Daniel maps & timelines

Geographic Context

Daniel is set entirely in the great imperial capitals of the East, far from the land of Israel. Its stage is Babylon, on the Euphrates, where Daniel was carried as a youth and served in the court of Nebuchadnezzar and his successors, and later the Persian Empire, after Babylon fell to “the Medes and Persians” in 539 BC. Daniel’s visions look out over the whole sweep of ancient Near Eastern power — the great world empires symbolized by the statue and the beasts (Babylon, Media-Persia, Greece, and Rome) — and one vision is set beside “the Ulai canal” in Susa, another Persian capital.

Though Daniel lived and served in exile, his heart remained fixed on Jerusalem, toward which he prayed three times a day, and his great prayer in chapter 9 pleads for the restoration of the holy city and sanctuary. The book’s geography thus spans the mightiest empires of the world while keeping the promised land in view, testifying that the God of a small, exiled people rules over all the kingdoms of the earth.

Timeline of Major Events

• 605 BC - Daniel is taken to Babylon in the first deportation.
• c. 603 BC - Daniel interprets Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the great statue.
• c. 590-570 BC - The fiery furnace and Nebuchadnezzar’s humbling.
• c. 553-551 BC - Daniel’s visions of the four beasts and the ram and goat.
• 539 BC - Belshazzar’s feast; Babylon falls to the Medes and Persians.
• c. 538 BC - Daniel is delivered from the lions’ den under Darius.
• c. 536-535 BC - Daniel’s prayer, the seventy weeks, and his final visions.