And all Israel have transgressed thy law, even turning aside so as not to listen unto thy voice. And the curse hath been poured out upon us, and the oath that is written in the law of Moses the servant of God for we have sinned against him.
Daniel is praying for a ruined nation, and he never once argues that God has been unfair. Here he admits the charge in full: the whole nation broke God's law, and the curse Moses had written down has fallen on them.
One commentator maps out the prayer, then points out something surprising about the man praying it:
It has three parts. Verses 4-10: confession of the failure of his people and acknowledgment of God's covenant mercies. Verses 11-14: the deserved curse as written in the law of Moses. Verses 15-19: pleading for mercy, that God would turn away His anger and remember His city, Jerusalem, and His people. Throughout this prayer we read how completely he identified himself with the sins, the failure, the shame and the judgment of the people of God. This is remarkable. He was brought to Babylon when quite young, and even then he belonged to the believing, God-fearing part of the nation. Yet he speaks of the nation's sins, their rebellion, their transgressions of the law and their wicked deeds as if they belonged to him.
Daniel could have based his plea on the promises made to Abraham. He did not:
Nowhere in the Bible do we find a finer example of thorough confession and prayer. Ezra's prayer in Ezra 9 closely resembles it. Daniel made no reference to the covenant of promise made with Abraham. Instead he placed himself before God on the ground of the covenant of the law of Moses, and of the later ministry through the prophets. On this ground he confessed complete breakdown and disaster. Yet he himself was less involved in it than anyone in his day.
Moses had written the curse down long before it fell. One commentator shows where to find it:
It is pointless to say that we receive the blessing which belongs to Deuteronomy 27. We do not. There we get the curse and no blessing. But in Deuteronomy 28 we get certain blessings and then curses. So this chapter shows the state Israel would be in right up to the present day. It lists the details: "And you shall become a horror, a proverb, and a byword among all the peoples where the LORD will lead you away." So this is not a question of God dealing according to His nature. It is a matter of His ways with a nation in this world, and nothing more.
If the law had been all Daniel knew, his prayer could have stopped there. He had more to appeal to:
Shame belonged to every class of the people because of their sins, as Daniel again confesses. Yet "to the Lord our God," he goes on to say, "belong mercy and forgiveness." This was true though they had rebelled against Him, though they had not obeyed His voice through the prophets, and though all Israel had transgressed the law of the Lord their God. They had therefore fallen under the curse and penalty of their sins, as written in the law of Moses the servant of God. In that one sentence, "To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness," Daniel had found the only ground he could rest on as he prayed for his people. Had he known only the law, he could not have hoped to be heard.
One commentator follows the curse of the law to its end. It was not cancelled. It was carried:
Above all, Christ has redeemed us from the curse. He was made a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree" (Deut. 21:23). Christ bears our curse so that we might receive blessing, and the promise of the Spirit, through faith in Christ.
Daniel was the least guilty man of his day. He was also the most troubled by his nation's guilt:
So it always is. Those deeply involved in failure and sin are made blind by that very fact. They cannot see how far they have sunk. Those less involved feel the state of things painfully.
- Cause. Israel broke the law and refused to listen. The ruin was no accident. It was the written penalty of a broken covenant.
- Curse. Deuteronomy named the sentence in advance: Israel would become a byword among the nations. Daniel admits it has now fallen.
- Confession. Daniel stands on the law's ground, not Abraham's promise. He says "we" though he was the least involved man of his day.
- Mercy. The law alone would have silenced him. He could pray at all only because "to the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness."
- Christ. Christ did not set the curse aside. He carried it, being made a curse so that blessing could come.
And he hath performed his words, which he spoke against us, and against our judges that judged us, by bringing upon us a great evil; so that there hath not been done under the whole heaven as hath been done upon Jerusalem.
Daniel prays as an exile in Babylon, looking back on a ruined city and a scattered nation. He traces that ruin to God Himself, which raises a hard question: can the fall of God's own city be God keeping His word?
The earlier verses confess the sin. This verse states what came of it, for the people and for the rulers over them.
Verses 11, 12. So the curse announced in the law had fallen on them. God had confirmed the words He had spoken against the nation by bringing this great evil upon them.
If God is this exact with a threat, what does that say about a promise?
Oh, what foolishness is ours that could ever doubt a word of God! And what has God given us all this for? Only that we may know that if that word stands in what is evil, how much more in what is good. If God carries out His threats to the letter, can His promises fail for an instant?
Daniel had guilty kings and a violent conqueror he could have blamed. He names none of them.
He speaks of "the Lord our God… bringing upon us a great evil"; and again, "the Lord watched upon the evil, and brought it upon us." So Daniel loses sight of the folly and wickedness of individual men. He mentions no names. He does not speak of Jehoiakim, or of "his abominations which he did." He does not speak of Zedekiah and his folly. He does not point to the ruthless violence of Nebuchadnezzar.
Nor does he soften the language, and the same commentator notes this is not unique to Daniel.
These men of God do not soften their strong statements about God's dealings in discipline. They do not even say that God has "allowed" His people to be scattered, or "permitted" them to be driven away. They say plainly that God Himself has driven the people away and brought the evil.
The verse ends by measuring the disaster against everything else under heaven.
Daniel will hide nothing. God had only confirmed His words in bringing so great an evil on His people, and there was never a greater evil under the whole heaven than what fell on Jerusalem. The evil came on them exactly as written in the law of Moses.
Daniel says "we" all the way through the prayer. The sins he confesses were the nation's, not his own.
Verses 11-14 set out the deserved curse as written in the law of Moses. Throughout this prayer we see how fully he identified himself with the sins, the failure, the shame and the judgment of the people of God. This is remarkable. He speaks of the nation's sins, their rebellion, their transgressions of the law and their wicked deeds as if they belonged to him.
The "great evil" of verse 12 was meant to turn the nation back. Verse 13 says it did not. (The quote below uses an older wording of verse 14: "the Lord watched upon the evil.")
"Yet we have not entreated the favour of the Lord our God, turning from our iniquities and gaining insight by Your truth" (v. 13). That is, we have not only transgressed. When the chastening came, we did not turn to the Lord with a true heart, to turn us from our iniquities. Here sin reached its height. "Therefore the Lord has watched upon the evil and brought it upon us" (v. 14), as He watched over the good to bless. How terrible, when the government of God watches over evil to make it come upon His people!
- Word. God had spoken against the nation. The fall of Jerusalem confirmed His own words — and the God who keeps a threat keeps a promise.
- Hand. Daniel names no king and no invader. He traces the scattering to God Himself, and refuses even the softer words "allowed" and "permitted".
- Weight. The judgment on Jerusalem was without equal under heaven. It landed exactly as the law of Moses had written it.
- Owner. Daniel says "we" for sins that were not his, taking the nation's sin, shame and judgment as his own.
- Warning. God sent the evil to turn them back. They did not turn — and there sin reached its height.
As it is written in the law of Moses, all this evil is come upon us; yet we besought not Jehovah our God, that we might turn from our iniquities, and understand thy truth.
Daniel names the worst part of Israel's ruin: the disaster came just as the law of Moses had warned, and still no one prayed. Why does trouble leave so many people unchanged, and what links turning from sin to understanding God's truth?
The failure Daniel confesses here is not the original sin but the response to its punishment. One writer calls this the lowest point of the whole confession. He reads the next verse as its result, quoting verse 14 from an older translation.
We have not only broken the law. When the chastening came, we did not turn to the Lord with a true heart, so that we might be turned from our iniquities. Here sin reached its height. "Therefore the Lord has watched over the evil and brought it upon us" (v. 14) — as He watched over the good to bless. How terrible, when the government of God watches over evil to make it come upon His people!
Daniel could have stopped at admitting the nation's guilt. Instead he adds a worse detail: nobody sought God even after the blow fell. Hiding nothing is what makes his prayer a model.
Daniel went to the very bottom. He viewed all the sins of his people in the light of God's holiness. He justified God, and owned that the judgment which had come on Jerusalem, Judah, Israel, kings, princes, and people was only what they righteously deserved. So it is a pattern confession for all time, for believers and for sinners alike. Only remember that grace is known even better now (see 1 John 2:1-2; 1:9). And if it is better known, that is one more reason to confess thoroughly and openly.
The verse ties two things together: turning from sin, and gaining insight into God's truth. One commentator applies that link to people who find the Bible impossible to understand.
He fully justifies God. Then he adds this to his confession: they had not turned to Him in prayer, asking to be freed from their moral state and to understand His truth (v. 13). And is not this in large measure the reason why so few today understand God's truth — His Word? To most it seems a sealed book, passed from one to another with the admission that it cannot be understood. (See Isaiah 29:11-12.) But how could it be otherwise? Men — and Christian men at that — fail to cry to God for light. They are unwilling to turn from their worldly ways, or to break with their ungodly company. Here lies the real reason why most professing Christians today fail to understand the Scriptures.
Daniel was taken to Babylon as a boy and had no share in the sins that ruined Jerusalem. Yet the prayer never says "they."
Daniel was led captive when very young, and he had taken no part in the actual sin of Israel. There was therefore no ground for self-accusation. But the fact is, there is no such thing as a Christian who is separate from the interests of his fellow believers. This could not be… Since Christ identifies Himself with all that the people have done from the beginning, Daniel too can say, "We have sinned." He joins himself to them all, as one of the same people, though he had shared in none of these sins.
Commentators do not leave this in the past. One writer holds Daniel's words up as a mirror: trouble accepted calmly, truth left unstudied. He keeps the verse's older wording, where "entreated the favor of the LORD" reads "made our prayer before the Lord."
Has this solemn verse no voice for the people of God in our own day? The people of God are scattered and divided because of their sins. Yet how calmly, even contentedly, they look at this division! What is more, God's truth is little understood at the moment, and there is little desire to understand it. Oh that the state of God's people would stir us so deeply that we must make our prayer before the Lord our God, turn from our iniquities, and set our faces to understand the truth of God!
- The blow. The disaster came exactly as written, so the punishment itself was proof that God keeps His word.
- The silence. The worst sin was not the first offence. It was the refusal to pray once the chastening came.
- The hardening. When God's people will not turn, His government watches over the evil to bring it on them. Once it watched over the good to bless.
- The turning. Daniel's confession hides nothing and justifies God. He says "we" though he shared none of the guilt. That is the pattern for anyone confessing sin.
- The understanding. Turning from sin and understanding God's truth stand or fall together. Where people will not break with their ways, the Bible stays a sealed book.