Daniel 12

1. And at that time. When God’s people are oppressed, their guardian shall interpose; but in the efforts for their freedom there shall be a struggle and suffering of unexampled severity. Yet there shall be a glorious deliverance and resurrection, in which those who were their faithful leaders and teachers in their time of depression shall have the highest honours (1-3). For use in that time this vision is to be preserved (4).

Michael. See notes on x. 13.

written in the book. Cp. Exod. xxxii. 33; Rev. xx. 12-15.

2 many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake. These words, like so many prophetic utterances, have both an immediate and a further, complete fulfilment, referring in the first instance to the national revival and in the second place to the final resurrection of the just and the unjust.

4 seal the book. See note on viii. 26.

many shall run to and fro. If this translation

be accepted, it perhaps refers primarily to the extensive diffusion of religious truth by the Jewish people before the coming of Christ. But the form of the Hebrew verb is used of scrutiny or inspection, as of God’s all-seeing eyes (2 Chron. xvi. 9) and has therefore been translated by some scholars “many shall peruse the book.” Charles and Moffatt give a different reading, suggesting that “many shall apostatise.”

profligate, but one who afterwards became unfaithful and deserted him. It is in her subsequent repentance and her forgiveness by the man she had wronged that the great message of the book consists. On the story of Lancelot and Guinevere in the Idylls of the King.