Daniel 1:21

Unto the first year. Some commentators have held that there is an apparent contradiction between this verse and the statement of ch. 10:1 that Daniel received a vision in the 3rd year of Cyrus. But the text does not necessarily imply that Daniel’s life did not extend beyond the 1st year of Cyrus. Daniel may have referred to that date because of some special event that took place during that year. Some have suggested the event to be the decree of the first year of King Cyrus that marked the end of the Babylonian exile (2 Chron. 36:22, 23; Ezra 1:1-4; 6:3). That decree brought the fulfillment of an important prophecy that Daniel had carefully studied, namely, the prophecy of Jeremiah that the Exile would last 70 years (Jer. 29:10; Dan. 9:2). Daniel lived throughout the Exile from the first captivity, in 605 B.C. to the time when the decree was given by Cyrus, probably as late as the summer of 537 B.C. Daniel may have desired to inform his readers that though he had been carried away in the first captivity, he was still alive at the time the Exile ended about 70 years later. Also, the conclusion seems warranted that ch. 1 and perhaps also some of the other chapters were not written until the 1st year of Cyrus. Such a date explains the use of loan words from the Persian. Daniel again occupied an official position, under the Persian rule, shortly after the fall of Babylon (Dan. 6:1, 2), and from his contact with Persian officials doubtless added to his vocabulary some of the Persian words he used in the composition of his book.

=== 27 Daniel 02-03.txt ===