewish men to eat pork, torturing them and even killing them when they refused and how women who circumcised their sons were thrown off the city walls along with their children. To remain faithful to the Lord in those days came at a great cost. Many even paid with their lives. Meanwhile, a significant segment of the Jewish people capitulated, finding ways to compromise or abandoning their faith altogether. The faithful died and the unfaithful lived. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. Daniel was written for these people—to exhort them, to give them hope, and to assure them that the Lord remained sovereign and would vindicate them in the end.
And that’s where Daniel’s vision gets difficult. Up to the events of about 167BC the vision maps right onto history, but then at 11:40 the angel says, “At the time of the end…” As I said last week, the natural way to read this is as a continuation of the events that took place under Antiochus Epiphanes. Verses 40-45 describes another war between Egypt and Syria. They describe tens of thousands falling, but also being delivered out of his hand. The king conquers Egypt, Libya, and Cush. There’s a vague description of him going off to another war—or something—and pitching his tent between Mount Zion and the sea, and then—suddenly—he comes to his end.
The vision changes in these verses. What was very specific suddenly becomes vague. The language becomes more grandiose. And what’s described here doesn’t map onto historical events as easily as the earlier parts of the vision do. So some people think with those words “at the time of the end”, the vision is jumping to some time in the future and that the king is no longer Antiochus Epiphanes, but a future antichrist. But as I said last week, the vision itself doesn’t suggest at all that the timeframe has changed and to interpret it that way ends up undermining the purpose: to give hope to the faithful living under Antiochus. The reason for the change is twofold. First, the author of this vision, although writing it as if he were Daniel living centuries before, was really writing it at this point. Up to now, he’s been looking back at events that already happened and now he’s looking to the events of the roughly three years that will follow. Is it actually a prophecy? Or is it his Spirit-inspired insights based on what he knew of two centuries of Greek fighting coupled with what he knew from the Prophets? And I think that’s key here. Suddenly, here, the vision borrows language and images from Isaiah and Ezekiel and the Psalms. He was using those passages to interpret current events and that explains why the language becomes grandiose and why the historical one-to-one’s fall apart at this point. The key truth here isn’t so much the exact historical events that would happen, but that in them the God of Israel would act to judge the wicked, and to deliver and vindicate the faithful. As modern people who tend to think of prophecy mainly as foretelling future events, we forget that prophecy in Israel was always far more interested in telling us about the God behind world events. And as I said last week, I think that’s where the solution to our problems with Daniel lies. Throughout the Old Testament Prophets we see foretellings of judgement and vindication in history, and we can look back at the historical record and see that they really did happen, but most of the time there’s still an eschatological element that we don’t see fully fulfilled in the historical events. As Daniel speaks here of the end, there’s the end, the historical end of Antiochus Epiphanes, an end to his blasphemies, an end to his persecution of the faithful, but there’s also a sense of this big, this final End with a capital “E”—something that will bring history to a close with a once and for all judgement that ends wickedness forever and sees the faithful, the just fully restored and given justice. God’s judgements in history always point us to a day when all will be set to rights once and forever.
So when the angel says to Daniel “at the time of the end”, he is talking about historical events in the near future, but there’s an element or an aspect of these events—at least in the way they’re described here—that looks forward to and anticipates a future End with a capital “E”.
Look at Daniel 12:1-4.
“At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever. But you, Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book, until the time of the end. Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase.”
Things are bad, but they’re going to get worse, so the angel reminds Daniel of the beginning of the vision. There’s more to what’s going on than what Daniel—or the faithful in Judah—can see, so don’t despair. Again, scripture doesn’t fill us in on all the details about these battles in the heavenlies. Is it angel wresting with angel or is it armies of angels fighting with each other? How does it work? How are these battles in the heavenlies connected with what’s happening here? We don’t know and it’s not important. The key point is that God’s people are not alone in our struggles. Not only do angels fight for us, but Michael, who is apparently the greatest of them, stands on the side of the people of God. As he fought the angelic powers behind Persia and behind the Greeks, so—I think it’s safe to assume—he fights whatever angelic powers lie behind those who persecute the Church today.
The angel describes a time of trouble like never before. These are the words of Jeremiah 30:7 and they call back to the Lord’s promise to restore his people at the end of their exile:
“Thus says the Lord:
We have heard a cry of panic,
of terror, and no peace….
Alas! That day is so great
there is none like it;
it is a time of distress for Jacob;
yet he shall be saved out of it.
“And it shall come to pass in that day, declares the Lord of hosts, that I will break his yoke from off your neck, and I will burst your bonds, and foreigners shall no more make a servant of him. But they shall serve the Lord their God and David their king, whom I will raise up for them. (Jeremiah 30:5, 7-9)
The Lord will once again hear the cries of his people in their distress and as they stand firm in faith against a wicked king, so Michael will fight for them in the heavenlies. There is a book, the angel reminds Daniel, and the Lord will deliver everyone whose name is written in it. This book pops up throughout the Old Testament—Exodus, Isaiah, Malachi, and Psalm 69. It’s a census of the covenant faithful. The book itself is a reminder that the Lord is not only sovereign, but that he’s paying attention—that he knows the names of those who kept the faith.
To know that the Lord is paying that kind of attention is itself encouraging. Think back to 11:33, where we read about the “wise” during these dark days:
And the wise among the people shall make many understand, though for some day they shall stumble by sword and flame, by captivity and plunder.
The world is not as it should be. The people who deserve life receive death. But the Lord keeps the books and he will set everything right in the end. The angel tells Daniel about the many who sleep in the dust of the earth. Think of Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones. An image of death, hopelessness, and injustice. The people who should know the life of God are dead and all but forgotten. But there’s a promise. The Lord will restore them to share in his life. The angel, speaking to Daniel, draws on the language of Isaiah 26:19:
Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise.
You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy!
For your dew is a dew of light,
and the earth will give birth to the dead.
The angel here in Daniel takes these old prophetic images of resurrection that were originally illustrating Israel’s return from exile, here the angel gives those images a literal fulfilment and the return from exile becomes an image or an earnest, a down-payment, on this even better thing that the Lord will do for his people. They were longing for a restoration to the promised land where they could once against live with his presence in their midst in the temple, but now through the angel the Lord promises that he will raise his people from death and share his life with them. Those who were dead will sing for joy. And the wise, the faithful who put their own lives on the line to exhort the rest of the people to faithfulness, the angel says, they will shine like the stars. He draws on the image of the suffering servant from Isaiah 52:
Behold, my servant shall act wisely;
he shall be high and lifted up,
and shall be exalted.
As many were astonished at you—
his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance,
and his form beyond that of the children of mankind—
so shall he sprinkle many nations.
Kings shall shut their mouths because of him,
for that which has not been told them they see,
and that which they have not heard they understand.
The angels speaks of hayyim olam, everlasting life. It’s is the only place this phrase is used in the Old Testament, but it seems to draw on the Lord’s promise to the king in Psalm 21. And it suggests that the Lord is sharing something of himself with the faithful, because everlasting life is something that belongs only to God. It’s what he shared with human beings in the garden by means of the tree of life. It also calls back to Daniel 2:44 where Daniel is told:
The God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever.
The faithful dead will sin for joy forever. But giving life to the just only balances one side of the ledger. The angel says, too, that the wicked—the apostate Jews who conspired with Antiochus—they will be raised as well, but instead of being raised to know the life of God, they will be raised to face judgement and death. The description of them is taken from Isaiah 66:24:
“And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.”
The wicked, the apostates, and the collaborators who sided with the pagans and forsook the Lord’s covenant, who died—presumable natural, peaceful deaths—thinking they’d done the right thing, they are raised briefly so that they can know the Lord’s justice, so the books can be set straight, and then we have this image of their corpses being cast in the Valley of Hinnom to rot, a testimony to everyone of the Lord’s justice—that regardless of how things may look now, he will in the end give life to the just and destruction to the wicked.
The important thing in all this is the Lord’s vindication of his faithful people and, in that, his vindication of himself. The Lord will make known his faithfulness and, seeing it, the peoples will give him glory. In reading a stack of commentaries on Daniel, I’ve noticed that this gets lost. Everyone puts their attention on when this will happen or they get side-tracked with discussion about what all this means for our concept of the afterlife. That’s not the point. I love the way the Jewish Bible scholar Jon Levenson puts. He writes,
“The main point…is not afterlife; it is vindication, the vindication of the just and their God against the rebels or defectors who had of late triumphed over them and disgraced them. In short, in these texts the resurrection of the dead is best conceived as a reversal, not so much of death as of condition and status. God intervenes to make the downtrodden and the triumphant change places, in the process vindicating his own honor and sovereignty….In stark contrast to recent experience, the faithful traditionalists will live (and the ‘wise’ among them will shine radiantly), but the desecrators of the covenant will either die or endure an unending ignominy.”[1]
The central part of Chapter 12 comes to a close in verse 4, where the angel tells Daniel to seal all of this up until the “time of the end”. I think that, again, stresses that the time the author of Daniel was writing about was the days of Antiochus Epiphanes and Judas Maccabeus. If the book was sealed, no one could read it, so the idea here is that those who read the book would know that this was their time. And, again, that was meant to give them hope in the midst of very dark days as they watched their own people being killed for their faith.
The final paragraph of the book, I think, stresses this pretty clearly. Look at verse 5 and following:
Then I, Daniel, looked, and behold, two others stood, one on this bank of the stream and one on that bank of the stream. And someone said to the man clothed in linen, who was above the waters of the stream, “How long shall it be till the end of these wonders?” And I heard the man clothed in linen, who was above the waters of the stream; he raised his right hand and his left hand toward heaven and swore by him who lives forever that it would be for a time, times, and half a time, and that when the shattering of the power of the holy people comes to an end all these things would be finished. I heard, but I did not understand. Then I said, “O my lord, what shall be the outcome of these things?” He said, “Go your way, Daniel, for the words are shut up and sealed until the time of the end. Many shall purify themselves and make themselves white and be refined, but the wicked shall act wickedly. And none of the wicked shall understand, but those who are wise shall understand. And from the time that the regular burnt offering is taken away and the abomination that makes desolate is set up, there shall be 1,290 days. Blessed is he who waits and arrives at the 1,335 days. But go your way till the end. And you shall rest and shall stand in your allotted place at the end of the days.”
So we’re now back where we started at the Tigris River with this majestic man clothed in linen and gold. There are now two others who seem to be angels and “someone” asks the man how long it will be to the end of all this”. And the man swears to heaven as he tells Daniel that it will be a times, times, and a half time. This isn’t the first time we’ve heard this figure in Daniel and as before, it’s sort of a cryptic way of saying three-and-a-half years. That’s the emphasis of this whole paragraph. Daniel says that he doesn’t understand, and the man more or less says the same thing again in two different ways. From the time the regular offering is taken away and the altar is desecrated—and that points again to this being about those days when Antiochus did that, not some far future—from that time it’ll be 1290 days. And then the man, and without any other cue I think we have to assume he’s referring to the same time period, he says 1335 days. Both numbers work out to a little more than three-and-a-half years. Bible scholars debate the reason for the two additional numbers that differ a little from each other and from the first. Some think each is calculating the time using a different calendar: one lunar, one solar. Others point out that the numbers are symbolic and that you can work out various sums with them that have their own symbolic meaning. It’s a complex discussion with no certain solution. The simple point seems to be that all of this was supposed to happen in roughly three-and-a-half years. So it’s worth noting that, indeed, Judas Maccabeus and his forces captured the temple in December of 164 BC. (Jews celebrate that victory every year at Hannukah.) And Antiochus Epiphanes also died in December of 164 BC. That was three years from the desecration of the altar. It probably took some time for the news to get to Jerusalem. We know the morning and evening burnt offerings were stopped sometime before the desecration of the altar, but not precisely when, so the three-and-a-half years as a rough number with some symbolic significance fits.
And yet, even though Antiochus died and the altar and sacrifices were restored, the wicked were punished and the faithful vindicated, no one was literally raised from the dead. And this is why so many interpreters have insisted that this all must be about something in the future, not the days of Antiochus Epiphanes and Judas Maccabeus. To see this as describing future events has been the majority opinion for both Christians and Jews, but it isn’t the only opinion. As I’ve been studying Daniel, one of commentaries I’ve been reading is on the history of its interpretation and I’ve found it interesting that some of the earliest Christian readers of Daniel understood this to be fulfilled allegorically in the victory of the Maccabees and the death of Antiochus. I think they were on the right track. Again, as I said last week, it’s typical of the Old Testament prophets to write about judgement and vindication, whether of Israel or the nations, in a way that we see fulfilled in historical events, but that also points to a future day—to the great and final End with a capital “E”—that has yet to happen. And I think that’s what’s happening in Daniel’s vision. He wrote his book to encourage the faithful living through the dark days of the 160s BC and the people to whom it was written obviously found encouragement in it, because they made sure that the book made it into the Bible as scripture. They recognised the Spirit of God speaking through this man and his stories and visions. I can’t see them, with so much here that grounds Daniel’s vision in the events in which they were living, I can’t see them projecting this into some distant future. They knew that no one was resurrection from death in 164 BC but instead of throwing the book out as a failed prophecy, they were encouraged and exhorted by it, it made sense of the events through which they were living, they understood it to be fulfilled in some way in the events they experienced, and so they identified it as God’s word. This is, again, part of the nature of prophecy in the Bible. It speaks to the original people and rebukes or exhorts them in their historical circumstances, while also pointing to the future.
Brothers and Sisters, life is not easy. Maybe this is why Daniel is grouped with the wisdom books in the Hebrew Bible. Because Daniel reminds us that to walk in faith with the Lord doesn’t mean an escape from the trials and tears of the world; it doesn’t mean an escape from wicked rulers or, for that matter, wicked neighbours; it doesn’t give us a get-out-of-persecution-free card. What it does mean is that the Lord holds us in his hands through the trials and tribulations of life. Daniel reminds us that our names are written in his book. Daniel reminds us that no matter how bad things that we can see may look, God fights for us in the heavenlies. But, I think most important, to walk in faith with God is to know that his acts of faithfulness in the past—and even today—give us a sure and certain hope of vindication and of life everlasting in the age to come. Daniel and his people gathered year in and year out to eat the Passover meal and in doing that they remembered and participated in the events by which the Lord had rescued their ancestors from Egypt, made them his people, given them his law, dwelt in their midst, and made them a promise of life. They sat down at that table, recalled the past, and looked forward in hope because the past told them who the Lord is and that he is good and faithful. And if that was true for Daniel and for the faithful Jews living in the days of Antiochus and for Jesus and his disciples sitting down to eat the Passover in the upper room, how much truer is it for us? Like I said last week, Jesus did with Daniel what Daniel had done with the Prophets. Jesus saw himself fulfilling that future element of Daniel’s vision. He saw himself finally inaugurating that big and final End with a capital “E”. Jesus died and rose from death, as Paul would later write, the firstfruits of that promised and long-hoped for resurrection of the dead—the day when the Lord will set his creation to rights, vindicate his people who have suffered disgrace for their faith, and will reveal his glory as he deals once and for all with evil and sin and with death.
Brothers and Sisters, think on that as you come to the Lord’s Table this morning. As we eat the bread and drink the wine we remember the events of that first Easter Sunday when the false verdict on Jesus and his disgraceful crucifixion were overturned and he was vindicated by his Father: restored to life and declared the King. We remember those events by which he has delivered us from death. As you pass the font, dip your fingers in the water and remember that Jesus has led us through these waters in an exodus from sin and death. Brothers and Sisters, we remember the goodness and faithfulness of God revealed in Jesus, revealed in the giving of his Spirit, revealed in the new life he has given. He has made us his people. Our names are written in his book. And so we know—we have hope—for the day when he will bring to completion what began the day Jesus rose from the grave. One day he will wipe away ever tear and we will sing with joy and shine like the brightness of the sky.
Let’s pray: Gracious Father, fill us with faith. As we look back on your mighty and saving deeds, remind us of your goodness and your faithfulness and grow our faith that we might remain faithful to you. Grow our faith that we might stand firmly for you no matter the circumstances. Knowing that you have given the life of your own Son because you love us, fill us with your grace and teach us to love you in return with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength as we look forward in hope to day when you bring completion this work of new creation begun in Jesus. Amen.
[1] Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life (New Haven: Yale, 2006), 190-191.