A Lions' Den, a Fiery Furnace, and Beasts Rising From the Sea

Daniel divides cleanly into two very different halves. Chapters 1 through 6 tell court tales of a Judean exile serving pagan kings while remaining faithful to his own God, refusing the king's rich food, interpreting Nebuchadnezzar's troubling dreams, reading the mysterious handwriting on the wall at Belshazzar's feast, and surviving a night in a den of lions after political rivals trick King Darius into a law that traps him, alongside the parallel story of his three companions surviving a furnace heated seven times hotter than usual for refusing to worship a golden statue.

Chapters 7 through 12 shift entirely into first person apocalyptic vision, four terrifying beasts rising from a churning sea representing successive kingdoms, a vision of "one like a son of man" approaching the Ancient of Days to receive everlasting dominion, and increasingly detailed visions of conflict between the kings of the north and south that grow strikingly specific as they near a persecution of the faithful and the desecration of the Temple by "the abomination that causes desolation." The book closes with one of the Hebrew Bible's clearest statements of bodily resurrection and final judgment, "many who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt," among the most theologically consequential single verses in the entire Ketuvim.