NOTES for Dan 10:1-9

Apocalyptic visions often contain images that are not easy to understand. Here it is truly not enough simply to see; in order to understand and comprehend what has been seen, one often needs a special revelation (v. 1). And, of course, every revelation of this kind presupposes the desire and readiness to receive an answer to the question asked of God and to accept it. A sign of such readiness is often a strict fast, like the one Daniel kept before the vision he received (vv. 2-5).

It should be noted that both in Yahwism and Judaism, as well as in early Christianity, fasting was always connected with sorrowful or mourning events and dates. The hero of Daniel is no exception: as will become clear from the revelation he receives, he was grieving for his people, who were then in a very difficult situation. Of course, in this case there is no point in looking for historical concreteness or reliability in the author's story, but there are more than enough historical allusions in it: his Daniel is grieving, of course, not for those who lived in the age of the Persian kings, but for those who were persecuted under Antiochus Epiphanes.

But the Persian Empire, which in the historical memory of Jews of the second century BC had already merged into one with the Babylonia it had conquered, had by this time become, like Babylon itself, a symbol of earthly power that challenged God and took up arms against the people of God. And the fact that Daniel receives his revelation on the bank of the Tigris, in the very heart of an empire opposed to God (v. 4), must without doubt have been associated by the book's readers with the revelations received by the prophets and apocalyptic visionaries at the height of the Syrian persecutions. As for the outward appearance of the messenger of God who appeared to Daniel, it fully corresponds to the apocalyptic visionary tradition: his whole appearance is mysterious and full of frightening majesty, evoking sacred awe in the visionary (vv. 5-9). Of course, in that case a natural question arises: if this is only a matter of religious tradition, does that mean the angels themselves are nothing other than symbols or allegories? Answering this question is not simple, above all because in different biblical books the word "angel" means different things: sometimes a theophany, the visible presence of God to a person, is called an "angel"; at other times it means rational beings created by God who, unlike human beings, are purely spiritual.

It is not hard, however, to understand that in both cases the point is not a symbol, but a reality, though of different orders. As for its outward appearance, judging by everything we know from the biblical books, it can indeed change, adapting itself to the possibilities of human perception. What God is really like, only He Himself knows; He reveals Himself to us in such a way that we can see and hear Him. Angels are not God, but apparently we will not learn what they are really like, how God sees them or how they see one another, at least not in this world. To us, like God, they reveal themselves in such a way that we can see and hear them, and at the same time remember something they want to remind us of by their outward appearance. Then even the outward appearance of God's messenger becomes part of the message he brings us.