Daniel דניאל
The book of a Jew at the Babylonian and Persian court, full of dreams, visions and calculations of the end.
Daniel is taken to Babylon as a youth with his companions Chanania, Mishael and Azaria and trained for royal service. The first thing said of him is that he refused the king's food. Then come the interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream of a statue of four metals — read by tradition as four kingdoms; the furnace from which three emerge unharmed; the writing on the wall at Belshazzar's feast; and the lions' den.
The second half consists of his own visions, written in dense coded language: beasts, horns, «seventy weeks». Here Jewish tradition looks for hints of the end — and here the Talmud warns, «may the bones of those who calculate the end swell».
Daniel is placed among the Writings rather than the Prophets: he saw visions but was not sent to the people. Part of the book is in Aramaic.