The Pulpit Commentary — Daniel — Section 317

vision. This ie B fairly correct rendering bent on him after he could regulate hie of the Hebrew, Von Lengorlce wonlcl mBke own affnirs. His ordinary hflhit was t.o cat the verbs imperative, which certainly they flesh and to <lrinlc wine; nut dnring these might be, so for BB form goes, bnt the in- weeks of fast, he denied himself th"""' trusion of imperatives hero into the title of cl_ainties. Neither did I anoint my•"lf rit nil, a section seems violent. The main cliffi- till thTee wlwle v,eeks v,ere /llljil/,rl. The oulty, moreover, is not touched. As they pleasure of anointing the body with oil WM etrinrl, these two clauses assert the same highly esteemed among the ancients. It is thing, Bnd if with Von Lengerke we mnke impossible to fail to recognize, in this pas- them both imperatives, we have the diffi- sage, the origin of the Eseenian discipline. culty still present with us. It mo.y be a The Essenes abstained, from flesh, from oo.se of "doublet." This is an hypothesis wine, and from anointing themselves. we scarcely would o.dopt except in necessity, Daniel thus abstained, as a sign of sorrow since the Septuagint ho.s both clauses. Theo• for the sin of his people; they made this <lotion, however, has only one of them. We fast a perpetual discipline. They waited feel ourselves inclined to follow the reading for the salvatwn of Israel, and endeavoured, of the Septuagint. The angels understood by fasting, to hasten the coming of the, the matter, o.nd ho-Daniel-understood it Lord. The converse of this, that Daniel'11 also by the vision. fast is derived from the Essene discipline, Ver. 2.-In those days I Daniel was is not to be thought of. It is a sign of a mourning three full weeks. The versions later development, when such practices of 11re close to the Massoretic, only the Septua- self-denial, from being the incidents of a. gint, and, following it, the Vetus, as quoted life which oocnr on special occasions, become by Tertullian, omit "do.ys," in the literal its rule. As early as B.c. 106 an Eesene rendering of the Hebrew phrase, "weeks of is mentioned teaching in the temple, and days. Moumi1lg. Zockler and Fuller think mentioned with no evidence that his sect this mourning due to the difficulties the was a thing of recent origin. The limite released captives bad in co.rrying out their are narrow between the critical date of desire of rebuilding the temple. It may Daniel and this date that within them so ho.ve been that he was grieved that so few prominent a sect as the Essenes should of the people were willing to avail them- spring up. eelvee of the privilege. We are here ae- Ver. 4.-And in the fQur and twentieth suming that the chronology of this passage day of the first month, as I was by tha side reckons from the overthrow of Nabnnahid, of the great river, which is Hiddekel The that is, from Cyrus'e accession to the throne LXX. differs from this only in rendering of Babylon; but, as we have seen, this Hiddekel by its Greek name " Tigris." "third yeo.r" may be reckoned from hie Theodotion subjoins to Tigris Eddekel, on assumption of the title King of Persi11, Bar the same principle that Wll have on the Parsua, in which case it may be the same margin of our Bibles different rendering& year with th11t vision narrated in the pre- from those in the text. The Peshitte. vious chapter. Three full weelc8; literally, makes the river the Euphrates. The Vul- three weeks of days-to mark off the du- gate follows the Septuagint. There seems ration of Daniel's fast from the weeks of no reasonable doubt that Behrmann is right years referred to in the ninth ohapter. Keil in regarding the Phrat of the Syriac as a objects to this interpretation, but assigns no gbss. It certainly was a natural suggestion, reason. At the same time, it is to be ob- tlut, as Babylon was on the Euphrates, served that "yeor of days" means a full Daniel should ro.ther be found walking year, but a. week is such a short period that there at the termination of his fast, than the necessity of saying that it was complete forty or fifty miles off. The four and by defining it a " week of days" is not so twentieth day of the first month ; that is, the obvious, and is unexampled. month Nisan or Abib--the month in which Ver. 3,-1 ate no pleo.sant bread, neither the Passover WILS celebrated in every Jewish come fteah nor wine in my mouth, neither home. It would seem that Daniel did not did I anoint myself at all, till three whole join in this festivoJ at this time. It is noted weeks were fulfilled. The versions are in that, from the days of Saul, the two first perfect agreement with the Massoretic text. days of every month were devoted to e. Pleasant bread; "bread of desires" is the feast and hence, th!Lt Da.niel's fast could rendering of the Septuagint o.nd of Theo- only begin on the third de.y. Since he dotion; the wor,J is the same in Hebrew ond must have refrained from partaking of the Greek ns tho.t o.pplied to Do.niel. Neither Paschal lamb, we cannot deduce that h0 came flesh nor wine in my mouth. This might not occu.py the opening days of the shows th11t tho practice adopted by Daniel month with so.dncss rather than feasting. and his fellows during their trnining was If Dnniel is an idea.I figure, inten,h,cl to not rego.rded by Daniel, at least as inoum- represent the model Jew resident i.n a DANIEL. \]  2[1() THE BOOK OF DANIEL. [err. x. 1-21.