By Jean Sheldon
A Commentary on the Sabbath School Lesson for November 13–19, 2004, "The Pre-Advent Judgment"
In the first half of Daniel, stories abound about divination, images, and miracles—all very Babylonian concepts. In pre-exilic Israel, divination was condemned by prophets and some kings (1 Sam. 28:9). Now a Jewish statesman named Daniel gains prominence by his ability to divine dreams. He is even referred to as the "chief of the magicians" by the king—hardly a title relished by his Jewish community (Dan. 4:9 NRSV). Yet, because Daniel can effectively divine dreams and decipher divine scribal handwriting on the wall, he bears witness to a God who "has sovereignty over the kingdom of mortals" (Dan. 4:25, 32; 5:21 NRSV).
In the last half of Daniel, prophecies reveal a long, drawn-out process of kingdoms rising and falling, of kings ousting previous kings, until the Most High receives the kingdom and possesses it for ever (Dan. 7:14). This process is initiated with a court judgment scene in heaven.
Thus it would seem that a possible mirror reflection of divination (Dan. 1–6) is judgment (Dan. 7–12), as though there is a subtle link between these two processes. Most of us would not immediately see commonality between divination and judicial practices, but a Babylonian might.
Ancient Babylonia’s hallmark was its ability to take the three great institutions of humankind (perhaps to be attributed to Sumer)—economics, kingship, and law—and reconfigure the realm of the gods accordingly. How the gods were seen to rule reflected a great extent the governance by Babylonians in their palace court, judicial assemblies, and economic systems of commerce and trade.1
The judiciary system, chiefly a casuistic process, took place in court settings in which chairs were no doubt set up and judges took their place.2 Cases were recorded on clay tablets, sealed, and stored in the administrative or temple archives, or possibly in private libraries. 3 They became precedent for future cases of a similar nature. The standard formula for these cases as they came to be formulated into "law" was "If a man/woman,…then he/she shall pay/be punished."4 The protasis generally stated the plaintiff’s claim or misdeed/crime while the apodosis stated the means of reconciliation (pecuniary payment) or punishment (talionic or mirror penalty).
Divinatory observations were written down and recorded. An abnormality in the liver of a sheep, for example, was reflective of an abnormal or maybe desired event in the life of the one making the request to the deity for information on his/her future. These written down observations have been called omens. Omens were kept in the archives of the temple much like laws were stored in the administrative or temple archives.
In addition, omens were worded very similarly to Babylonian laws: "If a x occurs [in a sheep’s liver/a dream/heavens], then such-and-such an event will follow." Though the word "if" is represented by a different sign in omens than in Babylonian laws, the construction and meaning are essentially the same. 5 Furthermore, it was understood that the event predicted in the apodosis was equivalent to a punishment/reward assigned by the god to the Babylonian worshiper making the divinatory request.
Thus we can conclude that omens were recorded messages of divine judicial decisions about a human being. And the Babylonians believed that every event—whether good or evil—that happened in their lives was fated by the gods as either a reward or a judgment by a deity who was either pleased with their sacrifices and other good behaviors or was angered with something (usually unknown) that the worshiper had done to offend the god.6
Kings came in for their fair share of divinatory messages. In Assyria, if the omens suggested that the gods were angry with the king to the point of ensuring his death, the substitute king ritual was followed in which a common person was put in as king for a specified amount of time and then executed as the original king was restored to the throne. 7 Thus the omens were fulfilled vicariously.
In Babylon, the king himself was part of the omen for his own fate. During the Akitu (New Year’s) Festival in Babylon, the king was brought in before Marduk and "humbled." As he knelt, his royal insignia were removed and he was struck on the cheek by a priest using a rod. He then had to confess his innocence in how he treated the Babylonians during the previous year. Following his confession, the priest struck him again and waited for the omen to be "read." If tears flowed from the king’s eyes, Marduk would be propitious toward him in the following year; if no tears flowed, the god was angry with the king and would depose him. 8
What this information provides in the book of Daniel, and especially chapter 7, is a fuller contextualization of its meaning. Daniel 7–12 is replete with tyrant following tyrant and oppressing people in ever increasing power. To generations of Jews living beyond Babylon, the picture is bleak. Babylon is overthrown by Medo-Persia, then by Greece, and finally by Rome in a succession of ever increasingly despotic powers.
Nebuchadnezzar seems comparatively benevolent beside the irrevocable laws of the Medes and Persians; the Medes and Persians practice religious tolerance compared to Antiochus Epiphanes’ baleful persecutions.9 And Rome seems to top them all with its iron grip. Where is God in all of this? Can we read the signs?
Daniel portrays a God who is in the fiery furnace with his persecuted followers sharing in their flames. He is not a secretive god whose cryptic messages must be deciphered in order to be pleased, but rather openly reveals his will to Daniel. He is the One who is ultimately in control and will have the final word regarding the chaos of human history. But how will he take the reigns of human power?
Amidst the scenes of tyranny in Daniel 7, chairs are set up and One who is ancient of days takes his seat. He is the only One present throughout all history and has witnessed everything. This Person is the Source of fire as life-giving energy and he is served by an innumerable company of heavenly beings. This cosmic court sits in judgment and the books are opened. Who is the judge?
If it is the "Ancient of days," why is more than one chair set up? In a Babylonian context, more than one chair means more than one judge. We could jump down to verse 13 and conclude that two chairs were set up and one of them was for the "son of man." But nothing really indicates that this is the role to be played by the "son of man." Rather, the court decides to give him dominion.
It seems to me that the "judges" consist of all of the heavenly beings. As in the book of Job, anyone is allowed to play judge in God’s court, even the Satan (Job 1, 2). The God of Daniel, then, is not an arbitrary, vindictive judge playing games with his children, like the gods of the Babylonians. Rather, he holds "open court" in which cases are decided by the actions and thus the decisions of the defendants themselves (vv. 11–12, 23–26); the court’s purpose is to defend the saints who are oppressed (v. 22).
And who is this son of man? Is he the mirror of the one, seen walking with three oppressed men in a tablet kiln, who looked like a god? (Dan. 3:23). Coming in the midst of tyranny with ancient kingdoms portrayed as beasts that fight with one another and prey on human victims, the picture is profound. In the midst of oppression, one is presented before the Ancient of Days, reminiscent, perhaps, of Marduk being presented to the high god as the one who will conquer the dragon Tiamat.
Yet he is no Marduk—a formidible being with four eyes and four ears and breathing out fire.10 He is one like us, a human being. And yet to him is given the everlasting dominion of the world. And then he turns around and gives that dominion away! Only a God who is not sovereign in the tyrannical, oppressive sense would give the kingdom to his subjects (vv.18, 27).
And so the book of Daniel encourages us to wait for that eternal kingdom and not to waste our time here in judging others, wishing divine punishment on them, oppressing them—and thus practicing divination.
1. I believe it is possible to see the mythologies as reflecting actual events in Mesopotamian history. For a fairly definitive study of the interplay between religion and the political-social arena in two very different countries—Egypt and Mesopotamia—see Henri Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods: A Study of Ancient Near Eastern Religion as the Integration of Society and Nature (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1978). See also Thorkild Jacobsen, Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1976), 77–143.
2. Compare Daniel 7:9. Judges in the ancient Near East are generally portrayed as seated. For a portrayal of how a city court system worked in Mesopotamia, see Marc Van De Mieroop, The Ancient Mesopotamian City (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 121–28.
3. These administrative archives were state and/or temple libraries. See C. B. F. Walker, Cuneiform (Berkeley: University of California Press/British Museum, 1987), 38–39.
4. For an anthology of Mesopotamian laws, see Martha T. Roth, Law Collection from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor (SBLWAWS 6; with Harry A Hoffner, Jr.; Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1995).
5. In the laws, the sign for the word if in the laws is tukum-bi; for the omens, it is ma.
6. For an overview of the fates in Mesopotamia, see Jack N. Lawson, The Concept of Fate in Ancient Mesopotamia of the First Millennium: Toward an Understanding of Šîmtu (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1994).
7. For a discussion of this ritual, see Jean Bottéro, Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia, trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 138–55.
8. For an overview of this rite, see Mark E. Cohen, The Cultic Calendars of the Ancient Near East (Bethesda, Md.: CDL Press, 1993), 400–453.
9. For a very recent volume contesting the "traditional" view of Persia as extremely tolerant and allowing local freedoms, see Lisbeth S. Fried, The Priest and the Great King: Temple-Palace Relations in the Persian Empire (BJS 10; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2004).
10. See Enuma Elish I:96–98, 102–4, and IV:39–40.
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