Daniel / Ezekiel / Lamentations
Introduction: Rooted in the Old Testament
If you’ve got your Bibles, open to the book of Lamentations—a tiny little book, five chapters tucked right in the middle of your Old Testament.
Just to set up where we’re heading in our time together, I was talking with a guy this last week after one of our services. He’s brand new to the things of God, literally three weeks into church. Because he came in during this series, he’s gotten a mouthful of guys whose names nobody can pronounce. He said, “Hey dude, I mean, I’m liking it. But what’s the deal with all this Jewish stuff? Why all this talk about Israel?”
I thought, what a wonderful observation! If we’re not careful, we forget that Jesus was Jewish. Sometimes we think He’s from Michigan. He’s not from Michigan. He’s not a white dude who lives in Kentucky. He’s Jewish. All Christianity is, at its root, is the embracing of the Jewish Messiah. The difference between Judaism and Christianity today is that we believe Jesus was the guy, and they’re still waiting for the guy to come.
The reality is that we have intimate and deep connections to Judaism. We are grafted into the rich root of Israel. Make no mistake about it, we are not Israel. God is not done with His people. We are Gentiles who eat the crumbs from the Master’s table, and it is a beautiful thing for us to understand our heritage. As much as we’d like to spend all our time in the New Testament and assume the new is good and the old is bad, both are inspired by God. Both are profitable, and we really need to be as sharp in Ephesians as we are in Lamentations.
The Reason for Captivity: Sin and the Sabbath
To set up where we are by way of reminder: the Southern Kingdom of Judah has now been taken into captivity. The Babylonians finally wrecked shop on Jerusalem. They destroyed the wall, destroyed the temple, and set the city ablaze.
The question, of course, is why? If God is God and these are the people of God, why did God allow that? That was the core question in the book of Habakkuk, that back-and-forth Q&A session. There were two primary reasons why the city was destroyed. The first, of course, is the issue of sin—primarily the sin of idolatry.
Second Chronicles chapter 36 tells us that the Lord sent persistently to them His messengers because He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling place, but they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising His words, and scoffing at His prophets.
2 Chronicles 36:15-16 (NASB)
The LORD, the God of their fathers, sent [word] to them again and again by His messengers, because He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling place; but they [continually] mocked the messengers of God, despised His words and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of the LORD arose against His people, until there was no remedy.
Who were those messengers? Isaiah, Micah, Zephaniah, Jeremiah, and Habakkuk, to name a few. Four weeks ago, if I walked through that list, you might have just shrugged. Now, when I say Isaiah, you think of the heavenly kingdom; Micah, the earthly kingdom; Habakkuk, a Q&A with God gone bad. You begin to understand these prophets. They were all called to bring the people back, but unfortunately, the people wouldn’t respond.
It is in this context that Second Chronicles 7 was written:
2 Chronicles 7:14 (NASB)
and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
It says if My people who are called by My name would just humble themselves and pray, seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I would hear from heaven, forgive their sins, and heal their land. We quote that passage all the time without understanding the context. God was saying, “If I could just find a people who would listen to My messengers, turn from their wicked ways, and repent.” But they rejected Him.
There is a second reason why captivity came that we haven’t talked about much. Do you remember all the way back in the book of Leviticus, chapter 25? God gave instructions concerning the land:
Leviticus 25:3-5 (NASB)
’Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its crop, but during the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath rest, a sabbath to the LORD; you shall not sow your field nor prune your vineyard. ’Your harvest’s aftergrowth you shall not reap, and your grapes of untrimmed vines you shall not gather; the land shall have a sabbatical year.
He said that for six years you shall sow your field and prune your vineyard, but the seventh year shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land. Just as God commanded work for six days and rest on the seventh day, He commanded work for six years and rest on the seventh year. Did we see the nation of Israel rest the land on the seventh year even once in all our study? No. They said the exact same thing about the Sabbath year that you and I would say: “That’s crazy! Who’s really going to take a whole year off?”
Because they refused to let the land Sabbath, destruction came upon the city. Scripture records that God brought against them the Babylonians, who killed their young men, destroyed their sanctuary, and took them into exile so that the land would finally enjoy its Sabbaths to fulfill the seventy years. God gave them one year of exile for every seven-year cycle they failed to observe.
We often fail to understand the context of Jeremiah as well. Jeremiah began his ministry during Josiah’s reign and was there when the city fell. While the city was under siege, Jeremiah spoke to the people:
Jeremiah 29:10-12 (NASB)
’For thus says the LORD, ’When seventy years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill My good word to you, to bring you back to this place. ‘For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ’plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. ’Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.
He told them that when seventy years are completed for Babylon, God would visit them and bring them back. “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” How many times have we quoted Jeremiah 29:11? “Oh, God has a wonderful plan to prosper my life!” Do you realize the original context was given while the Babylonians were burning down the city gates and killing everyone inside? Jeremiah was telling them, “You are going into a seventy-year time-out in Babylon to pay your dues, but God still has a plan for you—a plan to bring you back and do you good.”
When the Babylonians invaded, Jeremiah was miraculously spared. Nebuchadnezzar had heard about Jeremiah telling the king of Judah not to fight the Babylonians. In Jeremiah 39 and 40, Nebuchadnezzar instructed his commander to take care of Jeremiah and ensure he wasn’t harmed. The commander freed him from his chains and gave him permission to go to Babylon or stay behind. Jeremiah stayed behind in Jerusalem among the rubble.
Think post-apocalyptic scene: everyone of status was gone, and only three groups of people remained—the poorest of the poor, the vinedressers, and the plowmen. As the Babylonian convoys marched away with all his friends, Jeremiah sat in the ruins and wrote the book of Lamentations.
Lamentations: Faithfulness in the Rubble
Lamentations contains five simple chapters, each an individual piece of poetry expressing grief over the fall of the city. Chapter 1 is a lament over the city itself. Chapter 2 details the cause of the destruction.
Chapter 3 contains Jeremiah’s prayer for mercy. Jeremiah was literally sitting in the stench of a fallen city where people had become so desperate during the siege that they boiled their own children for food. They were driven to complete degradation. In the midst of that devastating rubble, Jeremiah wrote these famous words:
Lamentations 3:22-26 (NASB)
The LORD’S lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, For His compassions never fail. [They] are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness. ‘The LORD is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘Therefore I have hope in Him.’ The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, To the person who seeks Him. [It is] good that he waits silently For the salvation of the LORD.
“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.” I picture him sitting on a pile of ash and broken stone in absolute silence, declaring, “It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.”
In chapter 4, he describes the horrific depth of the destruction:
Lamentations 4:9-10 (NASB)
Better are those slain with the sword Than those slain with hunger; For they pine away, being stricken For lack of the fruits of the field. The hands of compassionate women Boiled their own children; They became food for them Because of the destruction of the daughter of my people.
He writes that those killed by the sword were better off than those who starved to death. Yet in chapter 5, as with all the prophetic writings, there remains a plea and hope for restoration:
Lamentations 5:1-3 (NASB)
Remember, O LORD, what has befallen us; Look, and see our reproach! Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, Our houses to aliens. We have become orphans without a father, Our mothers are like widows.
Daniel: Uncompromising Character in Babylon
That brings us to the two exilic prophets—prophets who wrote while living in captivity in Babylon: Daniel and Ezekiel.
Daniel is a fascinating book. Daniel dropped timeline pins throughout his text with incredible precision. Notice verse 1 of almost every chapter: Chapter 1 verse 1 begins, “In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim.” Chapter 2 verse 1: “In the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar.” Chapter 3 verse 1: “King Nebuchadnezzar.” Chapter 4 verse 1: “King Nebuchadnezzar.” Chapter 5 verse 1: “King Belshazzar.” Chapter 6: “It pleased Darius.” Chapter 7: “In the first year of Belshazzar.” Daniel meticulously established the historical setting.
Chapters 1 through 6 are historical narrative, while chapters 7 through 12 contain prophecies and visions. When dealing with biblical prophecy, we must interpret literally wherever possible while recognizing figurative language. Allegorizing prophecy without contextual grounding is dangerous.
In chapter 1, Daniel and his three friends—Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, renamed Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—were taken as teenagers to Babylon. The Babylonian strategy was assimilation: change their diet, language, education, and worship. Because the king’s food had been sacrificed to pagan deities, Daniel drew a line in the sand. He politely requested a vegetarian diet instead of the royal delicacies. God honored their conviction, and they excelled beyond all the other counselors.
A recurring theme in Daniel is that godly character opens doors to greatness. Daniel’s predetermined decisions not to compromise elevated him to positions of immense influence under two world empires—Babylon and Persia. As Peter wrote, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, and He will exalt you at the proper time.
1 Peter 5:6 (NASB)
Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time,
In chapter 2, King Nebuchadnezzar had a disturbing dream that his magicians couldn’t interpret. Daniel stepped forward and revealed both the dream and its interpretation. The king saw a massive statue: a head of gold, chest and arms of silver, thighs of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of iron mixed with clay. Daniel explained that this represented the flow of human history under the absolute sovereignty of God: Babylon (gold), Medo-Persia (silver), Greece (bronze), Rome (iron), and a future divided empire (iron and clay). Finally, a stone cut without hands struck the statue and filled the whole earth—representing the eternal kingdom of Jesus Christ.
Nebuchadnezzar promoted Daniel, but the king had severe spiritual swings. In chapter 3, driven by ego, he built a massive golden image and commanded everyone to bow down when the music played. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused. Furious, Nebuchadnezzar ordered the furnace heated seven times hotter and had them cast in.
Daniel 3:23-25 (NASB)
But these three men, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego, fell into the midst of the furnace of blazing fire [still] tied up. Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astounded and stood up in haste; he said to his high officials, ‘Was it not three men we cast bound into the midst of the fire?’ They replied to the king, ‘Certainly, O king.’ He said, ‘Look! I see four men loosed [and] walking [about] in the midst of the fire without harm, and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of [the] gods!’
The fire was so intense it killed the guards who threw them in. But as the king watched, he saw four men walking freely in the fire, unhurt, and the appearance of the fourth was like the Son of God. When they walked out, they didn’t even smell like smoke!
In chapter 4, Nebuchadnezzar praised God, but pride crept back in. He had another dream of a great tree being cut down. Daniel warned him that he would lose his sanity and live like an animal until he acknowledged the Most High.
Daniel 4:28-33 (NASB)
’All [this] happened to Nebuchadnezzar the king. ’Twelve months later he was walking on the [roof of] the royal palace of Babylon. ’The king reflected and said, ‘Is this not Babylon the great, which I myself have built as a royal residence by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?’ ’While the word [was] in the king’s mouth, a voice came from heaven, [saying], ‘King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is declared: sovereignty has been removed from you, and you will be driven away from mankind, and your dwelling place [will be] with the beasts of the field. You will be given grass to eat like cattle, and seven periods of time will pass over you until you recognize that the Most High is ruler over the realm of mankind and bestows it on whomever He wishes.’ ‘Immediately the word concerning Nebuchadnezzar was fulfilled; and he was driven away from mankind and began eating grass like cattle, and his body was drenched with the dew of heaven until his hair had grown like eagles’ [feathers] and his nails like birds’ [claws].
Twelve months later, while walking on his roof boasting about “great Babylon which I have built,” judgment struck instantly. He lived outdoors, ate grass like an ox, and his hair and nails grew wild until he humbled himself and acknowledged God’s sovereignty. Afterward, God restored his kingdom.
In chapter 5, King Belshazzar threw an arrogant drunken feast while the Medo-Persian army besieged the city. He brought out the sacred golden cups looted from the temple in Jerusalem to drink wine from them. Suddenly, a detached human hand appeared and wrote on the wall.
Daniel 5:5 (NASB)
Suddenly the fingers of a man’s hand emerged and began writing opposite the lampstand on the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace, and the king saw the back of the hand that did the writing.
Daniel was summoned to read the writing. He told Belshazzar: “God has numbered your kingdom and brought it to an end; you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting; your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.”
Daniel 5:26-28 (NASB)
’This is the interpretation of the message: ’MENE ’– God has numbered your kingdom and put an end to it. ’’TEKEL ’– you have been weighed on the scales and found deficient. ’’PERES ‘– your kingdom has been divided and given over to the Medes and Persians.’
That very night, the Persians diverted the Euphrates River, marched under the city walls through the dry riverbed, and took Babylon without a fight. Belshazzar was killed.
In chapter 6, King Darius the Mede appointed Daniel as a chief administrator. Daniel’s peers grew jealous and conducted an exhaustive background investigation on him:
Daniel 6:4 (NASB)
Then the commissioners and satraps began trying to find a ground of accusation against Daniel in regard to government affairs; but they could find no ground of accusation or [evidence of] corruption, inasmuch as he was faithful, and no negligence or corruption was [to be] found in him.
They couldn’t find a single error, scandal, or compromise because he was entirely faithful. The only way they could trap him was through his devotion to God. They tricked Darius into passing an unalterable decree forbidding prayer to anyone except the king for thirty days. Daniel went home, opened his windows toward Jerusalem, and prayed three times a day just as he had always done. He was thrown into the lions’ den, but God shut the mouths of the lions, preserving His servant.
The Timeline of History and the Coming Messiah
In Daniel 7, Daniel received his own vision of four beasts corresponding to the four kingdoms: a lion (Babylon), a bear (Medo-Persia), a leopard (Greece), and a terrifying beast with iron teeth (Rome), culminating in the rule of the Ancient of Days.
Chapter 9 contains one of the most astonishing mathematical prophecies in all of Scripture. Daniel was studying Jeremiah and realized the seventy years of captivity were nearly complete. As he prayed, the angel Gabriel gave him the prophecy of the “seventy weeks” (seventy sets of seven years, or 490 prophetic years):
Daniel 9:24-26 (NASB)
’Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy [place]. ’So you are to know and discern [that] from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince [there will be] seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress. ’Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end [will come] with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined.
Gabriel told him that from the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Messiah the Prince, there would be 7 weeks and 62 weeks—a total of 69 weeks of years, which equals 483 prophetic years.
Sir Robert Anderson, a former head of Scotland Yard’s criminal investigation department, calculated this timeline using the 360-day prophetic calendar. From the decree given to Nehemiah by Artaxerxes to rebuild Jerusalem to the very day Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the foal of a donkey on Palm Sunday is exactly 173,880 days.
Throughout His ministry, Jesus repeatedly said, “My hour has not yet come.” But on that specific day, He rode into the city, accepted the messianic praises of the crowd, and declared that if the people were silent, the very stones would cry out. Exactly 173,880 days to the letter! Daniel then prophesied that after this period, the Messiah would be cut off (killed) and a future ruler’s people would destroy the city and sanctuary—which the Romans did in 70 AD.
Chapters 10 through 12 continue with astonishing historical precision, predicting the exact succession of Persian kings, the rise and sudden death of Alexander the Great, the division of his empire among four generals, the ongoing conflicts between Syria and Egypt, and ultimately the end times.
Ezekiel: Visions of a Restored Future
Finally, we have Ezekiel. Ezekiel was a contemporary of Daniel, writing from captivity along the Chebar Canal in modern-day Iraq.
Ezekiel 1:1-2 (NASB)
Now it came about in the thirtieth year, on the fifth [day] of the fourth month, while I was by the river Chebar among the exiles, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God. (On the fifth of the month in the fifth year of King Jehoiachin’s exile,
Ezekiel contains 14 specifically dated prophecies. Over fifty times, Ezekiel writes, “The word of the Lord came to me.” God had Ezekiel perform dramatic prophetic signs: lying on his side for over a year, shaving his head, and acting out sieges.
Chapters 1 through 24 record the warnings and reasons for Jerusalem’s impending fall. Chapters 25 through 32 contain judgments against surrounding pagan nations. Chapters 33 through 39 prophesy Israel’s future restoration and spiritual rebirth.
Chapters 40 through 48 conclude with a detailed blueprint of a future temple. The glory of God, which Ezekiel saw depart from Solomon’s temple due to idolatry, is seen returning to this new temple. While the immediate post-exilic community rebuilt a modest temple under Zerubbabel and Ezra, Ezekiel’s ultimate vision points to the millennial reign of Christ, when the Messiah Himself will rule from Jerusalem in absolute holiness and glory.
Conclusion: Trusting God in the Details
What is our takeaway from Lamentations, Daniel, and Ezekiel?
If God is capable of orchestrating the exact flow of human history across centuries—from Babylon to Persia, to Greece, to Rome—and if God fulfilled His prophetic word to the exact day (173,880 days from the decree until Christ rode into Jerusalem), do you believe God is able to keep His promises to you today?
We often say, “Faith is hard. I haven’t seen Jesus with my physical eyes. I need something tangible.” Look at this Book! Look at how profoundly specific, faithful, and reliable God has proven to be. If God is faithful in the monumental movements of world history and in the microscopic mathematical details of prophecy, we can trust Him completely with our lives, even when our circumstances look like rubble.
Let’s pray together.
Father, thank You for these incredible books. Thank You for Daniel’s uncompromising character and Ezekiel’s vision of hope. Thank You that You reign sovereignly over all human history. We look forward to the return of our true King—the One who did not grasp at power, but humbled Himself and served us by laying down His life. Until that day, make us faithful witnesses of Your truth. In Jesus’ name, Amen.