3:24 Then King Nebuchadnezzar was startled and quickly got up. He said to his ministers, “Wasn’t it three men that we tied up and threw 6 into 7 the fire?” They replied to the king, “For sure, O king.”
7:6 “After these things, 8 as I was watching, another beast 9 like a leopard appeared, with four bird-like wings on its back. 10 This beast had four heads, 11 and ruling authority was given to it.
7:11 “Then I kept on watching because of the arrogant words of the horn that was speaking. I was watching 12 until the beast was killed and its body destroyed and thrown into 13 the flaming fire.
8:5 While I was contemplating all this, 14 a male goat 15 was coming from the west over the surface of all the land 16 without touching the ground. This goat had a conspicuous horn 17 between its eyes.
1 tc The MT lacks the conjunction, reading the first word in the phrase as a construct (“wisdom of insight”). While this reading is not impossible, it seems better to follow Theodotion, the Syriac, the Vulgate, and the Sahidic Coptic, all of which have the conjunction.
2 tn Heb “hands.”
3 tn Aram “a revealer of mysteries.” The phrase serves as a quasi-title for God in Daniel.
4 tn Aram “in the latter days.”
5 tn Aram “your dream and the visions of your head upon your bed.”
5 tn Aram “we threw…bound.”
6 tn Aram “into the midst of.”
7 tn Aram “this.” So also in v. 7.
8 tn Aram “and behold, another one.”
9 tn Or “sides.”
10 sn If the third animal is Greece, the most likely identification of these four heads is the four-fold division of the empire of Alexander the Great following his death. See note on Dan 8:8.
9 tc The LXX and Theodotion lack the words “I was watching” here. It is possible that these words in the MT are a dittography from the first part of the verse.
10 tn Aram “and given over to” (so NRSV).
11 tn The words “all this” are added in the translation for stylistic reasons and for clarification.
12 tn Heb “and behold, a he-goat of the goats.”
13 tn Or “of the whole earth” (NAB, ASV, NASB, NRSV).
14 tn Heb “a horn of vision” [or “conspicuousness”], i.e., “a conspicuous horn,” one easily seen.
13 tc This phrase, repeated from v. 1, is absent in Theodotion.
14 tn The Hebrew text has “books”; the word “sacred” has been added in the translation to clarify that it is Scriptures that are referred to.
15 sn The tetragrammaton (the four Hebrew letters which constitute the divine Name, YHWH) appears eight times in this chapter, and nowhere else in the book of Daniel.
16 map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.