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Now these were the sons of David, which were born unto him in Hebron; the firstborn Amnon, of Ahinoam the Jezreelitess; the second Daniel, of Abigail the Carmelitess:

Of the sons of Phinehas; Gershom: of the sons of Ithamar; Daniel: of the sons of David; Hattush.

Daniel, Ginnethon, Baruch,

Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they should deliver but their own souls by their righteousness, saith the Lord GOD.

Though Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, they shall deliver neither son nor daughter; they shall but deliver their own souls by their righteousness.

Behold, thou art wiser than Daniel; there is no secret that they can hide from thee:

Now among these were of the children of Judah, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah:

Unto whom the prince of the eunuchs gave names: for he gave unto Daniel the name of Belteshazzar; and to Hananiah, of Shadrach; and to Mishael, of Meshach; and to Azariah, of Abednego.

But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's meat, nor with the wine which he drank: therefore he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself.

Now God had brought Daniel into favour and tender love with the prince of the eunuchs.

New Defender's Study Bible Notes

6:2 sons of God. The identity of these “sons of God” has been a matter of much discussion, but the obvious meaning is that they were angelic beings. This was the uniform interpretation of the ancient Jews, who translated the phrase as “angels of God” in their Septuagint translation of the Old Testament. The apocryphal books of Enoch elaborate this interpretation, which is also strongly implied by the New Testament passages (Jude 6, II Peter 2:4-6; I Peter 3:19,20). The Hebrew phrase is bene elohim, which occurs elsewhere only in Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7. In these three explicitly parallel usages, the contextual meaning can be nothing except that of angels. A similar phrase bar elohim, occurs in Daniel 3:25, and another, bar elim, occurs in Psalm 29:1 and Psalm 89:6. All of these also refer explicitly to angels. The intent of the writer of Genesis 6 (probably Noah) was clearly that of introducing a monstrous irruption of demonic forces on the earth, leading to universal corruption and eventual judgment.

14:34 each day for a year. This verse provides essentially the only Biblical argument for the fanciful “year/day” school of prophetic interpretation, which arbitrarily converts prophetic “days” into years, especially in the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation. But this verse was spoken explicitly as a judgment on the faithless generation of Israelites, not as an arbitrary key to future prophecy. All males twenty years old or above would die during their forty years in the desert. Thus only Joshua and Caleb, who were excepted because of their faith, were more than sixty years old when the Israelites finally crossed the Jordan, even though God through Moses had indicated the normal life span at the time to be seventy or eighty years (Psalm 90:10). Joshua actually lived to age 110 and Caleb was still in full strength at age eighty-five (Joshua 14:10-11; 24:29).

4:24 consuming fire. This verse is quoted and applied relative to professing Christian believers in Hebrews 12:29. 4:28 ye shall serve gods. This is a prophecy remarkably fulfilled in later ages. Not only were the Israelites scattered among the nations of the world, but great multitudes of these apostates abandoned the faith of their fathers in favor of many forms–ancient and modern–of evolutionary pantheism. Modern “Reform Judaism,” for example, is little more than evolutionary humanism. 4:30 tribulation. This prophecy, given by Moses as Israel prepared to enter the promised land, apparently looks into the distant future, 3500 years or more, to “the latter days” when Israel will be in the “great tribulation” (Revelation 7:14). At that “time of trouble...thy people shall be delivered,” (Daniel 12:1), and “immediately after the tribulation of those days...He shall send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other” (Matthew 24:29,31). 4:32 God created man. “The days that are past,” to which Moses referred, “since the day that God created man upon the earth,” had been some 2500 years (assuming no “gaps” in the received chronological genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11). That was a long time, of course, but was at least a reasonable point of reference to which the people could relate–nothing like the eternal evolutionary ages postulated by the Egyptians, Canaanites and other ancient pagan nations. 4:37 he loved thy fathers. Israel was not God’s chosen people because they deserved to be, but “because He loved thy fathers.” He had made an unconditional promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob because of their faithfulness, not that of their “seed after them.”

32:4 without iniquity. Whatever God does is right, by definition, and whatever He says is true. See also Psalm 33:4-5. 32:8 sons of Adam. As Moses began his final song, he reminded his people that there had been “many generations” before them. Yet he told them they had been in God’s plan from the beginning, even making reference to the primeval father Adam. The different nations had received their inheritance and boundaries after the Flood and after Babel, as recorded in Genesis 10, the Table of Nations. It is noteworthy that there are seventy nations listed in this Table, where it says that “by these [families of the three sons of Noah] were the nations divided in the earth after the flood” (Genesis 10:32). These seventy did not include Israel, for this was before the days of Abraham. Nevertheless, just as there were seventy people in the original nation of Israel as they entered Egypt with Jacob (Genesis 46:27), so God in His prescience had ordained “bounds” for seventy original nations in the world after the Flood. Although the number of Israelites had multiplied by a factor of thirty thousand or more in the four hundred or so years in Egypt, the number “seventy” has been associated with Israel in many ways ever since (seventy elders, seventy in the Sanhedrin, seventy Septuagint translators, seventy weeks of Daniel, seventy years captivity, etc.). The number of nations in the world, on the other hand, has only slightly more than doubled in the four thousand or so years since Babel.

13:28 had not eaten. The Lord had sent the lion to slay His disobedient prophet, but would not allow him either to eat his body or even to slay the donkey. As with Daniel in the lion’s den, God had shut the mouth of the lion.

20:18 eunuchs. Among those placed “in the palace of the king of Babylon” were “Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah” (Daniel 1:6). They were “of the king’s seed, and of the princes” and were placed in the king’s palace under “Ashpenaz, the master of his eunuchs” (Daniel 1:3). Later they were placed directly under Melzar by “the prince of the eunuchs” (Daniel 1:11).

24:1 Nebuchadnezzar. This was the first of three incursions of Nebuchadnezzar against Jerusalem (II Kings 24:1,11; 25:1). He was evidently co-regent of Babylon at this time, leading its army while his father Nabopolassar was seriously ill at home. The latter died during the time Nebuchadnezzar was taking the land of Judah from the Egyptians, whom he had defeated several years earlier at Carchemish in northern Syria. The prophet Daniel was evidently among those carried away to Babylon during the reign of Jehoiakim (Daniel 1:1-3).

36:21 mouth of Jeremiah. This prophecy by Jeremiah of a seventy year captivity is found in Jeremiah 25:11 and 29:10. See also Daniel 9:2.

1:2 The LORD God of heaven. It is noteworthy that a heathen emperor, Cyrus the Great, had somehow come to recognize the fact that Jehovah Elohim, the God of the Jews, was actually the God of creation. It may be that the prophet Daniel, who (according to the Jewish historian Josephus) was Cyrus’ prime minister, led him to this conviction. Josephus relates that Daniel read to Cyrus the prophecy of Isaiah that gave his name and indicated he would enable the Jews to return and rebuild Jerusalem and the temple.

2:1 came again unto Jerusalem. Although chronological data are somewhat ambiguous, they seem to indicate that this initial return to Jerusalem took place just seventy years after Nebuchadnezzar’s initial capture of Jerusalem (II Chronicles 36:5-7), when he took Daniel and his three friends away into Babylon (Daniel 1:1-3). This return was in fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophecy (II Chronicles 36:20,21).

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