Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

    that all peoples, nations, and languages

        should serve him.

    His dominion is an everlasting dominion

        that shall not pass away,

    and his kingship is one

        that shall never be destroyed. (Dan 7:2-14)

This symbolic text was written in Israel during a period of great crisis. Daniel is the pseudonym of a theologian and prophet whose real name is no longer known. He lived in the second century before Christ under Antiochus III and then Antiochus IV, the Syrian rulers notorious in Jewish history. Antiochus IV ruled from 175–164 BCE. His plan was to Hellenize Israel. He plundered the Jerusalem temple and entered the holy of holies—a sacrilege to Jews who followed the Law. He established a cult of Zeus Olympios in the temple precincts. Jews were forbidden to practice their own worship or to celebrate the Sabbath. That is the immediate historical background for the book of Daniel and its hopes for the end time.

Because this was a time when faith was in crisis and persecution was rampant, the text says it is night. The four winds are the four compass directions and are an image representing the fact that this text is about the whole world, not only Israel. This is about world history. And the great sea spoken of in the night visions is not a body of water that can be geographically located. It is the world ocean, the primeval sea, and thus an image of chaos. For ancient people the sea was chaotic and perilous.

Thus the four beasts emerge from the chaos, and they themselves represent social chaos. They stand for four world empires, or we could say four societies, each more bestial and evil than the one before it. The lion, for the author of the book of Daniel, was the great power Babylon. The bear was the empire of the Medes, the leopard that of the Persians.

Then the prophet sees the fourth beast, and here the imagery almost gets away from him, so horrible is it. This is the beast itself. It is the world power that was most dangerous to Israel’s faith: the Hellenistic empire of the Seleucids, a successor to Alexander’s. The ten horns are ten Hellenistic rulers. The last horn, the “little one,” is Antiochus IV. As the arrogance of the last horn reaches its climax, an ancient one appears: this is God himself. He alone, and not the bestial world empires, is master of the world and of history. They have only been assigned the right to rule in a limited and transferred fashion (Dan 7:6, 12). That God is the true Lord of history is evident in what follows.

A heavenly court is assembled to judge all the world empires, but especially the beasts. The sentence is carried out immediately. Then a fifth empire appears before the world court, a fifth society. As previously the symbols were lion, bear, leopard, beast, now the corresponding symbol is the human being. For “son of man” simply means “human being.” The whole series—lion, bear, leopard, beast, human being—thus represents successive societies. The fifth society is, of course, very carefully dissociated from those that precede it. It is no longer brutal, no longer bestial, but finally a human society. Therefore it is symbolized not by beasts but by a human being.

We must see what a sharp distinction the text makes at this point: the fifth society does not arise out of the sea of chaos but comes from heaven. It comes “with the clouds of heaven” (Dan 7:13). Thus the new, eschatological society comes from above. It cannot be made by human beings. It is God’s gift to the world. It is the end of all violent rule.

And yet, even though this ultimate and final empire, this rule without end, comes from above, it does not float above the world. Despite its heavenly origin it is altogether earthly and worldly. It is the longed-for true, eschatological Israel, for in the subsequent interpretation of the vision it is identified absolutely with the “holy ones of the Most High.” An interpreting angel says to Daniel:

“As for these four great beasts, four kings shall arise out of the earth. But the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever—forever and ever.… The kingship and dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the holy ones of the Most High; their kingdom shall be an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey them.” (Dan 7:17-18, 27)

Thus not only the vision itself but its context makes clear that this is about empires, societies—and the one society represented by the “human being” is Israel. But it is not simply the Israel of the present. It is the hoped-for eschatological Israel. It is a counter-reality over against all social constructions of history thus far, which either relied on brutal violence or could not survive without it.