Bible Commentaries

Daniel 7:1

I am amusing myself with thinking of the prophecy of Daniel as a sort of allegory. All those monstrous, "rombustical" beasts with their horns—the horn with eyes and a mouth speaking proud things, and the little horn that waxed rebellious and stamped on the stars, seem like my passions and vain fancies, which are to be knocked down one after another—until all is subdued with a universal kingdom over which the Ancient of Days presides—the spirit of Love—the Catholicism of the universe—if you can attach any meaning to such a phrase.

—George Eliot to Sara Hennell

Daniel 7:10

Compare the reference in Tennyson's "Sea Dreams," and this rabbinic saying: "Consider three things, and thou wilt not fall into the hands of transgression: know what is above thee, a seeing eye, a hearing ear, and all thy deeds written in a book".

References.—VII:10.—J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons (6th Series), p214. J. Keble, Sermons for Advent to Christmas Eve.

Daniel 7:12

By resigning His strength, by declining to appeal to force, by committing Himself into God's hand, Jesus took the direct path to supreme power and universal dominion. Such is the honour which He felt to be owing to the kingdom of the Truth, to leave it to win its own way against the suffrages of all men. "He must reign...." Christ steals on and on in the world of human thought, and the enmity of one age falls before Him in the next. "Every battle (among men) is with confused noise and garments rolled in blood;" but after quite another manner God is bringing about the unification of all nations under Christ. Truth's battle which is Love's success, steals on, like some sweet mystic fire which "subdues all things to itself.

—Dr. John Pulsford.

Reference.—VIII.—J. G. Murphy, The Book of Daniel , p140.