The Visions of Daniel the Hebrew Prophet

Contents

Bibliography

Preface

Section 1

Introduction

Section 2

A Brief History Of Ancient Israel, From Its Origin

To Its Subjugation Under Rome

Section 3

The Covenant Between

God And Israel

Section 4

Daniel And His Book

Section 5

Introduction To

Daniel’s Visions

Section 6

Sumer To The Hellenistic Age:

A Brief History

Section 7

Kingdoms 1, 2, And 3 In The

First Vision (Chapter 2)

Section 8

Kingdoms 1, 2, And 3 In

The Second Vision (Chapter 7)

Section 9

Kingdoms 2 And 3 In The

Third Vision (Chapter 8)

Section 10

Ancient Rome To Today:

A Brief History

Section 11

The Fourth Kingdom In

The First Vision (Chapter 2)

Section 12

The Fourth Kingdom In

The Second Vision (Chapter 7)

Section 13

The Fifth Kingdom

Section 14

Introduction To The

Israel Prophecy

Section 15

A History Of Israel From The End Of The Exile To The Second Jewish Revolt: 538 BCE To 135 CE

Section 16

Ancient Israel’s Calendar

Section 17

The Seventy Sevens Message:

9:24 To 9:27

Section 18

The Fourth Vision:

Chapters 10, 11, And 12

Section 19

The Willful King: 11:36 To 11:45

Section 20

The Conflict Between The

Horn And The Host: 8:9 To 8:14

Section 21

The Stern-Faced King:

8:23 To 8:25

Section 22

The Israel Prophecy’s Second Chronological Component

Appendix 1

Daniel’s Prophecies: Genuine, Or After-The-Event Fictions?

Appendix 2

Jesus The Christ

Appendix 3

Additional Material Relevant To The Little Horn

Appendix 4

The Abomination That Desolates

Appendix 5

Appendix 6

Daniel And Dispensationalism

The principal Bible text in this work and Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

Other versions occasionally quoted or cited are:

The New American Standard Bible, copyright the Lockman Foundation (1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973). (NAS)

The New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. (NRS)

The Revised Standard Version, copyright 1952, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. (RSV)

The New American Bible, copyright 1970, by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, DC. (NAB)

The Holy Bible, New Century Version, copyright 1987, 1988, 1991, by Word Publishing, Dallas, TX. All rights reserved. (NCV)

Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60189. All rights reserved. (NLT)

The Jerusalem Bible, copyright 1966, 1967, and 1968, by Darton, Longman & Todd, and Doubleday & Company. (JER)

The Holy Bible, The Berkeley Version, copyright Zondervan Publishing House. (TBV)

The Holy Bible, The Revised Berkeley Version, copyright Zondervan Publishing House. (RBV)

The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson. (NKJ)

Passages from the Bible that are not part of the commentary and are uncredited are the author’s own translation.

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Preface

The human race was created by the one true God for the purpose of worshipping him. God provided his human creation with free will, intelligence, and the ability to reason. When humans worshipped the true God, it was to be because they chose to do so, not because they were programmed to do so. God’s demand of the human race that every member obey and worship him recognizes that every individual has the potential to fulfill God’s commands. Humans can, and should, respond positively to their Creator’s demands and commands. At the end of history, every person will be required to account for the course he or she chose.

God was never going to leave the human race in ignorance about his reason for creating the universe. When he was establishing the instrumentalities that would present his purposes to the human race, he chose the descendants of the Hebrew patriarch Abraham to be his primary witness to the world. When the descendants of Abraham became numerous enough to become a nation, they adopted the name Israel. As God’s Chosen Race, the Israelites were to be his evangelists to the world, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. To remain Chosen, it was imperative that the Israelites be thoroughly dedicated to God. They were to live in harmony with his will and be utterly obedient to his laws, commands, and statutes. In return, God would bless his people to an extraordinary degree. It was God’s desire that a faithful Israel be so blessed that the other nations would look at her with envy, eager to know more about Israel’s excellent God.

Tragically, Israel was consistently disobedient to God. She was rarely blessed and frequently punished. As an evangelist for the one true God, she was a failure. The Israelites were far more interested in making demands of God than fulfilling his demands of them.

Despite their persistent rebellion and disobedience, God displayed amazing grace and forbearance toward his people. So fair and forgiving was God toward his people that they concluded his forbearance was inexhaustible. This was a mistake. After tolerating Israel’s wickedness for centuries, God set a deadline by which his people had to be on a course that complied with his will. Failure to comply with his demands before the deadline would result in the Israelites being severely punished. God commissioned several faithful Israelites to warn Israel that her time was running out, one of whom was Daniel. This work examines the part Daniel’s messages played in delivering that warning and how the Israelites responded to his messages.

Section 1

Introduction

During the latter half of the seventh century before the Common Era, the God who created the universe sentenced Israel, his Chosen Race, to spend seventy years in exile in Babylonia. The punishment was God’s response to persistent disobedience on the part of his people over many generations. To begin the process of putting this decree into effect, God permitted the Babylonians to conquer Palestine and annex the Holy Land. Subsequently, a number of Israelites were taken as hostages and deported to Babylonia (605 BCE). Among those in this first deportation was a youth by the name of Daniel. After Daniel and some of his fellow captives were settled in Babylon, the king of the Babylonian Empire, Nebuchadrezzar (II), interviewed them. So impressed was the king by Daniel that he nominated him to be trained as a court adviser. Daniel completed the three-year course with distinction and became one of Babylon’s wise men.

In Babylon during the sixth century BCE, the economy was the antithesis of the ideal economy as defined by Israel’s God. Despite the temptations that the great city afforded Daniel, he remained true to his God and the religion of Israel. God responded to this excellent attitude by providing Daniel with five important messages, which Daniel duly documented, on the understanding that they were provided for Israel’s benefit and would eventually be circulated among his people. Four of the messages were cryptic; they were revealed to Daniel in the form of visions that employed a range of visual symbols to signify their meaning. The fifth was semi-literal; it was spoken to Daniel by a messenger from heaven. Daniel had only a limited understanding of the five revelations.

Purpose of the Revelations

Israel’s exile-punishment came to an end in 539 BCE, when the Persian king Cyrus conquered the Babylonians and seized their empire. Cyrus issued a decree permitting any Israelites in his kingdom to return to their homeland. A small number of Israelites took advantage of the decree and returned to the Holy Land, where they proceeded to rebuild their country and its economy. The region was in a terrible state, for Nebuchadrezzar’s armies had practically destroyed it (586 BCE).

By the time Cyrus issued his decree, Daniel had experienced three visions; the fourth vision and the oral message were granted to him during the three years after the issuing of the decree. All five revelations were pertinent to Israel’s future. Three revelations—the three that were given to Daniel around the time the exile ended—dealt with events and episodes that God’s people would experience during the next six hundred years of their history and, consequently, would be of importance to those who returned to the Holy Land.

Nature of the Revelations

The four visions were of two kinds. Visions one and two (recorded in chapters 2 and 7) might be described as prophecies, but their purpose extended beyond mere demonstrations of God’s knowledge of the future and control of history. Using symbols, the revelations identified political entities Israel would contact in her future. The common denominator linking the entities was that every one of them had the potential to be a friend or an enemy of Israel. To an obedient Israel, they would be friends; to a disobedient Israel, they would be enemies. God would determine the relationship between these entities and Israel.

Visions one and two looked a great distance into the future, as far as the end of history, the Eschaton.

The oral message (the Seventy sevens, described in the last four verses of chapter 9) was important because it provided the basis for the other visions, in particular the third and the fourth. Matters covered by the message differed from matters that were dealt with in the visions. The message identified a date in Israel’s future and hinted that a unique personage, an anointed one, would minister to Israel at that time. Significantly, it indicated that Israel would be on probation—on trial—until the anointed one appeared, and it made six demands of God’s people to be completed before the term of probation was over. The message inferred that if Israel failed to complete the tasks, it would cease to be Chosen.

The oral message looked no further than the time of the anointed one and the end of the probation period.

Some authorities describe Daniel’s five revelations as progressive parallelisms. By that, they mean that each revelation covers the same ground, though each revelation views that ground from a different perspective. Typically—according to this view—each revelation amplifies the one it succeeds. In fact, only visions one and two are true progressive parallelisms.

Visions three and four (chapters 8 and 11) do not cover the same ground as the first two visions, nor are they amplifications of those visions. To a limited extent, visions three and four are progressive parallelisms—vision four makes a significant contribution toward explaining vision three—but there is a major difference between the two: where vision four sees as far as the Eschaton (and therefore bears some similarity to visions one and two), vision three sees little further than a critical period of intense oppression that the remnant of Israel in the Holy Land will experience while on probation, during the reign of the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes (r. 175–164 BCE).

The focus of the third and fourth visions is the probation period.

The Chronological Components of Daniel’s Visions

Included among the data in the message and the third and fourth visions are several chronological data. Much conjecture has surrounded the application of these data. Readers familiar with the book of Daniel and the various ways in which its data are interpreted will be aware of the multitude of theories that have been propounded with the aim of explaining the 1,290 days and the 1,335 days. In the expositions that follow, these data are examined in detail, as are the 2,300 evenings and mornings. A traditional explanation of the Seventy sevens is provided.

The importance of the data lay in their relevance to circumstances that the remnant of Israel would experience after the exile. Besides dating the end of the probation period and the period during which the anointed one would be active, the data defined critical periods that would fall within the probation period. To each period, God assigned a special purpose; and each period would be demarcated by extraordinary events or special days.

Method of Treating Daniel’s Revelations Employed in this Work

During the 2,600 years that Daniel’s prophecies have been extant, much time and scholarly effort have been devoted to determining their meanings. Though there are several schools of interpretation of Daniel’s revelations, this work, in common with similar treatments of Daniel’s prophecies (or the book of Daniel), will focus on a particular theology, to digress only occasionally for the purpose of critiquing, reviewing, or refuting competing theologies.

The traditional method of treating Daniel’s revelations is to assess them in the order in which they occur in his scroll, one complete revelation after another complete revelation, one passage after another. The method employed in this work differs from the traditional method in that it groups parts of the revelations that are linked by common themes and treats each theme-based group as a unit.

Because Daniel’s predictions deal with history, history plays an important part in explaining them. Instead of providing the history that explains each element (or passage or verse) in conjunction with the examination of each element (or passage or verse), as is customary, this work provides, in appropriate places, comprehensive histories relevant to the prophecies. The histories are intended to provide readers who are not historians with knowledge sufficient to make informed judgments respecting the claimed fulfillments. In providing several comprehensive histories, including one of ancient Israel, the task of explaining data is simplified, and repetition is reduced to a minimum.

Providing the histories serves another important purpose: it makes it more difficult for the author of this work to fudge or falsify explanations and interpretations of the data. Discerning, critical readers familiar with explanations of Daniel’s visions will be aware that fudging is common. The use of false or unusual dates is not uncommon. One interpretation of Daniel’s Seventy sevens employs 31 CE as the year for Christ’s death, another the year 32, but neither of these years is feasible. When Jehovah’s Witnesses nominate 607 BCE as the year Jerusalem was destroyed by Babylon,¹ they don’t do this because it’s true but because they need 607 to be the year when Jerusalem was destroyed by Babylon.² Identifying historical nonevents as fulfillments of specifications is also frequent. Every event to which the symbols in Daniel’s visions apply is a real event—that is, a well-known, well-documented event in human history—and every episode to which the elements in Daniel’s visions apply is a comprehensive, well-documented episode in human history. One explanation of Daniel’s visions identifies, as the starting point for a chronological calculation, an event that its supporters claim occured in the year 538 CE, but the event is a nonevent and the year of no moment at all in historical terms.³ The rationalist explanation of Daniel’s Seventy sevens treats not only the message but all relevant dates and events with such contempt that it portrays the author of the message as a fool.

Another purpose of the histories is to provide a background and context for Daniel, his visions, events in the history of ancient Israel, and events in secular history. Relevant knowledge is necessary if one is to make sensible judgments with respect to issues such as: determining whether the ten-kings datum in chapter 7 has been fulfilled or is awaiting fulfillment at the end of time; determining whether Daniel 7’s little horn has entered history or is yet to make an appearance; deciding the validity or otherwise of the various, competing, four-kingdom schemata; deciding between the Roman Empire and Antiochus Epiphanes in connection with the fulfillment of verses 21 through 32 of chapter 11; assessing claims that there are lengthy gaps or ages in chronological data in Daniel’s revelations; and a number of additional issues of a critical nature.

Readers are invited to check the histories, check the dates (the claim is made that all dates are popular and conventional), and check the chronological calculations.⁴

Integrity of the Book of Daniel

The book of Daniel is the only book in the Bible that Christ urged his people to read and understand (Matt. 24:15). Despite our Lord’s inference that the work is authentic, modern critical scholarship is practically unanimous in its rejection of the book as a sixth-century BCE document written by Daniel. The rationalist school insists that the book was compiled in the second century BCE by an unknown author, and that the revelations are merely history documented after the fact in the form of quasi-prophecies. If the work is a fiction, our Lord’s recommendation that people read it doesn’t make a very positive statement about the extent of his intelligence and knowledge.

The issue of the genuineness of the book and its revelations is addressed in several places.

Premises Underlying This Work

Most theological documents are based on premises, assumed or proved. This book is not an exception. The premises on which it is based are: the book of Daniel is a genuine document; its revelations are genuine; the source of the five revelations was the one true God, not Daniel (or Pseudo-Daniel); every datum in the visions has a meaning and purpose, including the chronological specifications; most of the data have been fulfilled, leaving no more than a few specifications yet to be realized; the prophecies know about God’s Messiah; the primary focus of the revelations is the era of Israel’s history that begins with the end of the exile and ends shortly after the death of the Messiah; the primary audience for the revelations was Israel of that era; although God did not purpose that his people learn the meaning of the visions, this was not only possible but the ideal; and, obedience to God’s laws, statutes, and commands on the part of Israel was a prerequisite for learning the meaning of the message and the visions.

Notes

1.   Many theologians suppose that the audience for Daniel’s visions was limited to Israel of ancient times. This is a reasonable supposition: there are few instances in the Bible where a prophet of God delivered a message to God’s people that did not have a contemporary or near-future application. This work will argue that the material in the third, fourth, and fifth revelations—chapters 8, 9, and 11—was supplied for the benefit of Israelites who lived during the critical period bounded by the exile and the advent of Israel’s Messiah, ca. 538 BCE to ca. 30 CE, and thus had a contemporary and near-future application.

      An issue arises with respect to the first and second revelations, chapters 2 and 7. Theologians who insist that the audience for Daniel’s visions was a contemporary (or near-contemporary) one object to the notion that these visions see as far as the end of history. They ask questions such as, Why would God provide Israel of ancient times with information relevant only to Israel of modern times?

      According to the explanations of chapters 2 and 7 presented in this work, the first and second revelations do know about the end of history.⁵ To the question, Why would God provide Israel of the sixth century before the Christ with information that would be irrelevant until hundreds, even thousands of years had passed? our response is, Because he could, and because the particular information he provided would be of interest to Israelites living during those distant eons and ages.

      Daniel wasn’t a typical Hebrew prophet, nor were his messages typical. It might be correct to argue that the audience for a typical prophet’s message was, with few exceptions, a contemporary or near-future one, but it’s incorrect and unreasonable to extrapolate this basic truth to infer that God would not provide Daniel—hence, post-Daniel Israelites, Gentiles, us, and anyone else with an interest in the way the true God dealt with, and deals with, Israel and the world—with information that would be meaningless until hundreds, even thousands of years had passed. Scripture is adamant that the descendants of Abraham will be well represented at the end of time; and, if traditional, conservative (Christian) explanations of the post-Messiah data in Daniel’s prophecies are correct, then it would have served God’s purposes to provide Israelites (and us and Gentiles and . . .) living between the time of the Messiah (the first century) and the end of history with that data.⁶

____________________

1.   See, e.g., the articles on Nebuchadnezzar and Jerusalem in Insight on the Scriptures (Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, 1988).

2.   The correct date is 587/6 BCE. They are not fazed by the fact that the reign of Nebuchadrezzar II is among the most certainly established of the kings of antiquity, and a date of 607 for the destruction of Jerusalem is unsupportable.

3.   The same schema employs the non-year of 508 BCE in its explanation of Danielic data.

4.   Commentaries on Daniel are still being published with chronological calculations that ignore the absence of year zero as the calculation passes from BCE to CE and are, as a consequence, in error by a year.

5.   The fifth revelation, chapter 11, also sees as far as the end of history.

6.   Whether or not they derived benefit from the messages would be up to them.

Section 2

A Brief History Of Ancient Israel, From Its Origin To Its Subjugation Under Rome

Introduction

The book of Daniel is set during the watershed in Israel’s history known as the Babylonian exile (sixth century BCE). This brief history of Israel from its origin to its conquest by the Roman Empire sets the exile in its historical context. It also sets the life and career of Daniel the prophet in context, and provides a basic background for the exposition of Daniel’s visions that follows. In places, this account of that history is necessarily subjective and editorial.

Early History: ca. 1900 to ca. 1040 BCE

The patriarchs. The history of Israel began around 1900 BCE when the God who created the universe summoned a resident of the city of Ur in Mesopotamia to acknowledge him exclusively and, with his family, leave his homeland and travel to a strange place a great distance away. Abraham obeyed. In an act of supreme and unquestioning faith, Abraham, together with his extended family, their servants, flocks, and herds, left behind a comfortable lifestyle and set out for the land of Canaan (Palestine). God promised Abraham that his descendants would inherit Canaan and, if they obeyed him, be blessed with divine favor.

In Canaan, Abraham’s clan lived a semi-nomadic existence. As they moved from place to place, they built altars to the true God and worshipped him. Abraham became wealthy, but he lacked a son and heir. Despite the aging patriarch’s lack of faith, God assured Abraham he would have a son. In time, his wife, Sarah, bore him a son, Isaac. When Isaac married and had a son, he named him Jacob. Jacob married two women, distant relatives by the name of Leah and Rachel. Between the two wives and their maidservants, he had thirteen children: to Leah, he had seven children, sons Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun, and a daughter, Dinah; to Rachel, Jacob had two sons, Joseph and Benjamin; Leah’s maidservant Zilpah bore him two sons, Gad and Asher; and to Rachel’s maidservant Bilhah he had two sons, Dan and Naphtali. In time, God gave Jacob a new name, Israel.

Egypt and enslavement. Jacob’s favorite son was Joseph. The other sons became envious of the relationship Joseph enjoyed with his father and sold Joseph to Midianite traders, who eventually profited by selling him to an official attached to the royal court of Egypt. In Egypt, Joseph came to the attention of the pharaoh of the time. Joseph’s honesty and aptitude so impressed the king that he appointed Joseph to a position of authority in his government. When, later, Canaan experienced a prolonged drought, the aging Jacob sent his sons to Egypt to buy grain and other goods. Providence brought the sons in contact with their brother Joseph and the family was reconciled. At the invitation of Joseph and the pharaoh, Jacob and his extended family moved to Egypt. In the space of about a dozen generations, the descendants of Jacob expanded to a community of about 100,000 people. They retained their family bonds to become the twelve tribes of Israel—the Israelites (aka, the Hebrews).

Many decades after the death of the pharaoh who had honored Joseph, a dynasty of kings who were not amicably disposed toward Jacob’s descendants came to Egypt’s throne. Ruthlessly, they enslaved and oppressed the Israelites. In anguish, the Israelites pleaded with their God to deliver them from bondage. God responded to their pleas by commissioning one of their number, Moses, to lead them out of Egypt and into Canaan, the Promised Land.

Moses accepted the assignment, albeit reluctantly. Accompanied by his brother Aaron, Moses confronted pharaoh and demanded, in the name of Israel’s God, Yahweh, the liberation of the Hebrew slaves. Pharaoh refused. When the Israelites learned of pharaoh’s response they became more discouraged; and when, as punishment, their work was made more difficult, they blamed Moses and Aaron. God, through Moses, reminded his people that he had made certain promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and he would keep the promises, despite the present display of unfaithfulness. He would free the Israelites from slavery and settle them in the Promised Land, where they would be his special, privileged people, the nation Israel.

The Lord inflicted the Egyptians with a succession of nine plagues, each of increasing severity. Sometimes pharaoh would relent and agree to Moses’ demands to free the Hebrews; but the loss of tens of thousands of slaves and the disruption this would cause to his country’s economy was something he could not seriously contemplate, consequently pharaoh would retract the promises. God’s response was to send a tenth plague—the plague to end all plagues. It would be so terrible the Egyptians would be left no choice other than to release the Hebrews.

When he confronted pharaoh with Yahweh’s ultimatum, Moses was in no mood to mince words: Around midnight our God will go throughout Egypt. Every firstborn creature in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh to the firstborn son of the slave girl. The firstborn of all the cattle will die as well. There will be loud crying throughout Egypt, such as there has never been before, or ever will be again. But the Israelites will be so unaffected, not even a dog will bark. After that, you will know our God makes a distinction between Egyptians and Israelites, and we will leave.¹

The first Passover. To test the faith of his people, and distinguish between those rapt in Gentile ways and those prepared to dedicate themselves to him, God issued some instructions to the Israelites. To avoid being a victim of the impending carnage, the faithful of Israel, on a family basis, were to kill a young, perfect, male lamb or goat. It was to be slaughtered at dusk on the fourteenth day of the current month.² Some of the animal’s blood was to be wiped across the doorposts and lintels of the house of the family petitioning protection. This done, the Lord would not take the life of any firstborn, whether child or animal, associated with that family, but would pass over that home. Unfaithful Israelites who ignored these instructions would suffer the fate to which the Egyptians had been sentenced.³

In addition, on the night the animal was sacrificed, the faithful among the Israelites were to partake of a special meal. The sacrificed lamb was to be roasted, along with bitter herbs, and eaten with bread made without yeast. Dressed as if ready to go on a journey, the people were to eat the meal in haste, for it is the Lord’s Passover. This Passover meal would be celebrated annually by the Israelites as a memorial of the great deliverance that God brought about.⁴

That night, throughout Egypt thousands perished, even pharaoh’s eldest child; but the Lord’s vengeance passed-over the homes of all those loyal to Yahweh. With this tenth plague, the arrogant king relented. The Chosen Race was on its way to independence in a new land, the Promised Land.

The Exodus (circa thirteenth century BCE). Approximately 100,000 Israelites, plus a small party of non-Israelites (Gentiles), set out from Egypt with all their goods and chattels, flocks and herds. They had no idea where they were going, or how they were getting there, or what was going to sustain them along the way; some weren’t even confident anyone was leading.

God led the people. During the day his presence was evidenced by a pillar of cloud, and at night by a pillar of fire. When and where the cloud and fire went, so went the twelve tribes; when and where these phenomena hovered, the massive caravan established a semi-permanent camp. When water and food became scarce, God provided; clothes and shoes lasted indefinitely.

Seven weeks into the journey, the people encamped on the plain at the base of Mount Sinai in the Sinai Peninsula. Amid a spectacular display of huge black clouds erupting with thunder and lightning, Moses ascended the mountain, where he communed with God. Forty days later he descended with a comprehensive set of laws—religious, civil, and moral. Detailed in the Law were instructions about Israel’s obligations to God; the moral and spiritual responsibilities of faithful Israelites; a priesthood; daily, monthly, and annual sacrificial rituals; holydays and the means by which their occasion was to be determined; the way in which the feasts and festivals were to be celebrated; civil laws; ablution and health rules; and laws respecting tithing.⁵ The Israelites were to worship Yahweh and Yahweh only. They were not to represent him by means of images; and in thought, word and deed they were to behave in a manner befitting the people who worshipped the one true God. Under no circumstances were God’s people to modify the Law or invent their own laws. Syncretism was strictly forbidden: Israel must not blend the religion of the true God, Yahwism, with elements of other religions, all of which are, axiomatically, false and abominable. The true God is a jealous God.⁶

In conjunction with the giving of the Law, God entered into a covenant (agreement; compact) with his people.⁷ The foundation of the covenant was the Law: if Israel was faithful to God and obeyed his laws, his statutes, and his commands, she would be blessed; if Israel was rebellious and repeatedly disobeyed God, she would be punished.⁸ Blessings would include bountiful harvests, good health, protection from enemies, and wisdom. Punishment would involve conquest and subjugation by powerful Gentile nations conscripted by God. When the covenant arrangement was explained to the Israelites, the people responded positively: We will do everything the Lord has told us to do.⁹

At Sinai, God issued instructions for the construction of a portable tent-shrine, the tabernacle. God also provided instructions for the construction of a special sacred box, the Ark of the Covenant, to be kept inside the tabernacle in a chamber called the Most Holy Place.¹⁰ The Ark, containing