Daniel 7:1

1. In the first year of Belshazzar For Belshazzar see Introduction, III, 3, (4). If these portions of the Daniel apocalypse represent actual events, then Daniel 7:8 must chronologically precede chap. 5. Contemporaneous records make it impossible to believe that Belshazzar ever reigned over Babylon as its supreme ruler which fact is also suggested by verse 29 but he may have been made co-ruler with his father, Nabonidus, as many crowned princes were before and after this date. Although this is not stated in any cuneiform documents which have so far been found, it is certain that for a number of years before his father’s death he seems to have been the real ruler of the kingdom. [See Introduction, III, 3, (4).] Daniel is here stated to have written down the “visions of his head” (compare Daniel 2:28) and to have told the sum and substance of them to others, although the book as a whole, or the interpretation of it, was to be sealed and hidden (Daniel 12:0; Daniel 4:0).