Daniel 2:19

Then was the secret revealed unto Daniel in a night vision.

Daniel’s Preparation for Prophetic Work

A prophecy does not fall from Heaven in the form of a book written and sealed. Prophecy is given through the spirit of a man. It comes first into the living soul. He afterwards declares it, and then records it, in a form adapted to the needs of living souls around. The situation of the prophet, then, must be favourable to the full reception of the prophecy in all its significance. “To qualify him for his work his historical position must be such that his whole situation may be, so to say, the human question to which revelation proclaims the Divine answer.” Accordingly, Daniel was carefully placed by the hand of God so that the prophecies with which he was favoured should have for him the fullest meaning. When we say that his watch-tower was in the palace of Babylon, hard by the very throne, we indicate how exactly God prepared him to be the prophet of this crisis in the history, not of Israel merely, but of the whole world. For more than seventy years he lived at the Babylonian and Medo-Persian court. He was a member of the government, high in position. His political preparation for successive revelations was very favourable. He gained an insight into the secular organisations of the kingdoms of this world, and became thus fitted to receive what we may be allowed to call political revelations. His spiritual preparation, too, was wisely and graciously ordered. The moral victory over the temptations of his state of pupilage, rendered it possible for God to communicate with humanity through him. He was well versed in previous revelations. Daniel knew the contents of preceding prophecies (9:2). Besides this preparation of knowledge and self-conquest, the experience of life at Babylon was likely to make his soul very susceptible to Divine impressions. (H. T. Robjohns, B.A.)