Daniel 8:27 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Daniel 8:27
And I Daniel fainted, and was sick certain days; afterward I rose up, and did the king’s business; and I was astonished at the vision, but none understood it.
to exist · verb, niphal perfect, 1st person common singular
sick
וְנֶֽחֱלֵ֙יתִי֙ve.ne.che.Lei.ti
H2470
properly · conjunction + verb, niphal perfect, 1st person common singular
days
יָמִ֔יםya.Mim
H3117
a day (as the warm hours) · noun, common masculine plural absolute
up
וָאָק֕וּםva.'a.Kum
H6965
to rise (in various applications · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 1st person common singular
did
וָאֶֽעֱשֶׂ֖הva.'e.'e.Seh
H6213
to do or make · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 1st person common singular
king’s
הַמֶּ֑לֶךְha.Me.lekh
H4428
a king · definite article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
business
מְלֶ֣אכֶתme.Le.khet
H4399
properly · noun, common feminine singular construct
astonished
וָאֶשְׁתּוֹמֵ֥םva.'esh.to.Mem
H8074
to stun (or intransitively · conjunction + verb, hithpael sequential imperfect, 1st person common singular
vision
הַמַּרְאֶ֖הha.mar.'Eh
H4758
a view (the act of seeing) · definite article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
understood
מֵבִֽיןme.Vin
H995
to separate mentally (or distinguish) · verb, hiphil active participle, masculine singular 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
Daniel 7:28 Hitherto is the end of the matter. As for me Daniel, my cogitations much troubled me, and my countenance changed in me: but I kept the matte…
Habakkuk 3:16 When I heard, my belly trembled; my lips quivered at the voice: rottenness entered into my bones, and I trembled in myself, that I might res…
1 Samuel 3:15 And Samuel lay until the morning, and opened the doors of the house of the LORD. And Samuel feared to shew Eli the vision.
Daniel 2:48-49 Then the king made Daniel a great man, and gave him many great gifts, and made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon, and chief of th…
Daniel 5:14 I have even heard of thee, that the spirit of the gods is in thee, and that light and understanding and excellent wisdom is found in thee.
Daniel 6:2-3 And over these three presidents; of whom Daniel was first: that the princes might give accounts unto them, and the king should have no damag…
Daniel 8:2 And I saw in a vision; and it came to pass, when I saw, that I was at Shushan in the palace, which is in the province of Elam; and I saw in…
Daniel 8:7 And I saw him come close unto the ram, and he was moved with choler against him, and smote the ram, and brake his two horns: and there was n…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Daniel 8:15–end
Here we have,
I. Daniel's earnest desire to have this vision explained to him (Dan 8:15): I sought the meaning. Note, Those that rightly know the things of God cannot but desire to know more and more of them, and to be led further into the mystery of them; and those that would find the meaning of what they have seen or heard from God must seek it, and seek it diligently. Seek and you shall find. Daniel considered the thing, compared it with the former discoveries, to try if he could understand it; but especially he sought by prayer (as he had done Dan 2:18), and he did not seek in vain.
II. Orders given to the angel Gabriel to inform him concerning this vision. One in the appearance of a man…
I . . . was sick--through grief at the calamities coming on my people and the Church of God (compare Psa 102:14).
afterward I . . . did the king's business--He who holds nearest communion with heaven can best discharge the duties of common life.
none understood it--He had heard of kings, but knew not their names; He foresaw the events, but not the time when they were to take place; thereupon he could only feel "astonished," and leave all with the omniscient God [JEROME].
The world powers here recede from view; Israel, and the salvation by Messiah promised to it, are the subject of revelation. Israel had naturally expected salvation at the end of the captivity. Daniel is therefore told,…
Daniel fainted - To foresee the desolations that were coming on the land, the city, the temple, and the people.
Did the king's business - Transacted the affairs of state that belonged to my department, after having been sick for certain days through the effects of this vision. He had a pious and feeling heart; and he was distressed for the desolations that were coming upon his people.
John Gill on Daniel 8:27
The Church Fathers
On learning the troubles that would overtake the people in due course, I became so unwell as to fall a victim to illness. Yet despite being thus indisposed, I managed the work entrusted to me by the king, with no one aware of the cause of the sickness. He was in the habit of saying along with blessed Paul, "Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I am not indignant?" and "Weeping with those who weep, rejoicing with those who rejoice," and "If one limb suffers, all the limbs suffer together." This man felt the same way, and he had this affection for his fellow slaves; and on learning of the calamities to overtake his fellow slaves many generations later, he kept weeping and wailing. He had a precise knowledge that he personally would not experience those things but would instead be freed from the present life before long.
Verse 27. "And I, Daniel, languished and was sick for some days. And when I rose from my bed, I performed the king's tasks." This is the same thing as we read in Genesis about Abraham, for after he had heard the Lord speaking to him, he averred that he was but dust and ashes (Genesis 18:27). And so Daniel states that he languished as a reaction to the horror of the vision, and suffered illness. And after he had risen from his sick-bed, he says he performed the tasks assigned to him by the king, rendering to all men all that was due them and bearing in mind the gospel principle: "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" (Luke 20:25). "And I was amazed at the vision, and there was no one who could interpret it." If there was no one who could interpret it, how was it that the angel interpreted it in the previous passage? What he means is that he had heard mention of kings and did not know what their names were; he learned of things to come, but he was tossed about with uncertainty as to what time they would come to pass. And so he did the only thing he could do: he marveled at the vision, and resigned everything to God's omniscience.
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
Shushan — A lily, the Susa of Greek and Roman writers, once the capital of Elam. It lay in the uplands of Susiana, on the east of the Tigris, about 150 miles to the north of the head of the Persian Gulf. It is…
Diseases · Over-excitement a cause of — Over-excitement a cause of
Fainting · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
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).
And I Daniel fainted and was sick certain days,.... Or, "then I Daniel fainted" (x); after he had seen the vision, and had thought upon it, and considered the afflictions that were to come upon the people of God, and the condition the temple, and the worship of it, would be in; these so affected his mind, that he not only fainted away, and was struck with a kind of stupor and amazement, but had a fit of illness upon him, which continued some days; such a nearness and sympathy there are between the soul and body:
afterwards I rose up; from the bed in which he had laid some days ill:
and did the king's business; by which it appears, that, upon the death of Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel was as yet c…
Daniel 8:27
27. And I Daniel fainted, and was sick certain days; afterward I rose up, and did the king's business; and I was astonished at the vision, but none understood it.
27. Et ergo Daniel deliquium passus, vel, fractus sum, et aegrotavi dies, [74] et surrexi, [75] feci opus regis, [76] et obstupui propter visionem: neque intelligens. [77]
Again, Daniel shews himself to have been so touched with the secret instinct of God, that he knew for certain this vision to have been divinely presented to him. For God wished so to affect his servant, that he might embrace with greater reverence what he both heard and saw. I have already referred to our want of attention in listening to God's wor…
The interpretation of the vision - The interpretation of Daniel's vision, as given by the angel, falls within the vision itself. When Daniel sought to understand the vision, viz., in his mind, not by prayer or by asking a question, he saw before him, according to Dan 8:17, one standing at some distance, who had the appearance of a man, but was not a man, but a supernatural being in human likeness. This person resembling a man is (Dan 8:16) named by the angel, Gabriel, i.e., man of God. The voice of another, whom Daniel did not see, hearing only a human voice proceeding from the Ulai, commanded this person to explain the vision to the prophet (להלּז, i.e., to Daniel). Nothing further is indic…
about the 2,300 evenings and mornings: This could refer to a period of 1,150 days (1,150 evenings + 1,150 mornings, about 31/2 years) or 2,300 days (about 7 years). Antiochus IV deposed high priest Onias III in 171 BC. He desecrated the Temple in December 167 BC and offered unclean sacrifices. The Temple and the altar were cleansed and used again in December 164 BC, seven years after Onias was deposed and just over three years after the Temple was desecrated (see 1 Maccabees 1:54; 4:52-53; 2 Maccabees 10:5). • keep this vision a secret: It would have been unwise for Daniel to share this vision at that time during Belshazzar’s reign, when it would have smelled of insurrection or treason.
Rashi on Daniel 8:27
became broken Heb. נִהְיֵיתִי, an expression of calamity (הוָה) and breach; i.e., I was pained because of this trouble and I was depressed.
the king’s work for I was appointed over the assignment of the work of the government of Belshazzar’s kingdom, for Nebuchadnezzar his father had appointed him, as is written in the beginning of the Book (2:48): “...and gave him dominion over all the capital cities of Babylon.”
and I was terrified about the vision Heb. וָאֶשְׁתּוֹמֵם עַל הַמַרְאֶה.
but no one realized that I was terrified because I restrained myself before the princes.
