Welcome back to my study/review of The Book of Daniel. If you missed the previous parts of this study, you can find them HERE.
Daniel 9:8-15
8 To us, O Lord, belongs open shame, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against you. 9 To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against him 10 and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God by walking in his laws, which he set before us by his servants the prophets. 11 All Israel has transgressed your law and turned aside, refusing to obey your voice. And the curse and oath that are written in the Law of Moses the servant of God have been poured out upon us, because we have sinned against him. 12 He has confirmed his words, which he spoke against us and against our rulers who ruled us, by bringing upon us a great calamity. For under the whole heaven there has not been done anything like what has been done against Jerusalem. 13 As it is written in the Law of Moses, all this calamity has come upon us; yet we have not entreated the favor of the Lord our God, turning from our iniquities and gaining insight by your truth. 14 Therefore the Lord has kept ready the calamity and has brought it upon us, for the Lord our God is righteous in all the works that he has done, and we have not obeyed his voice. 15 And now, O Lord our God, who brought your people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand, and have made a name for yourself, as at this day, we have sinned, we have done wickedly.
Daniel 9 continues with Daniel’s prayer – which as the earlier verses tell us, occurs in the first year of the reign of Darius. The Babylonian Empire has fallen, but the Jewish people remain (for now) in captivity. The prayer concerns how long that status quo will continue.
We’ll jump into the verse with a comment from Ellicott’s Bible Commentary and verse 8:
(8) Confusion of face.—Repeated from Daniel 9:7, so as to bring into stronger contrast the mercy of God (Daniel 9:9) with the righteousness” mentioned in Daniel 9:7. St. Jerome well remarks, “Post sententiam judicantis provocat eum ad clementiam.” The absolute mercy and forgiveness of God is implied by the article in this verse, just as His absolute righteousness is in Daniel 9:7.
If the note is confusing, that’s because “confusion of face” is translated as “open shame” in the ESV quoted at the top of the post.
open = פָּנִים pânîym, paw-neem’; plural (but always as singular) of an unused noun פָּנֶה pâneh; from H6437); the face (as the part that turns); used in a great variety of applications (literally and figuratively); also (with prepositional prefix) as a preposition (before, etc.):— accept, a-(be-) fore(-time), against, anger, × as (long as), at, battle, because (of), beseech, countenance, edge, employ, endure, enquire, face, favour, fear of, for, forefront(-part), form(-er time, -ward), from, front, heaviness, × him(-self), honourable, impudent, in, it, look(-eth) (-s), × me, meet, × more than, mouth, of, off, (of) old (time), × on, open, out of, over against, the partial, person, please, presence, prospect, was purposed, by reason of, regard, right forth, serve, × shewbread, sight, state, straight, street, × thee, × them(-selves), through ( -out), till, time(-s) past, (un-) to(-ward), upon, upside ( down), with(-in, -stand), × ye, × you.
shame = בֹּשֶׁת bôsheth, bo’-sheth; from H954; shame (the feeling and the condition, as well as its cause); by implication (specifically) an idol:—ashamed, confusion, greatly, (put to) shame(-ful thing).
If you’ve read the account of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, (ex: 1 & 2 Kings) prior to their captivities, then Daniel’s repentance here makes sense. The people had behaved in deep and significant depravity prior to their exile. Indeed, their behavior led to the punishment of the exile in the first place. Repentance is a necessary step to take before forgiveness can (or should) be given. Continuing to verses 9 and 10, from The Pulpit Commentaries:
To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgivenesses, though we have rebelled against him; neither have we obeyed the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in his laws, which he set before us by his servants the prophets. The Septuagint renders the last clause, “The Law which thou gavest before Moses, and us by thy servants the prophets.” There is a change here which has the appearance of marking an interpolation. The prayer ceases, and an explanatory narrative begins. In content it resembles the parallel passage in Bar. 1; but is much briefer, and therefore more likely to be the older. “Forgivenesses” occurs only here and Nehemiah 9:17 in a prayer that otherwise seems borrowed from that before us.
Daniel here is specific, noting that it is within the power of God to forgive, but also noting that the Jewish people have been disobedient. The bad behavior, he acknowledges in the next verse (note from Ellicott) led to their current situation:
(11) The curse.—The passages in the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, to which Daniel refers, had already been noticed by Isaiah (Isaiah 1:0), as having received a partial fulfilment in his times. It remains for Daniel to realise the complete “pouring” out of the curse. It is poured out like a torrent of rain (see Exodus 9:33); as the fire melts the silver (Ezekiel 22:20-22), so does the curse cause the nation to melt away.
As the note says, God promises in the Torah that God’s blessings are contingent upon Israel’s faithfulness. There are many places in Scripture where God promises to punish disobedience.
Deuteronomy 11: 26 “See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: 27 the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, 28 and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn aside from the way that I am commanding you today, to go after other gods that you have not known.
“Why have all of these bad things happened to us?” sometimes reaches the point of self-reflection and realization that it was one’s own bad actions that brought them about. Daniel seems to be here now, on behalf of his people. Continuing on in TPC:
And he hath confirmed his words, which he spake against us. and against our judges that judged us, by bringing upon us a great evil: for under the whole heaven hath not been done as hath been done upon Jerusalem. The LXX. differs somewhat, “And he hath confirmed against us (ἔστησεν ἡμῖν) his words (προστάγματα), such as he spake against us, and against our judges, such great evils as thou didst adjudge us (ἔκρινας ἡμῖν), to bring upon us.” The rest is farily in accordance with the Massoretic. It is clear that in the text before the LXX. translator the word was shephaṭtanoo instead of shephaṭoonoo, that is to say, ת(tau) instead of ו(vav). These letters in earlier scripts were liable to be confounded. The meaning assigned to shaphat in this reading is unusual; but this is rather in favour of it being the true reading; and the return to the second person, while awkward, also has weight. Theodotion and the Peshitta do not call for remark. The use of the word “judges” for rulers generally ought to be noted. If we take the Massoretic reading, there may be a reminiscence of 2 Kings 23:22. Among the Carthaginians the principal magistrates bore the title suffetes, equivalent to shopheteen. Under the whole heaven hath not been done as bath been done upon Jerusalem. Such language is to be regarded in any case as the exaggeration of grief; but it would have something like a justification twice in the history of Jerusalem, and only twice—after the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, and after its capture by Titus. No one has maintained that the origin of Daniel is so late as the latter event; hence we are thrown back upon the former. With the fact before him that temples had been plundered everywhere, and desecrated, and cities sacked, the writer could not have regarded the case of Jerusalem, and its temple, in the days of Epiphanes, as unique under all heaven. After the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, the temple was left in rums and the city deserted. Such measure, so far as we know, was not meted out by Nebuchadnezzar to any other city. Only rarely had even the Ninevite monarchs taken such terrible vengeance on rebellious subjects.
The note here is interesting. We might assume that laying waste to a conquered city was standard practice in ancient times, but apparently it was not. It’s therefore significant that an even worse sacking of Jerusalem occurs in 70 A.D. at the hands of the Romans.
For those who try to ascribe a 2nd century B.C. dating to Daniel, this passage poses a problem. If the Babylonians are being used as a 2nd century B.C. stand-in for the then present-day Antiochus IV Epiphanes… well, Epiphanes was comparatively not that bad. The Temple was looted, but it and the city were not destroyed. If Epiphanes represents the 4th and most terrible beasts, wouldn’t you expect him to live up to that? By contrast, the Romans do live up to it.
Continuing on, again in Ellicott:
(13) Made we not our prayer.—The reference is, as in Daniel 9:6, to the conduct of the nation from the first. There had been plenty of external show of praying, as appears from Isaiah 1:0 and elsewhere, but these prayers were of no effect on account of their formalism. The conditions of acceptable prayer are implied in the closing words of the verse “turning from iniquity, and wisdom in the truth,” i.e., in the revelation of God. On the phrase “make prayer,” see Exodus 32:11.
God – according to the note – wanted His people to turn from their sins. Once that happened, then He would hear their prayers. 2 Chronicles famously sums up this principle:
2 Chronicles 7:14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
God desires the hearts of His people, not just their empty words. We’ll finish the section in Ellicott:
(14) Watched.—By the use of this word it seems that Daniel is again referring to the prophecies of Jeremiah. (See Jeremiah 1:12, &c.) He prays that as all the curses foretold by that prophet have been poured upon the nation, so also the release from the Captivity, which was also promised by him, may be accomplished also.
(15) Thou hast brought.—The mention of past mercies moves Daniel to pray that future mercies may be granted. His language is founded partly upon Jeremiah 32:17-23, and partly upon Isaiah 63:11-16. The Babylonian exile is frequently compared by Isaiah (e.g., Isaiah 51:9-10) to Egyptian bondage. Daniel reproduces the thought in this verse.
Here in these verses, Daniel confesses that his people deserve the calamity through which they are going. Does that mean he does not hope for it to end? No. In fact, he knows that it will end at some point due to the fact this punishment was predicted beforehand, as was its end. Daniel thus hopes that the punishment is reaching its end.
He has reason to hope. As mentioned, Daniel seems to be drawing directly from the writings of Jeremiah:
Jeremiah 29:10 “For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. 11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
Daniel likely was aware of this writing, and his question here is related to timing. When precisely did that 70 year clock start? There are multiple potential starting points – hence there are multiple potential end points. Seventy is also a number that can be viewed symbolically, as well as literally. Either way, Daniel seems to have realized that this time period was almost over so he prayed on behalf of his people.
We can also infer from the fact that Daniel has access to this writing that there was a Jewish religious community of some sort in Babylon of which Daniel was a part. We are not told what precisely that looked like. Perhaps some of Daniel’s job for the Babylonians allowed him to keep and study the religious texts of his own people. Or alternatively, that might have happened entirely outside of the text.
As a side note, there are some who believe that the Magi who are said to have visited Jesus were part of a Jewish religious sect (or at least one that was influenced by Judaism) that continued on in Babylon after the Jews returned to the Holy Land when the exile ended. (There are also other people who argue that the Magi were Zoroastrian priest from Persia, and others who argue that they were from a Jewish community in or near China.) Maybe I’ll do a deep dive on that topic in conjunction with a study of the Book of Matthew.
In any case, that brings us to the end of this section of verses, though Daniel’s prayer continues on. We are nearing the verses wherein the Angel Gabriel brings God’s answer to Daniel’s prayer .
