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Context No. 882 of 4322 · Daniel (Greek)

Context · Reflection

Daniel (Greek) 7:1-5: in context

1In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head on his bed. Then he wrote the dream and told the sum of the matters. 2Daniel spoke and said, “I saw in my vision by night and behold, the four winds of the sky broke out on the great sea. 3Four great animals came up from the sea, different from one another. 4“The first was like a lion, and had eagle’s wings. I watched until its wings were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made to stand on two feet as a man. A man’s heart was given to it. 5“Behold, there was another animal, a second, like a bear. It was raised up on one side, and three ribs were in its mouth between its teeth. They said this to it: ‘Arise! Devour much flesh!’

This is the turn in the book of Daniel from court stories to visions. In Belshazzar's first year, Daniel dreams of four winds churning the great sea and four great beasts rising out of it, each different: the first like a lion with eagle's wings, later lifted up and given a man's heart; the second like a bear, raised up on one side, three ribs in its teeth, told to arise and devour much flesh.

The images are strange on purpose. These beasts are empires, kingdoms rising one after another out of the chaos of the sea, and the vision is meant to show history from above, as God sees it. From ground level, an empire looks permanent, a settled order you must simply live under. From Daniel's vantage they look like monsters that come up, rampage, and are stripped of their power in turn. The lion's wings are plucked; the bear is commanded to gorge but is not sovereign; each beast acts only under a permission granted from somewhere higher. That is the comfort buried in the frightening pictures. The kingdoms that terrify God's people are not the top of the order. Later in the same chapter the Ancient of Days takes his seat and the books are opened, and the beasts' dominion is taken away. Daniel writes it all down, which is its own act of faith: recording that the monsters have a limit.

What empire or power am I treating as permanent and final, when scripture insists it is only a beast that will be stripped of its dominion in its time?

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