但以理书 Daniel

但以理书的舞台在巴比伦王宫。少年但以理与三个朋友被掳异乡，在帝国的心脏地带面对改名字、改教育、改饮食的同化压力，却「立志不以王的膳玷污自己」。前六章一连串扣人心弦的宫廷故事——巨像之梦、烈火的窑、墙上的字、狮子坑——反复见证同一个真理：列国的兴衰荣辱背后，是天上的神在掌权。

后六章记录但以理所见的异象：四个大兽从海中上来，象征相继兴起的帝国；七十个七的预言指向受膏者的来临；末后必有空前的大艰难，但「睡在尘埃中的，必有多人复醒」。一切异象的中心在第七章——「有一位像人子的，驾着天云而来」，从亘古常在者手中领受永不败坏的国度。

耶稣最常用的自称「人子」正出自这个异象；他在公会受审时宣告：「你们必看见人子坐在那权能者的右边，驾着天上的云降临。」但以理书呼召今天的读者在各自的「巴比伦」中持守信仰——像三位青年那样说「即便如此……即或不然」，因为我们所等候的，是那存到永远的国。

Daniel is set in the royal court of Babylon. Carried into exile as a youth, Daniel and his three friends faced the empire's full program of assimilation — new names, new education, new food from the king's table — yet Daniel "resolved not to defile himself." The famous court narratives of the first six chapters — the dream of the great statue, the blazing furnace, the writing on the wall, the lions' den — all bear witness to one truth: behind the rise and fall of empires, the God of heaven rules.

The second half of the book records Daniel's visions: four great beasts rising from the sea, empires succeeding one another; the seventy "sevens" pointing to the coming of the Anointed One; a time of unprecedented distress at the end, when "multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake." At the center of it all stands chapter 7 — "one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven," receiving from the Ancient of Days a kingdom that will never be destroyed.

"Son of Man," Jesus' favorite name for Himself, comes straight from this vision; on trial before the Sanhedrin He declared, "You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven." Daniel calls today's readers to keep faith in their own Babylon — to say with the three young men, "the God we serve is able to deliver us... but even if he does not" — because the kingdom we wait for is the one that endures forever.