Verse of the day · September 19
What had just happened to Daniel when he said that wisdom and might are God's?
Daniel prayed for his life that night, and what got written down was the thanks he gave afterwards.
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Daniel answered and said, Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever: for wisdom and might are his:
Daniel 2:20
A king in Babylon required his wise men to tell him his own dream, and then to interpret it. They insisted the demand could never be gratified, which did but make him more outrageous, and a decree went out — from rage and not from zeal — that the wise men of Babylon should be slain, the whole college of them. Daniel, a Jewish captive in that city, had never been summoned with the rest, though the king had once examined him and reckoned him ten times wiser than any of them. By an undistinguishing sentence he stood condemned along with them, and he knew nothing of the matter until the captain of the guard came to take him.
He did not fall into a passion when Arioch came, and did not reproach the king. He answered with counsel and wisdom, asked mildly why the decree was so hasty, and undertook to give the king what he wanted if he were allowed a little time. In Matthew Henry's account he did not go looking through the other men's art and books for anything of use. He went home to be alone with God, and set his companions praying too, to desire mercies of the God of heaven concerning this secret.
The secret came to him in a night vision. Henry takes it that he was awake, still continuing instant in prayer, and that the dream and its interpretation were brought to him together by an angel. He did not wait to carry it to the king and find out whether he would own it as his dream. He was confident he had gained his point, and he turned his prayers into praises at once. His prayer was not recorded; his thanksgiving is.
Scripture often uses the name to denote the person himself, so what the sentence blesses is God. JFB take that name as God in his revelation of himself by acts of love, and the acts they point to are the two in this verse. The thanksgiving opens on two words, and both, Albert Barnes writes, had been shown remarkably in the circumstances of this case, which is why they begin the song. Wisdom had just been imparted to Daniel, enabling him to disclose a secret when all human skill had failed; might was about to be shown in the changes of empire the dream and its interpretation had set out. John Gill takes the two together here — wisdom in revealing the secret of the dream to Daniel, and might to accomplish the various events predicted in it. What Daniel says here has a very peculiar regard to the present affair, for which his heart was warm with gratitude.
The first glory Daniel gives God, in Henry's ordering of the prayer, is the glory of what he is in himself, and it is this pair. Whatever is fit to be done he will do, and whatever he will do he can do and dares do — infinite wisdom to design and contrive, infinite power to execute and accomplish. Adam Clarke's whole comment on the clause is that he knows all things, and can do all things. With him are strength and wisdom, Henry writes, which in men are often parted.
The king had power enough to have every wise man in Babylon killed on one hasty decree, and none of it could get him back one night's dream. The men whose whole business was knowing had already said it could not be done, and their art could not keep them alive either. The Geneva Notes take the decree as God declining to have his servant united in the company of those sorcerers and astrologers. The answer went instead to a captive much their junior, and Henry has honour put on the Spirit of prophecy at the moment contempt was put on the spirit of divination.
The same pair turns up in the man who received it. Praising the fountain of wisdom and might, Daniel is praising him for the wisdom and might he had been given: wisdom to know this great secret, and might to bear the discovery. Whatever a man has of either, Henry writes, he must acknowledge as God's gift. The friends who prayed with him are inside the thanksgiving too — it is what we desired of thee, thou hast made known unto us the king's matter.
The decree had only been respited. The king had heard nothing yet, and the empires the dream had shown had not begun to move. Half of what Daniel blessed God for had already happened, in the dark, and the other half had not started. He put both in one clause anyway, before he had shown a single person what he was carrying. The matter of that praise was eternal in God, so the work of it would be everlastingly in the doing. He had asked for a little time, and he gave his praise in for ever and ever.
Drawn from Matthew Henry, John Gill, Albert Barnes, the Jamieson-Fausset-Brown commentary, Adam Clarke and the Geneva Bible notes. How these teachings are made