What Does Daniel 12:12 Mean?
Flourishing is the one who waits, and arrives at one thousand three hundred and thirty-five days.
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
Blessed is he that waiteth, and cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days.THE KEY
Here flourishing stands at the far edge of the wait: the one who waits is the one who reaches the stated measure.
THE MEANING
Flourishing belongs to the one who waits through the stated span and reaches its far edge. The verse holds the days and the arrival together in a single line.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a long wait disqualifies the one waiting from flourishing; here, the one who waits and reaches the measure is called flourishing.
THE ROOT
הַמְחַכֶּה
hamĕḥakkêh
GROWS FROM
חכה
To wait for, look for, or tarry in expectation.
“waits” in this verse is hamĕḥakkêh. The participle describes a person in the act of waiting, and the same root appears in the call to “wait for it” in Habakkuk and “they that wait for him” in Isaiah. This is expectation held through an interval, paired here with reaching the stated measure.
ALSO GROWS
ḥakkêh: Wait for the vision.
חַכֵּה
Habakkuk uses this form for waiting through delay until the appointed outcome arrives.
ḥōkê: Those who wait for him.
חוֹכֵי
Isaiah pairs this same root with flourishing, echoing Daniel’s image of the one who waits.
וְיַגִּיעַ
wəyaggîaʿ
GROWS FROM
נגע
To touch, reach, or arrive at.
The verb translated “cometh” belongs to a root whose basic sense is touching or reaching. The English can sound like reaching a date; the Hebrew also carries the sense of coming into contact with the far edge of the wait.
ALSO GROWS
nāgaʿ: To touch or come into contact.
נָגַע
This is the root’s basic verb sense, present beneath the word for arriving at the stated days.
negaʿ: A touch, stroke, or affliction.
נֶגַע
This noun preserves the root’s sense of contact, making the arrival in Daniel feel like reaching a real boundary.
THE PATTERN
Flourishing accompanies the one who remains in the wait until the stated arrival.
Therefore the LORD will wait, so that he may show you favor, and therefore he will rise up to have compassion on you. For the LORD is a God of judgment. Flourishing are all who wait for him.For the vision is yet for the appointed time, and at the end it will breathe and not lie. Though it lingers, wait for it. Because it will surely come, it will not stay behind.Be slow to heat therefore, brethren, until the arrival of the LORD. Look, the one who works the soil waits for the costly fruit of the earth, and is slow to heat over it until he takes in the early and late rain.THE THREAD
Therefore the LORD will wait, so that he may show you favor, and therefore he will rise up to have compassion on you. For the LORD is a God of judgment. Flourishing are all who wait for him.Isaiah pairs “blessed” with “they that wait,” echoing Daniel’s pairing of flourishing with the one who waits. The waiting word comes from the same root in both verses, so the connection is carried by the Hebrew itself.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us