Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Kingdom Under the Whole Sky
Daniel 7:26-28
26 “‘But the judgment will be set, and they will take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it to the end. · WEB
The court's session takes the horn's dominion away and hands the world to the saints — and the prophet who saw it goes pale and says nothing.
But the judgment will be set, and they will take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it to the end Daniel 7:26.
But the judgment will be set — the third time this chapter has turned on that court Daniel 7:10 Daniel 7:22, and each time it is the answer to something intolerable. The horn had been granted its era Daniel 7:25; the era ends in a session, not a war. And the removal is total: to consume and to destroy it to the end — no residue, no prolonging of life as the first three beasts received Daniel 7:12. A power that spoke against the Most High is not retired; it is finished.
Notice that the sentence is passed by a court rather than executed by an army. Everything the saints could not do on the ground for a time, times, and half a time is done by the opening of books Daniel 7:10. The book's answer to injustice is not that God's people will eventually be stronger. It is that there is a bench, and it sits.
The kingdom and the dominion, and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole sky, will be given to the people of the saints of the Most High Daniel 7:27.
Everything the four beasts held, everything the metals represented, the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole sky — the accumulated dominion of all human history, handed in one transfer to the people of the saints of the Most High. The vision has been consistent about who receives: the Son of Man is given it Daniel 7:14, the saints receive it Daniel 7:18, the people possess it here. One kingdom, one giving, held by the Son of Man and shared with his people Revelation 5:10 Revelation 20:4 Matthew 25:34.
His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions will serve and obey him.
The chapter closes its argument where the first dream closed its own Daniel 2:44 and where a Persian king's decree would land Daniel 6:26. And the last verb is obey — not merely acknowledge. What the beasts refused and the horn contradicted, all dominions render.
Here is the end of the matter. As for me, Daniel, my thoughts troubled me greatly, and my face was changed in me; but I kept the matter in my heart Daniel 7:28.
And then the human ending, which is not triumphant. His face changes color — the same phrase used of a terrified king staring at a wall Daniel 5:6 — and the thoughts that had grieved him at the start of the interpretation Daniel 7:15 are worse at the end of it. He has been told the verdict goes in the saints' favor and it does not settle his stomach, because he has also been told what the saints go through first.
But I kept the matter in my heart. He does not publish it, explain it away, or press for more; he carries it. The Aramaic section of the book ends here, with the empires' language spent and the prophet holding something he cannot yet unpack — and the next vision, in Hebrew, will be given to the same man to take him further into the one thing this chapter left open: how long.
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