Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:
4And you, Daniel, stop up the words and seal the book until [the] time of [the] end. Many will go quickly to and fro and will increase the knowledge.
It was fun to arrive at this verse. I feel I’ve read it a thousand times, yet every time I pass over it, it leaves me puzzled. What on earth does it mean? The NIV translates the first half of the verse, “But you, Daniel, close up and seal the words of the scroll until the time of the end.” What on earth does the angel mean “close up and seal the words of the scroll?” And then he adds, “…until the time of the end.”
To you or me today, if we were given something to write, then told to close it up and seal it until the time of the end,” it would mean something like, “Get it all written, then put it in a safe deposit box and lock it up until far into the future.” It sounds like what we do with time capsules, burying them with a plan to dig it up and open it in like 100 years. Obviously, that is not what Daniel did. His writings have been disseminated around the world for nearly 2,600 years! Even Jesus had read the book and quoted it.
So what does it mean? Having studied it, I’m glad I can now say with confidence, “I don’t know.” What I have long thought as I passed over these words is that they are expressing something which Daniel would have understood, but we simply cannot. It is a cultural expression, perhaps even an idiom, one that would have made sense to Daniel, but the words are lost on us. If I told you someone just “kicked the bucket,” you would immediately know what I mean is that they passed away. Step back and ask yourself, “If I was from another time and another country far away and was trying to translate those words, would they make any sense?" We would immediately think someone really did “kick” a bucket, then we’d sit and puzzle over it, asking, “What on earth does that mean?”
I strongly suspect that is what is going on here. One author recounted that, in the ancient world, things like contracts, wills, and other important legal documents would be authorized as the different parties would apply their wax seals. Copies would be made for each party, and the original would be literally sealed up and put away. Then, if there was ever a dispute, that original could be brought out and everyone would know it was reliable, that no matter if someone had altered the wording in a copy, their mischief would be exposed.
So, Daniel might understand it was okay to make copies of his writings, but the original is something to maintain “until the time of the end,” lest devious scribes (or “scholars”) would deliberately alter it. That does sort of make sense, except that, as far as we know, there was never “an original” of any book of the Bible which was meticulously preserved. There’s nowhere in the world where you can go and actually see the manuscript written in Daniel’s own hand. As far as we know, every manuscript we have is a copy. There simply is not some dusty old monastery or something where generations of men have kept and guarded the originals.
So, whatever the angel means, it still doesn’t really make sense to me. I don’t know. I can’t say I really know what Daniel understood these words to mean, “Close up and seal the words of the scroll until the time of the end.” Now, I want to say I like being able to confidently conclude, “I don’t know.” What I mean is, I feel good whenever I’ve finally had time to sit down and really study a passage, only to conclude, “I don’t know.” Then every time I read it again, I won’t puzzle over it. I’ll just remember, “I don’t know,” and leave it lie.
The Bible is God’s Word. It was written down by at least forty different men, over a period of at least two thousand years, in at least three different languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. He had every right to record some things that would have been understood by the people of that time, but lost on us. Sometimes it is best to just let it say what it says, to study it, puzzle over it, and conclude, “I don’t know.” Throughout all eternity, God will be infinite and you and I will be finite. There will always be much about Him which will be mysterious to us.
Many old writers acknowledged these very thoughts. Robert Hawker (ca. 1800) wrote, “Where the word of God is not very clear and plain, I humbly conceive, that the Lord's intuition is, in this obscurity, His people should humbly wait the explanation of prophecy, until that in the accomplishment, the thing predicted, by the event, be explained.” Another said, “One of the greatest talents in religious discovery is the finding how to hang up questions and let them hang without being at all anxious about them. What seemed perfectly insoluble will clear itself in a wondrous revelation.”
And here is a thought: “It will not hurt you, nor hurt the truth, if you should have some few questions left to be carried on with you when you go hence, for in that more luminous state, most likely they will soon be cleared, only a thousand others will be springing up even there, and you will go on dissolving still your new sets of questions, and growing mightier and more deep-seeing for eternal ages.” Even Daniel, later in this chapter will say, “I heard, but I did not understand” (v.8).
All these same thoughts pass on to the second half of the verse: “Many will go quickly to and fro and increase in knowledge.” To what is this referring? Interestingly, there are about as many interpretations as there are writers! I can say, “I don’t know,” and frankly, I think in some way or another, that’s what everyone else should admit. A few do, but not many.
What strikes me as possible is that the verse is actually prophesying the very world we live in today. In the ancient world and even up to not long ago in America, common people simply did not travel. All down through the millennia, many people could be born, live, and die and never wander more than five miles from home. If any of them could have seen us, this is exactly how they’d describe us, “going quickly to and fro.” We race around in our cars at 70 or 80 MPH. Then when that isn’t fast enough, we get on a plane and go hundreds of miles per hour! Especially young people today seemingly go on some new trip every weekend. It’s certainly true, compared to any other time in history, we “go quickly to and fro.”
Then it says, “and knowledge will increase.” Wow. Here we are living in the computer age. And now we even have AI, the “artificial intelligence.” We used to have to consult encyclopedias. Now we go click, click, click and it would seem there is nothing we can’t know.
It sure fits in a way it never has before.
But am I 100% positive that is what this was intended to mean? No. Interestingly, in Hebrew, it is “the knowledge” which will increase. Why “the” knowledge? It would seem to be referring not to knowledge in general, but to a specific knowledge, such as the understanding of prophecies (as they are fulfilled). What does it mean? I don’t know.
There I go again.
Time to move on. I have studied the verse. For now, at least, I just have to say, “I don’t know,” and leave it at that. Maybe if I live long enough, the Lord will reveal some of these things to me, but I fully expect to die with a hundred thousand questions I’m still puzzling over. It will always be true, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My thoughts above your thoughts, and My ways above your ways” (Isa. 55:9).
And I’m okay with that. Sometimes, I just don’t know.
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