Daniel - Chapter 9

While our study of Daniel is about the blessings of knowing God, and Daniel himself is probably one of our best biblical examples of what it means to know the Lord, we see in chapter nine the time in which Daniel is in the presence of God, and see God sharing His secrets and revealing His mysteries to His servant. 

Here we see the true nature of the spirit of the man chosen by the Lord to be His prophet and see his usefulness to His kingdom. Daniel is a man of prayer. He prayed in crisis times but he did far more than that. His life was a life of regular and strongly disciplined praying. His prayer life was a life long communion, heart to heart, with the true and living God, and in this chapter we will see how the Lord accepted and blessed Daniel's prayers.

(9:1-3) Inspired to Pray

King Belshazzar is gone. Now Darius is the king so we begin our view in a time of transition. By careful and constant study of scripture and especially the book of Jeremiah, Daniel had become inspired to pray to seek out the mind of God because the 70 years of captivity Jeremiah had taught were now finished.  We notice the special manner in which Daniel begins, not with the people still held in Babylon, including himself, but by placing his focus on the 70 years of desolation of Jerusalem. Daniel knew that God's will expressed in Jeremiah was not conditional. The number of years had been specified clearly by Jeremiah, inspired of the Holy Spirit.

Daniel felt a responsibility to ask God his question. He knew that God employs His own means to fulfill His purpose. What follows now is Daniel pouring out his heart to the Lord. We see one of the longest and most sincere prayers in all of scripture. 

This prayer is given to us to clearly show that God does hear, honor and answer secret prayers from the heart of any believer. We see the true value of these prayers in the scripture of the end of all things, Revelation 8, which describes an angel carrying the prayers of all the saints to the golden altar before God's throne.

Daniel also provides us with the highly personal and devoted manner in which he sought God in prayer, that of fasting, sackcloth and ashes. These represent the willingness to be in denial of self to commune with the Lord. They further show the humility of this one who had already known that he was chosen as a prophet, but still lowered himself personally in appearance, effort, and heart to approach the Lord.

(9:4-19) The Inspirer of Prayer

We read the gracious prayer given in supplication by Daniel in the verses.

Immediately we see much revealed.

Daniel realized that the great promise of God was yet unfulfilled. He knew that God's word never returns void so he sought the Lord to reveal His will.

He confessed sin. God's people had broken His laws. They had ignored the solemn  warnings of His prophets. He acknowledges the lordship of God over all things. 

He knows that God is a covenant God and therefore the relationship with Him is primary.  He knows God is a God who speaks and He had spoken through Jeremiah. We will later be taught in Hebrews 1:1 that this fact is truth. (God, who at various times and in various ways spoke to the fathers by the prophets). The Lord is always true to the covenants He has made. But Daniel is careful to pray that Israel has transgressed the law with shame, and has not obeyed His voice.

Daniel seeks the glory of the Lord as he expresses that He is a great and awesome God. He keeps His covenants and is a God of righteousness and shows mercy and forgiveness. He confirms that God's word is truth and that He is a deliverer of those oppressed. At the end Daniel also asks God to deliver His people “for your own sake”.

Like Isaiah, Daniel appeals to the Lord for the needs of the people. God said in Isaiah 63 that “these are MY people” and Daniel prays for this fact to continue.

These verses show what it means to have faith in the covenant Lord and to know Him as the inspirer of prayer.

(9:20-23) The Hearer of Prayer

In these few verses we see one of the most amazing moments in all of scripture concerning the effect of prayer. 

WHILE Daniel was still in prayer, the command came from God to the angel Gabriel to fly swiftly to him. The angel is quite clear in the nature and quickness of the command. He tells Daniel that “at the beginning of your supplication the command went out”.  Here is the proof reality of God's hearing of prayer.

The angel was sent to assure Daniel's understanding. Now the Lord wanted His prophet to have a far more complete understanding of His will concerning the 70 years and God intended Daniel to develop a more pointed acceptance of the coming expansion of those years as His will unfolds into human history.

Now he is to see the full version of the path that has been set for the rise of God's people in greater detail. He must look not at the 70 years as described in Jeremiah, but at the 70 weeks  (70 sevens) now revealed by Gabriel. We see one more important lesson moment in these few verses as Gabriel tells Daniel in verse 23 that he is greatly beloved, a gracious encouragement of divine love. If we are not careful we will miss one of the reasons Daniel is greatly beloved. 

He tells us that these comments by the angel came about the time of the evening offering. It would be easy for us to skim this comment as not of great value but that would be a serious mistake. It had been many decades since Daniel had been in Jerusalem, yet his thinking and his life was still regulated by the worship time of his people in the Holy City.

Daniel was loved in heaven because he lived for God. His waking moments were focused upon God's promises and the truth of His word. Daniel's experience in these moments with God's angel was a foretaste of glory that awaits those who seek and serve the Lord.

(9:24-27) The Seventy Weeks

Gabriel provides to Daniel a view of the plan of God for His people in prophetic language. The view reveals the intent of the Lord to fold into human history both the 70 weeks as well as the plan for the Gentiles and for His chosen people, the Jews.

Most importantly, the view provides the prophecy of the coming Messiah whose precious death for all sin is foretold. In addition we are granted the teaching in verse 24 that He will come “to seal up vision and prophecy” which means that in Him all the promises of God receive their final YES and their AMEN. In Him prophecy and prophet are united into one and very importantly, after Him none other will appear. He is the full and final revelation of God to man.

Verse 26 teaches us of His death which will not be for himself just as Isaiah foretold in his prophecy, chapter 53, that God's suffering servant would be cut off from the land of the living, for the transgressions of my people.

As we look deeply into the likely meaning of this angel's revelation, we should remember that we see heaven willing to communicate the plans to the chosen prophet. The Lord wanted Daniel to see beyond the 70 years to see the people delivered from captivity, to see Jerusalem and the Temple rebuilt, to see the Temple of forever come in the person of the Messiah (said to be a Temple not built with hands) and to see that it was to this new and holiest of all temples, Jesus himself, that God wished people to turn to as it once and for all gave forgiveness through grace. Now to Daniel his earlier vision of the Son of man receiving the kingdom must have begun to seem real when he heard it from the lips of an angel. 

The Lord's timing for all these things is provided to Daniel in these verses. Now let us examine exactly how perfect the plan revealed is shown to be.