The prophet Daniel in the Old Testament is famous for his godliness. Even when he knew that it was illegal to pray to anyone but the king of Babylon, he nevertheless continued to pray to the LORD, the One True God. We’re familiar with that example of Daniel’s godliness and courage, but there’s another way that he is exemplary: Daniel read his “Bible.” I put “Bible” in quotes because, of course, Daniel didn’t have the entire Bible that we have today. But we know that while Daniel was in exile, he read the Scriptures that were available to him. We know this because Daniel himself tells us about an example of this very thing.
Daniel tells us that when he was old, “In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus… in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years that, according to the word of the LORD to Jeremiah the prophet, must pass before the end of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years” (Dan. 9:1-2). By opening the Scriptures, Daniel gained an understanding of the timeline of what God was doing with the kingdom of Judah. Daniel looked back to these words given to Jeremiah years before and understood that the captivity of Judah was coming to an end.
The passage that Daniel references is found in Jeremiah 25. God rebuked the people of Jerusalem for their continued rebellion and for continually breaking the covenant, even though God had persistently warned them with prophet after prophet. As punishment for their stubborn rebelliousness, God promised to destroy their land and send Judah and her neighboring countries into exile. “This whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years” (Jer. 25:11). Not long after, Jerusalem was indeed conquered and its people—including a young man named Daniel—were taken captive to Babylon.
Isn’t it amazing that Daniel read the same words of Jeremiah that we have in our Bibles today? When we read the Bible, we’re reading the same Scriptures that God’s people have read and loved and obeyed for hundreds and even thousands of years. It should give us a strong sense of solidarity with all of God’s people throughout the centuries. As those who live after the first coming of Christ, we have the blessing of having the complete Bible. Like Daniel, we can read the writings of Jeremiah, but we can also read the rest of the Old Testament and the whole New Testament, too. God has blessed us by giving us his word. Are you reading it? Are you growing in your understanding of it? It will not do us any good if it’s just sitting on the bookshelf, but if we open it up and read it and pray for God’s guidance, then like Daniel, we will gain understanding of what God is doing in the world.