Canter Bridge

Committed fans of sweetness and light need not consult seventh chapter of the biblical book of Daniel.

Placed in the time of the weak-kneed Babylonian king Belshazzar—it is notable how much the brute power of empire compensates for frailty at the top—the story shows us the Judahite exile Daniel terrified by his bizarre night-time visions.

They are not, to put it mildly, a pretty sight. Waves of animalesque imagery flood the man’s brain. These are interpreted as the comings and goings of great empires, a theme that ought to have made Belshazzar’s knees knock still more. Empires, after all, presume and when necessary insist upon their own permanence.

The exile’s dreams say otherwise.

Seen from the angle of those visions, empires are not only bloody and boot-clad but temporary as well. They rage, it seems, against their own temporality.

In the midst of his uninvited dreams, Daniel receives an odd assurance. There is a just king who will reign beyond all the fitful storming to and fro of human empires. As in their case, the God of the heavens—here, apparently, appearing as ‘the Ancient of Days’—gives his kingdom to him. Unlike them, the ‘son of man’s’ proximity to the Giver of kingdoms hints at a certain reciprocal relationship, a conscious agreement that things are to be this way and that for them to be this way is good.

Yet the payoff for ‘the saints of the most High’ is not so immediate as one might have wished.

Empire wars against them, tramples them underfoot, even prevails against them. They are partisans of an eternal empire yet victims of the ephemeral ones that storm across a landscape that it is their lot to inhabit.

It is difficult to parse the terror that Daniel experiences upon seeing history from this apocalyptic angle.

Is it the blood-drenched rise and fall of empires that unsettles him? Or the momentary but lamentable experience of ‘the saints’? Or the casting of the entire drama into the shadow of its suggested resolution?

It is perhaps impossible to know.

Yet the chapter ends up placing its emphasis upon the eventual vindication of the people who come to be associated with the ‘Most High’. Dominion is ‘taken away’ from their tormentor and handed over to them. Indeed, ‘all dominions shall serve and obey them.’

It is the finest of conclusions.

But it takes so long. And before they rule, they are crushed and worn out. They sigh, they mourn, they die unlamented, forgotten, looking for all the world like fools.

Here the account ends. As for me, Daniel, my thoughts greatly terrified me, and my face turned pale; but I kept the matter in my mind.

Daniel trembles.