Daniel 10 Study Notes
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10:1 Daniel received this vision in 536 BC. Assuming Daniel was about fifteen when taken captive, he was approximately eighty-four years old at the time. The vision was about a great conflict in the future, recounted in 11:2-12:3. The last three chapters of Daniel are about the same vision.
charats
| Hebrew pronunciation | [chah RATZ] |
| CSB translation | decide, decree, determine |
| Uses in Daniel | 3 |
| Uses in the OT | 11 |
| Focus passage | Daniel 9:26-27 |
This root in several languages suggests cutting, and in Akkadian also indicates determining. The former concept appears in the idiom “sharpening the tongue,” which suggests dogs snarling (Ex 11:7) or people saying something against others (Jos 10:21). Otherwise charats denotes decide (1Kg 20:40) and determine (Jb 14:5). Once it means act decisively (2Sm 5:24). In Isaiah and Daniel it implies judgments decreed by God against someone in the future (Is 10:22-23). The noun charuts represents threshing board/sledge (4x, Jb 41:30; Is 28:27), verdict (Jl 3:14), moat (Dn 9:25), and maimed animal (Lv 22:22).
10:2 Daniel may have been mourning because of the poor conditions of the returned captives. The Samaritans were opposing reconstruction of the temple, and the work had been stopped (Ezr 4:5,24). The Hebrew text contains the words “weeks of days” in describing Daniel’s mourning period to distinguish it from the weeks of years in the previous chapter (Dn 9:24-27).
10:3 Daniel engaged in a semi-fast, not because the food had been offered to the gods but to give priority to prayer.
10:4 The Tigris River was some twenty miles from Babylon. At the advanced age of eighty-four, Daniel had not made the difficult and demanding journey to Israel with the other Jewish returnees, but he remained instead in government service in Babylon.
10:5-6 Despite his similarity to Christ’s appearance as described in Rv 1:12-16, the angel in the form of a man dressed in linen cannot have been the preincarnate Messiah because Christ would not need help from the angel Michael.
10:7 The Hebrew for only I, Daniel, saw the vision is emphatic: “I saw, I, Daniel, I alone.” His companions sensed a powerful and terrifying presence but saw nothing, so they ran and hid (cp. Ac 9:7).
10:8-11 In v. 11 the phrase treasured by God is used; that also occurs in 9:23.
10:12-13 The Persian prince had to be supernatural to oppose this angel, and he had to be evil to oppose God’s purposes. Therefore, we conclude that he was a demonic spirit seeking to influence the political affairs of Persia and oppose God’s purposes. Other Scriptures also teach that there are unseen spiritual forces influencing principalities and world powers (Ezk 28:11-19; 2Co 10:3-4; Eph 6:12). The unnamed angel was able to prevail over the demon associated with Persia only because the angel Michael . . . came to help him. Michael (whose name means “who is like God”) is the guardian angel of Israel (cp. v. 21; 12:1; Rv 12:7), and he is designated an archangel in the NT (Jd 9).
10:14 The angel revealed that the first purpose of the vision was to reveal what would happen to Israel in the last days.
10:15-19 The angel not only came to reveal the future but to strengthen Daniel, first by his touch (v. 18) and secondly with his words of encouragement (v. 19).
10:20-21 The prince of Greece is an allusion to the prediction that Greece would follow Persia as the next major world power (8:4-8,20-22). The angel’s final purpose was to reveal what is recorded in the book of truth (lit “the writings of truth”), a reference not to a particular earthly book but to God’s heavenly decrees about the future of all nations.