Daniel 10:13

13. The angel would have reached Daniel with an answer to his petition, that the future of his people might be a blessed future (see note Daniel 10:2-4), on the very day when his fasting and prayer began (the third day of the month) in which case he would have been able to enjoy the passover feast on the 14th if it had not been for an unexpected delay and bitter struggle with the prince of the kingdom of Persia. (See note Daniel 10:1.) This prince could hardly have been Cyrus, as so many commentators have supposed. The angel Gabriel could not have been detained in his mission by any earthly potentate. Rather, this prince of one of the beast kingdoms is imaged as a “prince of darkness” representing one of the “powers” and “spirits of wickedness” (Ephesians 6:12) which are at enmity with righteousness. This “war” could not mean simply an attempt of the angel to influence the mind of the prince of Persia and change his political designs against Israel. Rather, this “guardian angel” of a beast nation is supposed to be the adversary of any angel of light, and especially of one who bears a message of ruin for all the worldly kingdoms of evil and a message of eternal sovereignty for the new human Messianic kingdom of righteousness. The difficult and complicated questions which might arise concerning angels and demons cannot be discussed here. That God permits evil men to live in rebellion against his authority, and with a far-reaching harmful influence upon redeemed souls, is as mysterious as that he permits wicked angels to live. The Scriptures take the existence of angels for granted; but show a gradual development of belief or knowledge concerning them. Behrmann says of the angelology of Daniel, “In general we meet here no conceptions which had not been intimated or plainly begun in earlier or contemporary books.” He refers to Judges 5:20, and Isaiah 24:21, where these celestial beings mix up in the struggle of earthly nations, and points out that even the idea of archangels acting as patrons or guardians of nations meets us in Deuteronomy 32:8 (LXX.), while Israel from the beginning has its national archangel or protector (Exodus 14:19; Numbers 20:16; Zechariah 12:8). Dr. A.B. Davidson, however (art. “Angel,” in Hastings’s Dictionary of the Bible), well shows that the “angel of Jehovah” mentioned in these latter references is positively identified in the Scriptures with Jehovah himself. (See Genesis 16:10; Genesis 31:11; Exodus 3:2; Exodus 3:6, etc.) Daniel is the only book of the Old Testament in which the angels are ever given names, and in which their difference of rank and national guardianship is emphasized.

How far this picturesque angelology may be due to the figurative speech so natural and necessary to orientals, cannot perhaps be determined. In the Persian angelology, at a period not much later than the exile, each angel represented some attribute of deity. This same method of speech undoubtedly meets us in other places in the Scriptures. God’s chariots and horses are said to be the storm clouds (Habakkuk 3:8); the spirit of prophecy is “objectivized” as a man ( Eze 40:3 ; 1 Kings 22:21; Zechariah 1:13; Zechariah 1:19; Zechariah 3:3), while the operations of Jehovah among the nations are personified as horsemen and chariots, and the seven lamps of Zechariah’s vision are seven “eyes,” these seven eyes being the seven “spirits of God.” Much of what seems to us bald and literal may have really been symbolical. Both in Job and Zechariah we meet with the angelic Satan, the “opposer” or “accuser” who appears as the well-known enemy of good men; but of the archangels only Michael and Gabriel are mentioned by name in Scripture, though in the later Apocrypha the names of several others (Raphael, Uriel, etc.) are given. The Jews had a definite memory that they obtained the names of these angels in Babylon. Gabriel (or, as the name signifies, God’s hero see note Daniel 8:16), though never called “archangel” in Scripture, is always given especial dignity in work and the highest honor in the heavenly hierarchy. He has been well called “the heavenly evangelist” (Godet) who preludes the work of the Messiah as the Saviour of the world (Luke 1:19; Luke 1:26). Michael is distinctly called “the archangel” in the New Testament (Jude 1:9), and is given so lofty a position in both Old and New Testaments that many scholars have argued that Michael (“who is God,” or, “who is as God”) was merely the title of the “Angel of Jehovah” and the “Messenger of the covenant,” who was the second person in the Godhead and afterward manifested as Immanuel, “God with us.” He is here called one of the chief princes, and later more clearly the prince who “standeth” for Israel (Daniel 10:21; Daniel 12:1). Some writers would even infer from the various references to these two angels that “Michael was the son of God as the strong contestant against Satan for his people, and Gabriel was the son of God in his loving proclamation of the good tidings.” While these views are homiletically attractive, they are not generally approved by critical scholars. It may perhaps be better to understand, with Davidson, that here, according to the oriental style, the “spirits” of Persia and Greece (Daniel 10:20) are personified as angelic or demonic beings, while the “spirit” of Israel is represented by this mighty, victorious, divinely endowed archangel Michael. This vision of a heavenly conflict between the nations’ angelic representatives would thus be entirely analogous to the vision of the Battle of the Beasts previously described (7, 8). Each nation is here pictorially represented with an angelic prince at its head as each Church with a special angel at its head (Revelation 2:2; Revelation 2:8; Revelation 2:12; Revelation 2:18, etc.). Persia’s representative could not be subdued until this angelic prince of the Jewish people took part in the conflict. It is not at all unlikely that the Babylonians were familiar with this idea that each nation had a protecting genius. (See closing note Daniel 10:21.)

And I remained there with the kings of Persia Out of the numberless translations of these obscure words, the best is that of Prince, “While I was left alone there, contending with the kings of Persia,” or that of the original LXX., “And I left him there with the commander of the Persian king.” According to the former interpretation the emphasis is placed upon the help afforded by Israel’s angel to the solitary warrior of Jehovah, the victory being inferred. According to the latter, Michael takes Gabriel’s place in the battle while he, being relieved from attack, hastens on his way to deliver God’s message to Daniel.