November 9–15, 2026 · Come, Follow Me
"There Is No Other God That Can Deliver" · the Church's lesson page
Nathan and Eli open the week at Daniel's open window, then follow the table, the furnace, the den, and the Son of man with a guest who reads prophecy in layers. Then the hard questions: a Maccabean date, Darius the Mede, Greece or Rome, the fourth figure in the fire, and the den's children.
This week's reading follows four young men from Jerusalem into the court of the empire that destroyed their city. Taken captive in the first deportations, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah are trained in "the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans" (1:4), renamed Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego (1:7), and put to work for Nebuchadnezzar. Over six chapters they refuse the king's table, interpret a statue of four metals, walk out of a furnace, watch a proud king eat grass, read a hand's writing on a wall, and spend a night with lions. Then chapter 7 leaves the court behind for a dream of four beasts from the sea and "one like the Son of man" who comes "with the clouds of heaven" (7:13).
The panel reads the same chapters from very different places. The practical disciple starts with the obvious thing nobody notices: Most of Daniel 1–6 happens at work. The rabbi reads it as his people have read it for millennia, less as a timetable than as a manual for keeping your soul intact in someone else's empire. The honest questioner warns that the book that holds the children's stories has been fought over since the third century, called both the Bible's best proof of predictive prophecy and its clearest case of prophecy written after the fact. The academic scholar notes that a reader moving from the lions' den (ch. 6) to the beasts from the sea (ch. 7) crosses a genre boundary and probably several centuries of composition. The LDS scholar thinks a Latter-day Saint is well placed to look at all of that squarely, because nothing in the Restoration's own account of scripture requires the book to be something other than what the evidence shows. The doctrinal connector traces Daniel's stone, Ancient of days, and Son of man into Restoration scripture and checks what the Restoration texts actually say, which is often narrower and more interesting than people remember. And the six-outlooks essay takes two verses, 7:13–14, and reads them through six lenses, because every one of the six lenses has real work to do there.
The lesson's title comes from the middle of the block. After the furnace Nebuchadnezzar decrees "that there is no other God that can deliver after this sort" (3:29). The LDS scholar points out that the book answers its own line: Nebuchadnezzar's decree that "there is no other God that can deliver after this sort" (3:29) is answered by Darius's "He delivereth and rescueth" (6:27). But the same chapters keep asking what happens when God does not deliver, and that question runs under all five sessions.
Session 1 (Daniel 1) sets up the book: its two languages, its place in the canon, the week's biggest Wrestle (when was it written?), and Daniel's line at the king's table. Session 2 (Daniel 2) faces an impossible king, hears Daniel's psalm, and wrestles with whose four kingdoms and whose stone. Session 3 (Daniel 3) stands before the golden image with the three friends, hears the rabbi's midrash behind "but if not," and sets the furnace beside Ammonihah, where the faithful burned. Session 4 (Daniel 4 and 5) reads a king's confession and a king's last feast, with Wrestles on Nabonidus and on who Belshazzar was. Session 5 (Daniel 6 and 7) kneels at Daniel's window, faces the children thrown to the lions, asks who the Ancient of days is, and ends with a capstone that reads 7:13–14 six ways.
The questions at the end of each session are not a quiz. Most have more than one defensible answer, and several ask about your own week rather than the text.
Before reading chapter 1, it helps to know the shape of the whole book. It opens in Hebrew. At 2:4 the wise men answer the king "in Syriack," and from there to the end of chapter 7 the book is in Aramaic; Hebrew resumes at 8:1. The language break does not line up with the content break. Chapters 1–6 are stories about Daniel told in the third person; chapters 7–12 are Daniel's visions in the first person. So, as the academic scholar puts it, Chapter 7 belongs to both halves at once.
In 1972 A. Lenglet argued that the Aramaic chapters are built as a ring. Chapters 2 and 7 each set out four kingdoms ended by God's kingdom; chapters 3 and 6 are rescues from execution; chapters 4 and 5 are judgments on proud kings. Read that way, chapter 7 is the capstone of a designed unit, not a fresh start. The LDS scholar draws the same conclusion: the Aramaic chapters once circulated as a unit about earthly kingship under heaven's rule, and that chapter 7 was written to close it, deliberately echoing chapter 2.
The usual critical reconstruction, laid out in the commentaries of John J. Collins (1993) and Carol Newsom (2014), adds one more step. In the 160s BCE a writer or circle added the vision of chapter 7 in Aramaic to finish it, wrote chapters 8–12 in Hebrew, and supplied a Hebrew introduction (ch. 1) so the book would begin and end in the national language. The academic scholar is careful about its status: It is a hypothesis, not a proof, but it explains the awkward facts economically.
Christian Bibles, following the Greek order, make Daniel the fourth "major prophet." The Hebrew Bible does not. In the Hebrew Bible Daniel stands among the Writings, not the Prophets, often taken as a sign that it arrived after the prophetic collection had closed. The rabbi gives the tradition's own reason. In rabbinic terms a prophet is someone sent to Israel with a message, and Daniel is never sent to his people. He sees, interprets for kings, and writes. Maimonides placed him with David and Solomon among those who spoke by the holy spirit rather than with Isaiah and Jeremiah. So a Jewish reader comes to Daniel expecting a sage at a royal court rather than a prophet at the city gate.
This is the question every other dispute this week leans on, so it comes first.
The case for a late date. The challenge is old. The third-century philosopher Porphyry argued that the book was written by someone living in Judea under Antiochus IV Epiphanes; we know his argument mainly because Jerome quoted it to refute it. Most critical scholars hold a refined version of that view. The court tales of chapters 1–6 are treated as older diaspora stories, and the visions as products of Antiochus's persecution, about 167–164 BC. The main evidence is chapter 11, which tracks the Seleucid and Ptolemaic wars in detail and then has Antiochus die in the land of Israel, when he actually died on campaign in the east. On the critical reading, the vision is accurate up to the author's own moment and then becomes a real, and mistaken, prediction. Chapter 7 points the same way, as Session 5 will show. Smaller clues, such as the Greek instrument names in 3:5, come up in Session 3.
The manuscripts. In 2025 a team led by Mladen Popović radiocarbon-dated a Qumran copy of Daniel 8–11 (4QDaniel-c) to a range of 230–160 BC. The honest questioner shows how both sides use it: A traditionalist can say so early a copy leaves little time for a new book to spread; a critic can say the date fits the Maccabean setting exactly. The LDS scholar narrows what it proves: Both camps will cite it; what it firmly establishes is that copies of the visions were circulating within a generation or so of Antiochus at the latest.
Faithful positions. Conservative scholars such as Joyce Baldwin defend a sixth-century Daniel with genuine predictive visions; others accept a late date for chapters 7–12 and treat apocalyptic as an inspired genre; others keep the question open. Believers stand on more than one side of this debate. For Latter-day Saints the honest questioner does not pretend the issue is idle: For Latter-day Saints the stakes are real: Jesus speaks of "Daniel the prophet" (Matthew 24:15), and the Bible Dictionary presents chapters 7–12 as visions Daniel reports in his own name, without engaging the critical dating.
What it costs. The LDS scholar answers the question most readers are really asking. What does this mean for a Latter-day Saint? Less than many fear. The eighth article of faith already accepts the Bible "as far as it is translated correctly," and the Church's own Ensign has admitted historical errors in this very book (Session 4). But he names a real cost too: a Maccabean date means the predictions were aimed at the Maccabean crisis, so any Latter-day Saint application to later events then has to be understood as a further fulfillment or a likening, not as the author's own meaning. Hold that sentence; it returns with the stone in Session 2 and the Ancient of days in Session 5.
The first verse is the first historical knot. Daniel 1:1 puts a siege of Jerusalem in Jehoiakim's third year, about 606 BC. Jeremiah equates Jehoiakim's fourth year with Nebuchadnezzar's first (Jeremiah 25:1; 46:2), and the academic scholar notes of the earlier siege that No Babylonian source records one. The honest questioner gives both sides. Harmonizers note that Babylon did not count a king's accession year as year one, so "third" and "fourth" may name the same year, and that 2 Kings 24:1 and 2 Chronicles 36:6–7 (which Daniel 1:2 seems to echo) place Jehoiakim under Babylon early. Critics answer that no siege of Jerusalem in 605 is recorded and that 1:1 looks like a date worked out later from Chronicles.
Verse 2 contains a detail that matters later. The first thing taken from Jerusalem is "part of the vessels of the house of God," carried "to the house of his god" (1:2). Watch for those vessels in chapter 5.
The young men are chosen for looks and aptitude, given three years of Chaldean education, fed from the king's table, and renamed. The practical disciple asks you to slow down here. Notice how much Daniel accepted before he refused anything. He took the education, answered to a name given "according to the name of my god" (4:8), and served the empire that had besieged his city. He did not treat every part of Babylon as a test of loyalty.
The academic scholar places this in an ancient genre: the wise courtier from a subject people at a foreign king's court, like Joseph, Esther, and, outside the Bible, the Aramaic Story of Ahiqar. Ahiqar too is a counselor brought down by rivals and vindicated. W. Lee Humphreys argued that such tales offered a lifestyle for Jews under foreign rule, and the academic scholar finds the striking thing is how cooperative Daniel 1–6 is. The lines are drawn narrowly: no defiling food (1:8), no worship of the image (3:18), no break in prayer (6:10). Short of those lines, a Jew can serve the empire and prosper.
"But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's meat, nor with the wine which he drank" (1:8).
The rabbi's reading. Jewish readers have always heard a story about kashrut, and about the boundary between Israel and the nations at the table. Abraham ibn Ezra says the king's bread was forbidden, and the wine too, because it was poured out in libations to idols. The "pulse... and water" of 1:12 is not a diet plan. It is the one menu a Jew in a pagan court could eat without asking questions. The Talmud goes further: Rav traces the later ban on gentile oil back to Daniel, reading "which he drank" as two drinks. Others disagreed, but the rabbis saw in Daniel 1 the founding of the dietary separations that let Jews live among the nations without dissolving into them. Daniel takes the name, the schooling, the career, and draws his line at a private, daily, almost invisible practice. You may work for the king. You do not eat his food.
How he asked. The practical disciple notes that the text never fully explains why this was the line (John Calvin thought Daniel saw the offer as a snare meant to make him forget his country), but the timing is clear. Whatever the reason, Daniel decided before the pressure came. Then he "requested" (1:8). When the official feared for his own head (1:10), Daniel offered a limited, checkable trial of ten days of "pulse" (Hebrew zeroʻim, "things sown," vegetables) and water. His conviction was firm, and his way of asking protected the other man's neck. The practical disciple's pattern: decide the line in advance, ask instead of announce, offer a test, and take the other person's risk seriously. People who skip the last step often turn a principled stand into a self-righteous one.
The lesson pairs 1:15–17 with Doctrine and Covenants 89:18–21. The doctrinal connector says plainly that The parallel is real. After the test, "God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom" (1:17), and the Word of Wisdom promises "wisdom and great treasures of knowledge, even hidden treasures" (D&C 89:19). But Daniel's reason is defilement, not nutrition, and the healthy faces are a sign of favor, not the motive. That makes Daniel 1 a story about the Word of Wisdom's deeper purpose rather than its health rules. Daniel's diet marked whom he belonged to in a place built to rename him (1:7), and the reward was knowledge given by God.
The honest questioner and the rabbi agree on the limit. The text's language is ritual purity, so the comparison works as an analogy for keeping a covenant law under pressure, not as Daniel's motive. The practical disciple turns it toward the reader: the drink at the client dinner, the shortcut on the expense report. Did you decide those in advance, or were they decided for you at the table?
Think deeply.
Nebuchadnezzar demands that his experts tell him both his dream and its meaning, on pain of death for all of them (2:5, 12–13). The practical disciple calls it what it is: Nebuchadnezzar's demand in chapter 2 is the worst performance review in scripture. Daniel had not even been in the room.
The academic scholar names the plot. In tales of contest (Dan. 2, 4, 5), the king faces a problem his own experts cannot solve, and the foreign captive succeeds where they fail. The lists of failed "magicians" and "astrologers" (2:2; 4:7; 5:7–8) are pointed. He also flags a small internal seam: Internally, too, Daniel trains three years (1:5) yet interprets a dream in Nebuchadnezzar's "second year" (2:1).
Watch Daniel's order of operations. He "answered with counsel and wisdom" to Arioch, the executioner, and asked, "Why is the decree so hasty from the king?" (2:14–15). He did not panic or plead. He gathered information. Then he asked the king for time (2:16), and then he went home and told his three friends so they would "desire mercies of the God of heaven concerning this secret" (2:17–18). He did not carry the crisis alone, and he did not try to manage it by himself first and pray later.
The secret comes "in a night vision" (2:19). Daniel does not run to the palace. He stopped and praised God, and the prayer in 2:20–23 is a full psalm. "Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever: for wisdom and might are his: and he changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings" (2:20–21).
The rabbi's reading. Daniel's opening words have lived on. In Aramaic, 2:20 begins with a blessing of God's name "for ever and ever"; the response at the heart of the Kaddish, recited at every service and by mourners, is "May His great name be blessed for ever and ever." The echo is close, in the same language. Daniel's Aramaic has become, in part, the language of Jewish mourning.
Then Daniel speaks, and refuses credit: "this secret is not revealed to me for any wisdom that I have more than any living" (2:30). Two details are easy to miss. His first words to Arioch were "Destroy not the wise men of Babylon" (2:24). Those men were his professional rivals, the same astrologers and magicians he had outperformed "ten times" (1:20), and he saved them too. And at the end, After he was promoted, he asked for his three friends to be promoted with him (2:49). The practical disciple puts it in modern dress: And when the layoff list comes, it looks like arguing for the people you do not much like.
A statue with a head of gold, chest and arms of silver, belly and thighs of brass, legs of iron, and feet of iron and clay (2:32–33). A stone "cut out without hands" strikes the feet, the whole image breaks "to pieces together," and the stone "became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth" (2:34–35). Daniel names only the first kingdom: "Thou art this head of gold" (2:38).
The metal sequence is older than Daniel. Hesiod's Works and Days describes declining human races of gold, silver, bronze, and iron. Daniel maps that decline onto political history. A four-empire scheme (Assyria, Media, Persia, Macedon) also circulated in Persian and Greek historiography, and Daniel's version swaps in Babylon for Assyria, since Babylon destroyed Jerusalem, and keeps Media in second place.
What is the stone? Within the book, it is the kingdom "the God of heaven" sets up, which "shall never be destroyed" (2:44). "Without hands" means not human work, and the stone that becomes "a great mountain" (2:35) may evoke Zion. The text identifies the kingdom by its origin and its permanence, not by its institutions.
The lesson teaches, quoting President D. Todd Christofferson, that "the Church is that prophesied latter-day kingdom." The panel takes that claim seriously and also asks what Daniel's author had in view.
The traditional sequence. The usual Christian reading is Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome. The alternative sequence, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome, is the traditional Christian reading, and Jerome defended it against Porphyry. The old Christian reading, which makes Rome the fourth kingdom, is the one Latter-day Saint teaching usually assumes.
The book's own sequence. The book's own clues favor another sequence. Babylon is the gold head (2:38); the kingdom goes to "the Medes and Persians" (5:28), first to Darius the Median (5:31), then to Cyrus the Persian (6:28); and in 8:20–21 the ram is "the kings of Media and Persia" and the goat "the king of Grecia." So most critical scholars read Babylon, Media, Persia, Greece. The Rome reading requires merging Media and Persia into one kingdom, which the text keeps apart. On this reading the iron mixed with clay that "shall mingle themselves with the seed of men" (2:43) is the failed marriage alliances between the Seleucid and Ptolemaic dynasties.
The hardest form of the question. On that reading the author expected God's kingdom soon after Antiochus fell, and it did not come in the form described. That is the hardest form of the question. Faithful answers include layered fulfillment, Nephi's "likening" (1 Nephi 19:23), and treating modern revelation as authoritative reapplication. The honest questioner's conclusion: A reader persuaded by the Greek reading need not discard Doctrine and Covenants 65, but should notice that it applies Daniel's image anew rather than recovering its original sense.
What D&C 65 actually says. Two essayists read the key Restoration text closely. "The keys of the kingdom of God are committed unto man on the earth, and from thence shall the gospel roll forth unto the ends of the earth, as the stone which is cut out of the mountain without hands shall roll forth" (D&C 65:2). The LDS scholar: The word "as" matters. It is a simile, not an exegesis of Daniel. The doctrinal connector adds that Doctrine and Covenants 65 works under either reading, because it borrows the stone, not the metals. And he notices a change: Second, the verb is new. In Daniel the stone strikes and becomes a mountain; it never rolls. Section 65 is headed a revelation on prayer, and it reads like one: "may the kingdom of God go forth, that the kingdom of heaven may come" (65:6). Joseph Smith received Daniel 2 as something to pray toward, not something to boast about. Verse 5 joins Daniel 2 to Daniel 7, preparing for the day the Son of Man comes "to meet the kingdom of God which is set up on the earth." The stone of chapter 2 goes out to meet the Son of Man of chapter 7.
What kind of kingdom. The Kirtland Temple prayer asks that the kingdom "set up without hands" may "fill the whole earth" (D&C 109:72) in the same sentence that remembers the sick, afflicted, poor, and meek. In this temple prayer, the kingdom that fills the earth looks like a community that cares for its sick and poor, not a conquering power. President Christofferson's talk, the one the lesson quotes, adds a limit: "Before that day, it will not be a kingdom in any political sense." So the stone's breaking "in pieces" of other kingdoms (2:44) is not a mandate for the Church to overthrow governments.
Two horizons. The LDS scholar's resolution: the Restoration identifies a second, later fulfillment and says so by revelation. Scholarship can neither confirm nor rule that out; it can keep us from claiming that the 160s BC author had the 1830s in view. Holding the two horizons apart makes the Restoration claim more honest and no weaker. The six-outlooks essay adds that the book itself invites the connection: 2:44 says the stone's kingdom "shall never be destroyed," and 7:14 says the Son of man's kingdom "shall not be destroyed." The book itself links the two promises, so a reader is on solid ground in likening the one to the other.
The essays do not disagree about the Restoration claim; they disagree with the common assumption that Daniel's author meant Rome. If you were taught the Rome sequence, notice that nothing in D&C 65 depends on it.
Think deeply.
Nebuchadnezzar sets up a golden image sixty cubits high and summons every official to its dedication. When they hear "the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of musick" (3:5), everyone must fall down and worship.
Three of those instruments carry names generally recognized as Greek: qitharos, pesanterin, and sumponyah. For a long time they were treated as decisive proof of a Hellenistic date. Greek traders and mercenaries were in the Near East before Alexander, and Conservative writers make that point and note that three words is few, but the loanwords fit a Hellenistic-era text most easily. The LDS scholar reports a newer argument by Benjamin Suchard that the words look more like code-switching, the language-mixing of bilingual speakers, than like loanwords fully absorbed into Aramaic. That weakens a classic argument without overturning the case.
The accusers do not attack strangers. They remind the king that he himself had "set over the affairs of the province of Babylon" these three Jews (3:12). Their trouble came partly from success. Envy at work is old. This is the second kind of court tale. In tales of conflict (Dan. 3, 6), rivals use the hero's religion to trap him, and he is saved from death.
"If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up" (3:17–18).
The rabbi's reading: the midrash behind the verse. The rabbis asked where three young men got the idea that God might not save them. Song of Songs Rabbah tells the story. Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah ask Daniel whether to bow; Daniel sends them to Ezekiel, who advises them to hide. They refuse, because then the nations would say every people bowed. Ezekiel takes the question to God, and God answers, "I will not stand by them," still angry over the destroyed Temple. Ezekiel comes back weeping. The three answer that whether He stands by them or not, they are giving their lives to sanctify His name. The midrash then observes that before they went to Ezekiel they spoke confidently of deliverance (3:17), and only after hearing his answer did they add "But if not." That is the Jewish shape of this verse. It is not a confident hedge. It is qiddush ha-Shem, the sanctification of God's name, by men told plainly there would be no miracle. The teaching lies in a willingness that came before anyone knew there would be a rescue.
The verse at the center of the book. The historical readers arrive at the same place from another direction. If the book was finished under Antiochus, its first readers were people whose friends were dying for the law. The LDS scholar: A book finished under Antiochus, when the faithful were not always delivered, would put exactly that sentence at its center. The academic scholar: For the book's first readers under Antiochus, many of whom were not rescued, that may have been the most important line in the book. Notice that a rabbinic midrash and a critical reconstruction, which agree on almost nothing else, both read "but if not" as spoken by people who did not expect rescue.
On a Tuesday. The practical disciple refuses to let the phrase become a technique. "But if not" is not a formula for getting the miracle. For many disciples the furnace does not cool: the diagnosis stays, the marriage ends, the child does not come back this year. The chapter does not promise otherwise. It promises that you will not be alone in the fire. His test for your own prayers: Do you tell God what you will do whatever He decides, or only what you hope He will do?
The lesson asks, "What if your faith doesn't lead to the miracles you seek?" and points to Alma 14:8–13.
The problem. The honest questioner states it without softening. If chapter 7 comes from Antiochus's persecution, its first readers were not being delivered; the horn "made war with the saints, and prevailed against them" (7:21). The furnace and the den would have reached people whose friends were dying for the law. Daniel does not explain why some are delivered and others are not.
Ammonihah. The doctrinal connector sets the two fires side by side. The lesson pairs Daniel 3 with Alma 14:8–13, and the two stories end in opposite ways. In Ammonihah believing women and children are burned with their scriptures, and Alma says, "the Lord receiveth them up unto himself, in glory" (Alma 14:11). When Amulek fears for their own lives, Alma's answer is Daniel 3:18 in Nephite form: "Be it according to the will of the Lord. But, behold, our work is not finished; therefore they burn us not" (14:13). Together the two stories keep "but if not" from becoming a slogan. The same God who delivers in Babylon receives the faithful of Ammonihah "unto himself, in glory," and that second ending only makes sense inside a plan of salvation where death is not the end. Elder Dennis E. Simmons's April 2004 conference talk on this verse ended with a line the connector quotes: "The but if nots can become remarkable blessings."
Liberty Jail. The connector finds the Restoration's fullest "but if not" in D&C 122: "if thou shouldst be cast into the pit... if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee... The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?" (122:7–8). The pit and the gaping jaws call Daniel's den to mind, and the answer is the Son of Man, who went down below all of them.
What remains. None of the essays claims to close the gap. What they offer is a posture: obedience decided before the outcome is known, and the assurance of company in the fire rather than a guarantee of rescue from it.
The furnace is heated seven times hotter, and the men who throw the three in are killed by the heat (3:19–22). Then the king looks in: "Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God" (3:25). The lesson places this verse under "Jesus Christ is the Son of the Eternal Father."
The Aramaic. Four essays make the same point. The Aramaic bar ʼelahin is more naturally "a son of the gods," a polytheist king's way of naming a divine being, and three verses later the king explains himself: God "hath sent his angel" (3:28). The LDS scholar: Seeing the premortal Christ here is an old and legitimate devotional reading, but it is a reading, and the KJV capitals make it look more certain than the Aramaic does. The honest questioner: A christological reading remains possible as application, but the words do not require it. The doctrinal connector: The verse cannot bear the weight of a proof text for Christ's divine Sonship, and it does not need to. The faithful in the fire are not alone, and Restoration scripture names the one who goes down into suffering with them (D&C 122:8).
The rabbi's reading. Rashi identifies the fourth figure as an angel, like the one that destroyed Sennacherib's army. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 93a) draws a bolder lesson from the word order: the king first sees "four men loose," and only then mentions the angel. The righteous are greater than the ministering angels. The humans who chose the fire come first.
The decree. Nebuchadnezzar ends the chapter with the line the lesson takes as its title: "there is no other God that can deliver after this sort" (3:29). The same verse threatens that anyone who speaks against this God "shall be cut in pieces, and their houses shall be made a dunghill." The academic scholar does not look away from the violence in these stories: The narrator does not comment; that was how ancient court literature imagined royal justice, and a modern reader need not admire it.
Think deeply.
Chapter 4 is a royal decree in Nebuchadnezzar's own voice, addressed "unto all people, nations, and languages" (4:1). Chapter 4 is a confession written by a boss. Its refrain is stated three times: "the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will" (4:17, 25, 32). The academic scholar sums up the theology of the court tales in four words: Empires hold power on loan.
The rabbi's reading. At Shabbat meals many Jews sing Yah Ribbon ʻAlam, a sixteenth-century Aramaic hymn by Israel Najara that borrows the language of the KJV's 4:2, "I thought it good to shew the signs and wonders that the high God hath wrought toward me." The speaker of that line is the king whose army burned the Temple. Jews sing the conqueror's confession at the Sabbath table.
Daniel hears the dream of the great tree cut down to a stump and understands it. He "was astonied for one hour, and his thoughts troubled him" (4:19), and he wishes it on the king's enemies. He did not enjoy the king's coming fall. Then he tells the whole truth and ends with counsel: "break off thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by shewing mercy to the poor" (4:27). He was honest, he cared about the king, and he told him what to do next. For the practical disciple that is the pattern for any hard conversation upward: a difficult review, telling a parent it is time to stop driving, telling a friend about the drinking.
The rabbi's reading: the counsel that cost Daniel. The rabbis read the same verse very differently. In rabbinic Hebrew "righteousness" means charity. Judgment did not fall until "the end of twelve months" (4:29), so the Talmud (Bava Batra 4a) infers that the king took the advice, gave charity, and bought himself a year. Then it asks why Daniel was punished, and answers: Because he gave good counsel to a wicked king. One view says he was demoted; another, that this is why he was thrown to the lions. Daniel serves the empire loyally and well, and the tradition asks whether serving a tyrant well can become complicity.
Here the essays genuinely pull apart. The practical disciple holds up Daniel's counsel as a model of honest care; the Talmud treats the same counsel as a fault. Both cannot be the whole truth, and the rabbi leaves the question with the reader.
Twelve months later the king walks on his palace and says, "Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?" (4:30). Count the first-person pronouns. Before he finishes speaking, the kingdom is gone, and he is driven out to "eat grass as oxen" until "seven times" pass (4:31–33). His reason comes back when he "lifted up mine eyes unto heaven" (4:34). The cure for pride in this story is to look up. The doctrinal connector reads the same contrast against D&C 121's warning about "dominion": Nebuchadnezzar, who boasted of "the might of my power" (4:30), recovered only when he "lifted up mine eyes unto heaven" (4:34).
The evidence. Among the Dead Sea Scrolls is a damaged Aramaic text, the Prayer of Nabonidus (4Q242). In it the last king of Babylon, not Nebuchadnezzar, says he was afflicted for seven years at Tayma, an Arabian oasis, until a Jewish exile pardoned his sins, and he wrote to glorify the Most High God. A Babylonian king, seven years, a Jewish wise man, a confession of Israel's God. The historical Nabonidus did spend about a decade at Tayma, so many scholars think a story first told of him migrated to the more famous Nebuchadnezzar.
How firm is it? The academic scholar is careful: The surviving Qumran copy is younger than Daniel and the direction of influence is argued, so the Prayer is evidence of an older tradition behind chapter 4, not proof. The honest questioner agrees that The Prayer survives in a damaged copy, and its relation to Daniel 4 is disputed. Others posit a shared tradition.
What not to do with it. Both warn against the popular diagnosis of "boanthropy." Popular diagnoses of Nebuchadnezzar with "boanthropy" start from the wrong question: if the story began with Nabonidus, there is no royal case history to diagnose. Modern diagnoses such as "boanthropy" are speculation about a story whose history is itself uncertain; the chapter's point, "the heavens do rule" (4:26), does not rest on them.
A Latter-day Saint precedent. This is not new to Church readers. Latter-day Saints have had this in the Church's own magazine for forty years. In the September 1986 Ensign, John A. Tvedtnes argued that the madness fits Nabonidus better than Nebuchadnezzar and concluded that such errors "need not damage our faith in the book of Daniel, or in the Old Testament as a whole." Most scholars now read 4Q242 as an older form of the story rather than evidence of a copying error, but the LDS scholar says Tvedtnes's conclusion has worn well.
Belshazzar throws a feast for a thousand lords and calls for "the golden and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem" (5:2). Belshazzar uses the vessels from the Jerusalem temple as party glassware (5:2–4).
The rabbi's reading: Belshazzar's arithmetic. Why that night? The Talmud (Megillah 11b) says Belshazzar had been counting. Jeremiah promised redemption after seventy years (Jeremiah 29:10). Belshazzar added forty-five years for Nebuchadnezzar, twenty-three for Evil-merodach, and two of his own, decided the seventy years were over, and concluded that Israel's God had failed. The vessels came out as a toast over a dead promise. He had miscounted, and he died that night. And, surprisingly, On the next page (Megillah 12a) Rava adds that "Daniel also erred in this calculation."
The doctrinal connector's reading. The vessels were the first thing carried off in 1:2. Now they are used to praise "the gods of gold, and of silver" (5:4). The Kirtland Temple prayer asks "that no unclean thing shall be permitted to come into thy house to pollute it" (D&C 109:20). Belshazzar is the reverse case: holy things dragged into an unclean setting. The Restoration's emphasis on temple worthiness answers chapter 5 directly.
Once the skeptics' favorite. For centuries no source outside the Bible named Belshazzar. Then a cylinder of Nabonidus from Ur turned up with a prayer for "Belshazzar, the eldest son," and the Nabonidus Chronicle recorded again and again that the king was in Tayma while "the prince" was with the army in Akkad. Daniel knew a real crown prince who ran Babylon, a point in its favor. The LDS scholar: The evidence cuts both ways. Daniel preserves a real name that later Greek historians had forgotten. It also knows Daniel could only be made "the third ruler in the kingdom" (5:7, 16, 29), which makes most sense if Belshazzar was himself second, under an absent father.
What does not fit. Belshazzar was the son of Nabonidus, no relation to Nebuchadnezzar, and the tablets never call him king. Defenders note that "father" can mean predecessor. The LDS scholar thinks that is a stretch: Reading "father" as "predecessor" is possible but strained when the queen insists: "the king Nebuchadnezzar thy father, the king, I say, thy father" (5:11). The academic scholar: Defenders note that "father" can mean predecessor in Semitic usage; critical scholars see a memory compressed by time, which knows Belshazzar's name and that Babylon fell on his watch, but not the dynasty. The honest questioner: Critics reply that the author knew a remembered name, not the dynasty.
Darius the Median (5:31). "Darius the Median took the kingdom, being about threescore and two years old." No contemporary source puts a Median king between Babylon and Persia, and identifications of Darius with Ugbaru/Gubaru or with Cyrus have not won wide agreement. Proposed identifications include the governor Gubaru (John C. Whitcomb) and Cyrus himself (D. J. Wiseman, reading 6:28 as "the reign of Darius, even the reign of Cyrus the Persian"). The critical answer ties back to Session 2: The critical explanation is that the author followed a scheme in which Media succeeded Babylon, as Isaiah 13:17 and Jeremiah 51:11 had foretold, and that the same scheme shapes the four kingdoms. Most critical scholars think Darius the Mede reflects a schema rather than a person, for reasons the four kingdoms make clear.
What follows. None of this makes the authors dishonest. Court tales are not chronicles; the discrepancies matter as evidence of date and genre.
The queen remembers Daniel; Daniel refuses the gifts ("Let thy gifts be to thyself," 5:17) and retells Nebuchadnezzar's fall. Then the line that ties the two chapters together: Nebuchadnezzar's madness in chapter 4 is what Daniel throws back at Belshazzar in 5:18–22: "And thou his son, O Belshazzar, hast not humbled thine heart, though thou knewest all this." Belshazzar's problem was not that he lacked information. He knew the story and did not change.
The writing on the wall: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. The words on the wall have a likely background in weights and money. In the 1880s Charles Clermont-Ganneau proposed that they name weights, a mina, a shekel, and a half-mina. Daniel reads them as verbs: numbered, weighed, divided (5:26–28). "Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting" (5:27) is a merchant's scale. The image fits a disciple's life well, because we are measured in ordinary units, one by one, over time.
That night Belshazzar is slain (5:30). The practical disciple leaves two questions: what sacred things do you handle casually (temple covenants, a blessing, the sacrament, a spouse's trust), and What lesson do you know by heart and still have not acted on?
Think deeply.
Darius sets Daniel over the presidents and princes, and they look for a charge against him. They "could find none occasion nor fault; forasmuch as he was faithful, neither was there any error or fault found in him" (6:4). His enemies went through the books and came up empty. Their only hope is "the law of his God" (6:5). The practical disciple's question: Ask yourself whether your coworkers know you are a believer because of how you work, or only because of what you say.
The rivals flatter Darius into a thirty-day decree against praying to anyone but the king. He signs, then "laboured till the going down of the sun" to undo it and cannot (6:14). Read before you sign.
"Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime" (6:10).
The rabbi's reading. The Talmud (Berakhot 31a) draws a chain of laws from this sentence: pray in a room with windows; pray at fixed times, three times a day; the practice did not begin with exile; face Jerusalem. Synagogues still face Jerusalem. A Jew in Salt Lake City turning toward Jerusalem for the ʻAmidah, the standing prayer, is standing at Daniel's window. Christians usually read chapter 6 as courage. In Jewish reading it is above all a story about routine. Daniel does not pray more when the decree comes, and he does not hide. His defiance is refusing to let the empire change his habits.
The practical disciple agrees. The weight is in "as he did aforetime." Daniel did not start a new spiritual routine for the crisis. The habit was already there, and the crisis found him keeping it. Most of us do the reverse. We pray hard in the crisis and let the habit lapse when things are calm.
The doctrinal connector adds the temple. Solomon's dedicatory prayer asked that captives who prayed "toward... the house which I have built for thy name" be heard (1 Kings 8:46–49). Daniel is acting on a temple-dedication promise, and he is praying toward a temple that, in the story's setting, has already been destroyed. His orientation is covenant, not geography.
Darius spends the night fasting and sleepless (6:18). The academic scholar notes how unusual that is: in these tales the king is never the real villain, and Darius spends a sleepless, fasting night hoping Daniel survives (6:18–20). At dawn Daniel answers from the den: "My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions' mouths... before thee, O king, have I done no hurt" (6:22).
Then: "they cast them into the den of lions, them, their children, and their wives; and the lions had the mastery of them, and brake all their bones in pieces" (6:24).
The objection. The Law of Moses forbids exactly this: "neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers" (Deuteronomy 24:16). One can call it a pagan king's justice, recorded and not endorsed, but the narrator tells it in the same triumphant key as the rescue. That silence troubles readers, with reason.
The responses. The academic scholar, as in chapter 3: The narrator does not comment; that was how ancient court literature imagined royal justice, and a modern reader need not admire it. The practical disciple refuses to turn it into a lesson at all: The chapter's ending deserves honesty, not a lesson. A disciple should not take that verse as a model for what happens to people who wrong us. Daniel's own words point the other way: "before thee, O king, have I done no hurt."
What remains. No essay resolves it. The honest move, these readers suggest, is to let the verse stand as a record of how empires punished and not as a picture of how God does.
Darius's closing decree supplies the answer to Nebuchadnezzar's line in 3:29: "he delivereth and rescueth, and he worketh signs and wonders in heaven and in earth, who hath delivered Daniel from the power of the lions" (6:27).
Chapter 7 jumps back to "the first year of Belshazzar" (7:1) and to a dream. The four winds stir "the great sea," and four beasts come up: a lion with eagle's wings, a bear with three ribs in its mouth, a four-headed leopard, and a fourth beast "dreadful and terrible," with iron teeth and ten horns. A little horn uproots three of them, with "eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things" (7:8).
The critical reading. The critical dating rests above all on chapter 7. The little horn will "think to change times and laws" for "a time and times and the dividing of time" (7:25), about three and a half years. Almost all critical scholars identify him as Antiochus IV, who in 167 BC banned the Sabbath and festivals and set a pagan altar in the temple (1 Maccabees 1:41–54). "Change times and laws" fits the abolition of the Jewish calendar and Torah observance closely. The six-outlooks essay imagines the first audience: Pious Jews in the 160s BC, hearing chapter 7, would have recognized their own crisis.
The rabbi's reading: whose fourth beast? Leviticus Rabbah reads the beasts as Babylon, Media, Greece, and Edom; Rashi names the fourth kingdom Rome, which destroyed the Second Temple. "Edom" became rabbinic code for Rome, and after Constantine for Christian Rome. So when Christian readers identify the iron empire as Rome, Jews agree, but for many Jewish readers across the Middle Ages, the fourth beast was the Christian power they lived under. I say this not to wound, but because it is how Jews have heard this chapter.
"I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire" (7:9). The KJV says "the thrones were cast down," but the Aramaic means the thrones were set in place for judgment. "The judgment was set, and the books were opened" (7:10).
Plural thrones raised a question for the rabbis. Rabbi Akiva taught there were two, one for God and one for David, the Messiah. Rabbi Yose the Galilean rebuked him, and said both thrones were God's. The rabbis saw early where a second enthroned figure beside the Ancient of Days could lead, and they shut that door. The academic scholar explains why the scene invites it. J. A. Emerton traced it to Canaanite myth, where the aged El presides over the divine council and the younger Baal, "rider of the clouds," receives kingship. Daniel keeps the two figures distinct, which is unusual in Israelite religion, where Yahweh himself rides the clouds.
Restoration scripture. D&C 27:11 speaks of "Michael, or Adam, the father of all, the prince of all, the ancient of days." D&C 116 names Spring Hill, Missouri, as Adam-ondi-Ahman, where "the Ancient of Days shall sit, as spoken of by Daniel the prophet." In 1839 Joseph Smith taught that Daniel 7 describes Adam calling his children together in council, and that "the Son of Man stands before him" and "Adam delivers up his stewardship to Christ." In this reading Daniel 7:13 shows a steward returning his keys to the Lord of the household. The pattern lies in the past, when Adam blessed his posterity at Adam-ondi-Ahman (D&C 107:53–56).
The text. In Daniel 7:9–10 the one who judges, opens the books, and gives dominion is plainly God. Three essays say so without hedging. The LDS scholar: Honesty requires stating that this is not what the Aramaic author meant. Like D&C 65, it is revelation building on Daniel's image, not recovery of Daniel's original meaning. The honest questioner: Readers should see this as a Restoration reading laid over the text, accepted on the authority of later revelation rather than drawn from the Aramaic. The doctrinal connector: It is a revealed reinterpretation that places Daniel's courtroom inside the priesthood order of the plan of salvation.
An irony. John J. Collins identifies the "one like the Son of man" as the archangel Michael. Restoration scripture identifies Michael as Adam, the Ancient of days. There is an irony here: critical scholarship often finds Michael in the scene too, only in the other role. The six-outlooks essay puts it neatly: the two traditions agree that Michael belongs in this throne room. They put him in different seats. And the LDS scholar finds a deeper overlap: Yet the scholarly finding that Daniel's throne scene draws on an older picture of a divine council matches the Restoration's interest in a heavenly council more closely than either side usually admits.
"I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed" (7:13–14).
The six-outlooks essay borrows a framework from BYU's Donald W. Parry, written for Isaiah. His point is that a prophetic text can be read through more than one lens, and that reading it well usually takes several of them. The application to Daniel is the essayist's own: The application is mine, not his.
1. Historical context: the near view. The Aramaic kebar ʼenash means "one like a human being." The beasts rise from the sea; the kingdom of God arrives with the clouds in human form. The contrast is deliberate. The LDS scholar: Kingdoms that rise from the sea look like animals; the kingdom God gives looks human. Then the puzzle. The angel gives the kingdom to "the saints of the most High" (7:18, 22, 27), so many read the figure as faithful Israel; Collins reads an individual heavenly being, Michael. The twelfth-century commentator Ibn Ezra also read the figure as Israel, the holy people. The chapter itself moves from the one to the many. So the near view already contains a puzzle the chapter never settles: inside the vision the figure looks like an individual, but the angel's explanation points to a people. The academic scholar adds a caution: Either way, the phrase was not yet a title.
2. Prophecy: the distant view. At his trial the high priest asked Jesus whether he was the Christ. "I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven" (Mark 14:62). The high priest tore his clothes. Jesus had claimed for himself the throne-room figure who receives an everlasting dominion. This was not only a Christian move; the Similitudes of Enoch and 4 Ezra 13 already read the figure as an individual end-time redeemer. The distant view, in other words, is not only a later Christian reading. The rabbi confirms that Jewish tradition reads 7:13 messianically too: Rashi says flatly on 7:13 that the one like a man "is the King Messiah." But he draws the line where the Akiva story drew it: But the Messiah of Jewish tradition is a human king, not a divine person. The honest questioner holds both: Christians take his use as disclosing its fullest meaning; the text's first meaning remains disputed.
3. Dual or multiple fulfillment. Parry's image is a layer cake. Daniel 7:13–14 may be the clearest layer cake in the Old Testament, because each layer has its own text behind it. The second-century BC layer: the saints survive the horn. The first-century layer: Jesus takes the title. The latter-day layer: the council at Adam-ondi-Ahman. The model also resolves the near-view puzzle, since the dominion goes to "him" in 7:14 and to "the people of the saints" in 7:27. The prophecy can be fulfilled first in a people, then in a person, then in the person sharing his kingdom with the people.
4. Likening it to us. Daniel's word for "interpretation" is pesher, the word the Qumran community used for commentaries that read the prophets as being about their own sect and their own last days. Likening, then, is a cousin of pesher, but with a guardrail. Likening keeps the near view and then asks what it means for us. We too live among beasts that "devour" and "break in pieces" (7:7). The passage does not promise they will leave. It promises that real dominion is not theirs to keep: "they had their dominion taken away" (7:12). The rabbi adds a caution about the opposite temptation, turning "a time and times" into a calendar. Jews have calculated, and been burned. The Talmud curses those who calculate the end, and Maimonides makes it law to wait. To a Latter-day Saint reader who sees the stone "cut out without hands" (2:34) as a kingdom already rolling forth, Jewish tradition offers no rebuttal, only a caution earned by experience.
5. Personal reading. Following Elder Dallin H. Oaks, Parry's fifth outlook allows that scripture can open revelation that has little to do with the author's meaning. The six-outlooks essay offers examples, not doctrine. One reader might stop at the passive clause, "they brought him near before him." Even the Son of man is presented; someone else brings him into the presence. Another might stop at the chapter's last verse: "my cogitations much troubled me... but I kept the matter in my heart" (7:28). The practical disciple stops there too. Daniel did not understand everything he saw. He did not drop it or announce a theory. He kept it, and kept working. The six-outlooks essay's warning applies: Both are the kind of thing Parry's fifth outlook expects, and both should be held as personal rather than taught as the meaning of the text.
6. Doctrine. Moses 6:57: "in the language of Adam, Man of Holiness is his name, and the name of his Only Begotten is the Son of Man, even Jesus Christ, a righteous Judge." In Restoration teaching the title is not mainly about Jesus' humanity. It is a statement of his parentage: he is the Son of the Man of Holiness. The doctrinal connector notes that Moses 6:57's "righteous Judge" suits the setting: That fits Daniel's scene, which is a court: "the judgment was set." Then, how the kingdom is held. In 7:14 the Son of man does not seize dominion as the beasts do. It "was given him." And it is shared: given to "him" in 7:14 and to "the saints" in 7:18 and 27. The lesson points to D&C 121:46, "thy dominion shall be an everlasting dominion, and without compulsory means it shall flow unto thee forever and ever." The difference is in "without compulsory means." Every beast rules by devouring and stamping; the saints' power is defined by its opposite. What makes it everlasting is the way it is held.
The six-outlooks essay ends where the dating Wrestle in Session 1 began. Whether a reader dates chapter 7 to the sixth century or the second, the doctrine is the same: the beasts' dominion is "prolonged for a season and time" (7:12), and the Son of man's is given and permanent.
The academic scholar sees a book built in layers: the tales teach how to keep faith while serving someone else's empire, and The vision answers an emergency, an empire turned persecutor, and says the empires are beasts whose time is measured. The honest questioner, after every dispute: The book never claims God always delivers. It shows faithful people deciding, before they know the outcome, that they will not bow. The rabbi returns to the window. Nebuchadnezzar learns that the Most High rules on all fours in a field; Belshazzar learns it too late. Daniel learns it kneeling at his window three times a day, in good years and bad, in a city that was not his. And the practical disciple: Endurance in Daniel mostly means showing up honestly to the same job for decades, praying at the same window, and keeping hard questions in your heart without letting them push you off course.
Think deeply.