God’s Word for You

Daniel 9:15-16 for us and for our salvation

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Tuesday, December 16, 2025

15 “And now, O Lord our God, who brought your people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand and made your name that endures even to this day—we have sinned. We have been wicked. 16 O Lord, as with all your righteous acts, let your anger and wrath turn away from your city Jerusalem, and away from your holy mountain; because of our sins and the guilt of our ancestors, Jerusalem and your people have become a disgrace to everyone around us.

With “and now,” Daniel wants bring out the core of his prayer, which is the petition that God would rescue his people. But first he remembers how God brought Israel out of Egypt “with a mighty hand” and that this amazing miracle actually brought God fame around the world. He is the God who brought his people out of their hard captivity. So now, Daniel is asking God to do only what he had done before, to save his people from their captivity, this time in Babylon. For God does not retire. What he did once, he can do again, unless it is one of those rare things he has promised never to do again (Genesis 9:15-16).

Yet, “We have sinned. We have been wicked.” Grammatically, “we have been wicked” is the correct translation since the verb is stative, not active, but theologically there is no difference between “we have done wickedly” and “we have been wicked.” For Jesus says, “the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart” (Luke 6:45). Therefore Daniel’s prayer is an expansion of “Deliver us from evil.” For when we pray that “that our Father in heaven would deliver us from every evil that threatens body and soul, property and reputation” (Small Catechism), we surely pray that he would deliver us from our own evil as well as all outside evils. Of course, outside evils begin with the devil. “It is he who obstructs everything that we pray for: God’s name or glory, God’s kingdom and will, our daily bread, a good conscience, and so on” (Large Catechism).

In verse 16, Daniel prays for God’s wrath to be removed from “from your city Jerusalem, and away from your holy mountain.” He does not say “away from your holy temple” because Daniel knew that it was in ruins. But the mountain was sacred on account of the prophecy Moses made, “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided” (Genesis 22:14). And how should we understand the “it” in that prophecy? It is nothing else than the sacrifice of the Son of God for the forgiveness of mankind’s sins. For the prophecy came immediately after the Lord provided a ram to be killed in place of Abraham’s son, Isaac. And so Abraham’s name for the mountain, Adonai Yireh, “The Lord Will Provide,” was itself a prophecy about the mountain.

For when Christ entered the world, he did not do so to wage physical wars and defeat armed enemies. He did not come seeking personal revenge for old grudges. He did not come attempting to carve out a physical kingdom for himself to rival his Father’s kingdom in the spiritual realm like some rebellious Greek or Latin demigod. He came “for us and for our salvation,” as we pray in the Nicene Creed. He was with his Father and the Holy Spirit in eternity, and he came for us, and he came to save us.

“Come with salvation for us!” was a prayer of the Psalms (Psalm 80:2), and a prayer of the Prophets: “Be our salvation in times of trouble” (Isaiah 33:2). For God, Paul says, “did not appoint us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:9). Daniel’s prayer is a quite humble prayer for this very salvation to come.

Come, Lord Jesus. You have saved us from our sins. Rescue us from this evil world, and bring us home safely to be with you in heaven. This is the peace that we have today, knowing that as wretched as our sins are, we have Jesus, and he has given to us himself.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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