Daniel 9:1-12: Ultimate Fulfillment
Sunday, August 31, 2025
Written on January 9 and posted today as a favorite . . .
In today’s Noontime, footnotes tell us that the Darius the Mede whom we see in this prophecy is “unknown in profane history. The Median kingdom had already been conquered by Cyrus the Persian, and it was Cyrus who captured Babylon. Evidently the author of Daniel has deliberately adopted an apocalyptic view of history, derived from prophecy . . . according to which the Medes form the second of four world kingdoms preceding the messianic times . . . The character of Darius the Mede has probably been modeled on that of the Persian King Darius the Great (522-486 B.C.), the second successor of Cyrus.” (Senior 1096)
Further commentary tells us that “the prophet Jeremiah (25,11; 29,10) prophesied a Babylonian captivity of seventy years, a round number signifying the complete passing away of the existing generation, Jeremiah’s prophesy was fulfilled in the capture of Babylon by Cyrus and the subsequent return of the Jews to Palestine. However, the author of Daniel, living during the persecution of Antiochus, sees the conditions of the exile still existing; therefore in his mediation he extends Jeremiah’s number to seventy weeks of years (v 24), i.e., seven times seventy years, to characterize the Jewish victory over the Seleucids as the ultimate fulfillment of the prophecy.” (Senior 1100-1101)
What we see today is not a story about people or places we know in history. Nor is it a story about a particular time in our human record that has little to do with us in 2011. What we have before us is the story of how we – like Daniel – might interact with God’s messenger and with God himself. It is the story about the ultimate fulfillment of prophecy. It is the story of how God visits us constantly, how God interacts with us, and how God always keeps his promises.
When we flag or lose faith, when we are exhausted from the effort of our journey, when we are at the point of feeling that our exile will never end, we might – like Daniel – turn to God, acknowledge our humanity, and enter into a dialog with the divine. For it is through our trials, when we drop our defenses against God’s presence in our lives, that we are most intimate with God. And it is through our anguish and suffering that we encounter our divinity within. This is the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promises to us – to live freely and wholly in the Spirit.
A re-post from August 9, 2011.
Image from: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2005/02/06/arts/06devr_CA0ready.html
Senior, Donald, ed. THE CATHOLIC STUDY BIBLE. New York, Oxford University Press, 1990.1096,1100-1101. Print.
The Noontimes 