Wise Ones to Teach us the Future

Daniel.11.29-31

History and prophecy, past and future, go hand in hand throughout the Book of Daniel, assumed to be the final book of the biblical historical chronology even if we have a few more books to go.

The final two chapters introduce a blend of what may seem like future projections but is in fact the authors’ response to history - with winks to big personalities, not directly named but clearly referred to. Among them is Alexander the Great, and one of his heirs, Antiochus IV - not very beloved in Jewish history, infamous for his religious war on the Jews.

Today’s chapter Below the Bible Belt also meets the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day — Yom HaShoah - in observance of one of history’s most devastating assaults on the Jewish people. We read Daniel’s apocalyptic visions through the lens of more recent horrors, and the result is hauntingly familiar. In today’s chapter, , buried beneath symbols and riddles, we find an anguished reflection on persecution, persistence, and painful inner division — a pattern that echoes into the 20th century and into our continued and complex conflicts today. Has anything changed? What does this past teach us about our present?

As Daniel envisions the future, he describes epic battles between kings and dynasties, in what read like many seasons of ‘Game of Thrones’ style struggles for power. He then goes on to describe in details a king’s assault on the sacred rites of a city. What’s written as future-telling, is, in fact, retroactive reckoning and the cloaked chronicle of the brutal persecution of Jerusalem’s Jews under the Hellenistic ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes in the 2nd century BCE. His decrees weren’t just political suppression; they were an attack on the very heart of Jewish religious identity:

וּזְרֹעִים מִמֶּנּוּ יַעֲמֹדוּ וְחִלְּלוּ הַמִּקְדָּשׁ הַמָּעוֹז וְהֵסִירוּ הַתָּמִיד וְנָתְנוּ הַשִּׁקּוּץ מְשֹׁמֵם׃ וּמַרְשִׁיעֵי בְרִית יַחֲנִיף בַּחֲלַקּוֹת וְעַם יֹדְעֵי אֱלֹהָיו יַחֲזִקוּ וְעָשׂוּ׃ וּמַשְׂכִּילֵי עָם יָבִינוּ לָרַבִּים וְנִכְשְׁלוּ בְּחֶרֶב וּבְלֶהָבָה בִּשְׁבִי וּבְבִזָּה יָמִים׃

“Forces will be levied by the king; they will desecrate the temple, the fortress; they will abolish the regular offering and set up the appalling abomination. He will flatter with smooth words those who act wickedly toward the covenant, but the people devoted to their God will stand firm.

The wise among the people will make the many understand; and for a while they shall fall by sword and flame, suffer captivity and plunder.

Daniel.11.29-31

Reinhard G. Kratz, in his analysis of these verses helps decode what’s behind the “prophetic” mask.

The attack on the sacred is no metaphor. Antiochus’s regime desecrated the Temple, banned core Jewish practices like circumcision and Sabbath observance, and imposed Greek cultic rituals. Abolishing the tamid, the regular daily burnt offering, was a symbolic and practical blow. This ritual — twice daily, morning and evening — had represented the ongoing covenantal relationship between Israel and God. Its removal severed the rhythm of divine presence in communal life. Replacing it with pagan sacrifice wasn't just an insult — it was a redefinition of sacred space and sovereignty. It made clear: the empire, not the covenant, would now dictate what holiness looked like. These are the attacks that would provoke the revolt that led to the story of Hanukkah.

Political persecution and religious reforms often go hand in hand.

But Daniel isn’t just lamenting external violence.

He’s equally focused on the internal ruptures that followed. Some Jews collaborated with the new regime, coxed by the regime’s ‘smooth talk’, adapting or abandoning traditional practices. Others resisted — fiercely, faithfully. Among them were the Maskilim — the “wise ones,” or enlightened leaders, whom Daniel praises them, here and will elevate even more in the next and final chapter. It’s likely that the authors of this book belonged to this group.

These Maskilim aren’t warriors. They are teachers, spiritual strategists, moral exemplars. They offer not only resistance but vision. In Daniel’s telling, they are the quiet heroes, choosing wisdom over conformity, truth over safety. Their power is not political but prophetic.

They lead us to the future by teaching us the past.

Daniel is clearly on their side. Though he mourns the suffering endured by many, he frames these figures as agents of hope and continuity. We will hear more of them in the next and final chapter.

What does this ancient split teach us on this day of commemoration, in the midst of ongoing cruel war and deepening divides among us?

It reminds us that persecution often brings with it not just suffering from without, but fracture from within. It gives context to the ideologies that keep informing the stands we take - older than we would have thought, and just as compelling.

And yet, it also reveals a lineage of spiritual courage that transcends time. Like the Maskilim, many in the 20th century resisted Fascism — not only with arms, but with ideas, faith, songs, stories, and education. In our own time of communal schisms — over politics, identity, ideology — the model of the Maskilim offers both challenge and comfort. Endurance is a virtue and the focus on those who wisely choose patience over instant gratification and the empire’s smooth seductions -- is what Daniel invites us to honor.

Prophecy or history, these verses echo today, as we hold space for the pains and persecutions, ancient and more recent, honor persistence and survival, lift up the wisdom to resist despair and learn from our past - how to live more loving, helpful, hopeful lives, for the sake of safer and more kinder, wiser futures - for all of us.

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