Babylonian Bookends: The Offspring of Daniel

“Instead of seeking wisdom from the created heavens, the wise men now understood that ‘there is a God in heaven’ who reveals such secrets.”

“Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him” (Matthew 2:1-2).

An atheist friend once declared to me that a cumulative reading of the Bible makes no sense, since the Bible is not a single book but an anthology. Well, the Bible is indeed an anthology, but it was not only compiled but also inspired by a single Author.

Without such a foundation for hermeneutics, the significance of many of the historical details “planted” like seeds for us in the text goes unnoticed. One such overlooked “payoff” is the import of the appearance of the wise men from the east in Matthew 2.

A NEW COVENANT

The period from the exile to Christ was a unique era in Bible history. Instead of considering this half-millennium as a limbo of oppression, stagnation and unfulfilled promises, James Jordan observes that this was instead a time of preparation for the Gospel, and Israel was given a special ministry under a new covenant:

It is often overlooked that the restoration establishment was indeed a new covenant, and an advance in glory beyond the Davidic establishment. Whether we call the post-exilic establishment a new covenant or simply a “covenant renewal,” the fact is that there were very great changes involved in the new cosmos, changes equivalent to the changes involved in previous new covenants…

The Restoration is the least familiar and least studied phase of Old Covenant history. It is often assumed that the Kingdom of God went into the doldrums during this period, and that the people simply suffered until the coming of Messiah. Such an understanding of the postexilic era utterly fails to do justice to the case. The Restoration was actually a far more glorious time than ever before, in terms of spiritual power, though not in terms of outward glory and splendor.¹James B. Jordan, Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World, 244, 254.

Due to the failure of Israel’s kings, God put the nation through a death-and-resurrection, elevating his people to a higher court than that of David and Solomon—a Gentile one. Since they would not submit to the court of heaven, they would learn to serve a king of all kings on earth. By this “sacrificial” act, the influence of Israel expanded via the court of the emperor to all the nations under his rule.

In the ministry of the synagogues run by laymen, the Jews would now serve God in a prophetic capacity as a nation of teachers and witnesses throughout the oikoumene (a “household” of nations). This ministry began in the testimony of Daniel and his friends in the court of Nebuchadnezzar, which led to the conversion of the emperor, much as the witness of Joseph had led
to the conversion of Pharaoh.

THE TIMES OF THE GENTILES

This new “social architecture” is set up in the book of Daniel. The thrones of the ancient kings, including that of Solomon, were often surrounded by beasts, the symbolic meaning of which can be traced back to Genesis 1-2, the dominion over all flesh which was promised to Adam. Like the beasts in Genesis, these beasts were wild and intended to be subdued, but they were not inherently evil. James Jordan writes:

Daniel 7 first presents four composite beasts. These are not presented all at once, as in Ezekiel 1, but they are presented first in the order of the vision, as in Ezekiel 1. They are one beast, for each beast incorporates the previous, just as the statue of Daniel 1 had four sections or historical phases, but was one statue.

The cherubim guard God’s throne, and also with their wings form a boundary for the Chariot. Similarly, Daniel’s beasts, as some kind of earthly form of cherubim, are to guard God’s earthly people (the Jews) and form the boundaries of His Oikumene kingdom. Ezekiel’s beasts came down from the sky; Daniel’s come up from the great sea. The great sea is not the Mediterranean, because Babylon and Persia did not come from there. Nor is it some kind of mythological sea. Rather, in accordance with Biblical symbolism, the sea represents the Gentile world. These beasts are Gentile empires that are to act as guardian cherubim.

Some modern interpreters point to great “chaos beasts” as part of the ancient religions of the Near East, and assume that such dangerous and threatening beasts are in view. While educated Jews, like Daniel and his friends, would certainly know about such “chaos-monster myths,” they would also realize that this vision came from the same God who had revealed His chariot and His four beasts to Ezekiel. With their Jewish background, and with Ezekiel clearly in mind, Daniel and his friends would not have been drawn off by the red herring of “chaos-monsters,” but would have recognized the beasts of Daniel 7 as cherubic figures. Just as Satan was a fallen cherub, so these beasts might fall; but as Satan was created good at the beginning, so were these beasts.

Daniel’s beasts come in an historical order, each replaced in turn when it becomes evil and moves against God’s people in a climactic way (compare Daniel 5-6). When the fourth beast and his Little Horn sidekick turn against God’s people, the fifth and final kingdom, that of a man and not a beast, replaces it—just as the “stone cut without hands” replaced the statue in Daniel 2.²James B. Jordan, The Handwriting on the Wall: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel, 333-334.

Babylon was the first beast. Nebuchadnezzar himself, for cursing the children of Abraham, was humbled, subdued, by being transformed into a combination of “bird and beast,” a minister of the Covenant curses (Deuteronomy 28:26; 1 Samuel 17:44-46).The blessing for obedience to the Covenant was dominion over the beasts. The Covenant curse, however, was to be eaten by them.³For more discussion, see “Birds and Beasts” in Michael Bull, God’s Kitchen: Theology You Can Eat & Drink.

This 500 year “animal kingdom” was like the penultimate act of the Creation Week, the land filled with beasts but awaiting its human rulers, the Man and His Bride.⁴See the Creation Week recapitulated in Israel’s history in Michael Bull, Bible Matrix: An Introduction to the DNA of the Scriptures, 191.

The final guardian was Rome, and we see Roman authorities protecting Christians from Jewish persecution in the book of Acts. Under Nero and the Herods, the final beast turned bad. Jew and Gentile became united in their persecution of the Church. In their removal, the “times of the Gentiles,” through the removal of the Jew-Gentile distinction, circumcision and the law, came to an end (Luke 21:24; Romans 11:25; Revelation 11:2; 19:17-19).

What does all of this “oikoumene” background mean for Matthew 2? It reveals the significance of the visit of the wise men from the east.

READING THE STARS

This “Restoration Covenant” era began with young men of Judah taken as captives for training by the Chaldeans, the religious leaders of the Babylonian region. The book of Daniel presents them as characters similar to those in Pharaoh’s court, the men who opposed Moses. Daniel not only trumps their wisdom but ends up ruling over them. He was taken captive to be taught, but rather than seeking their power, he humbled himself and became the teacher.

Since Daniel ruled the wise men, he taught them the true source of wisdom, the Word of God, and redeemed them from pagan star gazing, a practice condemned by God because only He can interpret the stars, and He does so only to His prophets (Genesis 15:5; 22:17; 37:9, Deuteronomy 1:10; 4:19; 28:62, Judges 5:20; Isaiah 14:13; Jude 1:13; Revelation 1:16). Daniel was such a prophet, and he led these Gentiles to the truth concerning the stars. Stars are signs of the sons of God, those who are destined to ascend and rule the heavens.

Instead of seeking wisdom from the created heavens, the wise men now understood that “there is a God in heaven” who reveals such secrets. Daniel’s first resort after Nebuchadnezzar’s fury was to seek God, along with his brothers:

Then Daniel went to his house and made the matter known to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, his companions, and told them to seek mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery, so that Daniel and his companions might not be destroyed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon. (Daniel 2:17-18)

When summoned before the king in chapter 2, Daniel was as fearless concerning his testimony to the true God as he had been in chapter 1.

Daniel answered the king and said, “No wise men, enchanters, magicians, or astrologers can show to the king the mystery that the king has asked, but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days.” (Daniel 2:27-28)

It is unlikely that these events would have been forgotten, especially by the Chaldeans. This intervention by Daniel was a game changer. Indeed, it was remembered by the queen many decades later (Daniel 5:10-12), who advised that Daniel be called upon to interpret the handwriting on the wall for Belshazzar.

So, this era which began with Jews traveling to Babylon ends with a delegation of wise men traveling to Jerusalem. They were now far more enamored with the God of heaven than with the heavens themselves, and far more familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures than Herod and the rulers of Jerusalem. They would have known of Balaam’s prophecy concerning the star of Jacob (Numbers 24:15-19), and also the timing of the coming of the Messiah (Daniel 9). The irony of the fact that this infant king was a surprise to the rulers of Jerusalem, who it seems had no reliable prophets in their employ, would not have been lost on Matthew’s first readers. It is also the arrival of the wise men which sets the kingdom of the Herods against the kingdom of heaven. It was their testimony to Herod which brought about the massacre of the infants, an act which exposed the king as a man like Pharaoh, and his prophets as men like Jannes and Jambres (2 Timothy 3:8).

These believing wise men from the east understood the nature of true Kingdom. It was not in the study of the stars but in the knowledge of the one who made the stars “for signs and for seasons, and for days and years,” to be “lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth” (Genesis 1:14-15).

The Restoration Era is bookended by wise men, so we would do well to compare texts from the beginning with texts from the end. The first thing we might notice is that at the beginning, the wise men work for Nebuchadnezzar, but at the end they work for God:

“And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever. But you, Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book, until the time of the end.” (Daniel 12:3-4)

In Matthew, the time of the end, the last days (of Israel and the Old Covenant) was at hand, only one generation away. The appearance of the Chaldeans is thus the beginning of the end. While those from the east were bringing their glory into the kingdom, the Herods were behaving like the sons of Joktan, the Shemites who “journeyed from the east” but ended up compromising with Nimrod’s Babel project, seeking a name for themselves rather than seeking God (Genesis 10-11:9).⁵James Jordan observes that the building of Babel always required a compromise by the people of God, a false witness, but that the building of the house and city of God always required the aid of … Continue reading

Matthew’s narrative begins with wise men who were “angels” from the courts of earthly kings, guardians who had protected Israel until she gave birth to the promised One. They remembered Daniel of the tribe of Judah, the humble man without a kingdom whose only boast was in his God:

Then the king gave Daniel high honors and many great gifts, and made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon and chief prefect over all the wise men of Babylon. (Daniel 1:48)

Thanks to Daniel, they were not like the wise men of Nebuchadnezzar:

The Chaldeans answered the king and said, “There is not a man on earth who can meet the king’s demand, for no great and powerful king has asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or Chaldean. The thing that the king asks is difficult, and no one can show it to the king except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh.” (Daniel 2:10-11)

Now that they worshiped the God of heaven, He was not only pleased to speak to these converted wise men in dreams as He did to Daniel (Matthew 2:12), He was pleased to meet them in person, as a man on earth, a God who now dwelt in flesh.

This essay is a chapter from Inquiétude: Essays for a People without Eyes.