Biblion Bible Commentary
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Blessed Is He Who Waits
Daniel 12:11-13
11 “From the time that the continual burnt offering is taken away and the abomination that makes desolate set up, there will be one thousand two hundred ninety days. · WEB
Two more periods, a blessing on the one who waits, and a farewell to the prophet in two verbs — you will rest, and you will stand.
From the time that the continual burnt offering is taken away and the abomination that makes desolate set up, there will be one thousand two hundred ninety days Daniel 12:11.
A third period, and it is anchored to an event rather than to a decree: the removal of the continual and the setting up of the abomination that makes desolate — the same two acts the vision of the ram and goat had charged against the horn and chapter eleven had described Daniel 8:11–13 Daniel 11:31. From that point, 1,290 days; and by the day-for-a-year rule that governs the book's symbolic periods Numbers 14:34 Ezekiel 4:6, 1,290 years — thirty more than the 1,260 of the horn's era Daniel 7:25 Daniel 12:7, the two evidently overlapping and ending near one another.
Blessed is he who waits, and comes to the one thousand three hundred thirty-five days Daniel 12:12.
Forty-five more, and this one comes with a beatitude — the only blessing in the book. And it is pronounced not on the one who calculates but on the one who waits: patience is the virtue the number is attached to. That is characteristic of the whole book. Its readers are handed dates and told that the sealed words will be searched at the end Daniel 12:4 Daniel 12:10, and the disposition commended is endurance rather than certainty — the same blessing the last book of Scripture pronounces on those who keep the words and persevere Revelation 1:3 Revelation 14:12.
How the two extra periods run out to their term is among the things this book was told to seal, and the honest position is that the terminus is more clearly given than the reckoning. What is not obscure is the pattern: every period in Daniel begins at a stated point, runs a stated length, and ends — and no power in the book chooses its own closing date.
But go your way until the end; for you will rest, and will stand in your inheritance at the end of the days Daniel 12:13.
The book's last sentence, and it is addressed to one old man rather than to the nations. Go your way — the same dismissal as four verses earlier Daniel 12:9, and it is not a rebuke; it is a release. He is not required to understand in order to be finished.
And then the two verbs that hold the whole of Scripture's teaching about death in a farewell. You will rest — he will die, and death is rest, sleep in the dust with the many who wait there Daniel 12:2 Psalms 4:8 Revelation 14:13; the man who had been on his face and drained of strength three times in this book is promised, first of all, rest. And will stand in your inheritance at the end of the days — he will be raised, and given a portion. Rest, then stand. Nothing in between is described, because nothing in between is experienced.
Your inheritance: a share in the land, the word used of the portions allotted to the tribes — and Daniel had never had one. Taken from Judah as a boy Daniel 1:1–6, he served three kings in two empires and died in exile, having declined to go home when the door opened. He is told he will stand in his inheritance at the end of the days, and the kingdom the whole book has been about is given to the people of the saints of the Most High Daniel 7:27. The man who spent his life interpreting other people's dominions is promised one of his own.
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