God’s Word for You

Daniel 1:1 The third year of Jehoiakim

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Saturday, August 16, 2025

THE CAPTIVITY AND APOCALYPSE OF DANIEL

The three great prophets that follow after Isaiah (who lived in an earlier generation) are presented in the Bible in order of their length: Jeremiah (with Lamentations), Ezekiel, and then Daniel. They were more or less contemporaries with one another, and each prophet was connected to each of the three deportations of Israelites to Babylon. It happens that the three prophets are therefore chronologically in reverse order, since Daniel went with the very first exiles in 605 BC, Ezekiel with the second wave in 597 BC (see Ezekiel 1:2), and Jeremiah was about to depart with the third and final group in 587 when a Babylonian officer recognized him and released him from his chains, permitting him to remain behind (Jeremiah 40:1-4).

Like Ezra, Daniel is written in two languages, Aramaic (2:4b-7:8) and Hebrew (1:1-2:4a, 8:1-12:13). Daniel is among the more popular books found among the fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, with fragments from eight different copies of the book in evidence. The later appearance of three additions to Daniel among the Apocryphal books does not call into question the canonicity of the Book of Daniel. Instead, it rather more confirms Daniel’s status as a widely accepted book, with so many “children” grasping at its skirts from a fairly early date.

Daniel was written by the title character while in Babylon in the sixth century BC. He himself says that he was taken to Babylon in the first group assembled by Nebuchadnezzar in the third year of King Jehoiakim (1:1). Nebuchadnezzar’s chief court official Ashpenaz selected promising, intelligent and good-looking young men to learn Aramaic and the literature of the Chaldeans. One of these was Daniel (1:4-5) along with the men we usually call Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. If Daniel was perhaps 15 when he was taken into captivity, and spent three years learning Aramaic and Babylonian literature (1:4-5), he would have entered into Nebuchadnezzar’s service when he was about 18, and lived at least until the 530s BC when Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered Babylon. Daniel would have been in his eighties at that time.

During the later years of Daniel’s life, especially from about 550 to 535, the prophet began to have many visions of the coming of Christ, the last days, and the last judgment. In fact, Daniel specifically prophesies that the “seventy weeks of years” (that is, seventy groups of seven years each) equals 490 years from the time of Darius to the time of Christ (Daniel 9:1,24). He says, “Seventy weeks of years (‘sevens’) are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy” (Daniel 9:24). That Darius that Daniel was preaching to was “Darius son of Xerxes,” who began his reign in 465 BC. From this, as Luther says, “Seventy weeks of years add up to four hundred and ninety years. This is how long men were still supposed to wait for Christ, and then his kingdom was to begin” (Preface to the Prophet Daniel, LW 35:303). And 490 years after the beginning of the reign of Darius son of Xerxes comes to about 25 or 26 AD, when Jesus Christ would have been about 29 or 30 years old, the year that he was baptized by John and began his ministry, just as Luke says: “Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry” (Luke 3:23). “Thus,” Luther goes on to say, “Daniel proclaims not only the time but also the activity, shape, and nature of that time. And this strengthens our Christian faith immeasurably and makes us sure and firm in our consciences. For we see in operation before our very eyes that which he described and depicted for us so plainly and correctly in his book so long ago” (LW 35:314).

The first part of the book is about Daniel’s days in captivity. The second part is a series of prophecies that are all connected about the coming of Christ, the coming of Antichrist, and the Last Judgment. This is the outline of the book, listing the kings he served under. Notice that the kings of the captivity naturally overlap once again in the prophetic portion.

THE CAPTIVITY OF DANIEL

Ch. 1   Prologue (Nebuchadnezzar)
Ch. 2   The Dream of the Statue (Nebuchadnezzar)
Ch. 3   The Three Men in the Fiery Furnace (Nebuchadnezzar)
Ch. 4   The King’s Madness (Nebuchadnezzar)
Ch. 5   The Writing on the Wall (Belshazzar)
Ch. 6   Daniel in the Lion’s Den (Darius, and Cyrus)

THE APOCALYPSE OF DANIEL

Ch. 7   Dream of Four Beasts (Belshazzar)
Ch. 8   A Ram and a Goat (Belshazzar)
Ch. 9   The Seventy “sevens” (Darius)
Ch. 10 Supernatural powers fight over God’s people (Cyrus)
Ch. 11 The Most Detailed Prediction in Scripture (Cyrus)
Ch. 12 A Final Word of Cheer (Cyrus)

1:1 In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and laid siege to it.

Daniel begins by recalling his youth. He was born during the reign of King Josiah, who reigned from 640-609 BC. I think that it’s likely that Daniel was about 15 years old when he was captured by the Babylonians, and since Nebuchadnezzar came in the third year of Josiah’s son Jehoiakim (609-598), Daniel’s capture would have come about 606 or 605 BC, this would make the year he was born about 620 BC. We say that Daniel was taken in 605 BC because it’s clear from Jeremiah 25:1 and 46:2 that the usual Hebrew reckoning placed Nebuchadnezzar’s siege in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, not “the third year” as Daniel says. The issue is not an error in the Scripture, but that the Babylonians counted their years differently, and Daniel is writing his book to people (both Jews and Gentiles) in Babylon, and therefore he generally uses the chronology of his captors. We will use 605 BC as our date without further argument.

This is the only passage of the Bible that says that Nebuchadnezzar actually laid siege to Jerusalem, but without David’s ingenuity (2 Samuel 5:8), there was no other way to capture the city.

Where here are law and gospel? If we endeavor to “correctly handle the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15), we should be able to identify and apply law and gospel in the holy Scriptures. “From age to age, authors (of the Bible) separated by centuries proclaim the law and the gospel. The message becomes ever more complete, but all of it is already implicit in Genesis 3” (Deutschlander, Grace Abounds, p. 41).

Here there is law in the attack of Nebuchadnezzar, since God himself said, “I am raising up the Babylonians, that ruthless and impetuous people, who sweep across the whole earth to seize dwelling places not their own” (Habakkuk 1:6). The Lord sent the Babylonians, not only to overthrow Assyria (as Habakkuk was told) but to punish Judah and Jerusalem for their idolatry and unbelief. “I will punish you as your deeds deserve, declares the Lord. I will kindle a fire in your forests that will consume everything around you” (Jeremiah 21:14).

The gospel here is that Nebuchadnezzar was the one doing the attacking. He made it his practice, as we shall see, of deporting promising young men, the cream of the conquered nation, to enter into service in his own government. From such a position, God was going to raise up Daniel and others to be burning beacons of righteousness for the people of God to see, and to give them comfort and hope through his preaching. Daniel would quote from Jeremiah to assure the people that their captivity would end in seventy years. Daniel would be the one to point ahead so directly and exactly to the coming of the Messiah that the wise men of Babylon, four hundred and sixty years later (490 minus the youthful years of the Christ), would recognize the sign of a star in the east, and bring him gifts of gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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