Texts in Conversation
Daniel 12 depicts the wise shining like stars, recalling the servant in Isaiah 52 who acts wisely and is exalted, showing how Daniel reworks Isaiah’s servant figure to depict the faithful as teachers whose endurance and insight provide the backdrop for divine vindication.
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Isaiah 52:13
Hebrew Bible
11 Leave! Leave! Get out of there! Don’t touch anything unclean! Get out of it! Stay pure, you who carry the Lord’s holy items. 12 Yet do not depart quickly or leave in a panic. For the Lord goes before you; the God of Israel is your rear guard. 13 Look, my servant will act wisely!20 He will be elevated, lifted high, and greatly exalted— 14 (just as many were horrified by the sight of you) he was so disfigured he no longer looked like a man; his form was so marred he no longer looked human— 15 so now he will startle many nations. Kings will be shocked by his exaltation, for they will witness something unannounced to them, and they will understand something they had not heard about.
Date: 7th-5th Centuries B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Daniel 12:3
Hebrew Bible
1 “At that time Michael, the great prince who watches over your people, will arise. There will be a time of distress unlike any other from the nation’s beginning up to that time. But at that time your own people, all those whose names are found written in the book, will escape. 2 Many of those who sleep in the dusty ground will awake—some to everlasting life, and others to shame and everlasting abhorrence. 3 But the wise will shine like the brightness of the heavenly expanse. And those bringing many to righteousness will be like the stars forever and ever. 4 “But you, Daniel, close up these words and seal the book until the time of the end. Many will dash about, and knowledge will increase.” 5 I, Daniel, watched as two others stood there, one on each side of the river.
Date: 2nd Century B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Just as the reign of the last “king of the north” is described in terms reminiscent of Isaiah’s claims concerning Assyria (Daniel 11:10, 36, 40–45), so his counterpart, the “wise” or “teachers” among the faithful of the people Israel, are likewise described in terms evocative of an arresting Isaian figure: the Servant of YHWH in Isaiah 52–53. This allusion is striking on a number of counts, not least Daniel’s interpretation of the Servant figure and the extent to which the figure is developed in this last apocalypse of the book of Daniel ..."
Lester, G. Brooke
Daniel Evokes Isaiah: Allusive Characterization of Foreign Rule in the Hebrew-Aramaic Book of Daniel
(p. 94) Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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