The Pulpit Commentary — Daniel — Section 5

prophets that were Daniel'& oont.emporaries, a.s Ezekiel, are largely impregnated with the apocalyptic manner. Along with the description of what they saw, it is to be noted that apocalyptists made a much larger use of symbol than did the prophets. The symbols of Lhe apocalyptist are largely logical symbols built up by fancy rather than by that poetic imagination which takes what nature gives, and fills it full with a Divine meaning. Prophecy waa, as might naturally be expected from what we have just said, individual, personal; it is the people, not the abstract power, it regards. It is the monarch as an individual that is brought before us, not merely aa the accidental representative of a certain phase of the Divine government by world-powers. Akin with this is the enlarged and more de6ned angelology of the apocalyptisle. The Eastern mind is not abstract, and the only way in which such an abstraction as a power, a state, an empire, can be grasped in its continuity, was, by seeing behind the sblte with its armies, as seen on earth, an angelic ruler. We in these later days have no difficulty in thinking of a nation as an abstraction, and speaking of the spirit of the nation; but we cannot realize the angel of, a nation. It may be that the Oriental wae wiser than we. Certainly the functions Scripture assigns to angels are much more numerous and important than those popular theology ascribes to them. The Book of Daniel thus is an apocalypse. There was certainly a reason for this form of sacred literature making its appearance at the time of Daniel, and not earlier. So long as Judah was an independent country, its interests were limited to a great extent by the contiguous principalities that, small like itself, had but small effect on the great world. By the capture of Jerusalem by the Babylonian world-power, and the deportation of so large a portion of the inhabi- tants, Judah was brought within the sweep of the great tide of history. Their view of events was extended to a vast degree, both as to time and space. They were _thus enabled to grasp the world and its history as a whole in a very different way from what they could do while their thoughts were bounded by the Euphrates and the Nile. lnflpiration does not supersede the effects of circumstances ·and education1 but, assuming them, uses the person as he has become in consequence of them. Hence the prophet of a nation small geographically, even though inspired by the Divine Spirit, would have a limited outlook, and his prophecies, though referring to a remote future, would have the terms of their statements conditioned by the education and circumstances of him to whom tbey bad been revealed. It was different when the Jews were removed to Babylon. The Persian Gulf, into which the Euphrates and Tigris poured their waters, opened into the Indian Ocean. Not only was Egypt subject to Nebuchadnezzar, but he had in his army Greeks from beyond the great sea. To the Jewish captives in Babylon the world became vaster, and prophecy now had a broader outlook; it became by this lees impassioned-it became apocalypse. The very strange composite figures whlch adorned the walls of the temples and palaces of Babylon would help the imagi- nation of the seer to symbols sufficiently comprehensive to convey the message entrusted to him for his hearers. After the Jews had been restored to their own land, they were lees likely to have devised any mode of composition so new and strange as apocalypse. The nation became more provincial than ever. The Persian rule does not seem to have been conducive to literary effort. The J ewe inhabited a province in a great empire, ruled over by an alien race, their interests narrowed down to their flocks and herds, their vineyards and oliveyar<lB. The events oC their history were not the crash of empires and the fall of monarchs, but the invasion of locusts, the devastation of tempest~, the exactions of tyrannical governors, and the incursions of predatory Arabs. Once devised, they might cuntillue to produce apocalypse, but they could not have invented in these  THE BOOK OF DANIEL.