Daniel 9

Wesley dates the prayer to the first year of Darius the Mede—immediately after Babylon’s fall, the year of the Jews’ deliverance from captivity. He will not let this Darius be confused with Darius the Persian, as if the book’s setting were a later invention. The date is historical, and the man who prays is the Daniel who lived through the empire’s change.

Arminian readers read the opening as a moment in an exile. God has overturned Babylon; the prophet is still a servant in a foreign court. Nothing here is a debate about works earning mercy. It is a man named among a people, turning toward the God who had promised an end to desolations.

Calvin hears two movements in the chapter: how ardently Daniel prayed as Jeremiah’s time of redemption drew near, and the answer he received. The first year of Darius is not ornament. When the monarchy passed to the Medes and Persians, the hour named by Jeremiah was at the door.

Reformed readers take the date as providence, not coincidence. God had fixed seventy years; he also arranged the change of empires. Daniel’s prayer will not invent a new timetable. It will take the promise as already spoken and ask the Lord to do what he said.

Wesley: by books—by the sacred books. Daniel does not guess at the seventy years. He reads Jeremiah, and the number of years is the Lord’s word, not a private calculation. The desolations of Jerusalem have a term God named.

Scripture is given to be understood and used. The prophet perceives; he is not waiting for a second secret. The same books that wound the conscience with seventy years of ruin also name an end. Mercy is sought because the word has spoken, not because Daniel has earned a hearing.

Calvin: what benefit do God’s promises confer unless we embrace them by faith? Prayer is the chief exercise of faith. Daniel was stimulated to prayer because he knew from books the number of the years. The promise did not make him torpid; it made him ask.

The seventy years are God’s decree already on the page. Faith does not improve the promise; it takes it up. The sacred books here are Jeremiah’s word, and the faithful answer is supplication, not delay until the calendar forces God’s hand.

Daniel sets his face toward the Lord God to seek him in prayer and petitions, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes. The posture matches the need: a desolate city, a people under judgment, a man who will not bargain.

Wesley is silent on the rites themselves; the prayer that follows will plead mercy, not merit. Arminian readers can say the obvious without a fight: fasting and ashes are humility before God, not a wage he must pay. The seeker asks for mercy because mercy is what a ruined people need.

Calvin distinguishes this from Daniel’s daily habit. Sackcloth, ashes, and fasting mark an extraordinary plea as a promised deliverance draws near. Fasting, he insists, is not a work that appeases God by itself; it is joined to prayer and confession so that a sluggish heart may seek more earnestly.

The saints add helps when they confess guilt and ask pardon. The reality remains even when later ceremonies fall away. Daniel does not present a fast as righteousness. He presents a people in need to the God who had promised restoration.

The prayer begins where it must: O Lord, the great and dreadful God, who keeps covenant and loving kindness with those who love him and keep his commandments. Wesley will later hear “the Lord” as a title often given to the Messiah; here the confession still names the God of the covenant first.

Covenant love is not imaginary, and the commandments were not unknown. Daniel does not flatter the people as keepers. He names the God who keeps covenant, then immediately places the people among rebels. Mercy will be asked for a people who have not kept what they were given.

Calvin: Daniel prayed and made confession. He prayed to my God—faith, not a confused flight toward an unknown deity. God is great and terrible; we will not pray rightly unless we are humbled. Then the asperity is eased: he keeps covenant and pity toward those who love him.

Majesty and mercy are not rivals. The people had revolted, and as far as they were concerned the agreement had come to an end. Daniel still begins with who God is, not with what the exiles can offer. Confession is how pardon is sought.

We have sinned, and have dealt perversely, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled. The verbs pile up because one word would be too small. Daniel includes himself: we, not they. Turning aside from commandments and rules is named as rebellion, not a mistake in the dark.

Arminian readers find a sincere confession. The people sinned; the prayer asks mercy. There is no hint here that some hidden decree made the rebellion a charade. Daniel takes the guilt as his people’s own, and he takes it to God.

Calvin notices the copiousness: Daniel would stimulate himself and the whole people to penitence. Verbal acknowledgment is cheap; scarcely one in a hundred is affected with serious remorse. Free repentance is not a single mild sentence.

The confession is corporate and unsparing. God is not begged to call sin by a softer name. The same prophet who will plead mercy first tells the truth about wickedness, so that pardon, if it comes, comes to sinners and not to the innocent.

They have not listened to the prophets who spoke in God’s name to kings, princes, fathers, and all the people of the land. No rank is missing. The word was public, and the refusal was public.

God sent servants; the people did not hearken. Responsibility sits on rulers and commons together. The later plea for mercy will not pretend they were uninformed. Mercy is for a people who had been told.

Calvin: no turning to God avails if he is not attended when he sends his prophets. True prophets speak in his name with solid proofs of vocation, not empty boasts. Kings, nobles, fathers, and people are implicated in one guilt; worldly splendor cannot excuse deafness.

God spoke, and the whole body refused. Daniel exalts God by laying every high thing low. The confession is not an attack on prophecy; it is agreement that the word was clear and the nation would not hear it.

To the Lord belongs righteousness; to us confusion of face, as it is today. Judah, Jerusalem, and all Israel, near and far, share the disgrace of treachery. Exile itself is not treated as an accident. It is the face of shame the people now wear.

Wesley will call Jerusalem a place privileged many ways and punished above all others. The privilege makes the shame heavier, not lighter. Arminians can say with the text: God is in the right; the scattered people are not.

Calvin: God can neither be esteemed just nor his equity illustrious unless men’s mouths are closed and they are buried in disgrace. Righteousness is to thee, but shame to us. Empty boastings—holy fathers, sacred land—profit nothing before God.

Reformed comfort is severe first: the punishment displays the people’s impiety. Daniel will not say the Lord has treated them cruelly. Even if the penalties are severe, he confesses they are deserved. Only from that place will he ask for mercy.

Open shame belongs to us, to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, because we have sinned against you. The prayer will not spare the throne. Leadership is named in the guilt, not used as a shield.

Sin is not only the crowd’s. Those who judged and those who were judged stand in the same confession. Mercy, when it is asked, is asked for a whole people, including the names that once looked like safety.

Calvin: kings are accustomed to absolve themselves; Daniel will not. He comprehends the common people by naming kings, princes, and fathers. Those at a distance as well as those at home are under wrath. Guilt is not measured only by how hard the lash fell.

Some were treated more mildly and are not therefore innocent. All Israel conducted itself impiously. The confession pulls every rank into the light so that pardon, if God grants it, is pardon and not a compliment to the great.

To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against him. The for does not make rebellion a virtue. It makes mercy the only door left. Daniel does not claim a remnant of worth; he names where pity lives.

This is shared ground. Arminians gladly confess that forgiveness belongs to God, not to our record. The people have rebelled; the hope of the prayer is that God is merciful still. No works-versus-grace fight is being staged in this verse. Mercy is sought for a people.

Calvin: it is not enough to confess sins unless we are supported by confidence of pardon from God’s mercy. Recognition of a fault without hope of pardon is without profit. Daniel betakes himself to mercy as to a sacred asylum. To God belong mercies and forgivenesses—an attribute inseparable from his essence.

Satan either lulls into security or swallows the mind in sorrow. Daniel holds both members of true prayer: cast down as deserving death, then call on God with firm confidence because of who God is. The people have rebelled; God will not deny himself.

They have not obeyed the Lord’s voice by walking in his laws, set before them by the prophets. The way was pointed out. Refusal is not treated as a puzzle about hidden will. It is named as not walking.

Laws were set before their face—open, usable, enough for piety. Mercy will be asked for people who had light and turned aside. The confession keeps responsibility and pity together, which is how this prayer actually moves.

Calvin: wickedness is aggravated when we knowingly reject what God commands. Everything that would have been a fault in the Chaldeans was grievous wickedness in the elect people. The laws were set before them perspicuously; nothing needful was omitted.

God is despised in his prophets even when he does not thunder from heaven. Double punishment fits willful sinners. Daniel is not yet pleading a special inner inability. He is agreeing that the voice was given and not obeyed.

All Israel has transgressed and turned aside, refusing to obey. The curse and oath written in the Law of Moses have been poured out for we have sinned against him. Deuteronomy is not a bluff. The exile is the oath arriving.

Classical Arminians read the poured curse as God’s faithfulness to his own word, including the warnings. The people refused; the writing stood. The prayer’s later cry for mercy does not unwrite Moses. It asks the Lord to be merciful to those under a curse they earned.

Calvin: all Israel sinned, from the least to the greatest. They revolted so as not to hear—not error, not mere sloth, but determined obstinacy. The curse distilled upon them as Moses had written, a threatening God had even sworn.

The people had long been warned and treated the threats as worthless. When execution came, God’s justice shone without blame. Daniel will not let the nation complain of excess. The Law had already described the flood that was now around their feet.

Wesley: the judges’ duty was to govern and to judge causes; failure there was sin and judgment upon people and rulers alike. Upon Jerusalem—a place privileged many ways above all others, and punished above all others. Great calamity is not a denial of election. It is privilege under the word.

God confirmed what he spoke. No one may hide behind bad government, and no city may hide behind sacred memory. The prayer will still love Jerusalem. It will not call her innocent.

Calvin: God has stirred up his word against us. His threats are not scarecrows. The word would have seemed without vigor unless the curse were seen; now, while the people lie buried under calamities, the word is borne aloft. What happened to Jerusalem has not been done under the whole heaven.

Vengeance beginning at the house of God is not inequity. The nearer he approaches, the more detestable is impiety. Daniel removes the objection that other nations were treated more softly. Greater light, greater guilt, heavier blow—and still God is just.

All this evil has come as written, yet they have not entreated the Lord’s favor, turning from iniquities and have discernment in his truth. The missing piece is not more information. It is a people still unturned.

The stripes were meant to send them to prayer and to turning. They did not go. Daniel includes that failure in the confession. Mercy is still the request; stubbornness is still the truth. Both can be said in one breath.

Calvin: fools require calamities to teach them wisdom; this people remained stubborn under the rod. God holds final sentence in suspense to impel repentance: word, then threats, then blows. If even the blows produce no improvement, the desperate character of the people appears.

Daniel blames hardness, not God’s unreadiness. The Law’s penalties arrived, and still they would not entreat. The prayer now doing what they had not done is itself a mercy already beginning—an exile who finally asks.

Wesley: God’s watching denotes the fit ways that he always takes to punish sinners. The LORD has watched over the evil, and brought it; he is righteous in all his works he has done, and they have not obeyed his voice. Watching is not frenzy. It is care.

Shared confession: the disaster is God’s work, and it is just. Classical Arminians need not import a later argument about fate. Daniel says they did not obey, and the Lord was righteous to bring what he had made ready.

Calvin: the slaughter was not chance. God watched over the calamity as a guard watches a city—continual carefulness, not a hasty whim. To ascribe the blow to fortune is to rob God of providence. He is just in all his works; he is a law unto himself, yet no tyrant.

Reformed comfort amid the whirlpool: the covenant has not failed because the people suffer. The justice of the works is why the pious may still fly to God. They did not listen to his voice. The Judge is in the right.

The prayer turns from admission to plea by remembering the exodus: a mighty hand, a name made for God, and still—we have sinned, we have done wickedly. Past redemption is not a boast that they deserve more. It is a reason to ask the Redeemer not to drop his own name.

The God who brought them out of Egypt is still their God in Babylon. Daniel sets the people’s sin beside God’s old mercy without pretending the sin is small. He asks the same Lord to act again for a people who have no other history of help.

Calvin: the exodus was no momentary benefit. God bore witness to the adoption of Abraham’s race as their perpetual Savior. If the people perished, the remembrance of that mighty power would be destroyed. Daniel therefore turns God’s face from the people’s sins to himself, his pity, and the covenant.

Nothing is left in the people but material for vengeance. The plea is that God consider himself. Daniel will not let redemption become a forgotten proof. He asks that the name acquired in Egypt not be buried with the exiles.

For our sins and our fathers’ iniquities the city and people have become a reproach. The ground of the request is God’s righteousness, not the city’s recent record.

Wesley’s word still fits the tone: Jerusalem privileged and punished. Arminians hear a prayer for a people and a place God named as his. Neighbors mock; Daniel asks that wrath turn, not because Israel has become righteous, but because the hill is holy to the Lord.

Calvin: those who take “righteousness” here as mere judgment opposed to pity misread Scripture. God’s righteousness is made manifest especially in the benefits he confers—liberality, gratuitous favor, consistent fidelity. According to all thy promised mercies: though iniquities could drown them a thousand times, the promised mercies are more.

Daniel excludes imagined merit. He sets before God the mountain God chose, and he names the reproach that falls on God’s own name when Jerusalem is a taunt. Election is pleaded, not wages. The Gentiles’ insult of the city is an insult of the Lord who put his name there.

Wesley is exact here: for the Lord’s sake—for the sake of the Messiah, to whom the title Lord is frequently given in the Old Testament. The servant asks that God’s face shine on a desolate sanctuary, and Wesley hears the plea as christological already. Mercy on the temple is asked in the name of the coming Lord.

Classical Arminians can take Wesley at his word without turning the verse into a later party fight. Daniel pleads for a sanctuary in ruins. The face that must shine is the Lord’s. Wesley simply names whose sake he thinks the prophet means.

Calvin hears Daniel wrestling with distrust—not privately, but as a pattern for the church. Hear the prayer of thy servant; cause thy face to shine. The sanctuary is desolate; God seems not to look. Calvin’s weight falls on God’s own honor in the place he chose, the servant’s plea, and the need to keep praying when access feels shut.

“For the Lord’s sake” directs the eye to God, not to a righteousness in Daniel. The prophet repeats the request because trembling vitiates prayer. The desolate sanctuary is still God’s. The face must shine because he is the Lord of it, not because the ruins have earned light.

The verse says what both camps gladly repeat: we do not present our petitions because of our righteousness, but for your great mercies. Daniel points at desolations and at a city called by God’s name. The argument is mercy, and the name on the city.

Wesley does not gloss the sentence; he does not need to. Arminian readers have no brief for pleading our righteousness here. The prayer of 9:1–19 is mercy for a people. To invent a works-against-grace quarrel on this verse would be to fight the text.

Calvin: not in our righteousness but in thy compassions. Whenever the saints rely upon the grace of God, they renounce all their merits. Man’s righteousness and God’s mercy are fire and water. The mercies are many and great because the wickedness had reached its pitch.

Pastorally: repentance casts the pray-er down; faith raises the prayer up. Daniel asks God to incline an ear that had seemed deaf for seventy years, and to open eyes that had seemed shut. The city is called by God’s name. That, and great mercy, are the plea.

Don’t defer, for your own sake, because your city and your people are called by your name. The prayer ends in short cries. Forgiveness is asked for a named people, not for a theory.

The delay has already been long. Daniel does not threaten God with unbelief; he asks him not to wait, for his own sake. The name on city and people is the last word of 9:1–19. Mercy sought for a people: that is the range.

Calvin: this is vehemence, not display. Hear; be propitious; attend and do; delay not. God’s slowness, he says, springs from our coldness, while iniquities stand between us and his ear. For thine own sake—therefore not for ours. The name invoked upon city and people is gratuitous adoption.

Seventy years of apparent casting off had taught despondency. Daniel still asks God not to delay. Acceptable prayer rises above present condition. The confession has told the truth about sin; the last sentences leave the people in God’s hands, under God’s name, asking God to act for God.