The author of Daniel is the first inspired writer who has a distinct philosophy of history. He believes that the God of heaven changes seasons and times, removes kings and sets up kings, and that no king, or king of kings, can have any power and strength and glory unless these are given to him from above. And he believes that, while the God of heaven bestows temporary dominion upon one Gentile dynasty after another, His purpose is to set up in the end a kingdom which shall never be destroyed. These thoughts find expression in the weird idea of an image, of surpassing brightness and terrible in form, whose various parts are of gold, silver, brass, iron, and clay, and which is struck by a stone cut out without human hands, beaten to chaff, and whirled away by the wind, while the stone which smites it becomes a great mountain and fills the earth.
All are agreed that by the mysterious rock-fragment the writer meant the Messianic Kingdom. The “mountain” out of which (as is here first mentioned) the stone is cut is “the Mount Zion.” It begins “in the days of these kings.” Its origin is not earthly, for it is “cut without hands.” It represents “a kingdom” which “shall be set up by the God of heaven,” and shall destroy and supersede all the kingdoms, and shall stand for ever.
Whether a personal Messiah was definitely prominent in the mind of the writer is a question which will come before us later. Here there is only a Divine Kingdom; and that this is the dominion of Israel seems to be marked by the expression, “the kingdom shall not be left to other people.”
Dante has made an impressive use of Daniel's image. Having repeated the seer's description of the colossus which symbolizes the successive earthly empires, he adds his own sad reflection. “Every part, except the gold, is broken with a fissure that drops tears, which collected perforate that grotto. Their course descends from rock to rock into this valley. They form Acheron, Styx, and Phlegethon; then, by this narrow conduit, go down to where there is no more descent.”1 [Note: J. A. Carlyle, Dante's Inferno, 166.]
