While I, Daniel, was watching the vision, I sought to understand it. Now one who appeared to be a man was standing before me.

I looked up ¹  and saw a ²  man ³  clothed in linen; ⁴  around his waist was a belt made of gold from Upaz. ⁵ 

He said, “Do you know why I have come to you? ¹  Now I am about to return to engage in battle with the prince of Persia. When I go, the prince of Greece is coming.

I, Daniel, watched as two others stood there, one on each side of the river. ¹ 

Look! ¹  Even if ²  they flee from the destruction, Egypt will take hold ³  of them, and Memphis will bury them. The weeds will inherit the silver they treasure ⁴  – thorn bushes will occupy their homes. ⁵ 

The sovereign Lord confirms this oath by his own holy character: ¹  “Certainly the time is approaching ²  when you will be carried away ³  in baskets, ⁴  every last one of you ⁵  in fishermen’s pots. ⁶ 

The sovereign Lord showed me this: I saw ¹  the sovereign Lord summoning a shower of fire. ²  It consumed the great deep and devoured the fields.

“For look, I am giving a command and I will shake the family of Israel together with all the nations. It will resemble a sieve being shaken, when not even a pebble falls to the ground. ¹ 

“Be sure of this, ¹  the time is ²  coming,” says the Lord, “when the plowman will catch up to the reaper ³  and the one who stomps the grapes ⁴  will overtake ⁵  the planter. ⁶  Juice will run down the slopes, ⁷  it will flow down all the hillsides. ⁸ 

Be sure of this! The Lord who commands armies has decreed: The nations’ efforts will go up in smoke; their exhausting work will be for nothing. ¹ 

The one who says to wood, ‘Wake up!’ is as good as dead ¹  – he who says ²  to speechless stone, ‘Awake!’ Can it give reliable guidance? ³  It is overlaid with gold and silver; it has no life’s breath inside it.

The riders then agreed with the angel of the Lord, ¹  who was standing among the myrtle trees, “We have been walking about on the earth, and now everything is at rest and quiet.”

Once more I looked, and this time I saw four chariots emerging from between two mountains of bronze. ¹ 

Then say to him, ‘The Lord who rules over all says, “Look – here is the man whose name is Branch, ¹  who will sprout up from his place and build the temple of the Lord.

“I am about to make Jerusalem ¹  a cup that brings dizziness ²  to all the surrounding nations; indeed, Judah will also be included when Jerusalem is besieged.

Look, I will send you Elijah ¹  the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord arrives.

So now, look, the Lord has preserved my life, just as he promised, these past forty-five years since the Lord spoke these words to Moses, during which Israel traveled through the wilderness. Now look, I am today eighty-five years old.

David’s men said to him, “This is the day about which the Lord said to you, ‘I will give your enemy into your hand, and you can do to him whatever seems appropriate to you.’” ¹  So David got up and quietly cut off an edge of Saul’s robe.

Then God said, “I now ¹  give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the entire earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. ² 

In Noah’s six hundred and first year, ¹  in the first day of the first month, the waters had dried up from the earth, and Noah removed the covering from the ark and saw that ²  the surface of the ground was dry.