Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Daniel · About this commentary
We Have Sinned
Daniel 9:4-10
4 I prayed to Yahweh my God, and made confession, and said, “Oh, Lord, the great and dreadful God, who keeps covenant and loving kindness with those who love him and keep his commandments, · WEB
The prayer opens with God's covenant faithfulness, then piles up four verbs of guilt — and Daniel says we throughout, including himself in a wrong he did not commit.
Oh, Lord, the great and dreadful God, who keeps covenant and loving kindness with those who love him and keep his commandments Daniel 9:4.
The prayer begins where the law taught Israel to begin — with the covenant God who keeps mercy, in the wording of the commandments themselves Exodus 20:6 Deuteronomy 7:9. And it begins with God rather than with the problem. Whatever Daniel is about to confess, he establishes first that the one he is addressing keeps his word; the entire petition later rests on that Daniel 9:16.
We have sinned, and have dealt perversely, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even turning aside from your precepts and from your ordinances Daniel 9:5.
Four verbs, and no attempt to shade any of them. Not mistakes were made, not our fathers erred — sinned, dealt perversely, done wickedly, rebelled. Real confession in Scripture is specific and unhedged Psalms 51:3–4 1 John 1:9, and the piling of synonyms here is the opposite of the instinct to find one word soft enough to survive saying.
And every one of them is we. This is the man Scripture pairs with Noah and Job as a byword for righteousness Ezekiel 14:14, whose administration a hostile audit could not fault Daniel 6:4, who had gone to a den of lions rather than skip a prayer. He was a child when Jerusalem's guilt was accumulating and had spent seventy years being faithful in a foreign court. He says we have rebelled anyway, and never once says they. The pattern runs through Scripture's great intercessors — Moses standing between God and a nation he had not joined in its sin Exodus 32:31–32, Ezra and Nehemiah confessing in the first person plural Ezra 9:6 Nehemiah 1:6 — and it reaches its end in one who was numbered with transgressors having committed none Isaiah 53:12.
We haven't listened to your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land Daniel 9:6.
The charge is not ignorance. They had been told, at every level of society, by messengers sent in God's name — and had not listened. Daniel is praying with Jeremiah's scroll open in front of him Daniel 9:2, which makes the confession pointed: the same prophet whose seventy years he is counting had been ignored while he spoke them.
Lord, righteousness belongs to you, but to us confusion of face, as it is today Daniel 9:7.
The two columns of the prayer, stated in one line and repeated for emphasis Daniel 9:8. Everything right is on God's side; everything shameful is on theirs — including the exiles near and far off, through all the countries where you have driven them, which reckons the scattering as God's own act and just.
To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against him Daniel 9:9.
And the hinge of the confession is that for. Not although we have rebelled — the mercies and the forgiveness are named as belonging to God precisely where the rebellion is admitted, because forgiveness is only ever relevant to guilt. Daniel does not plead extenuation; he pleads the character of the one he has offended Psalms 130:3–4 Micah 7:18.
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