I, Daniel, was worn out. I lay exhausted for several days. Then I got up and went about the king’s business. I was appalled by the vision; it was beyond understanding. – Daniel 8:27

Today’s Scripture Reading (April 14, 2014): Daniel 8

A friend of mine once commented that he thought he needed to be paid overtime because he often went to bed at night and dreamed about his job. The comment itself was a bit of a joke, but the truth is that we have all spent nights where our dreams have physically worn us out. And that is exactly what seems to have happened to Daniel. The depth and the terror of the visions that God had given to him had left him exhausted. And for a few days he rested as he tried to simply deal with the things that he had seen.

But he could not let the exhaustion from the vision stop him for long. While God had shown his spirit a vision of the physical future, Daniel had always considered his physical tasks in the service of the king a spiritual duty. And while it is very likely that Daniel no longer held the position of prestige that had been his during the reign of the Babylonian Empire, he would not dishonor God by shirking his duty for long. And he also would have been severely wounded if it had been said about him that his visions and dreams had kept him from fulfilling his duty to the king.

But another part of the problem was that Daniel just could not understand everything that he had seen. He did not understand how God could ever abandon his people in the way that he had seen. Yet he could not doubt the truth of what he had seen. All of this left Daniel extremely confused.

It has been proposed in reference to biblical prophecy that the visions that the prophets saw can have up to three views. The first is the near view, it is the future that the prophet can see and understand in the immediate future. The second view was an intermediate vision. This is the vision that may have been at a point that is on the prophet’s horizon – it was a future that was at the edge of the future that the prophet could see. For many Hebrew prophets, this often seems to be prophecy that can be applied to the coming of the Messiah. But sometimes prophecies extended even beyond the Messianic expectation, to something that was beyond that. Sometimes this is under the heading of the “Day of the Lord,” but not always.

What seems to have frustrated and exhausted Daniel was that this prophecy did not seem to apply at all to either the near or the intermediate future – it simply applied to a time that was well beyond Daniel’s horizon. Daniel didn’t understand. But also didn’t need to understand. And that is a lesson that we all need to learn. There are some things we don’t understand, and that we don’t need to understand. And that is okay. Even Daniel struggled with some of the things that he had been shown, but that made him no less a man of God.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Daniel 9