in the first year of his reign, I Daniel understood by the books that the number of the years, whereof the word of Jehovah came to Jeremiah the prophet, for the accomplishment of the desolations of Jerusalem, was seventy years.
Babylon had just fallen, and a whole empire collapsed overnight. Daniel met the moment by reading a book, and there he found a date: seventy years set by God for the ruin of Jerusalem, and those years were almost over.
Daniel's understanding came the ordinary way: by studying what God had already said. God could have told him directly, and chose not to:
God could easily have told Daniel directly — by a vision, by a dream, or by an angel — that the long captivity of His people was almost over. But this is not His way. God usually acts on what has been called "the economy of miracle": He works by miracle only when it is needed. When His people or His servants can learn His will by careful study of His Word and by communion with Himself, they do not need — and should not expect — some shorter or easier way for Him to make His mind and ways known to them.
The "books" Daniel read were Jeremiah's. He did not treat them as one man's opinion.
To Daniel these "books" came as "the word of the Lord." He received Jeremiah's writings as inspired by God, and so as authoritative, to be accepted without question. We are happy if we follow his example and treat our Bible the same way.
Daniel had the news of Babylon's fall in front of him. He still refused to reason from events.
Daniel makes this important discovery in the first year of Darius. The actual return, we know, took place two years later, in the first year of Cyrus (Ezra 1:1). At that moment nothing in current events could have supported the hope of a return. He learns "by books," not by circumstances, that God would visit His people in captivity and open a way for them to return to their land. He has just seen the king of Babylon destroyed and his empire fall. But he does not speculate about the stirring events around him, or try to draw from them conclusions in favour of God's people.
This also settles a common mistake about prophecy — that you wait to see whether it comes true.
From the start of the chapter we learn how groundless it is to wait until a prophecy is fulfilled before profiting from it. Daniel did not wait. He understood the number of the years spoken of in the word of Jehovah to Jeremiah the prophet — and he understood it not by a special message to himself, but "by books."
Nothing forced Daniel to open Jeremiah. Two loves sent him there.
Two things clearly marked Daniel out: a deep love for the place where God's honour had lived, and a lasting affection for God's people... It was surely this love for Jerusalem that led him to the writings of Jeremiah, to find out how long it would remain in ruins.
The number was not arbitrary. Under the law the land was to rest one year in seven, and that rest had been withheld.
Leviticus 26:34-35 says what would happen if the Israelites did not let the land keep its sabbaths. It reads almost like a prophecy: the land would lie desolate "because it did not rest in your sabbaths." Jeremiah 25:11-12, Jeremiah 29:10 and Daniel 9:2 put the actual desolation at seventy years. And since the land was to rest one year in every seven, those 70 years answer to 70 × 7 = 490 years.
Daniel's own reaction to the discovery is the surprise.
In his place we might have felt thrilled by the discovery, and ready to celebrate. It was not so with Daniel; it was the exact opposite. It moved him to fasting, humbling himself, confession and prayer, as he realized the great sin of his people that had brought all this judgment on them... He condemned himself completely, as one identified with his people, and he vindicated God in His judgments.
That effect, one writer argues, is much of what prophecy is for:
If the study of prophecy does not give us a deeper sense of how God's people have failed on the earth, I am sure we lose one of its most important practical uses... People turn it into a question of dates and countries, of popes and kings. But God did not give it to exercise people's wits. He gave it to express His own mind about their moral condition.
- Books, not visions. Daniel's light came from patient reading. God gives no shortcut where His written Word already speaks.
- Word, not opinion. He took Jeremiah's writings as the word of the Lord, without question. That is the model for holding your own Bible.
- Word, not news. The fall of Babylon did not shape his hope. The text did.
- Faith, not sight. He profited from the promise two years before the return came. That is why God gives prophecy in advance.
- Knees, not cheers. The discovery drove him to fasting and confession. Prophecy read this way searches the reader; it does not just inform him.
And I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes;
Daniel had been reading Jeremiah, and he saw that the seventy years of Jerusalem's ruin were nearly over. The news was good, so why did it send him to his knees in fasting and grief instead of to a celebration?
Daniel takes the news straight back to its source.
As soon as Daniel learns from the word that God is about to visit His people, he turns to God. He does not go to his fellow-captives with the good news, but he draws near to God, as he says, "I turned my face to the Lord God." As another has said, "He has communion with God about what he receives from God." As a result he sees the true character of the moment, and the moral state of the people, and he acts in a way that fits it.
Daniel treated the written word as enough to act on.
From the start of the chapter we learn how baseless it is to wait until a prophecy is fulfilled before profiting by it… Babylon fell exactly on time. Would not the same seventy years end in the Jews returning from captivity? God had given no sign of this favour yet. The only pledge of it was the fall of the city that had taken them captive… This was the effect on a man who judged the present by the word of God, prophecy included. He did not busy himself with political guesswork. He turned instead to confession, humbling and prayer for his people before God.
What he had was not a private message from heaven but a book anyone could read.
Daniel was a prophet, but here God gives him no special revelation. That is why we are told he understood by books. He was only one of the faithful studying prophecy… God has revealed everything in the Bible, and by searching it we can, like Daniel, know and understand what He has already written about His people.
The outward signs matched the state of the people he prayed for, and they first did their work in him.
We can only humble ourselves for God's people if we are truly humbled before God ourselves. By grace, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, we must put ourselves in the place of those whose case we want to bring to God. The state of the people called for prayer and pleading, with fasting, sackcloth and ashes. The prophet was one of them. He understood their condition, and he took that place before God.
Daniel does not try to stand clear of the guilt.
He recognises that the low condition of God's people lies at the root of all the division and scattering among the people of God. He does not blame it on certain people, who may indeed have acted in a high-handed way. Looking past the failure of individuals, he sees and owns the failure of God's people as a whole… Daniel himself had no part in the scattering seventy years before. Yet neither his innocence nor the passing of time leads him to ignore it, or to blame people long gone from the scene. Instead he identifies himself before God with the people of God. He says, "We have sinned."
Daniel could plead for a guilty nation because nothing stood between him and God.
The purity of his own ways qualified Daniel to pray for others… His enemies said, "We shall not find any ground for complaint against this Daniel unless we find it in connection with the law of his God." In a foreign land, surrounded by enemies and traps, his practice was to pray. "He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God." How precious are the exercises of such a soul! No cloud in his own relationship with God — he is free to intercede for the state of God's people.
The signs of grief kept him at God's mercy-seat until the answer came.
"Prayer," "supplication," "fasting," "sackcloth," "ashes" — what a chain of links, forged in the fires of discipline! It binds the one who asks to the mercy-seat of God, and holds him waiting there until the answer came through "the man Gabriel," sent to "fly swiftly." Gabriel came to tell the intercessor God's gracious answer — not measured by what he asked, but in keeping with God's ways of grace, "far more abundantly than all that we ask or think."
- Read — Daniel's prayer starts in a book. He acts on a promise still unfulfilled instead of waiting for proof.
- Turn — What he receives from God he carries back to God. The news moves him toward the Lord before it moves him toward people.
- Own — Fasting, sackcloth and ashes put him where his people were. He says "we have sinned," though the sin came before his time.
- Qualify — A clear conscience frees him to plead for others. Daily prayer had trained him for this crisis.
- Receive — The answer comes through Gabriel, and it goes far beyond what he asked.