The Book of Daniel

Daniel is two books in one. The first half tells of faith under a pagan empire: a golden statue three young men will not adore, a feast ended by a hand writing on the wall, a prophet who prays three times a day though it means the lions. The second half sets down visions that run from Babylon to the end of the world, and Our Lord Himself quoted them.

Who wrote the Book of Daniel?

The Church has received the book as the work of the prophet Daniel, a youth of the royal seed of Juda carried to Babylon and renamed Baltassar (Belteshazzar), who served the kings of Babylon and Persia. From Daniel 7 onward he speaks in his own voice: "I Daniel was affrighted at these things" (7:15), "I Daniel understood by books" (Daniel 9:2).

The strongest witness is Christ's: "When therefore you shall see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place: he that readeth let him understand" (Matthew 24:15). Ezechiel names Daniel with Noe and Job as a pattern of justice (Ezechiel 14:14), and the dying Mathathias reminds his sons that "Daniel in his innocency was delivered out of the mouth of the lions" (1 Machabees 2:60).

The first known to deny Daniel's authorship was the pagan Porphyry in the third century, who claimed in the twelfth book of his work against the Christians that it was written by someone "living in Judaea at the time of the Antiochus who was surnamed Epiphanes," recording past events as prophecy. St Jerome answered him point by point in his Commentary on Daniel. Many modern scholars have taken up Porphyry's dating; the Fathers hold to the prophet.

When was it written?

Daniel was taken to Babylon "in the third year of the reign of Joakim king of Juda" (Daniel 1:1), about 605 B.C., and was still receiving visions "in the third year of Cyrus king of the Persians" (Daniel 10:1), about 536 B.C. The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia gives the traditional date of composition as 570–536 B.C. Many modern scholars date it instead to the persecution of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, about 165 B.C.

The book is written in two languages. Chapter 1 to 2:4 and chapters 8–12 are in Hebrew; at 2:4 "the Chaldeans answered the king in Syriac," and from there to the end of chapter 7 the text is in Aramaic. The prayer and canticle of 3:24–90 and chapters 13–14 have come down in Greek; St Jerome translated them from the version of Theodotion, which the Church had long read for Daniel in place of the Septuagint.

A timeline. The chapters are not in order of time. By the dates the book gives: the captivity, about 605 B.C. (chapter 1); the statue dream in the second year of Nabuchodonosor (chapter 2), then the furnace and the king's madness (3–4); the visions of the first and third years of Baltasar (chapters 7–8); the fall of Babylon in 539 B.C. (chapter 5); the seventy weeks and the lions' den under Darius the Mede (9 and 6); the last vision in the third year of Cyrus (10–12).

What is the Book of Daniel about? A summary

At the court of Babylon (chapters 1–2)

In Daniel 1 Nabuchodonosor (Nebuchadnezzar) has noble youths of Juda trained for his service. Daniel, Ananias, Misael and Azarias are renamed Baltassar, Sidrach, Misach and Abdenago (Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego). Daniel "purposed in his heart that he would not be defiled with the king's table," and after ten days of pulse and water the four look healthier than all the rest. In Daniel 2 God reveals to Daniel the king's dream: a statue with a head of gold, breast of silver, belly of brass, legs of iron, and feet "part of iron and part of clay," shattered by a stone "cut out of a mountain without hands," which "became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth." The metals are four kingdoms; the stone, a kingdom "that shall never be destroyed."

The furnace and the king's madness (chapters 3–4)

In Daniel 3 the three companions refuse to adore a golden statue sixty cubits high: "our God, whom we worship, is able to save us... But if he will not, be it known to thee, O king, that we will not worship thy gods." Cast into a furnace heated seven times over, they walk in the flame; Azarias prays, "the angel of the Lord went down" with them, and they sing the canticle Benedicite.

The king sees "four men loose, and walking in the midst of the fire... and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God." In Daniel 4 Daniel counsels him to "redeem thou thy sins with alms," but Nabuchodonosor boasts of "the great Babylon, which I have built" and eats grass like an ox for "seven times," until he learns "that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men."

The writing on the wall and the lions' den (chapters 5–6)

In Daniel 5 King Baltasar (Belshazzar) drinks from the sacred vessels of the Temple, and a hand writes on the wall: MANE, God hath numbered thy kingdom; THECEL, "thou art weighed in the balance, and art found wanting"; PHARES, thy kingdom is given to the Medes and Persians. "The same night Baltasar the Chaldean king was slain." In Daniel 6 jealous princes trap Darius the Mede into forbidding prayer for thirty days. Daniel, "opening the windows in his upper chamber towards Jerusalem... knelt down three times a day," and is cast to the lions; a stone is sealed on the den. At dawn he answers: "My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut up the mouths of the lions."

The visions: beasts, ram and he-goat, seventy weeks (chapters 7–9)

In Daniel 7 four beasts rise from the sea, the last "terrible and wonderful" with ten horns and a little horn "speaking great things" that makes war on the saints. Then "one like the son of man came with the clouds of heaven," receiving "an everlasting power that shall not be taken away." In Daniel 8 a ram is trampled by a he-goat, and Gabriel, here first named in Scripture, explains them as the empires of the Medes and Persians and of the Greeks. In Daniel 9, reading the seventy years foretold by Jeremias, Daniel prays "with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes"; Gabriel brings the prophecy of seventy weeks of years, at whose end "the saint of saints may be anointed," and "after sixty-two weeks Christ shall be slain."

The last vision (chapters 10–12)

After three weeks of fasting Daniel sees "a man clothed in linen" by the Tigris (Daniel 10), who speaks of "Michael your prince." Daniel 11 foretells the wars of the kings "of the south" and "of the north" down to a persecutor who sets up "the abomination unto desolation." Daniel 12 reaches the end of the world: "at that time shall Michael rise up," and "many of those that sleep in the dust of the earth, shall awake: some unto life everlasting, and others unto reproach."

Susanna, Bel and the dragon (chapters 13–14)

In Daniel 13 two elders try to seduce the chaste Susanna and, refused, accuse her of adultery: "it is better for me to fall into your hands without doing it, than to sin in the sight of the Lord." As she is led to death, God raises up "the holy spirit of a young boy, whose name was Daniel," who questions the elders apart; one names a mastic tree, the other a holm tree. In Daniel 14 Daniel exposes the priests of Bel by sifting ashes on the temple floor, kills the dragon the Babylonians worship, and spends six days among seven lions, fed by "a prophet called Habacuc," whom an angel carries by the hair from Judea; some identify him with the author of the prophecy of Habacuc.

What is the main message of the Book of Daniel?

God rules the kingdoms of men. The lesson taught to Nabuchodonosor is the refrain of the book: "the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will." Empires of gold and iron pass; the kingdom of God "shall stand for ever."

Fidelity under pressure. Daniel and his companions serve a pagan state loyally, yet will not eat what the law forbids, adore an idol or stop praying. Their prayer at fixed hours and their fasts are the pattern of the Church's own practice, as we show in What Does God Say About Fasting?

Christ and His kingdom. St Jerome reads the four metals as Babylon, the Medes and Persians, Alexander's empire and Rome, and the stone cut "without hands" as Christ, born of a Virgin without human seed; Challoner calls the everlasting kingdom "the kingdom of Christ in the Catholic Church which cannot be destroyed." The "son of man" coming on the clouds is the title Our Lord claimed before Caiphas (Matthew 26:64). Challoner counts the sixty-nine weeks, 483 years, from the rebuilding of Jerusalem's walls under Artaxerxes (2 Esdras (Nehemiah) 2) to the baptism of Christ, and sees in "the half of the week" His three and a half years of preaching, ended by the Sacrifice of the Cross.

Antichrist and the end. The little horn of chapter 7, Challoner notes, "is commonly understood of Antichrist," with Antiochus Epiphanes as his figure. The same figures return in the Apocalypse; we treat them soberly in What Does God Say About the Antichrist?. Chapter 12 is the clearest Old Testament prophecy of the resurrection of the body.

The archangels. Daniel names Gabriel, who will announce the Incarnation to Our Lady (Luke 1:26), and Michael, "the great prince, who standeth for the children of thy people," whom Challoner calls "the guardian general of the church of God." See St Gabriel the Archangel and St Michael the Archangel.

Figures of Christ and the Church. The fourth in the furnace, "like the Son of God," shows God with His servants in the fire. Daniel in the den under a sealed stone, brought out alive at dawn, foreshadows the sealed sepulchre (Matthew 27:66), which is why the Church reads chapter 14 in Passiontide. St Hippolytus of Rome, in his commentary on Daniel, saw in Susanna, falsely accused and saved by God, a figure of the Church.

Famous verses from Daniel

• Daniel 1:12, "Try, I beseech thee, thy servants for ten days, and let pulse be given us to eat, and water to drink."
• Daniel 2:44, "The God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed" (Daniel 2).
• Daniel 3:57, "All ye works of the Lord, bless the Lord: praise and exalt him above all for ever" (Daniel 3).
• Daniel 7:13, "Lo, one like the son of man came with the clouds of heaven" (Daniel 7).
• Daniel 12:3, "They that are learned shall shine as the brightness of the firmament: and they that instruct many to justice, as stars for all eternity" (Daniel 12).

Daniel in the canon and in the liturgy

In the Catholic Old Testament, Daniel is the fourth of the major prophets, after Isaias, Jeremias and Ezechiel, and before Osee (Hosea). The Hebrew Bible places it among the Writings, not the Prophets.

The prayer and canticle of 3:24–90, Susanna (chapter 13) and Bel and the dragon (chapter 14) are deuterocanonical. Challoner notes that St Jerome did not find them in the Hebrew of his day, "but this is certain: that it is, and has been of old, received by the church, and read as canonical scripture in her liturgy." The councils of Rome (382), Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) list Daniel among the prophets, Florence (1442) confirmed the canon, and Trent (Session IV, 8 April 1546) named "Ezechiel, Daniel" among the sacred books, to be received "entire with all their parts." Protestant Bibles keep only the Hebrew and Aramaic text, twelve chapters, and relegate the rest to the "Apocrypha." We explain why in The Deuterocanonical Books.

In the 1962 Missal, Daniel's prayer (9:15–19) is the lesson of the Monday of the second week of Lent; Susanna is read on the Saturday of the third week; Daniel among the lions (14:27–42) on Tuesday in Passion Week; and the prayer of Azarias (3:25, 34–45) on Thursday in Passion Week, whose Introit Omnia quae fecisti (3:31) is also that of the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost. Every Ember Saturday reads the angel in the furnace (3:47–51) before the hymn Benedictus es; the feast of St Gabriel (24 March) reads 9:21–26; and the Last Sunday after Pentecost has Christ's words on "the abomination of desolation" in its Gospel. The Benedicite is the canticle of Sunday Lauds, and the book is read at Matins in November among the prophets, as you can follow in our online Breviary.

How to read the Book of Daniel

Read chapters 1–6 at one sitting: they are stories, and they show who Daniel is. Then take the visions of chapters 7–12 one a day, keeping 1 Machabees at hand for the history of Antiochus behind chapters 8 and 11. Pray the Benedicite (3:57–88) aloud. Each chapter page sets the Latin Vulgate beside the Douay-Rheims.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who wrote the Book of Daniel?

Tradition holds that the prophet Daniel wrote it, a Jew of noble birth taken to Babylon in his youth, who speaks in the first person in chapters 7–12. Our Lord cites "Daniel the prophet" in Matthew 24:15, and St Jerome defended his authorship against the pagan Porphyry. Many modern scholars attribute the book to an unknown writer of the second century B.C.

When was the Book of Daniel written?

The traditional date is the sixth century before Christ, between Daniel's deportation about 605 B.C. and the third year of Cyrus about 536 B.C.; the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia gives 570–536 B.C. Many modern scholars propose about 165 B.C., under Antiochus Epiphanes, a view first argued by Porphyry in the third century.

What is the Book of Daniel about?

It tells how Daniel and three companions stayed faithful to God at the court of Babylon, in the fiery furnace and the lions' den, and records Daniel's visions of the empires to come, the Messiah, Antichrist and the end of the world. Its message is that God rules the kingdoms of men and will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed.

How many chapters are in the Book of Daniel?

Fourteen in the Latin Vulgate and the Douay-Rheims. Protestant Bibles have twelve, because they omit the Greek portions: 3:24–90 and chapters 13 and 14. You can read all fourteen from chapter 1.

Is the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament?

Yes. Daniel is the last of the four major prophets of the Old Testament, after Isaias, Jeremias and Ezechiel and before the twelve minor prophets. The Hebrew Bible places it among the Writings.

What is pulse in the Book of Daniel?

"Pulse" is the food Daniel and his companions asked for instead of the king's meat and wine (1:12). Challoner explains it as "pease, beans, and such like." After ten days on pulse and water they looked healthier than those fed from the royal table.

What does the statue in Daniel 2 mean?

The statue of gold, silver, brass, iron and clay in Nabuchodonosor's dream stands for four successive kingdoms, which St Jerome identifies as Babylon, the Medes and Persians, the empire of Alexander, and Rome. The stone cut out "without hands" that shatters it and fills the earth is Christ and His everlasting kingdom (Daniel 2).

Who was Susanna in the Book of Daniel?

Susanna was the virtuous wife of Joakim in Babylon. Two elders who lusted after her accused her of adultery when she refused them, and she was condemned to death until the young Daniel exposed their lies by questioning them separately (Daniel 13). Protestant Bibles leave her story out of Daniel and print it, if at all, among the "Apocrypha."

Read the whole Book of Daniel verse by verse, in Latin and in English, in the Iter Fidei Catholic Bible app.

Sources. Holy Scripture, Douay-Rheims (Challoner), with its notes on Daniel; Latin Vulgate. St Jerome, Commentary on Daniel and Preface to Daniel. St Hippolytus of Rome, Commentary on Daniel. Councils of Rome (382), Hippo (393) and Carthage (397); Council of Florence, Cantate Domino (1442); Council of Trent, Session IV, Decree on the Canonical Scriptures (1546). Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), "Book of Daniel." Roman Missal (1962): Lent, Passion Week, Ember Saturdays, Sundays after Pentecost, St Gabriel. Roman Breviary (1962).