The Promise-Plan of God: A Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments by Walter C. Kaiser Jr

Author:Walter C. Kaiser Jr. [Kaiser Jr., Walter C.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Array
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2009-10-05T16:00:00+00:00

THE BOOK OF DANIEL

Daniel, meaning “God is my judge,” was an exilic statesman and a mediator of the divine revelation for Israel and the nations. Born into an unidentified family of nobility in Judah sometime just prior to Josiah’s reformation in 622 BC, he was taken by Nebu-chadnezzar along with the first captives from Judah to Babylon in 605 BC.

Daniel was a hostage, serving to prove Judah’s good faith toward Babylon’s continued mastery over Judah. So in the third year of King Jehoiakim (Da 1:1, 3), he and his three friends (Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah), were put into a three-year course in Babylon in preparation for some type of royal service (Da 1:4, 5).

The theme of this book could well be represented in Daniel 2:44:

In the time of those [Gentile] kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.

Thus, God’s sovereignty is seen in the abiding kingdom that God will eventually set up after the last of human empires and its leaders come to a decisive end, as determined by God himself.

Daniel prefers to use the more general name for God, ’elohim, restricting his use of the personal name of Yahweh (= LORD) to his prayer in Daniel 9. In this way, Daniel made the point that this Lord was not just the God of the Jews, but he is God over all the nations. Accordingly, he is called the “Most Holy [God]” (4:17; 5:18), the “God of gods” (2:47), and the “Lord of kings” (2:47). God is in charge of all of history, and he controls it so that it terminates in the conclusion he has determined for history and not one chosen by any human rulers for their own benefit.

The Promised Kingdom’s Success

The theology of Daniel is clearly set forth in antithesis to the successive kingdoms of humankind. In contrast to these kingdoms is the abiding but finally triumphant kingdom of God that is central to Daniel’s message. Daniel, another exile along with Ezekiel,3 looked beyond the catastrophe of Jerusalem’s collapse and the present demise of the Davidic line to that abiding promised kingdom of God that would triumph over all the presently observed obstacles.

The Stone and the Kingdom of God

The dream of Nebuchadnezzar recorded in Daniel 2 set the stage for this prophecy. There a colossal image was described, which was composed of four decreasingly valuable metals. The statue is characterized by increasing weakness and division as one proceeds from head to toes. This image represented the human alternative to that “Stone” which fell on the feet of the colossus and crushed the whole image to pieces. After this, the “Stone” became a great kingdom that filled the whole earth. The “Stone” called to mind Isaiah’s “Cornerstone” (Isa 28:16), while the metals of the statue were clearly identified as the four kingdoms, beginning with Babylon, followed by the split dominion of Medo-Persia, Graeco-Macedonia, and the Roman or Western empires.

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