Daniel 8:19–22

While I, Daniel, was watching the vision and trying to understand it, there before me stood one who looked like a man. 16 And I heard a man’s voice from the Ulai calling, “Gabriel, tell this man the meaning of the vision.” 17 As he came near the place where I was standing, I was terrified and fell prostrate. “Son of man,” he said to me, “understand that the vision concerns the time of the end.” 18 While he was speaking to me, I was in a deep sleep, with my face to the ground. Then he touched me and raised me to my feet.

As was the case in chapter 7, the second half of this chapter is an interpretation of the first half. As Daniel watched the amazing sequence of events pictured in his vision, he struggled to grasp what God was trying to tell him. He understood that an enemy would overthrow the sanctuary and persecute the people of God. He learned also that this persecution, though severe, would be temporary. But Daniel wanted to know more of the meaning of the vision. And so God told him more.

God’s answer again came in a vision. Suddenly, Daniel saw an angel named Gabriel standing before him. Daniel heard a voice—apparently the voice of God—which seemed to come out of the river saying, “Gabriel, tell this man the meaning of the vision.”

Daniel was a renowned statesman, the adviser of kings. Yet here he was terrified. He fell prostrate, not only as a mark of reverence before an angelic being but also because the experience he was undergoing was absolutely overwhelming.

The angel Gabriel addressed Daniel as “son of man,” an appropriate designation for a sinful human being, a frail creature of clay. “Son of man, . . . understand that the vision concerns the time of the end.” Here was a fact Daniel needed to know in order to understand the vision, a fact he could not have found out by himself.

The heavenly messenger now proceeded to explain that the future time referred to was not only the near future but also the more distant future, the Messianic period, the time we know as the New Testament era. As the details unfold, it becomes clear that Daniel’s vision of a ram and a goat and a little horn deals first of all with some events that happened in the time of the Persian and Greek empires. But it is equally clear that Daniel’s vision symbolizes the difficult days that will come upon God’s people as the world draws to its end.

It is emphasized again that Gabriel’s message had a shattering effect on Daniel. He fell into “a deep sleep,” apparently fainting. Gabriel touched him and restored him to consciousness. He gave Daniel the strength to get up and to listen to further interpretation.