Biblion Bible Commentary
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Michael Stands Up
Daniel 12:1-3
1 “At that time Michael will stand up, the great prince who stands for the children of your people; and there will be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time. At that time your people will be delivered, everyone who is found written in the book. · WEB
The great prince stands up, the worst trouble in history arrives with deliverance inside it, and the dead in the dust awake to two destinies.
At that time Michael will stand up, the great prince who stands for the children of your people Daniel 12:1.
The ally named in the last chapter Daniel 10:13 Daniel 10:21 takes the field. Stands up is a royal action in this book — kings stand up to reign Daniel 11:2–3 Daniel 8:23 — and the office is given in the same breath: the great prince who stands for the children of your people, the one who takes their side. The name means who is like God?, the question the whole book has been asking of every power that magnified itself Daniel 11:36.
And there will be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time.
The worst distress in history, and the vision does not soften it. The Lord used this verse's own measure of the tribulation he foretold Matthew 24:21, and Jeremiah had called the same season the time of Jacob's trouble while promising he would be saved out of it Jeremiah 30:7.
At that time your people will be delivered, everyone who is found written in the book.
Deliverance is inside the trouble, not instead of it, and the criterion is a register — written in the book, the record Scripture speaks of repeatedly Exodus 32:32 Malachi 3:16 Luke 10:20 Revelation 20:12. The books had been opened in the court Daniel watched Daniel 7:10; here they determine who is brought through.
Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt Daniel 12:2.
The Old Testament's plainest resurrection text, and its terms are exact. Death is sleep in the dust of the earth — unconscious, located in the ground, and temporary; the figure is Scripture's settled way of speaking, and the Lord used it of a man four days dead and then said plainly that he was dead John 11:11–14 Psalms 13:3 1 Thessalonians 4:14. The dead are in the dust, not elsewhere; what happens to them is that they awake, which is something done to bodies.
And the two destinies are assigned at the waking. Everlasting life on one side; on the other shame and everlasting contempt — a verdict, and note what is called everlasting: the contempt, not a conscious duration of it. The same distinction runs through Scripture, where the wages of sin is death and the second death is the end of the matter Romans 6:23 Revelation 20:14 Malachi 4:1. Nobody in this verse is awake between death and the resurrection, and nobody is sustained forever in torment by it.
Those who are wise will shine as the brightness of the expanse. Those who turn many to righteousness will shine as the stars forever and ever Daniel 12:3.
The book's own readers, promised the outcome of their work. The wise are those who instructed many and fell doing it Daniel 11:33 Daniel 11:35; the horn had cast some of the stars to the ground and trampled them Daniel 8:10, and here they are shining. And the promise is specifically for those who turn many to righteousness — the only ambition in this book that ends in permanent glory Matthew 13:43 James 5:20.
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