The Four Beasts, the Ancient of Days, and "One Like a Son of Man" — Dan 7:1-28

Meaning. Daniel 7 is the great apocalyptic vision that opens the second half of the book and constitutes its summit. On a night of the "first year of Belshatzàr" the seer contemplates the great sea (yammà rabbà), the abyss of primordial chaos, from which rise four monstrous beasts — a winged lion, a bear, a four-headed leopard, and an unnameable fourth beast with iron teeth and ten horns. Among the horns there springs up a "small" one with an arrogant mouth, which makes war on the qaddishìn, the holy ones. The scene is suddenly reversed in a heavenly court of law: thrones are set in place, the Ancient of Days (Attìq Yomìn) takes his seat, a river of fire flows, the books are opened. The fourth beast is put to death; the others are granted a reprieve. Then "one like a son of man" (ke-bar enàsh) comes with the clouds and receives an everlasting dominion. The chapter leaves the reader in no doubt: in vv. 18 and 27 the text itself interprets the figure as the people of the holy ones of the Most High, set in contrast to the beasts which are the inhuman kingdoms.

Historical Reconstruction

Historical-literary criticism places Daniel 7 within the so-called Maccabean apocalyptic, composed in all likelihood around 167–164 B.C.E., during the persecution of Antìoco IV Epìfane. The internal indicators are transparent: the "little horn" that "speaks words against the Most High," "wears out the holy ones," and "thinks to change the times and the Law" (v. 25) corresponds to the desecration of the Temple, the suppression of worship, and the imposition of foreign festivals documented for that Seleucid reign. The sequence of the four kingdoms — read historically as Babylon, Media, Persia, and Greece — is a schema widespread in the Hellenistic Near East, which organizes universal history in a descending succession until the kingdom that shall be shattered "not by human hand." The "time, times, and half a time" (v. 25) is a symbolic duration (three and a half years) calibrated to the horizon of the crisis, not to an indefinite calendar. The narrative framework ("first year of Belshatzàr") is literary: it situates the vision within the exilic setting of the book, while the message speaks to the present of the redactor. The beast that "is unlike any other" translates the historical experience of a violence perceived as unprecedented.

Textual Notes (MT and LXX)

Daniel 7 belongs to the Aramaic section of the book (Dn 2,4b–7,28): the Masoretic text here is in Imperial Aramaic, not in Hebrew, a decisive datum for dating and for the history of transmission. For the Greek there exist two recensions: the "Old Septuagint" (Old Greek) and the version of Theodotion, which the ecclesiastical tradition ultimately preferred precisely for Daniel; the two diverge at several points, and this chapter is a prime test case. Several nodes deserve attention: at v. 9 the MT has karsawàn, "thrones," in the plural, a detail that will generate interpretive debate; at v. 13 the Aramaic ke-bar enàsh says "like one resembling a man," with the kaf of comparison keeping the figure on the plane of visionary likeness, not identification; at v. 25 zimnìn we-dàt joins "the times" (calendar and festivals) and the dàt, the Law/Torah. The verb at v. 25 rendered "wear out" (yevàlleʾ) properly means "to wear down, to exhaust," a prolonged attrition rather than an immediate massacre. The Old LXX tends to expand and paraphrase the judgment scene; these differences are data to record, not to harmonize.

Jewish Reception (Rabbinic and Liturgical)

The rabbinic tradition read the plurality of the "thrones" at v. 9 and the anthropomorphism of the Ancient of Days with caution. The Talmud Bavlì, Chagigà 14a preserves a celebrated exchange: R. ʿAqivà explains the two thrones as "one for Him and one for David" (i.e., for the royal Messiah), but is rebuked by R. Yosè the Galilean — "ʿAqivà, how long will you profane the Shekhinàh? One is for judgment and one for justice" — in defense of divine uniqueness against any reading that would enthrone alongside God a second sovereign figure. The same passage reflects the reticence with which the masters treated speculations about the "Chariot" and throne visions. The Mishnàh, Sanhedrin 10,1, which opens the chapter on the world to come and on the kingdoms, and the lengthy midrashìm on the "four kingdoms" (as in Wayyiqrà Rabbà and Bereshìt Rabbà) place Daniel 7 at the heart of reflection on the end of imperial powers, with the "fourth kingdom" reread, across the centuries, as Rome. In the liturgical sphere, the image of the "books opened" at judgment (v. 10) flows into the symbolism of the yamìm noraʾìm, the Days of Awe of Rosh ha-Shanàh and Kippùr, in which the books of life and death opened before the Judge are spoken of.

Aggadah

The aggadic tradition identified in the four beasts the four empires that succeed one another in the history of Israel, and delighted in depicting the "fourth kingdom" — Rome, sometimes covertly called "Edom" — as the most ferocious and the most hybrid, because it is "different from all the others." Some midrashic homiletists connect the "lion with eagle's wings" of v. 4 to the images of Babylon already present in Jeremiah, and the "bear" to the voracious heaviness of Persia. On "one like a son of man" the aggadàh develops the expectation of the Mashìach: in some homilies he "comes with the clouds" if Israel is worthy, "humble and riding on a donkey" (Zc 9,9) if it is not — a well-known messianic paradox transmitted in the Talmud, Sanhedrin 98a. Yet alongside this individual reading there remains alive the awareness that in the text of Daniel the figure is above all collective: the faithful people that, after the beasts, inherits a kingdom that shall not be devoured.

New Testament Reception and Typology

The historical-literal Jewish sense must be held firm before all else. In its context, "one like a son of man" (ke-bar enàsh) is not a title nor the name of a single redeemer: it is a human image contrasted with the beasts, and verses 18 and 27 explain it expressly as "the people of the holy ones of the Most High" who receive the kingdom. This is the proper meaning of the passage and must not be dissolved.

The christological reading is a later reception, to be clearly distinguished from the original sense. Already within Second Temple Judaism the Danielic figure and the expectation of an individual redeemer "began to merge" — the process is documentable in works such as 1 Enoch (the Parables), 4 Esdra, and 2 Baruc, datable between the first century B.C.E. and the end of the first century C.E. It is within this channel, and only as its development, that the Gospels apply "the Son of Man coming with the clouds" (cf. Mc 13,26; 14,62; Mt 26,64) to an individual figure. This is a distinct typological layer, a rereading accomplished from a later faith: the Hebrew text does not "predict" that reading nor is it abolished or replaced by it. The historical-prophetic sense — the kingdom taken from the beasts and given to the people of the holy ones — retains full autonomy and validity; the New Testament echo is grafted onto it as a further application, not as its exclusive fulfillment that would cancel its proper meaning. Holding both planes together, without confusing or superimposing them, is the condition for a correct reading.

Observance and Liturgy

The symbolic reservoir of Daniel 7 has nourished practices and rites that endure. The "books opened" before the Judge (v. 10) are the backdrop of the Unetanè tòqef and of the entire theology of the yamìm noraʾìm: throughout the ten days between Rosh ha-Shanàh and Yom Kippùr the community understands itself as summoned before the heavenly court while the registers of life remain open. The promise of a "kingdom that shall not be destroyed" (v. 14) nourishes the hope recited daily in the ʿalènu and the qaddìsh, where the manifestation of the Kingdom is invoked "in your days." On the plane of observance, v. 25 — the power that "thinks to change the times and the Law" — has functioned as a warning to guard the sacred calendar (the dates of the festivals, the Sabbath) and the dàt, the Torah, as the non-negotiable perimeter of the people's identity: attempting to alter them is equivalent, in the language of the vision, to the arrogance of the beast. Thus the apocalypse of Daniel, born in a precise crisis, has become a permanent grammar of trust in the judgment of God and of faithfulness to the commandments in the time of trial.