Today’s Scripture Reading (July 5, 2017):
Daniel 9
Mark Twain humorously
suggested that “giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know
because I've done it thousands of times.” Some things are too important to give
up trying and breaking addictions is one of them. Sometimes those around us
begin to think that beating the addiction just isn’t a priority, but the truth is
exactly the reverse. Like Twain, we have tried it a thousand times and now are
getting ready to try once more.
Daniel’s mention of the
Darius the Mede is confusing to historians. There is no such person known to history, but that is more likely a limitation of what we
know then it is of Daniel being wrong (Daniel was there, he knew to whom
he had communication.) According to Daniel, Darius the Mede reigned in Babylon
for a short period between Nabonidus, the last Mesopotamian king of Babylon who
often left the rule of the nation to his son Belshazzar, and the conquering Cyrus
the Great. The solution seems to be either that Darius was an alternate name
for Cyrus himself or an alternate name of
Cyaxares II of the Medes (who some scholars also doubt ever existed). According
to some theories, when the Persians and the Medes came together under one
empire, Cyaxares voluntarily became a general in the army of the new Medo-Persian army. And that it was Cyaxares
the Mede that took the city and reigned for a short period as an extension of
Cyrus’s rule.
But notwithstanding
the answer to the historical mystery of Darius the Mede, any theory places this
prayer of Daniel as being offered in 539 B.C.E. If Daniel is dating the exile
from the time that he left Jerusalem, which was during the first exile when the
best and the brightest were removed from the city, then about sixty-six years
had passed. Daniel, now in his
eighties, had never stopped dreaming of home and had never stopped studying scripture for a clue as to
when this part of his people’s journey would end. Daniel had never given up. And now, having studied the Scripture, he
devotes himself to prayer.
Just a note on the word “Scriptures.”
It is a little misleading in this context. At the time of Daniel, there was not
a Bible as we think of Scripture. At best, Daniel would have had the Torah, the
first five books of the Bible, and then a lot of other related writings, such
as the books of Kings (although not our book of Kings), and poetry and other writings
from which to study. Daniel specifically mentions the writings and teachings of
Jeremiah. Jeremiah would have been an older contemporary of Daniel. In his
youth in Jerusalem, before the exile began, he would have likely heard the
weeping prophet teach on the streets of the city. And he had probably read the writings of Jeremiah that had
been forwarded to Babylon and the exiles.
Some of those writings, but probably not all, make up our current biblical book
of Jeremiah. But Daniel was a student. He had studied the law of ages past, he
knew the history of his nation, and he read the current
writings of his day. And through all of this, God had shown him what it was that he was about to accomplish.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Daniel 10
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