Daniel 2:2

2:2 The king issued an order ¹  to summon the magicians, astrologers, sorcerers, and wise men ²  in order to explain his dreams to him. ³  So they came and awaited the king’s instructions. ⁴ 

Daniel 2:23

2:23 O God of my fathers, I acknowledge and glorify you,

for you have bestowed wisdom and power on me.

Now you have enabled me to understand what I ⁵  requested from you.

For you have enabled me to understand the king’s dilemma.” ⁶ 

Daniel 4:26

4:26 They said to leave the taproot of the tree, for your kingdom will be restored to you when you come to understand that heaven ⁷  rules.

Daniel 5:3

5:3 So they brought the gold and silver ⁸  vessels that had been confiscated from the temple, the house of God ⁹  in Jerusalem, and the king and his nobles, together with his wives and concubines, drank from them.

Daniel 5:5

5:5 At that very moment the fingers of a human hand appeared ¹⁰  and wrote on the plaster of the royal palace wall, opposite the lampstand. ¹¹  The king was watching the back ¹²  of the hand that was writing.

Daniel 9:2

9:2 in the first year of his reign ¹³  I, Daniel, came to understand from the sacred books ¹⁴  that, according to the word of the LORD ¹⁵  disclosed to the prophet Jeremiah, the years for the fulfilling of the desolation of Jerusalem ¹⁶  were seventy in number.

¹ tn Heb “said.” So also in v. 12.

² tn Heb “Chaldeans.” The term Chaldeans (Hebrew כַּשְׂדִּים, kasdim) is used in the book of Daniel both in an ethnic sense and, as here, to refer to a caste of Babylonian wise men and astrologers.

³ tn Heb “to explain to the king his dreams.”

⁴ tn Heb “stood before the king.”

⁵ tn Aram “we.” Various explanations have been offered for the plural, but it is probably best understood as the editorial plural; so also with “me” later in this verse.

⁶ tn Aram “the word of the king.”

⁹ sn The reference to heaven here is a circumlocution for God. There was a tendency in Jewish contexts to avoid direct reference to God. Cf. the expression “kingdom of heaven” in the NT and such statements as “I have sinned against heaven and in your sight” (Luke 15:21).

¹³ tc The present translation reads וְכַסְפָּא (vÿkhaspa’, “and the silver”) with Theodotion and the Vulgate. Cf. v. 2. The form was probably accidentally dropped from the Aramaic text by homoioteleuton.

¹⁴ tn Aram “the temple of the house of God.” The phrase seems rather awkward. The Vulgate lacks “of the house of God,” while Theodotion and the Syriac lack “the house.”

¹⁷ tn Aram “came forth.”

¹⁸ sn The mention of the lampstand in this context is of interest because it suggests that the writing was in clear view.

¹⁹ tn While Aramaic פַּס (pas) can mean the palm of the hand, here it seems to be the back of the hand that is intended.

²¹ tc This phrase, repeated from v. 1, is absent in Theodotion.

²² 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.

²³ 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.

²⁴ map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.