A World of Symbols

Human beings live in a world permeated with symbols. Through symbols, men interact. The language we speak is a system of symbols conveying meanings. The money we earn and spend are symbols of values. Some symbols are easily understood and their meanings are shared by many people. However, some symbols are deliberately designed to mislead and conceal the true intention of the authors. We are reading some of these today in Daniel 7. 

Leaving Daniel 6, we leave behind a world of narratives. In the first six chapters of Daniel, there are stories which have beginnings, developments and endings. Once we reach Daniel 7, we have entered a totally different world. We see some images which defy our logic and our understanding of the world. It is the famous vision of 4 beasts. The four beasts are a lion, a bear, a leopard and a nameless monster. Many scholars have offered their opinions on their identity. These opinions are easily accessible on the Internet. I will not discuss them.
Daniel uses some conventional symbols to depict the background.
Daniel said, "I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea (Daniel 7:2).
This brings to mind the beginning of the Creation story in which the Spirit of God (great winds) hovered over the face of the waters (Genesis 1:2). The sea/waters is a symbol of chaos, of evil and enemy of God. So, Daniel set a scene of an opposition between God and evil. In the end, God would bring forth order out of chaos.

In making dreams, man himself is the director. This director searches his memory store to pick up useful stuff to repackage them into socially acceptable images that appear in his dreams. It is no coincident that in Daniel 2, Nebuchadnezzar dreams of a statue that which is made up of 4 layers of metals to represent four empires; while in Daniel 7, Daniel saw in his night visions 4 beasts to represent, most probably, the same four empires. Daniel had already passed judgment on these 4 empires. They were evil and life-threatening like these wild beasts.
I considered the horns, and behold, there came up among them another horn, a little one, before which three of the first horns were plucked up by the roots; and behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things (Daniel 7:8).
Most scholars agree that this little horn was Antiochus IV who desecrated the Temple.
For Christians, the most important verse is the one that contains the "Son of Man". They discovered another reason why Jesus always called himself "the Son of Man". Other than being humble, it means the authority to judge the living and the death at the end of the world.
I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him (Daniel 7:13).

Dear Lord, You let us see that however fearsome worldly powers are, You are still the Lord to us, to the world and to the whole Creation. May the faithfully departed find their true resting place. Amen.