Biblion Bible Commentary
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A Vision at Shushan
Daniel 8:1-2
1 In the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar, a vision appeared to me, even to me, Daniel, after that which appeared to me at the first. · WEB
A prophet still serving Babylon is set down in the future capital of the empire that has not yet risen — and the book's language returns to Hebrew for a vision about a sanctuary.
In the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar, a vision appeared to me, even to me, Daniel, after that which appeared to me at the first Daniel 8:1.
The date places this two years after the vision of the beasts Daniel 7:1 and some years before the writing on the plaster Daniel 5:1 Daniel 5:30. Babylon still stands. Daniel is an old man in the service of a court with a term on it, and after that which appeared to me at the first ties the two visions together explicitly: what follows is a continuation, not a fresh subject. The chapter assumes its reader knows chapter seven — the little horn, the court, the question left hanging.
When I saw, I was in the citadel of Susa, which is in the province of Elam. I saw in the vision, and I was by the river Ulai Daniel 8:2.
In the vision he is moved. Susa was a provincial town at the time, of no great consequence; it became a royal capital of the empire this chapter is about to describe, and it is where the events of Esther would later unfold Esther 1:2. So Daniel is not told about Persia while sitting in Babylon — he is set down in Persia's future seat of power and shown Persia broken there. The staging is part of the message.
And the vision opens where the first one had ended. Chapter seven left the prophet holding a matter he could not unpack Daniel 7:28, and the question that had gone unanswered was how long the saints would be worn out Daniel 7:25. This chapter runs the same history again and drives toward exactly that number Daniel 8:14.
One further change happens here that is invisible in translation. From the Chaldeans' first reply Daniel 2:4 the book has been written in Aramaic, the language of the empires; at this chapter it returns to Hebrew and stays there to the end. The shift matches the subject. The Aramaic chapters displayed the rise and fall of kingdoms before the nations in the nations' own tongue; from here the vision narrows to a sanctuary, a continual ministry, a holy people and a covenant — and it says so in the covenant's language.
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