LIKE BERYL … AS LIGHTNING … LAMPS OF FIRE

The identity of the ‘certain man’ of verse 5 is not given. On the one hand, this may have been a manifestation of God; in effect, a pre-incarnate appearance of the Lord Jesus. On the other hand, it may have been the appearance of an angel.

If the ‘man’ who later spoke to Daniel in verses 10-14 was the ‘certain man’ seen by Daniel in verses 5 and 6 then the ‘certain man’ was an angel; no divine person would have said what the ‘man’ does in verse 13. It may be, however, that the celestial being who later spoke was someone different. In which case, it is most likely that the ‘certain man’ was none other than our Lord Jesus, an interpretation supported by the many points of resem­blance between the description given of the ‘certain man’ and that of the risen and transcendent Lord, cf. Rev. 1. 13-16 - where He is seen as ‘one like a son of man’, lit.

In all likelihood, the word translated ‘like the beryl’ indi­cates ‘a transparent stone with a refulgence like that of gold… brought from Tarshish (southern Spain)’, Pliny. If we under­stand the description to be that of our Lord Jesus, this may well suggest His divine purity - that no trace of sin ever tar­nished His beauty. And we remember that it was in His ‘body’ that He bore our sins, 1 Pet. 2. 24. ‘His face as the appearance of lightning’ may cause us to think of those occasions when our Lord’s face shone as the sun, Matt. 17. 2; Rev. 1. 16. And we remember that more than one group of men spat in that very face, Matt. 26. 67; 27. 30, and that the face which had been glo­riously transfigured on the Holy Mount was cruelly disfigured at the Place of the Skull. For ‘his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men’, Isa. 53. 14. ‘His eyes as lamps of fire’ indicate discernment and a penetrating, all-seeing gaze. We may well link these words with the three occasions where we are told that our Lord’s eyes were as ‘a flame of fire’, Rev. 1. 14; 2. 18; 19. 12. And we remember the time when, hanging on His cross, ‘Jesus … saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved’, and when He said, ‘Woman, behold thy son!’, John 19. 25, 26. His eyes were not ‘as lamps of fire’ then!