Daniel 12 explained: Rescue, Resurrection and a Sealed Scroll

Michael stands up (v. 1)

As the persecution of chapter 11 reaches a distress worse than any before, Michael arises: the 'great prince' who guards Daniel's people, named earlier as one of the chief angelic princes (10:13, 21). 'The book' pictures a heavenly record of God's people, and everyone written in it will be rescued.

The dead will wake (vv. 2-3)

Many of the dead, pictured as asleep in the dust, will wake to everlasting life or to lasting shame, and the 'wise', the faithful teachers of 11:33 who suffered for it, will shine like stars. This is the Hebrew Bible's clearest picture of resurrection, though readers differ on whether 'many' means all the dead or only some, such as the most faithful and the worst offenders.

Seal the scroll (v. 4)

Daniel is to close and seal the scroll, keeping it safe and unchanged until the end, because its meaning would not be clear before then. The last line is uncertain; it is often read as many people searching through the scroll, so that understanding grows as the end comes near.

How long? (vv. 5-10)

By the river, one of two new figures asks the man in linen, the heavenly messenger of chapter 10, how long until the end, and he swears with both hands raised, an extra solemn oath: three and a half 'times' (as in 7:25), usually read as three and a half years, lasting until the holy people's power is fully broken. Daniel admits he does not understand and is told the words stay sealed, though hard times will refine the faithful while the wicked never grasp what is happening.

The puzzling numbers (vv. 11-12)

The end of the daily offering and the setting up of the 'abomination' (a detestable object that defiled the temple) are widely linked to 167 BC, when the Greek king Antiochus IV halted temple worship and set up pagan worship on its altar, until the temple was rededicated about three years later, the event Hanukkah remembers. Why the count is 1,290 days and then 1,335 is unclear: some link the numbers to events of that time, some scholars think they were adjusted when the end came later than expected, and many Christians read them as a timetable still to come.

Daniel's rest and reward (v. 13)

Daniel is told to go on until his own end: he will rest in death, then rise at the end of the days to receive his share. The translations word this differently (one speaks of receiving an inheritance, the other of standing in his lot), but both use the image of the land once shared out among Israel's tribes.

Key verse: Daniel 12:2

Where Christians differ

Christians differ on whether this chapter mainly looks back to the persecution under Antiochus IV in the 160s BC, ahead to a final persecution and resurrection at the end of history, or to both at once, and this shapes how they read its numbers.

Something to think about

Daniel asks how it all ends and is told to go on living without a full answer; how do you live with questions that may never be fully answered?