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The book at a glance
The book tells of Daniel, a young Jew taken to Babylon, who serves at the courts of Nebuchadnezzar and his successors and lived at least until 538 BC. Chapters 1–6 are stories of Daniel and his companions remaining faithful under foreign kings; chapters 7–12 are his visions. Older tradition took Daniel himself as the author, writing in the sixth century BC. Most modern scholars, including the NABRE introduction, hold that the book reached its final form during the persecution of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (167–164 BC), drawing on older stories and written to strengthen Jews facing that ordeal. Scholars differ on this; the Church receives the book as inspired Scripture either way, and its visions reach beyond the second century BC to Christ and the end.
Daniel is not mainly a book of oracles but of apocalypse: dreams and visions explained by angels, kingdoms shown as metals and beasts, and numbered periods of distress that God has already measured. Its message is that God rules history, that persecution has an end, and that the kingdom belongs to his holy ones. Its numbers and symbols have tempted readers in every age to build timetables; this page gives the main readings the Church has known and marks the unsettled ones as mystery, without date-setting.
Key to the labels
How a passage stands
Fulfilled Accomplished in history, above all in Christ.
Unfolding Being worked out now in the life of the Church.
Future Clearly still to come at Christ's return.
Mystery Its meaning or moment is not yet settled.
What kind of passage it is
Prophecy God's word through a prophet, or Christ, about what will come.
Promise A pledge God makes, kept over generations.
Type A person or event that foreshadows Christ or the Church.
Image A picture Scripture returns to and completes at the end.
Apocalypse A vision unveiling history from heaven's side, in symbols.
More on the labels
| Passage | Subject | Standing |
|---|
| 2:31–45 | The statue and the stone | Fulfilled Unfolding Future |
| 3:1–97 | The fourth man in the furnace | Fulfilled |
| 7:1–8, 19–27 | The four beasts and the little horn | Fulfilled Future Mystery |
| 7:9–14 | The Ancient of Days and the Son of Man | Fulfilled Future |
| 8 | The ram, the he-goat and the 2,300 evenings and mornings | Fulfilled |
| 9:24–27 | The seventy weeks | Mystery |
| 9:27; 11:31; 12:11 | The abomination of desolation | Fulfilled Mystery |
| 12:1–3 | Michael and the resurrection | Future |
| 12:4–13 | Sealed until the end; 1,290 and 1,335 days | Mystery |
The passages
“But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.” (2:35)
- Reading
- Nebuchadnezzar dreams of a huge statue: head of gold, chest and arms of silver, belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, “its feet partly iron and partly clay” (2:32–33). A stone “hewn from a mountain without a hand being put to it” strikes the feet and the whole statue crumbles like chaff (2:34–35). Daniel explains: four kingdoms in succession, and then “the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed” (2:44). The NABRE note reads the metals as Babylon, Media, Persia and the Greek kingdoms that followed Alexander, and the stone as the kingdom of God awaited by Israel. Many Fathers, St. Irenaeus and St. Jerome among them, read the four as Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.26.1; Jerome, Commentary on Daniel, on 2:31–45).
- Fulfilled
- The Fathers saw the stone as Christ. Jerome takes “without a hand being put to it” as a sign of his birth from a virgin, without human father. Jesus himself joins the image of the rejected stone to this one: “Everyone who falls on that stone will be dashed to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls” (Luke 20:18), and the NABRE note on Daniel points to that verse.
- Unfolding
- The stone “became a great mountain and filled the whole earth”: the kingdom of God, present in mystery in the Church, grows from small beginnings through all the world (Matthew 13:31–32).
- Future
- The kingdom that “shall stand forever” (2:44) is completed when “the kingdom of the world now belongs to our Lord and to his Anointed” (Revelation 11:15).
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego refuse to worship the golden statue and are thrown into the white-hot furnace. The king looks in and sees not three men but four, walking unharmed in the fire, the fourth like a son of God (3:91–92).
- Reading
- The three young men tell the king that their God can save them, and that even if he does not, they will not serve his gods (3:17–18). In the fire they are not alone. The king himself later blesses the God who sent his angel to deliver his servants (3:95). The scene is a pattern for every age of persecution: an empire demands worship of its image, and the faithful refuse.
- Fulfilled
- Many Fathers saw in the fourth figure a foreshadowing of the Son of God, who enters the furnace of human suffering with his own and brings them through it (so St. Hippolytus in his Commentary on Daniel). This is a typological reading; the text itself speaks of an angel. Revelation returns to the scene when the beast's image must be worshiped on pain of death (Revelation 13:15), and the victors stand by a sea of glass mingled with fire (Revelation 15:2).
- Note
- Verses 24–90 of this chapter, the Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the three young men, are preserved in the Greek and are part of the Catholic canon. The Church prays their canticle, the Benedicite, at Morning Prayer on Sundays and feasts. See The Greek parts of Daniel below.
“…another, a little horn, sprang out of their midst… This horn had eyes like human eyes, and a mouth that spoke arrogantly.” (7:8)
- Reading
- From the churning sea come “four immense beasts, each different from the others” (7:3): a winged lion, a bear, a four-headed leopard, and a fourth beast, terrible, with iron teeth and ten horns. Among the horns rises a little horn that “shall speak against the Most High and wear down the holy ones of the Most High,” and they are handed over to him “for a time, two times, and half a time” (7:25). Then judgment is given, and the kingdom passes to “the people of the holy ones of the Most High” (7:27). The NABRE notes read the four beasts as the same four kingdoms as the statue of chapter 2, and the little horn as Antiochus IV, who persecuted the Jews and tried to stamp out their worship.
- Fulfilled
- In its first horizon the vision was fulfilled when Antiochus fell and the Temple was rededicated (1 Maccabees 4:52–59), as the faithful of that day hoped.
- Future
- Revelation fuses Daniel's four beasts into one: a beast from the sea “with ten horns and seven heads,” like a leopard, with feet like a bear's and a mouth like a lion's, given “a mouth uttering proud boasts and blasphemies” and authority “for forty-two months,” that is, three and a half years, Daniel's “time, two times, and half a time” (Revelation 13:1–7). St. Irenaeus and many Fathers read the little horn as a figure of the final Antichrist (Against Heresies 5.25.3). The Church teaches that a final trial and the “supreme religious deception” of the Antichrist precede Christ's return (CCC 675).
- Why mystery
- The Church has not defined how Daniel's beasts map onto history after Antiochus, and the Fathers themselves differed. What is certain is the shape: the beasts are given a measured time, and the last word is the judgment of God and the kingdom of the holy ones.
- Note
- The little horn has been pinned on emperors, popes, reformers and dictators, by one side or another, for two thousand years. This site names no one. See 2 Thessalonians 2:3–5 and Newman on the Antichrist.
“As the visions during the night continued, I saw coming with the clouds of heaven One like a son of man.” (7:13)
- Reading
- Thrones are set up and “the Ancient of Days took his throne. His clothing was white as snow, the hair on his head like pure wool” (7:9). “The court was convened, and the books were opened” (7:10). Then, in contrast to the beasts from the sea, a human figure comes on the clouds, the way God himself comes in the Old Testament. “He received dominion, splendor, and kingship; all nations, peoples and tongues will serve him” (7:14). The NABRE note says scholars differ on whether this figure is a symbol of God's faithful people, as 7:18 and 7:27 suggest, or a particular heavenly figure, and adds that “Son of Man” became Jesus' title in the Gospels.
- Fulfilled
- Jesus calls himself “the Son of Man” more than any other title. On trial before the high priest he claims this vision openly: “From now on you will see ‘the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power’ and ‘coming on the clouds of heaven’” (Matthew 26:64). The Catechism teaches that his being seated at the Father's right hand is the inauguration of the Messiah's kingdom, the fulfillment of Daniel's vision, citing 7:14 (CCC 664). Both readings meet in him: the Son of Man is the head, and his holy ones share his kingdom (7:18).
- Future
- “Behold, he is coming amid the clouds, and every eye will see him” (Revelation 1:7). In John's first vision the risen Christ is “one like a son of man” with hair “as white as white wool or as snow” (Revelation 1:13–14): the features of the Ancient of Days now belong to the Son. See Matthew 24:29–31.
“For two thousand three hundred evenings and mornings; then the sanctuary shall be set right.” (8:14)
- Reading
- A two-horned ram is trampled by a he-goat with one great horn; the horn breaks into four, and out of one comes “a little horn which grew and grew toward the south, the east, and the glorious land” (8:9). It grows “even to the Prince of the host, from whom the daily sacrifice was removed” (8:11). Here the text names the kingdoms itself: the ram is “the kings of the Medes and Persians,” the he-goat “the king of the Greeks,” and its great horn the first king (8:20–21), that is, Alexander. The NABRE notes identify the little horn as Antiochus IV, who suppressed the worship of the Most High.
- Fulfilled
- The 2,300 evenings and mornings are most often read as 2,300 evening and morning sacrifices, about 1,150 days, roughly the time the daily offering ceased before Judas Maccabeus cleansed the Temple (1 Maccabees 4:52–59), the feast Jesus kept as the Dedication (John 10:22). The persecutor “shall be broken without a hand being raised” (8:25).
- Note
- Gabriel tells Daniel that “the vision refers to the end time” (8:17), and the Fathers read Antiochus as a figure of the last persecutor. But the numbers of this chapter belong to a crisis already past; using them to calculate future dates has always failed.
“Seventy weeks are decreed for your people and for your holy city: Then transgression will stop and sin will end, guilt will be expiated…” (9:24)
- Reading
- Daniel has been pondering Jeremiah's word that Jerusalem would lie in ruins for seventy years (9:2; Jeremiah 25:11). Gabriel answers that the true span is “seventy weeks,” weeks of years, about 490 years, divided into seven weeks, sixty-two weeks and a final week. “After the sixty-two weeks an anointed one shall be cut down with no one to help him” (9:26), and in the last week sacrifice is abolished and “the desolating abomination” set up (9:27). The goal of it all is the end of sin, “everlasting justice,” and the anointing of “a holy of holies” (9:24). The Church has known three main readings:
- The historical reading. The NABRE notes take the numbers as round, not exact, and read them within the book's own crisis: the “anointed ruler” of 9:25 is Cyrus or the high priest Jeshua after the exile; the “anointed one” cut down in 9:26 is the high priest Onias III, murdered in 171 BC; the “leader” whose people destroy the sanctuary is Antiochus IV.
- The messianic reading. Many Fathers counted the weeks to Christ: the anointed one cut down is Jesus in his Passion, the end of sacrifice is the end of the old offerings in his one sacrifice, and the destruction of city and sanctuary is the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 (so Tertullian, Against the Jews 8). They did not agree on the starting point or the arithmetic. St. Jerome, in his Commentary on Daniel, set out the differing calculations of earlier writers one after another and declined to judge between them, because it was dangerous to pronounce on the opinions of the Church's teachers.
- The last week at the end. St. Irenaeus and St. Hippolytus applied the final half-week to the reign of the Antichrist before Christ's return (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.25.4). A modern form of this view inserts a long gap between the sixty-ninth and seventieth weeks and builds a timetable of the end on it; that system is not part of Catholic tradition.
- Why mystery
- The Church has not defined the meaning of the seventy weeks. The messianic reading has deep roots in the Fathers and in the liturgy's hope; the historical reading is the plain sense most scholars find; the eschatological reading points beyond both. None of them gives anyone a date. What 9:24 promises, the end of sin and everlasting justice, Christ has won, and will complete.
“Armed forces shall rise at his command and defile the sanctuary stronghold, abolishing the daily sacrifice and setting up the desolating abomination.” (11:31)
- Reading
- Three times Daniel speaks of the “desolating abomination” that replaces the daily sacrifice (9:27; 11:31; 12:11). Its first fulfillment is recorded in 1 Maccabees 1:54: in 167 BC Antiochus IV set up a pagan altar on the altar of burnt offering. Daniel describes him as a king “exalting himself and making himself greater than any god” (11:36), yet he “shall prosper only till the wrath is finished.” In those days “those who remain loyal to their God shall take strong action” (11:32).
- Fulfilled
- Jesus takes up the phrase: “When you see the desolating abomination spoken of through Daniel the prophet standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains” (Matthew 24:15–16). He applies it to the profanation and destruction of the Temple, fulfilled in AD 70, as Luke's version makes plain (Luke 21:20). See Matthew 24:15–28.
- Why mystery
- Paul's lawless one who will “seat himself in the temple of God” (2 Thessalonians 2:4) draws on Daniel 11:36, and many Fathers saw in the abomination a figure also of the final Antichrist. Whether that last profanation is outward, inward, or both, the Church has not settled. See The Temple of His Body.
“Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake; Some to everlasting life, others to reproach and everlasting disgrace.” (12:2)
- Reading
- “At that time there shall arise Michael, the great prince, guardian of your people” (12:1). It will be a time of distress like no other, but “your people shall escape, everyone who is found written in the book.” Then comes the clearest promise of bodily resurrection in the Old Testament, and a promise to the faithful teachers: “those who lead the many to justice shall be like the stars forever” (12:3). The NABRE note observes that Daniel does not yet state the universal resurrection later taught by the Church; that hope was revealed progressively, as the Catechism says, pointing to this chapter and to the Maccabean martyrs (CCC 992; 2 Maccabees 7:9, 14).
- Future
- Jesus fulfills and widens the promise: “the hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and will come out, those who have done good deeds to the resurrection of life, but those who have done wicked deeds to the resurrection of condemnation” (John 5:28–29). Michael returns in Revelation, casting down the dragon (Revelation 12:7), and the book of life is opened at the last judgment (Revelation 20:12). Jesus' own words echo the time of distress: “great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until now” (Matthew 24:21).
- For now
- The promise is given to people suffering for their faith. The distress is real, but so are the guardian, the book and the morning.
“Blessed are they who have patience and persevere for the one thousand three hundred and thirty-five days.” (12:12)
- Reading
- Daniel is told to “keep secret the message and seal the book until the end time” (12:4). The man clothed in linen swears that the distress will last “for a time, two times, and half a time” (12:7). Then two different figures follow: “one thousand two hundred and ninety days” from the abolition of the daily sacrifice (12:11), and a blessing on those who persevere for 1,335 days (12:12). The NABRE note suggests that these are successive attempts to give the length of the three and a half years, kept side by side in the text, and that their very disagreement is a reminder that no one can calculate the time of God's judgment (Mark 13:32).
- Why mystery
- The Church has never fixed what these numbers measure. Countless readers have added them to a chosen starting year and announced the end; every such date has passed. Jesus' word is final: “of that day and hour no one knows” (Matthew 24:36), and “It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has established by his own authority” (Acts 1:7; CCC 673).
- Note
- The beatitude falls not on those who calculate the days but on those who persevere through them. And the book ends with a personal promise to the prophet: “Go, take your rest, you shall rise for your reward at the end of days” (12:13). Daniel's book is sealed; John is told the opposite, “Do not seal up the prophetic words of this book, for the appointed time is near” (Revelation 22:10), because in Christ the end has begun.
The Greek parts of Daniel
The Catholic Book of Daniel is longer than the one in Jewish and most Protestant Bibles. The Greek Bible used by the early Church, the Septuagint, contains three further sections: the Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the three young men in the furnace (3:24–90), the story of Susanna (chapter 13), and the stories of Bel and the Dragon (chapter 14). The NABRE note explains that they survive in Greek, were probably first written in Hebrew or Aramaic, and were never part of the Hebrew Bible; Protestant canons exclude them, while the Catholic Church has always counted them among her inspired writings. They are part of the canon the Church receives (CCC 120).
They hold little prophecy in the strict sense, but they belong to the book's message. Susanna, falsely accused and saved when the young Daniel exposes the lie, prays to the God who knows “what is hidden” and all things “before they come to be” (13:42). In chapter 14 Daniel refuses to worship an idol and is thrown again to the lions, and the king finally confesses: “You are great, O Lord, the God of Daniel, and there is no other besides you!” (14:41). Like the furnace, these are stories of God vindicating the faithful when earthly powers turn against them.
Daniel and Revelation
Revelation draws on Daniel more than on any other book except perhaps Ezekiel and Isaiah. Daniel's book is sealed until the end; Revelation opens it.
| Daniel | Revelation |
|---|
| Four beasts rise from the sea, the fourth with ten horns (7:3–7) | One beast from the sea, like a leopard, bear and lion, with ten horns (13:1–2) |
| A little horn with “a mouth that spoke arrogantly” (7:8) | The beast given “a mouth uttering proud boasts and blasphemies” (13:5) |
| The holy ones worn down “for a time, two times, and half a time” (7:25) | The beast's authority “for forty-two months” (13:5); the woman cared for in the desert for “a year, two years, and a half-year” (12:14) |
| The Ancient of Days, hair like pure wool (7:9) | The risen Christ, hair “as white as white wool or as snow” (1:14) |
| One like a son of man coming with the clouds (7:13) | “Behold, he is coming amid the clouds” (1:7); one like a son of man (1:13; 14:14) |
| “The court was convened, and the books were opened” (7:10) | The books opened before the throne (20:12) |
| The kingship given to the holy ones forever (7:18, 27) | “They shall reign forever and ever” (22:5) |
| Michael, the great prince, arises (12:1) | Michael and his angels battle the dragon (12:7) |
| The worship of a golden statue on pain of death (3:5–6) | The worship of the beast's image on pain of death (13:15) |
| “Seal the book until the end time” (12:4) | “Do not seal up the prophetic words of this book” (22:10) |
Still to come on this pageFurther passages to add: the tree cut down and the king who learns that the Most High rules (4), the writing on the wall (5), Daniel in the lions' den as a figure of the Resurrection (6), Daniel's prayer of confession (9:3–19), the man clothed in linen and the princes of the nations (10), the kings of the north and the south (11:2–45), and the story of Susanna as a figure of the Church (13).
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