Those who sleep will awake to everlasting life
1 At that time, Michael will rise, the Great Comman der who defends your people. It shall be a time of anguish as never before since the nations first existed until this very day.
Then all those whose names are written in the Book will be saved.
2 Many of those who sleep in the Region of the Dust will awake, some to everlasting life but others to eternal horror and shame.
3 Those who acquired knowledge will shine like the brilliance of the firmament; those who taught people to be just will shine like the stars for all eternity.
4 And you, Daniel, keep these words secret and have the Book sealed until the ap pointed time of the end. Many will wander looking here and there. Wickedness will go on in creasing.”
5 I, Daniel, looked and saw two others standing, one on either side of the river.
6 One said to the man clothed in linen who was upstream, “When will these wonderful things take place?”
7 And I heard the answer of the man in linen who was upstream. He raised his hands to heaven and swore by the One who lives eternally: “Everything will be fulfilled within a time, two times and a half a time. When the holy people is completely crushed and without any strength, then these things will be fulfilled.”
8 I heard but did not understand. Then I said, “My lord, what will be the outcome of these things?”
9 He said, “Go, Daniel, for these words are secret and sealed until the appointed time of the end.
10 Many will be purified, cleansed and proved. The im pious will go on doing evil, none of them will understand anything, only the learned will understand.
11 From the time the perpetual sacrifice is suppressed and the Abominable Idol of the devastator is installed, there shall be a thousand two hundred ninety days.
12 Fortunate is the one who waits and reaches a thousand three hundred thirty-five days.
13 And you, go your way until your end. You shall rest and then rise to receive your reward at the end of time.”
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Comments , Chapter 12
• 12.1 This is a very important text: the first mention of the resurrection.
In centuries before, the Israelites believed that, after death, they would have diminished life under the earth. They held no hope of a resurrection or a reward for the individual, but only for their nation. If they were righteous, God would bless or uplift their nation (See Ezk 37).
The persecutions during the days of the Maccabees and their reflection on the destiny of the martyrs led them to the conviction that those who had died would have their share of happiness in the kingdom of God: they had to be raised up. We find the same hope in the second book of Maccabees (7:9 and 12:43). We read about it also in chapters 2-5 of the book of Wisdom. These texts, fruits of the faith and the trials the Jewish people had undergone in the last two centuries before Jesus, prepared for what he was going to teach about the resurrection (Mk 12:18).
Michael, your angel (of the Jewish people) 10:13 and 10:21. The book of Daniel is filled with many visions, some of them quite complex: this is typical of the apocalyptic books which were writ t en by the Jews between 200 B.C. and 100 A.D.(See the Introduction of this book.)
In 9:1 the angel Gabriel explains the vision. Here we have another angel, Michael. History is described as if the events were predetermined and written in God’s book. In heaven there are occasional struggles between angels representing one nation or another. So, Michael fights for the Jewish people. In 10:13 we have another angel called “prince of the Persian kingdom.”
At the end of chapter 12 we have another series of symbolic numbers. They do not express anything more than the previous ones: the persecution which has continued from the time worship was interrupted, must stop, and soon after, the end will come.
WHY DID THEY ANNOUNCE THE RULE OF GOD AS IMMINENT WHEN IT CAME MUCH LATER?
Various oracles in the book of Daniel predict both the end of the persecution by Antiochus and the definitive coming of God with his universal rule. Christ came more than a hun dred years later. We can apply here what was said concerning the prophets’ announcements (see Is 9).
When a man starts on a long walk with his son and the son begins to get tired, the father does not tell him how much longer he still has to walk. He simply points to the next goal: let us go as far as that tree we see in the distance. Then he tells him: let us go to this house, to the top of this hill… and so, he nourishes the son’s hope through a series of stages. Thus, in sacred history every time God invites his people to take a step, he presents the happy future which he has in store for humanity with bright colors, as if it were within their grasp. There is always something gained, but the best is still ahead, and people will live by hope until their last days.
God does not speak to satisfy our curiosity, but to call us to action. When, in 165 B.C., a teacher of the Law was writing this book to encourage his persecuted compatriots and to announce the liberation which he thought would be the final one, God did not reveal the date of the end of the world to him. For the Jews of his time, the unexpected end of the persecution by Antiochus and the peace achieved must have been quite a clear sign of God’s rule over history.
• 5. THE ANGELS
In the previous pages we explained that all these visions and these angels are no more than literary images: it is a way of writing apocalyptic books. See also the note on Gen 16. However we should not swiftly conclude that there is no room for angels in the biblical message and that there is no word of God about them. What can we believe regarding this point?
During the past centuries angels were presented to believers as invisible companions. The wings they had in the images made people understand that they mastered distance and weightlessness. Each of us, they said, had been entrusted by God to a guardian angel who was to protect us from danger and temptations. Some were more important in this heavenly host; these were the archangels. Others were consigned as the managers of the universe: we should call them cosmic powers. Still others, according to spiritual authors, would be closer to God and did not look at anything except God: these were the sera phims.
Many people consider this as pious imagination, outdated but touching. Many others, when experiencing very special heavenly protection, prefer to think that it comes directly from God: why would we look for intermediaries?
In the Bible we find various texts written in different times which show that people had faith in intermediaries. This belief was actually consonant with a higher and better grasp of God’s mystery. It was not difficult for them to believe in angels because they were not paralyzed by a materialistic vision of the universe. So they affirmed that God shares power with good and evil spirits. Some texts, like the book of Tobit, present the guardian angel as an instrument of God’s careful presence. Others, as does the book of Daniel, tell us of the nation’s protective angels who taught them at the beginning about the principles of their own culture and religion. They are the managers of human history and they do their task quite freely, though they must abide at the end with God’s sovereign decisions. We must confess that, that concept of human history is alien to many of us today, although it is duly rooted in biblical texts (Deut 32:8; Jdg 11:24; Is 63:9; Dn 10:21).
New Testament authors welcome these different shades of angels’ missions without giving preference to any of them. Stephen and Paul know the angels of nations: see Acts 7:38; Gal 3:19; Eph 1:21. And the commentaries and John’s Revelation designate the angels in heavenly liturgies, the very part which was proper for priests in the temple of Jerusalem (8:3). They are likewise considered as instruments of God’s judgment, and they carry the disasters through by which sinful humanity becomes aware of its sins (15:5). The Gospels speak the same language and it adds as its own that the angels of the little ones are the very angels already sharing the full brightness of God (Mt 18:10).
So it is that the bible speaks of angels. However it is not easy to answer immediately the questions many may ask: Are the angels but a way of speaking of God’s actuation in the world? Are they only sides of God’s kind and wideworld care for the good of those loved, or are they rather real beings and spiritual powers distinct of God?
There is no clear and definitive answer to such questions. Actually the tradition has always held the faith in God “the Creator of seen and unseen creatures.” A “materialist” God would have forged the universe as craftsmen are used to making a clock. Instead, a God who is spirit and in whom Spirit is nothing less than God should be the Creator of a universe in which all and any of the created beings are like reflections and irradiations of God’s own richness whose light does not exhaust in a first reflection: spirit splashes back and is transmitted to other inferior levels. If the Word of God chose to come among us and to share our flesh, it is probably because we are living in the lower department of creation and the Creator wanted to reach the poorest. This does not allow us to take ourselves as the masters of the estate.
As the Church extended through the world, it met people who lived their relation to cosmic powers differently. Thus has its language evolved, as already happened with the authors of sacred books. The door was always open for new experiences. It was enough for it to remind us that all those intermediaries were submitted to Christ when he was raised and glorified. He alone holds the keys of history and of our individual destinies.