Daniel 10: 7-11 “Grace”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

⁷And I, Daniel, alone saw the vision, and the men who were with me did not see the vision, but a great trembling fell on them and they fled in hiding themselves. ⁸And I was left alone and I saw the vision the great the this and no strength remained in me and my glory was turned to corruption and I kept no strength. ⁹And I heard the sound of His words and as I [was] hearing the sound of His words, and I was one being dropped into deep sleep upon my face and my face earthward. ¹⁰And behold! A hand touched me and set me trembling on my knees and the palms of my hands, ¹¹and he said to me, “Daniel, man greatly valued, understand in the words which I [am] speaking to you and stand on your place, because now I am sent to you,” And in his speaking with me the word the this, I stood up trembling.

There is so much more to observe in these verses! Here are some more thoughts, not necessarily in any order. In v.8, I’ve translated the Hebrew to say, “And I was left alone and I saw the vision the great the this and no strength remained in me and my glory was turned to corruption and I kept no strength.” Notice the “my glory was turned to corruption.” The phrase is a bit tricky to translate as the Hebrew words have a very wide range of meaning. The old KJV translated it, “All my comeliness became corruption,” while the NIV translates it “my face turned deathly pale.”

I’m not at all persuaded that Daniel is referring to his appearance, as in “my face turned deathly pale.” I say that for at least two reasons. First of all, Daniel can’t see his face. Why would that particularly strike him? As he records the ways this vision profoundly affected him, I doubt “his appearance” would even come to his mind. The second reason is his age. Remember he’s somewhere around 90 years old. I’m sorry, but that is one of the effects of aging – to turn deathly pale! With young people and all their naturally vivacious color, when they’re sick or deeply frightened, there may be a very pronounced change in their countenance. They really can turn “deathly pale,” but I’m not so sure that’s true of us old folks. I seriously doubt there’s enough difference to even notice – and since Daniel probably wasn’t carrying around a mirror, again I doubt that his appearance was of any concern at all to him.

What would concern him about himself? As we noted earlier, this vision carries our Daniel into the presence of Jesus Himself and the pure holiness of heaven and angels. Frankly, I think the old KJV translators got it right: “All my comeliness became corruption.” Daniel would not be struck by the condition of his face, but rather of his soul! What he’s saying is that everything which perhaps had appeared to him noteworthy suddenly turns to ashes. Let’s stop and acknowledge that he was in fact a model believer. He was, by our standards, a truly faithful man. Although he clearly was not swallowed up by his pride, he had to be aware of his life and how it compared with others around him.

Suddenly he is in the presence of not a bunch of other (worse) sinners, but rather pure holiness. Whatever even he himself might have considered “comeliness” would be reduced to “corruption.” As Isaiah said, “All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” (Isa. 64:6). As Paul says, “Comparing themselves with themselves, they become unwise” (II Cor. 10:12). Even the very best of the best of us are still fallen sinners, desperately in need of grace. Only when Jesus “makes our lowly bodies like His glorious body” (Phil. 3:21) will we be able to stand unashamed in the presence of pure holiness. Until then, let Daniel remind us, we never come to God on the basis of what we perceive to be “our merits.” We can come boldly to Him, but we come “to obtain mercy and find grace to help…” (Heb. 4:16). Even if we could be as godly as Daniel, we still come to God on the basis of Jesus’ merits, not ours!

And what grace we see even here in these verses! While Daniel is crushed by the awareness of his own sinfulness, what does the angel tell him? The angel calls to him, “Daniel, you who are highly favored…!” This appellation will get repeated again in v. 19. I’ve noted before how the Babylonians tried to rename him Belshazzar, but even angels call him by his name Daniel! I’ve also noted how important it was for the angel to simply “touch” him. Touch itself can be an expression of grace and affection. I still marvel at the angels themselves. As we’re told in Hebrews 1:14, angels are “ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation.” They are pure and holy. They surely can see how sinful we are, how we rebel against God and resist Him, how we fail constantly. I suggested before, I wonder if, to them, we even stink! Yet, what they show us is pure grace. “You who are highly favored…!”

Although we would rarely “see” angels, let us be reminded by this passage, they are always there, and they are very specifically and very deliberately expressions of God’s grace toward us. They are, like us, created beings with names, intelligent beings who think and observe, and who, as servants of the Most High God, are constantly trying to help us, strengthen us, protect us, and help us along the path of grace. Daniel would remind us, though we realize what failures we are, to focus not on ourselves and despair, but rather to embrace the Lord’s grace and accept that even His angels are actively seeking to help us live for Him.

Last thought for whatever it’s worth, beginning in v.10, I think the “hand that touched me” and the voice speaking to him is now an angel and not the Jesus of vv.5,6. Someone may object, “But it doesn’t say that.” The last voice Daniel was hearing was that of the Jesus vision. If we read, “and he said,” that surely refers back to Jesus. My answer would be, if we were writing in English, then, yes, that would be important to us to clearly distinguish between the words Jesus spoke to Daniel and then the shift to that of an angel. However, what we’re reading is not originally written in English but rather in Hebrew and this sort of thing happens all through the Bible, where the dialogue often shifts from one speaker to another with no notation that has happened.

As I have often noted, English is a very technical language. We love to line up all the facts, clearly present them in order, and make our case with what we think is all our very tight logic. Hebrew was none of that. It was a picture language, much more suited to verbal story-telling than to any idea at all of “presenting facts.” With Hebrew, it’s like “you had to be there.” To really understand, you have to let yourself get drawn into the story, listen to what the speaker is trying to relate to you, and then, for us modern American English speakers, lay aside our iron-clad determination to get “all the facts.” As they say, “It just ain’t there.”  In this passage, I am suggesting the shift occurs with the words, “A hand touched me…,” leading to “he said.” Who said? In Hebrew I’m suggesting it would be the person whose hand just touched him. One of them would probably say, “Well, that’s obvious, isn’t it?” We might say, “Not to us!,” to which they might respond, “Why do you have to be told every little fact? Don’t you have a brain?”

So, anyway, let’s let Daniel remind us again that all of our hope is in Jesus, that God is very real, that His angels are very real, and that, though we are sinners and too often miserable failures, we have been swallowed up by grace! Then let us, like Daniel, live that grace ourselves.