Daniel is the great prophetical book of the Old Testament as Revelation is of the new Testament. The one is complementary to the other, especially in their delineations of the Roman Empire.
Daniel was a singularly beautiful character. A captive at the court of Babylon, of royal or noble birth (Dan. 1:3), he began to stand for God in his youthful days, and witnessed for the truth till the reign of King Cyrus, a period covering about seventy years.
He knew what it was to live in the fierce light that falls upon those in highest positions, as well as to be in the shade of obscurity for years. Yet whenever called upon he answered for God.
To him were given wonderful visions full of the deepest importance and enlightenment as to the last days. Without Daniel, Revelation would be to a large extent a sealed book.
The prophet was contemporary with Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
Divisions of the Book:
1. Daniel 1 — Introductory.
2. Daniels 2:1 to 4:37 — Nebuchadnezzar's dreams and their interpretations.
3. Daniel 5 to 6:28 — Daniel's history under Belshazzar and Darius.
4. Daniel 7:1-12:13 — Daniel's visions and their interpretations.
These divisions are well marked, and easily apprehended. Dr. C. I. Scofield writes: “From Daniel 2:4 to 7:28 the Book of Daniel is written in Aramaic, the ancient language of Syria, and substantially identical with Chaldaic, the language of ancient Babylonia. Upon this fact, together with the occurrence of fifteen Persian and three Greek words, has been based an argument against the historicity of Daniel, and in favor of a date after the conquest of Palestine by Alexander (B.C. 332). It has, however, seemed, with some modern exceptions, to the Hebrew and Christian scholarship of the ages an unanswerable proof rather of the Danielle authorship of the book, that living from boyhood in a land the language of which was Chaldaic, a great part of his writing should be in that tongue. It has been often pointed out that the Chaldaic of Daniel is of high antiquity, as is shown by comparison with that of the Targums. The few words of Persian and Greek in like manner confirm the writer's residence at a court constantly visited by emissaries from those peoples. It is noteworthy that the Aramaic section is precisely that part of Daniel which most concerned the peoples amongst whom he lived, and to whom a prophecy written in Hebrew would have been unintelligible. The language returns to Hebrew in the predictive portions which have to do with the future of Israel.”
The prophetical part of this Book coming particularly within the scope of our present inquiry, we will content ourselves with very slender reference to the historical parts.