We've been tracing the theme of the Sea Dragon in the Bible and today we arrive at the

scroll of Daniel.

When the story of Daniel begins, the nation of Israel has been conquered by Babylon,

and many of its inhabitants have been carried off into exile,

including Daniel and his three friends Shadrack, Meshach, and the Bendigo.

And right off the bat, the narrator of Daniel

points out that these guys are all from the line of David.

By saying in the opening line that Daniel and his friends are from the royal seat, the

authors linking Daniel and his friends back to that ancient conflict between the

seed of the woman from Genesis 315 and then the snake and its seed.

The whole book of Daniel is the dramatization of Genesis 315.

So if this is a story about the seed of the woman from the line of David who will defeat the dragon,

then we're going to expect to encounter some serpents.

And so it's going to be no surprise that in Danny Chapter 7

when the drama of what's happening in the world

is described as a drama between one like a son of Adam

and then between this monstrous series of beasts, one of which is so monstrous you can't even be described.

Daniel Chapter 7 is an incredible apocalyptic dream that Daniel has where he sees four chaos monsters rising up out of the sea.

These are creatures that are in God's world but they're monstrous boundary breaking. What's important about all these beasts is the mixing of the categories.

Yawe appears on his throne in the sky,

but there's another character as well

that Daniel calls the son of man and he rides up on a cloud

...