What Does Daniel 10:9 Mean?
Yet I heard the voice of his words, and when I heard the voice of his words, then I was in a deep sleep upon my face, and my face toward the ground.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Yet heard I the voice of his words: and when I heard the voice of his words, then was I in a deep sleep on my face, and my face toward the ground.THE KEY
Daniel hears the voice twice, yet the first visible response is a body overtaken into deep sleep.
THE MEANING
You may hear the voice and still be face-down, unable to keep yourself upright. Hearing remains real in the very moment the body is overcome.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A real encounter must leave you composed and upright; Daniel hears the voice and is still face-down in deep sleep.
THE ROOT
נִרְדָּם
nirdām
GROWS FROM
רדם
radam
To sink into deep sleep; to be overcome by sleep.
The word here, נִרְדָּם (nirdām, sunk into deep sleep), shares its root with תַּרְדֵּמָה (tardēmāh, deep sleep), the sleep that falls on Adam in Genesis 2:21. The root names both the person’s state and the sleep itself, keeping the emphasis on being overtaken: Daniel hears the voice even as ordinary bodily control gives way.
ALSO GROWS
tardēmāh: Deep sleep.
תַּרְדֵּמָה
This noun names the deep sleep that falls on Adam in Genesis 2:21, linking Daniel’s state to a body unable to direct what follows.
wayyirdam: And he fell fast asleep.
וַיִּרְדַּם
Jonah 1:5 uses this verb as Jonah sleeps below deck during a storm; the root can mark a body unresponsive to what surrounds it.
nirdām: One sunk into deep sleep.
נִרְדָּם
Proverbs 10:5 uses the same form for the person who sleeps through harvest, showing how the state can leave someone unaware of what is happening around them.
THE PATTERN
An encounter that exceeds human command brings the body low before the person can answer.
As the look of the bow that is in the cloud on the day of rain, so was the glow round about. This was the look of the likeness of the weight of the LORD. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face, and I heard a voice of one speaking.And he fell to the ground, and heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why do you pursue me?As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and behold, a terror of great darkness fell upon him.THE THREAD
And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept, and he took one of his ribs and shut the flesh in its place.Daniel’s נִרְדָּם (nirdām, sunk into deep sleep) and Adam’s תַּרְדֵּמָה (tardēmāh, deep sleep) both grow from רדם (radam, to sink into deep sleep). In Genesis the sleeper cannot direct what follows; that shared root opens Daniel’s face-down state as the body’s surrender of control while the voice has already been heard.
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