Judgment in Daniel 7

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Judgment in Daniel 7is written in 2:2, and its verbs are in the perfect ("sat"t'were opened").This section brings the preparations for the judgment to a fitting andpunctiliar close.The actual acts ofjudging are not described here; we are only providedwith a picture ofthe commencement of that judgment. This is one way ofemphasizing the fact that what is undertaken here is a new divine act ofjudgment in contrastwith thoseviews ofjudgmentfrom the tabernacle andtemple elsewhere described in the 01:As a concluding note to the poetic analysis provided above, it may beobserved that this stanza conforms to the canons ofclassical poetic expressionfrom OT times. It ranks along with the best of the other examples ofthese poetic techniques. This lends minor support to an early date forDaniel since the use of the classical canons of Hebrew poetry faded fromJewish literature in the last centuries B.C.Daniel 7:13-14Verse13a13b14a14bTranslationI saw in the visions of the nightAnd behold, with the clouds of heavenOne like a Son of man came;And to the Ancient of days he reached,and before him they brought him near;And to him was given dominion and gloryand kingdom,and all the peoples, the nations, and thelanguages shall worship him;His dominion is an everlasting dominion,which shall not pass away,and his kingdom one that shall not bedestroyed.*Ext =extrametrical; synt =synthetic; syn =synonymous.**Pt =participle; pf =perfect; impf =imperfect.Parallelism Verbaland Meter· Forms··ext pt + pfsynt,4:4syn,4:2synt, 5:5syn,5:3pt + pfpfpfpfimpfimpfimpfThe poetic structure in these verses is not chiastic as in verses 9-10.Rather, the passage is in the nature of a pair of parallel couplets. Thesemay be outlined as on the following page:122
Judgment in Daniel 7I. The Son of man, verse 131. His arrival 13a2. His presentation 13bII. The kingdom, verse 141. Its presentation 14a2. Its nature 14bThe meter expressed in the bicola of this stanza is longer than thatfound in the preceding stanza (vss. 9-10). Even though the precedingstanzawas writtenwith six bicola and this with four, the length ofthis stanzaalmost equals that of the preceding one with a total of 32 stress accents,compared with 36 in the preceding stanza.Only one of the four bicola in this stanza-the second-is as shortmeterwise as any ofthose found in its predecessor. The meterofthis stanzaalso lengthens progressively so that the first bicola of these couplets goesfrom 4:4 to 5:5, and the second bicola goes from 4:2 to 5:3. The former arebalanced (4:4, 5:5), and the latter are unbalanced (4:2, 5:3).Thus the couplets follow the same pattern, with the exception that thesecond couplet is longer than the first. In this way a climax is built. Theapex of the poetic crescendo of the two stanzas may be found in the 5:5bicolon, which tells about the kingdom being given to the Son of man.The first bicolon of the stanza starts with the exclamation, "behold!"It calls attention to how deeply the prophet was involved with this sceneas it passed before him. (Comparesimilar references throughout-thevisionin verses 2, 7-9.)The verbs used for the approach of the Son of man to the Ancient ofdays are different in all three cases ("came"t'reached"/"brought near").In the first instance a compound construction is used with a participle ofthe verb "to come" and a perfect of the verb "to be" ('llleh haWlih). Thisconstruction is another way to express the past tense ("One ... came").The second verb is a simple perfect ofmetllh (to come, reach, arrive). Thethird verb is also a perfect, but it is a plural written in a causative form fromtheverb qerel2. (to come near, before). The antecedentsubject ofthis pluralverb is "the clouds of heaven" (vs. 13a) with which the Son of man came.The use of three different kinds of perfect verbal constructions todescribe the movement of the Son of man to the Ancient ofdays emphasizesthat movement as a process. The verbs suggest that he came closerand closer and closer to the Ancient ofdays.The same feature is emphasized by the poetic structure in which thismovement is couched. The meter ofthe first bicolon is 4:4, giving it a total123
Page 1 and 2: Chapter VJudgment in Daniel 7Chapte
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Judgment in Daniel 7

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