Judgment in Daniel 7

Judgment in Daniel 7This relationship emphasizes the thematic connections between thecontent of these two stanzas. The Ancient of days comes upon the scenein the first, and the judgment begins. In the second stanza the Son ofmancomes upon the scene at the end of that judgment, and it is as a result ofthatjudgment that the kingdom is conferred upon him. In brief, therefore,these two stanzas provide us with two pictures of the judgment: its beginningand its end. Their separation into two poetic stanzas, between whicha piece ofprose intelVenes, suggests thatsome time was to elapse betweenthe realization ofthese two events. Thecourseofthejudgmentin betweenthem is not described.The second verb ("shall worship") in the bicolon, which refers to thekingdom being given to the Son ofman (vs. 14a), is particularly importantto note. Its root, pela/1, identifies the action in which all of the nations,peoples, and tongues will participate as worship. The Son of man is thusto be worshiped by every human being who will populate his new worldwideand eternal kingdom. This is another indication ofthe divine characterof the Son of man, since only a divine supra-angelical personage likethe Ancient of days is worthy of such worship. The extent and nature ofthe kingdom to be given Him also suggests that the Son of man is divinein character.Theword used for "dominion" (saltan) is related to our loanword "sultan."No future person or power such as those represented by the precedingbeasts and horns are to receive or to take this dominion from Him. Incontrast to the kingdoms represented by thebeasts and horns, the kingdomof the Son of man will never be destroyed. The shift in the tense of theverbs employed in the stanza emphasizes this point.Verbs in the form ofthe Hebrew perfect occur throughout the stanzauntil its last three lines or colons. These verbs may be described as "propheticperfects," as are also the verbs in the first and last bicola of thepreceding stanza (vss. 9-10). (The "prophetic perfect" is an expressionused to designate a phenomenon in the Hebrewlanguage in which afutureevent is stated in the perfect form oftheverb as though it had already happened.)This usage of the perfect is common to OT prophecy.With the last lines ofthis stanza, however, there is a shift to imperfects("shall worship," "shall not pass away," "shall not be destroyed"). Theseverbal expressions do not emphasize so much the future occurrenceofthiskingdom as they do its ongoing and enduring nature. The last two verbsthat express this idea ("shall not pass away, shall not be destroyed") arepaired together at the end of the last bicolon ofthe stanza. The second of126