The book of Daniel is comprised of two pillars, one for Babylon and one for Persia. Each column begins and ends with a notable reference to food.
It is said that God works in mysterious ways, but God’s ways are only mysterious if we are not paying attention. At the beginning of every one of his “ways” in history is a sign, and that sign is usually a person.
History’s Heads
What God does in that individual not only qualifies them for what God will then do through that individual but also prefigures the later, “corporate” work. The “Adamic” work will be multiplied in a “bride.” Perhaps the most obvious example is the 40 years that Moses spent as a shepherd in the wilderness before the Lord returned him to Egypt to shepherd Israel through the wilderness. This “head-and-body” pattern is found throughout the Bible in both the cultus and the culture.
Just as individual sin, if it is not nipped in the bud, grows into corporate sin, so corporate holiness begins with a sanctified individual. God “rips open” the Man to make a “holy place.” In this way, he becomes a household for others. The verse that describes the creation of Adam (Genesis 2:7) subtly works through the heptamerous pattern that undergirds both the Creation Week and Israel’s later festal calendar because Adam was to become a “booth,” that is, a fruitful tree who would provide food and shelter for all humanity. However, when God came looking for spiritual fruit, all He found was a temporary covering of dying leaves. Later history shows that as the Man becomes a Holy Husbandman, so the barrenness and trouble of Eve is removed. This is the case with all of the famous “heads” throughout the Old Testament. Each time God pruned Adam’s “family tree,” history was continued in a fruitful Branch.
“…by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous…” (Isaiah 53:11)
This head-and-body pattern—observed in the Ascension offering in Leviticus 1, and also in the “crowning” of a child’s head unless it is a breech birth—is why God set Moses apart from Israel as a holy “head.” But it is also why God set the Tabernacle of Moses apart from the tents of Israel as a holy “head” in legal and architectural terms. The Tabernacle was humaniform. It represented Adam laid out upon the ground. Like Adam, it had a head (the Ark) and a body, but it also comprised the head of a greater body. Around this tent of blood, God arranged a multiplied “body” of tents, a “bride” that was literally, “awesome as an army with banners” (Song of Solomon 6:4, 10).
Daniel’s Pillars
Before and after the exile of Israel, God spoke through prophets who functioned as sacrificial heads. But it was Daniel who actually served as the foundation for the establishment of a “resurrected” Israel, a body free from the old idolatries, a nation that would no longer need the Ark of the Testimony because the Law would be written on the hearts of the people.
The entire restoration era rested upon the faithfulness of one young Judahite whose courageous yet humble ministry began with a simple refusal to compromise in a “day of small things.” The long shadow of Daniel was a robe of righteousness, a flowing train that reached from the judgment of the first Temple to the judgment of the last. God transforms a life of faithful witness into a legacy that benefits many generations.
This fact might have some bearing on the literary structure of the book of Daniel. I have long been dissatisfied with the various attempts to make sense of the overall arrangement of the book (including my own), but now believe that it was shaped by the Spirit to represent two pillars. Each of them works vertically through the fivefold covenant pattern. Just like the pillars of the Temple of Solomon, one related to the office of Priest and the other to the office of King. The one who is meek before heaven as a priest is given authority not only to rule as a king but also to speak as a prophet. Daniel’s prophecy is thus the Word in the Garden after the imperial “flood” had judged and disempowered the mighty men of the old order.
Although the complete structure echoes that of the Ten Words, the book does not work through the Words as dyads but as separate columns. The first literary column describes Daniel’s ministry under the government of Babylon, and the second his ministry under the subsequent government of Persia. Each column begins and ends with a notable reference to food, whether that be an act of fasting or feasting.
To mitigate the curses of the Mosaic Covenant, the High Priest made two approaches to the Most Holy on the Day of Atonement—one for the Head (the rulers, with the blood of a bull) and one for the Body (the people, with the blood of a goat). Just as Israel represented all nations, so one man represented all Israel. One man would “die” for the people. In this case, that man was Daniel. Each of the pillars rests upon his faithfulness in the face of a life-and-death call to compromise.
We see the same Head-and-Body (totus Christus) structure in the book of Daniel. The book is comprised of a priestly forming and a kingly filling. Together, these two Edenic “legs” are the future, the “walk with God” of the prophet (Daniel 9:20-23), the man who is himself a sign. Thus, as two holy pillars, the life and testimony of Daniel was itself the “Adamic” blueprint upon which the new Temple would rest. Daniel’s ministry as the chief wise man in the highest human court was a microcosm of Israel’s “latter day” ministry until AD70. His service to the first empire laid the foundation for Israel’s ministry to all four empires, culminating in the fifth, the cosmic court of Christ.
Another facet of the book, when taken in a completely linear fashion, is the significance of the switch from Hebrew to Aramaic after chapter one, and the reversion to Hebrew in chapter 8. Although each column works from “above” to “beside” to “below” in a covenant-legal process, perhaps this there-and-back-again in tongues describes an overall “Garden, Land, World” pattern, with the Aramaic chapters indicating the period of Daniel’s service in the court, and thus his use of non-Israelite scribes. The Aramaic section begins and ends with a vision of the four kingdoms and their ultimate obsolescence.
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