NOTES for Dan 12:1-4

The vision in the Book of Daniel of an apocalyptic visionary whose name we do not know ends with a picture of the universal resurrection and the last Judgment (vv. 1-4). It is now impossible to say exactly when the ideas about resurrection and Judgment reflected in the Book of Daniel took shape in the Synagogue. Apparently their formation begins already in the pre-exilic period, in the time of the later prophets and under the influence of their preaching, and is completed and takes a more or less finished form after the campaigns of Alexander the Great, in the Hellenistic era. Be that as it may, by the middle of the second century B.C., when the texts later included in the Book of Daniel were being written down, it was already generally accepted in the Synagogue. And God reveals to the unnamed visionary that the Judgment is not an invention, not an allegory, and not a symbol; it is absolutely real, just as real as the resurrection from the dead, that complete victory over death without which the triumph of the Kingdom is unthinkable.

But the universal resurrection is not only God's triumph over His enemies and the triumph of the life of the Kingdom over death, which reigns undivided in the untransformed world. It is also a chance given to everyone, the last chance to meet God face to face, to receive an answer to all questions, to resolve every bewilderment, to ask forgiveness for everything in which they did not have time or did not consider it necessary to repent during their earthly journey. And it is the final choice: whether to be with those who are ready to share with God His life and His Kingdom, or to lose everything, now forever (v. 2).

Then what the "wise" mentioned in the revelation about the persecuted righteous have done is revealed to all and to each one. It is no accident that they are compared with the stars in the sky, whose light is visible to all. In antiquity many thought that the stars, like the Moon, shine with the same light as the Sun, only there is less of this light in the Moon than in the Sun, and less in the stars than in the Moon. And on the day of Judgment and of God's triumph, the righteous shine with God's light, though of course their light cannot eclipse God's radiance. Thus, on the day of Judgment and of God's triumph, the path of the righteous who remained faithful to God to the end is completed.