How
Did Daniel
Decipher It?
D a
n i e l C h a p t e
r 9
 By Rachmiel Frydland
As a religious Jew raised
in the Yeshivas of Poland, I knew, like others of my peers, that in the Book
of Daniel lie hidden the secrets of Israel's redemption and the Messianic
Days. I also knew that some of the great Talmudic and post-Talmudic
Rabbis had plunged into the study of this Book and even plummeted
the hidden secrets of its symbolic signs and cyphers.
The Talmud and Midrash, discussing Israel's redemption, often refer to the
Book of Daniel as the revealer of the secret time of Messiah's coming.
However, 1, together with my fellow Yeshiva students, were ominously reminded
of the warning and the curse pronounced against those who try to figure out
the end as stated in Sanhedrin 97B:
Rabbi Nathan said, the following verse plummets the very depths of this
subject: 'For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it
shall speak and not lie; though it tarry, wait for it, because it will surely
come, it will not tarry.' (Habakkuk 2:3) This opinion differs from
that of our previous Rabbis who made inferences about the Messianic time from
the verse in Daniel 7:2 5: 'And they shall be given into his hand until a
time, and times, and the dividing of time.' R. Shmuel
Bar Nahmeni made the following comment on Habakkuk
2:3: 'But at the end it shall speak.' May they drop who try to figure
out the end; for they say, since the time of His (Messiah's) coming has
already arrived yet He did not come, therefore He will not come at all.
This extreme
condemnation is easily explained by the context, for in it we are told:
The school of Elijah taught: The world is to be for six thousand years; two
thousand years empty without Torah; two thousand years, Torah; and two
thousand years, Messianic Times... . Rabbi Akiba
made the inference, from the verse, 'Yet once, it is a little while, and I
will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land' (Haggai
2:6), that Simon Bar Kozibah was the Messiah though
he reigned only for two and a half years.
Be this as it may, in the Yeshivah schools, we were
aware that the secrets are there, but that it was dangerous to make
assumptions or to figure them out test we come to the wrong conclusion.
The Midrash even states: "Two men had the end revealed to them; namely
Jacob, as stated in Genesis 49:1, '... that I may tell you what shall befall
you in the last days,' and Daniel (12:1,4), 'And
at that time thy people shall be delivered... . But thou O Daniel shut up the
words... .' So even these two men were forbidden
to reveal what they knew.......
WHAT DATE
IS IT?
From the above quotation, one can clearly see that the study of our greatest
sages brought them to the conclusion that if the dates in the Scriptures are
correct, then Messiah should have come in the first century of our era, or
thereabouts.
The many Messiahs who flourished during that period
claiming to be redeemers, were all great disappointments. Finally, Simon Bar Kozibah, whom R. Akiba called "Bar Kokhba" (The
Star), came. Though he was active in the first half of the second
century, R. Akiba adjusted him to the Messianic claim by making reference to
Haggai 2:6. For the majority of the Jewish people Bar Kozibah was a tragedy and a disappointment. Apart
from the loss of tens of thousands of Jews at his defeat in Betar A.D. 135, his activities resulted in untold
sufferings for the surviving Jews.
In spite of all these false Messianic claims, or perhaps even as a result of
them, a charming story survived in the Midrash of Lamentation based on the
words, she has none to Comfort her (Hebrew:
"Menachem") of all her friends....... (Lamentations
1:2) It is said: The same day when the enemies entered the City and
destroyed the Temple there was a Jew outside of Jerusalem who was plowing
with his plow; he saw that the cow with which he was plowing threw herself to the ground. The man was greatly afraid,
and he smote the cow so that she might continue to plow, but she refused, but
would throw herself again and again to the ground. Then he heard a
voice saying: Why do you bother the cow? Leave her alone - she is
behaving that way because of the bet Hamikdash
(Temple) which is being burned today. The man heard it, and immediately
he tore up his garments, and tore out his hair and cried; putting dust on his
head he wept bitterly, saying, Woe is me, Woe is me! After two or three
hours, the cow arose on her feet and began to dance from joy. The man
was greatly amazed. He heard a voice which said: Arise and plow - for
in this very hour Messiah was born. When the man heard it, he washed
his face, then he arose and was glad. He went
home and took with him long silken ribbons for ... a baby to move them in the
cradle. He took the ribbons and went to Jerusalem. When he came
into the city he put ribbons on his arms and called in the streets of the
city: Who wants to buy ribbons for his little boy or girl? The neighbor
of Messiah's mother heard it and said to him; Go into your house, for they
just had a baby boy. He entered the house and said to the mother: Buy a
silk ribbon for your son. She said: I will not buy it for Him, for in
the day that He was born the Temple was destroyed - cursed be that day in
which He was born. The man then drew near to the child, kissed Him on
the head and gave the baby the ribbon. He asked the mother to watch
over the baby and went home. Each year the man came to see the
baby. The name of the child was Menachem Ben Ami-el. One year he
came to Jerusalem and entered the house. The mother lifted up her voice
and cried: 'I have no Menachem (Comforter) -
for He was hidden.' This is the meaning of the verse 'she has no
comforter of all her friends.'
In another version of the same story, it was Elijah who brought gifts to the mother, and after five years returned and found that the
child was taken away. He then says:
Woe, for the salvation of Israel perished. But a voice came from heaven
saying, 'Elijah, it is not as you think, but He will be 400 years in the
Great Sea, and eighty years with the Sons of Korah
where the smoke ascends, and eighty years at Rome's gate, and the rest of the
years He will travel about the great Cities until the end.'
WHO IS HE?
Messiah, then, is clearly "alive and well" for the last nineteen
hundred years. His name is "Menachem," the Comforter, the son
of Amiel which sounds very close and has a similar
meaning in the Hebrew as Immanuel. He started to work around the great
Mediterranean Sea, went to Samaria (Korah), then
Rome and the ends of the world. Why was He expected at that particular
time? Clearly there was a certainty that Messiah had to appear at that
period. In our opinion, this conviction was based on the famous ninth
chapter of the Book of Daniel:
Seventy weeks are determined upon the
people and upon thy Holy City, to finish the transgression, and to make an
end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in
everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to
anoint the most Holy. Know, therefore, and understand, that from the
going forth of the commandment to restore and to rebuild Jerusalem unto the
Messiah, the Prince, shall be seven weeks, and three score and two weeks; the
street shall be built again; and the wall, even in troublous times. And
after the threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for
himself and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city
and the sanctuary, and the end of it shall be with a flood, and unto the end
of the war desolation's are determined. (Daniel
9:24-26)
This revelation was a result of Daniel's prayers given to him by the angel
Gabriel to explain the time, substance and circumstances of Israel's
salvation.
The time embraced was "seventy sevens." Within the sixty-nine
weeks of years, that is within 483 years, there will
be a building up of Jerusalem's streets and canals, though in troublous times.
After these 483 years, 'Messiah will be cut off and not for Himself'
literally - "none to Him"). After Messiah is cut off, the
city of Jerusalem and the Holy Temple will be destroyed 'by the people of the
prince that shall come. ' This is the picture that
the archangel Gabriel gave to Daniel.
HE AND I
This was the passage that challenged me many years ago to consider the
Messiahship of Jesus of Nazareth. Rashi and
other Rabbinic authorities, to whom I consulted, said that the reference was
King Agrippa, Herod's descendant, who is called "Messiah" here and
who was "cut off" before the Temple's destruction. Hence the
term "Messiah" is transferred to a voluptuous carnal king, like
Agrippa, as Rashi interprets, or to the unknown
Menachem (the Comforter) Ben Amiel (God is with His
People) as given in Midrash. On the other hand, there is Jesus - Yeshua
of Nazareth - who was "cut off" forty years before the second
Temple was destroyed, as revealed by Gabriel to Daniel.
In addition, the revelation given to Daniel deals also to some extent with
the substance and the circumstance of Messiah's activity, "to finish
the transgression, to make an end of sins and to make reconciliation for
iniquity and to bring in everlasting righteousness. "
In other words, Messiah being "cut off" is distinctly connected
with the atoning work that the Temple sacrifices attempted to do, except that
it would be a work of completion and fulfillment far greater than any Temple
sacrifices could possibly secure. In my case, I was enabled to lay
aside my fears and prejudices and to open the "Brit Hadasha"
(New Testament) and learn more of Him, Who, as the Prophet says:
Hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem Him
stricken,
smitten of God and afflicted. But He was wounded for our
transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement for our peace was upon
Him,
and with His
stripes we are healed.
Isaiah 53:4-5
In Daniel's timetable, Jesus fits in perfectly. No one else qualifies;
neither King Agrippa, nor the mystical Menachem could possibly fit in with
the prophecy. Read about Him and see if you will not be stirred by the
truth.
Daniel 9:1-27
Reprinted
with permission of The Messianic Literature Outreach
www.messianicliterature.org
Have you received your Redeemer,
the
Stone whom the builders rejected?
In Him is life, light and joy and in His sacrifice is forgiveness of sin.
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