Daniel12chapter 12

Daniel 12:1

The vision of chapter eleven closes without a break into chapter twelve: at that time Michael stands up, the same great prince named at 10:13 and 10:21 as the one who stands for the children of Daniel's people. A time of trouble follows such as never was since there was a nation, and yet the outcome named in the same breath is deliverance, everyone found written in the book. The commentators read Michael here as the angelic guardian the earlier vision already introduced, called now to active defense rather than the withstanding he did against the prince of Persia.

Daniel 12:2

sleep in the dust of the earth: Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt: the verse stands as the Old Testament's clearest statement of a future bodily resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked together. The commentators set it beside Isaiah 26:19's thy dead men shall live and John 5:28-29's hour when all in the graves shall hear his voice, reading one resurrection revealed progressively rather than a doctrine invented late. Many, not all, has drawn comment from the older writers, weighed against a near reference to Israel's national restoration and a wider reference to a general resurrection, the positions named rather than settled.

Daniel 12:3

They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever: the wise here are named by what they do, turning others to righteousness, not by private insight kept to themselves. The Lord's own words at Matthew 13:43, then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun, are read by the commentators as an echo of this verse, carrying its promise into his own teaching on the age to come. Gill and the older writers take the stars as the fixed and lasting reward of the teacher who leads others rather than only himself into the light.

Daniel 12:4

Daniel is told to shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end, when many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. The sealing sets the vision aside for a later generation rather than closing it from Daniel's own understanding, which the chapter's own ending will show he still lacked. The running to and fro and the increase of knowledge have drawn a range of readings from the bench, some hearing a general description of the last days' searching and unrest, others confining it to the scrutiny the book itself would receive once its appointed time arrived, the positions named and no date set by the text.

Daniel 12:5-7

Daniel sees two others standing at the river's opposite banks, and one asks the man clothed in linen how long it shall be to the end of these wonders. The answer comes as an oath, sworn by him that liveth for ever, that it shall be for a time, times, and an half, until the power of the holy people is fully scattered. The same phrase, a time, times and half a time, returns at Revelation 12:14 for the woman fled into the wilderness, and the commentators read Daniel's chapters and John's as speaking one language of an appointed limit even where neither names a shared date.

Daniel 12:8-9

Daniel hears the oath and does not understand it, and asks what shall be the end of these things, only to be told the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end. His confessed incomprehension stands deliberately beside Revelation 22:10's opposite instruction to John, seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book, for the time is at hand, a contrast the commentators note as marking two different moments in the same unfolding purpose. Daniel's not understanding here answers back to his own words at 8:27, I was astonished at the vision, but none understood it, tying the book's visions together under one honest human limit.

Daniel 12:10

Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried, while the wicked continue in wickedness and understand nothing of what is unfolding, and only the wise are given to understand. The verse gives coming suffering a refining purpose rather than a merely punishing one, the same purging the chapter eleven corridor named at verse 35, to try them, and to purge, and to make them white. Wesley and the older writers read the line as the book's own answer to the trouble named at verse 1, affliction sent to sift rather than only to destroy.

Daniel 12:11

From the time the daily sacrifice is taken away and the abomination that maketh desolate is set up, twelve hundred and ninety days are numbered, the same abomination named at 9:27 and 11:31, the thread the Lord takes up at Matthew 24:15 as spoken of by Daniel the prophet. The commentators hold a near fulfillment in Antiochus's profaning of the temple alongside a fulfillment beyond him that the Lord's own citation keeps open, the positions named without either erasing the other. The number of days is left in the text to specify an appointed length rather than a reader supplying an occasion for it.

Daniel 12:12

Blessed is he that waiteth, and cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days, a second count forty five days beyond the first, and the gap between the two numbers has been read by the commentators as marking a further stage of blessing reached only by waiting past the first appointed term. Some of the bench take both counts as literal calendar days from the abomination's setting up, while others read them as marking stages within one unfolding rather than fixed durations, positions named and neither pressed into a date. The blessing pronounced on whoever waits that far is the verse's own center regardless of which reading of the numbers is held.

Daniel 12:13

But go thou thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days, the last personal word given to any prophet in Scripture, spoken to Daniel himself rather than about the nations he had just watched cross a continent in vision. Rest answers the trouble of verse 1, and standing in his lot at the end of the days sets Daniel's own resurrection, promised in general at verse 2, into his own particular future. The commentators close the book here on the note the whole chapter has kept, appointed suffering, appointed knowledge, and an appointed waking, all held in the hand of the God who names the days.