Daniel 9: Part 2

The following is the second part of my notes from a Sunday school lesson I taught on the Daniel 9:

What do we know about the Book of Daniel?

• 12 chapters – first 6 are stories of Daniel and his three friends. Each of them is structured similarly. Daniel and his friends are exiled to the Babylonian court. They have changed outwardly to reflect where they are, but not inwardly and not in their faith, and this creates conflict.
• Second 6 chapters are Daniel’s visions – apocalyptic in nature.
• Chapter 9, that we will look at today, is different than the rest in that it includes an interpretation of a Biblical prophecy from Jeremiah (we won’t look at that today) and also Daniels’s prayer for the forgiveness of his people’s sins.
• Interestingly enough, the first chapter and the last 5 are written in Hebrew and chapters 2-7 are written in Aramaic.
• Daniel is set in the time of Nebuchadnezzer and the beginning of Cyrus’s reign in Babylon, but it was probably written around 164 BCE, which was a time of religious persecution in Palestine and Syria by Antiochus IV Epiphanies – so the text is meant to be encouragement to those who are undergoing persecution.
• One last trivia about the book of Daniel – in the Dead Sea Scrolls, there are 8 fragments of what will become the book of Daniel – and parts of all 12 chapters. This makes Daniel second among the prophets in the Dead Sea Scrolls – only after Isaiah – 21 copies.  The oldest manuscript of Daniel, dates to the late 2 century BCE, which is about 50 years after the book reached its final form. It is closer to the original edition of the biblical book than any other known biblical manuscript.  The text of these fragments, even though incomplete, is very close to the Hebrew text that forms the basis for modern editions of the OT, suggesting that the book of Daniel at Qumran was next to identical to the book as we know it.

What do we know about the sin of Israel and Judah?

Deuteronomy 29:25-26 à 25 And the answer will be: “It is because this people abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, the covenant he made with them when he brought them out of Egypt. 26 They went off and worshiped other gods and bowed down to them, gods they did not know, gods he had not given them

Structure of a lament – What we are going to read uses a literary structure called a lament. A lament has a typical form (and not all of these elements are in every lament, but they all contain some of these):

• Address to God
• Complaint, sometimes with a protestation of innocence
• Confession of trust
• Petition
• Words of assurance
• Vow of praise

Read scripture - Daniel 9:4-8, 15-19

Just a few notes:

• The prayer starts with Daniel using personal word for God – in it he switches to a more collective word for God – he is praying from his relationship with God, but he is praying for all of Israel.
• The prayer uses four verbs to describe what the peole have done: sinned, done wrong, rebelled and turned away from God’s commandments.  Really wicked.
• He mentions leaders and he mentions the people – neither group can escape from the fault of sin.
• He reminds them of Egypt, and that their God had rescued them before.