Daniel 8:18–22

Now, as he was speaking with me, I was in a deep sleep with my face to the ground; but he touched me, and stood me upright. And he said, “Look, I am making known to you what shall happen in the latter time of the indignation; for at the appointed time the end shall be. The ram which you saw, having the two horns—they are the kings of Media and Persia. And the male goat is the kingdom of Greece. The large horn that is between its eyes is the first king. As for the broken horn and the four that stood up in its place, four kingdoms shall arise out of that nation, but not with its power.”

This passage explains Daniel’s interpretation of the handwriting on the wall in Chapter 5. He already knew that the Medes and Persians were going to overrun Babylon—and soon.

While Chapter 5 doesn’t say how close the invading forces were, the fact that Belshazzar was killed that very night means they had to be within striking range of the palace. That means they had already invaded the nation.

Many battles had already been fought. There’s no way the king and his subjects could be unaware of that. While the king was feasting and showing off, his soldiers were fighting and dying, trying to halt an invasion.

But Daniel knew even more. He knew the invading forces couldn’t be stopped. Belshazzar, in his arrogance, assumed his army was strong enough to resist. He was wrong.

So, Daniel sees the writing—writing which everyone can read but no one can understand—with the foreknowledge of what is coming. This makes the king’s behavior in the presence of danger even more obviously incompetent. That’s how Daniel knew that MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN meant.

“God has numbered your kingdom, and finished it; You have been weighed in the balances, and found wanting; Your kingdom has been divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.” — Daniel 5:26–28

This passage also illuminates Nebuchadnezzar’s first dream. Some skeptics want to postdate Daniel to after the Greek kingdom so as to deny that it’s prophetic. To do that, they interpret the four kingdoms represented by the statue parts as: Babylonians, Medes, Persians, and Greeks. They deny the interpretation of the four parts as Babylonian, Medes and Persians, Greeks, and Romans because the book of Daniel obviously predates the Roman empire, and thus wouldn’t be postdated.

But the Medes and the Persians are clearly one ram in this passage. They’ve been one kingdom throughout the book, but this passage makes their unity undeniable. It can’t be a matter of interpretation.

The denial of the obvious by the skeptics is puzzling. Back in the discussion of 6:14—18, I said, “People usually believe what they want to believe—what they hope is true. That’s where a lot of denial comes from. If you wish hard enough for something to be true, you won’t be open to contradictory evidence.”

This is creepy. Why would skeptics hope that the book of Daniel is bogus?

These Monday—Friday DEEPs are written by Mike Slay. To subscribe to all the DEEPs click here:

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV stands for the English Standard Version. © Copyright 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved. NIV stands for The Holy Bible, New International Version®. © Copyright 1973 by International Bible Society. Used by permission. All rights reserved. KJV stands for the King James Version.