What Does Daniel 5:17 Mean?
Then Daniel answered and said before the king, Let your gifts be to yourself, and give your rewards to another; yet I will read the writing to the king, and make known to him the interpretation.
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
Then Daniel answered and said before the king, Let thy gifts be to thyself, and give thy rewards to another; yet I will read the writing unto the king, and make known to him the interpretation.THE KEY
Daniel refuses the king’s gifts yet still opens the writing: revelation can be disclosed without being sold.
THE MEANING
You can see the difference between a reward that seeks to claim you and a meaning that can still be given freely. The writing becomes knowable even while the offered payment is refused. Its truth does not belong to the one who can pay.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that truth belongs to whoever can pay for it.
THE ROOT
פִּשְׁרָא
pishrāʾ
GROWS FROM
פשר
p-sh-r
To interpret or explain; the wider cognate word-family also carries the sense of loosening or resolving.
English makes interpretation sound like an abstract answer, while this word-family suggests something being resolved and opened. Daniel makes the writing legible without letting the king’s reward bind its meaning.
ALSO GROWS
peshar: To interpret or explain.
פְּשַׁר
It names the act Daniel promises: making the writing’s meaning clear.
pesher: An interpretation or explanation.
פֵּשֶׁר
The written words become something that can be understood.
מַתְּנָתָךְ
mattenātāḵ
GROWS FROM
נתן
n-t-n
Give, set, place.
The word for the king’s gifts belongs to the root of giving. Daniel separates the gift from ownership: what is offered does not purchase the meaning he gives.
ALSO GROWS
nātan: To give, set, or place.
נָתַן
The root keeps the gift connected to an act of giving, not a claim over the recipient.
mattānāh: A gift.
מַתָּנָה
This related form makes the king’s offer concrete as something given, not something that owns what Daniel knows.
אֲהוֹדְעִנֵּהּ
ʾahodʿinnēh
GROWS FROM
ידע
y-d-ʿ
Know, perceive, recognize.
The phrase rendered make known comes from the root for knowing. The hidden writing moves into recognition; the king’s wealth does not create or control that knowledge.
ALSO GROWS
yedaʿ: To know or recognize in Aramaic.
יְדַע
It shares the root of Daniel’s promise to make the meaning known.
yādaʿ: To know or perceive in Hebrew.
יָדַע
The Hebrew cognate keeps the link between disclosure and knowing visible.
THE PATTERN
A divine gift is not owned by the one who offers a reward; what is given freely cannot be bought into someone’s possession.
But he said, As the LORD lives, before whom I stand, I will take none. And he pressed him to take it, but he refused.Heal the weak, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. As a gift you received, as a gift give.But Peter said to him, Your silver perish with you, because you have thought the gift of God may be bought with silver.THE THREAD
But there is a God in heaven who uncovers hidden things, and makes known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days. Your dream, and the visions of your head upon your bed, are these.The Aramaic phrase translated maketh known repeats the root ידע (y-d-ʿ), the language of knowing, that appears in Daniel 5:17. Here Daniel names God as the source of what is made known, while in the current verse he discloses the writing without accepting the king’s reward.
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