a day (as the warm hours) · preposition with the article + noun, common masculine plural absolute
Daniel
דָֽנִיֵּאל֙da.ni.yeL
H1840
Daniel or Danijel · proper noun, a man's name
mourning
מִתְאַבֵּ֔לmit.'a.Bel
H56
to bewail · verb, hithpael active participle, masculine singular absolute
three
שְׁלֹשָׁ֥הshe.lo.Shah
H7969
three · cardinal number, both genders singular absolute
full
יָמִֽיםya.Mim
H3117
a day (as the warm hours) · noun, common masculine plural absolute
weeks
שָׁבֻעִ֖יםsha.vu.'Im
H7620
literally · noun, common masculine plural absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Nehemiah 1:4 And it came to pass, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned certain days, and fasted, and prayed before the God of…
Daniel 9:24-27 Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make re…
Ezra 9:4-5 Then were assembled unto me every one that trembled at the words of the God of Israel, because of the transgression of those that had been c…
Psalms 42:9 I will say unto God my rock, Why hast thou forgotten me? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?
Psalms 43:2 For thou art the God of my strength: why dost thou cast me off? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?
Psalms 137:1-5 By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
Isaiah 66:10 Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all ye that love her: rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn for her:
Jeremiah 9:1 Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Daniel 10:1-9
This vision is dated in the third year of Cyrus, that is, of his reign after the conquest of Babylon, his third year since Daniel became acquainted with him and a subject to him. Here is,
I. A general idea of this prophecy (Dan 10:1): The thing was true; every word of God is so; it was true that Daniel had such a vision, and that such and such things were said. This he solemnly attests upon the word of a prophet. Et hoc paratus est verificare - He was prepared to verify it; and, if it was a word spoken from heaven, no doubt it is stedfast and may be depended upon. But the time appointed was long, as long as to the end of the reign of Antiochus, which was 300 years, a long time indeed when it…
mourning--that is afflicting myself by fasting from "pleasant bread, flesh and wine" (Dan 10:3), as a sign of sorrow, not for its own sake. Compare Mat 9:14, "fast," answering to "mourn" (Dan 10:15). Compare Co1 8:8; Ti1 4:3, which prove that "fasting" is not an indispensable Christian obligation; but merely an outward expression of sorrow, and separation from ordinary worldly enjoyments, in order to give one's self to prayer (Act 13:2). Daniel's mourning was probably for his countrymen, who met with many obstructions to their building of the temple, from their adversaries in the Persian court.
Adam Clarke on Daniel 10:2
I - was mourning three full weeks - The weeks are most probably dated from the time of the termination of the last vision. Calmet proves this by several reasons.
John Gill on Daniel 10:2
In those days I Daniel was mourning,.... Either on account of what had been revealed to him in the last vision or prophecy of the seventy weeks; by which it appeared what wickedness the people of the Jews would be guilty of in cutting off the Messiah; and what desolations would come upon their land, city, and temple, for such usage of him: as also because of the present case of his people; many of them continuing in the country of Babylon, when they had liberty to return to their land: or because of the hinderance the Jews met with in rebuilding their city and temple, who had returned thither; of which Daniel had an account, and which caused him to mourn in secret: and so he continued
three…
The Church Fathers
He says that the mourning had been protracted "for three weeks," because he had fasted for all that space of time. He calls fasting "mourning" in the same sense used by our Lord, when he defended himself and his disciples from the detractions of the Pharisees. When the disciples were reproached by the Pharisees because they were not fasting, the Lord answered, "The wedding guests cannot mourn," that is, fast, "as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they"?
We must seek the source of his grief.… Although the king permitted all who wanted their freedom and permission to return [to their homeland and rebuild the temple], most had built homes in Babylon and were held back by their bond to these houses and, thinking lightly of the chance to return, preferred a foreign land to their own. Only the lovers of godliness and guardians of the ancestral laws despised their possessions in Babylon and preferred their desolate homeland and its kingdom. Then the following fact also wrought a great pain for blessed Daniel: when he saw the trustworthiness of the divine promise and the kindness and benevolence of the king—and the stubborn and ungovernable nature of the people—he was very despondent in his soul, and he spent his time grieving.… He spent three weeks fasting.
And thou must also understand from the testimony of the Prophets, that they too, whenever they were held worthy to receive a vision of God or of the angels, led a life of much fasting, and then were they worthy to receive the vision of revelations, even as it is written of that beloved man Daniel, that after his fast of three weeks he was wholly worthy of the sight of angels. And if for that man who was looking for the advent of an angel all this fasting was necessary, and he was only then worthy to receive spiritual revelations, how much more for thee who awaitest the spiritual sight of Christ, and hopest to receive within thy soul the perception which is above nature, are much fasting, and abstinence, and the subduing of the body necessary, if thou wouldst arrive at things which are greater than those of Daniel?
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Fast — The sole fast required by the law of Moses was that of the great Day of Atonement (q.v.), Lev. 23:26-32. It is called “the fast” (Acts 27:9). The only other mention of a periodical fast in the Old…
Week — From the beginning, time was divided into weeks, each consisting of six days of working and one of rest (Gen. 2:2, 3; 7:10; 8:10, 12; 29:28). The references to this division of days becomes…
Fasting · .For three weeks, by Daniel — .For three weeks, by Daniel
Time · Computed by: Weeks — Computed by: Weeks
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Daniel 10:2-3
2. In those days I Daniel was mourning three full weeks.
2. Diebus illis ego Daniel dedi me luctui tribus hebdomadibus dierum.
3. I ate no pleasant bread, neither came flesh nor wine in my mouth, neither did I anoint myself at all, till three whole weeks were fulfilled.
3. Panem deliciarum [127] non comedi: et caro et vinum non intravit in os meum: et unguendo non fui unctus donec impletae sunt tres hebdomades dierum.
We gather from this passage why the angel appeared to the Prophet in the third year of Cyrus. He says, he was then in the greatest sorrow; and what was the cause of it? At that period we know an interruption of the work of rebuilding the temple and city to ha…
Dan 10:2, Dan 10:3 introduce the following revelation by a statement of the occasion of it. ההם בּימים refers back to the date named in Dan 10:1. The ימים after שׁבעים does not serve to designate the three weeks as common day-weeks, in contrast to the שׁבעים of Dan 9:24., but is an accusative subordinated to the definition of time which expresses the idea of continuance: three weeks long, or three whole weeks, as Gen 41:1; cf. Gesen. Gramm. 118, 3. For three weeks Daniel mourned and fasted, i.e., abstained from the usual food. חמות לחם, precious food, delicacies; but Hv., v. Leng., Maur., Hitz., and Kran. interpret it of leavened bread, so called in contrast to the unleavened paschal bread,…
Daniel was apparently in mourning because of his previous visions (10:14, 16).
Rashi on Daniel 10:2
had been mourning when he saw that Cyrus had curtailed the construction of the Temple, for he had ordered to commence it, and he reneged because of the missive of the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin: Rehum the adviser and Shimshai the scribe, as is written in the Book of Ezra (4:5).
three weeks of days twenty-one years. They are eighteen years from the one year of Darius the Mede, when he [Daniel] put to his heart to calculate the seventy years of the exile, as it is written: until the second year of Darius the Persian, the son of Esther, who built the Temple. As for the three extra years, I do not know whether he started to fast before them or whether the duration of the acceptance of th…
