Daniel 1:4 Children in whom was no blemish, but well favored, and skillful in all wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and understanding science… The new revelation which the people of God required for the period beginning with the Babylonian captivity, was to teach them how to regard the powers of the world which they were to obey, to teach them their nature and purpose, and to show them the relation in which the work of salvation which was to begin in Israel, stood to them. A new subject was thus given to prophecy, which, in the nature of things, could not have been given before the captivity, but which now forced itself, as it were, by an internal necessity. But if, according to God's intention, a revelation was to be given concerning the powers of the world and their development, the prophet must needs take a different standpoint from his predecessors; for the Divine word has always a historical starting point, and thus its organ is made fit to receive the Divine revelation. Revelation does not fall from heaven like a written book, which one has but to take into his hands and read; but a man must first receive it into his living spirit, and afterwards write it down, so that it may be adapted to the necessities of the horizon of men. And to qualify him for this work, his historical position must be such that the word from above is not altogether strange to him, such that his whole situation may be, so to say, the human question to which revelation proclaims the divine answer. As the subject of revelation now was no longer as it had been in the time of the earlier prophets, Israel in its relation to the Powers of the world, but the powers of the world m their relation to Israel, so the man of God who was chosen to prophecy of this, could not have lived among his own people, but necessarily, at the very centre of the heathen world-power. For only there could he gain such a clear insight into its nature and development as would fit him for receiving the revelation from on high. (Carl August Auberlen.) Parallel Verses KJV: Children in whom was no blemish, but well favoured, and skilful in all wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and understanding science, and such as had ability in them to stand in the king's palace, and whom they might teach the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans. |
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