And he said unto me, Fear not, Daniel; for from the first day that thou didst set thy heart to understand, and to humble thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come because of thy words.
Daniel had spent three weeks mourning and fasting when a heavenly messenger told him God heard his prayer on day one. So the verse raises two questions: which heart does God answer, and why did an answer sent at once take twenty-one days to arrive?
One writer points to the state of Daniel's soul as the thing God noticed:
We shall find, dear friends, some instructive circumstances at the beginning, in the position of Daniel and in the state of his soul. God notices this, for the man clothed in linen says to him, "Fear not, Daniel." Daniel's position was one of affliction before his God.
The verse names two things about Daniel. The first is what he wanted:
In the first place he had set his heart to understand. How often is this lacking among us today! Is it our strong desire to understand what God has revealed, not with the head only, but with the heart? Daniel loved his God, and loved his people, so that what God made known deeply affected him. If our love were stronger, we would be setting our hearts to understand the truth made known to us.
The second thing runs alongside the first. Where older translations say "chastened," the ESV says "humbled."
In the second place he "chastened", or "humbled" himself before God, while he sought the understanding. Here again we have to challenge ourselves. It is dangerously easy to want a large understanding of divine truth. Such knowledge gives the person who has it a certain prominence and importance. In reality all truth, if grasped in the heart, humbles us... If we chastened ourselves more truly before God, we would soon understand more of His truth.
Daniel's fasting was not a trick to pull secrets out of God. It was how he came to receive them.
Can we enter into God's secrets without a heart that is morally ready? Can we understand divine things just by hearing or reading, or because we have gathered around certain leaders of God's people and eagerly upheld their teachings? No mistake could be greater. Humiliation and fasting were Daniel's means of receiving these revelations.
There is a warning here for anyone whose prayers are about other people's faults:
We may fret against others, and speak out against their evil, but if our prayers are to be effective we need, like Daniel, to chasten ourselves in the presence of God.
Daniel's prayer brought the messenger. What the messenger brings is light on Scripture.
Go to God in prayer for a key to unlock the mysteries of His word. It is not the plodding but the praying soul that will get this treasure of Scripture knowledge. God often brings a truth to the Christian's hand as an answer to prayer, which he had long hunted for in vain with much labour and study... "I have come because of your words"; that is, because of your prayer. And what was this heavenly messenger's errand to Daniel but to open the Scripture to him more fully?
So why the delay? One writer sets the two facts side by side:
All this was good for Daniel. There was deep blessing in the searching of heart that God called this beloved and honoured servant to pass through during those three weeks. And what is especially worth noting is this: God had sent out the answer to Daniel's cry from His throne at the very start of that searching... "But" — how marvellous and mysterious this is! — "the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days."
Another writer draws the line to our own praying, and marks two kinds of answer:
The same thing that kept Daniel from a visible answer to his prayer may keep us from the answer of circumstances. The answer of faith we ought always to count on at once. The answer of circumstances, which God governs so as to bring out a visible answer, we may have to wait for. Daniel had to wait, and we are told why. From verse 13 we learn that the prince of the kingdom of Persia resisted for twenty-one days — exactly the time Daniel was kept in mourning and fasting before God.
- Heart — God answers a heart set to understand, not just a curious mind. Daniel loved God and loved his people, so what God made known mattered to him.
- Humbling — Real understanding lowers a person. Humbling himself was how Daniel came to receive what God showed him.
- Heard — The answer left the throne on day one. Silence is not proof of being unheard.
- Hindered — A hostile power held the messenger up for twenty-one days. The delay did not start with God.
- Held — The waiting carried deep blessing of its own. Those three weeks searched the heart of the man who would receive the vision.
But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days; and behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia.
Daniel had mourned and prayed for three weeks before a heavenly messenger reached him. The messenger's first words explain the delay: a struggle between spiritual powers over the empire that then ruled the world.
The delay had nothing to do with whether God heard Daniel.
God heard Daniel's prayer on the first day that he poured out his soul before Him. Even so, the answer did not reach him for three weeks. The angel gives the reason for the delay. Spiritual forces were at work in opposition. For three weeks the prince of the kingdom of Persia had withstood the angel sent to answer Daniel's prayer.
God may hear a prayer long before the answer arrives. That is where the comfort of this passage lies.
So there were spiritual obstacles, not to Daniel's prayer, not to its being heard and granted, but to the answer reaching him. Here there is good encouragement. We are apt to suppose that our breath in prayer is wasted if the answer does not come at once. But exercise of heart in prayer is never fruitless, though the result may be long delayed. Cornelius was told, "Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God"; and we do not know how long he waited before God sent Peter to him with the answer — it may have been years (Acts 10). As in Daniel's case, so in Cornelius', and so in ours, there is a time as well as a way of answering, which rests in the wisdom and grace of God.
One writer argues from the situation itself that this "prince" cannot be the Persian king.
Of whom is the angel speaking? Not of a man, certainly; for how could the Persian ruler hinder an angel coming from heaven with an answer to the prophet's prayer? And would he be likely to know that the prophet had prayed at all? It is a mighty spirit the angel speaks of, a spirit that took an interest, for good or for evil, in the politics of the Persian State.
The wording of the verse gives a second argument, and with it a picture of how Satan organises his power.
First, notice that "the prince of the kingdom of Persia" is an angel. The same verse calls Michael "one of the chief princes," and Daniel 12 calls him "the great prince" in connection with Israel. On the authority of Jude, we know Michael is the archangel. If so, then since this "prince" of Persia acts here against the mind of God, he is a bad angel — in fact one of Satan's princes... It would seem, then, that Satan has imitated the kingdom of God, and formed his ranks of authority and power on the divine pattern.
Michael is named only a handful of times in Scripture, and always with one nation in view.
This distinguished angel is named five times in the Scriptures... He seems to be the leader of the angelic ranks, since Jude calls him "the archangel." In Daniel 10:13, where Michael is first named, he is called "first of the chief princes" (see margin). In each of the five passages where his name occurs, and in their contexts, the Jewish people are in question. Clearly he is the angel to whose guardian care the interests of Israel are committed.
The same writer takes this further, into the way history really works.
The contests between Persia and Babylon looked as though the generalship and arms of the famous Persian, Cyrus, decided them, but it was not really so. Higher and spiritual powers shape and direct the movements of nations, their wars, politics, and social policy. Of course all is under the wise, strong, and controlling hand of God. He is the supreme Arbiter in human life and history.
The verse ends not with the obstacle but with the reinforcement.
It is an encouragement to learn from this scripture that we are not left to ourselves. If Satan's prince was seeking to hinder the answer to Daniel's prayers, Michael, one of God's chief princes, came to help His messenger. And the angel was "left there with the kings of Persia," victorious, through Michael's help, over the wicked agent who had dared to thrust himself between God's command and its carrying out.
- Heard — God received Daniel's words the first day. The delay held up the answer, not the hearing.
- Hindered — the prince of Persia is a spiritual being set against God's work. No human king could block an angel, or even know that Daniel had prayed at all.
- Ranked — Satan copies God's order of authority, setting his own princes over kingdoms as God set Michael over Israel.
- Helped — Michael, one of the chief princes and the archangel, guards Israel's interests. He came to the messenger's aid.
- Held — prayer is never wasted breath. God sets the time and the way of the answer, and His hand moves nations from behind the scene.