The Tanakh Podcast

The people have returned.Now they set their attention to the Temple.First they begin offering the Tamid, the daily sacrifice, on an altar on the Temple Mount.Next they set the Foundation Stone of the Secodn Temple, amidst great fanfare.

42, 360 Jews return. This chapter gives a roster of sorts of all the returnees, according to their ancestral lineage and geographical origin.

Cyrus takes the reins of the Persian Empire.He allows the Jews, (and other nations) to return to their homeland and rebuild the Temple. He even restores the original 1st Temple vessels to the Jewish emigrees. is exile over?

Today our chapter provides fertile ground for the ideas of resurrection of the dead, the final judgement, the book of life, and the notion of a "ketz" a pre-prescribed end-point of history. Here are the ingredients of Jewish eschatology, but as Daniel is told, the details are a riddle, a secret.

Daniel ch.11 gives us the history of the Greek Empire until the period of the Maccabees. What implications might we draw from this historical overview?

Ch.10 is the introduction to the final vision of the book.This chapter gives us a front-row seat as to the experience of prophecy, or at least, the encounter with a being - an angel - from the spiritual sphere.

Daniel sees that 70 years have past but the Exile is not over. He prays to God for mercy.One question raised by the Talmud is how a person's faith can remain intact after horrors like the Hurban (or the Holocaust) - and their meditation on our chapter offers some insight as to the changing nature of faith amid tragedy.

This chapter was used by many to try to calculate when the Redemption would arrive.

With ch.7 we begin the second segment of Sefer Daniel - Daniel's vision. We start with a vision of 4 terrifying beasts outlining the history of "Four Kingdoms" of which we have already learned in ch.2.We close this podcast with Meir Ariel's song The Iron BeastListen here. English lyrics here"The metal era, the iron ageReminds me of an animal in Daniel's visionThe metal animal, the iron beastThe similarity to these days is disturbing.."

Chapter 6 bears a startling similarity to ch.3.What are the unique lessons we can glean from this chapter? Why is the storyline repeated?