Daniel’s Most Holy High Ones

The prophet Daniel is given visions in which he sees two distinct divine Powers or Persons, namely, the Ancient of Days and one like a Son of Man:

“I kept looking Until thrones were set up, And the Ancient of Days was seated; His clothing was like white snow And the hair of His head like pure wool. His throne was ablaze with fire, Its wheels were a burning fire. A river of fire was flowing And coming out from before Him; Thousands upon thousands were attending Him, And myriads upon myriads were standing before Him; The court sat, And the books were opened.” Daniel 7:9-10 Legacy Standard Bible (LSB)

“I kept looking in the night visions, And behold, with the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man was coming, And He came up to the Ancient of Days And came near before Him. And to Him was given dominion, Glory, and a kingdom, That all the peoples, nations, and men of every tongue Might serve (yipelachun) Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion Which will not be taken away; And His kingdom is one Which will not be destroyed.” Daniel 7:13-14 LSB

That this second figure is fully, truly divine is easily demonstrated from the fact that he receives the exact worship due to God, reigns for the same duration that God does, and even rides the clouds like God:

“Then the reign, the dominion, and the greatness of all the kingdoms under the whole heaven will be given to the people of the Most High Holy Ones (qaddishe Elyonin); His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and all the dominions will serve (yipelachun) and obey Him.” Daniel 7:27

“Nebuchadnezzar the king to all the peoples, nations, and men of every tongue that inhabit all the earth: ‘May your peace abound! It has seemed good to me to declare the signs and wonders which the Most High God has done for me. How great are His signs, And how strong are His wonders! His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, And His dominion is from generation to generation.’” Daniel 4:1-3 LSB

“But at the end of those days, I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted up my eyes toward heaven, and my knowledge returned to me, and I blessed the Most High and praised and honored Him who lives forever; For His dominion is an everlasting dominion, And His kingdom endures from generation to generation. And all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, But He does according to His will in the host of heaven And among the inhabitants of earth; And no one can strike against His hand Or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’” Daniel 4:34-35 LSB

“Then Darius the king wrote to all the peoples, nations, and men of every tongue who were inhabiting all the land: ‘May your peace abound! I make a decree that in all the dominion of my kingdom, men are to fear and be in dread before the God of Daniel; For He is the living God and enduring forever, And His kingdom is one which will not be destroyed, And His dominion will be unto the end. He saves and delivers and does signs and wonders In heaven and on earth, Who has also saved Daniel from the power of the lions.’” Daniel 6:25-27 LSB

“Mem Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, And Your dominion endures from generation to every generation.” Psalm 145:13 LSB

“You, O Yahweh, sit enthroned forever; Your throne is from generation to generation.” Lamentations 5:19

“Sing to God, sing praises to His name; Lift up a song for Him who rides through the deserts, Whose name is Yah, and exult before Him... To Him who rides upon the highest heavens, which are from ancient times; Behold, He gives forth His voice, a voice that is strong. Ascribe strength to God; His majesty is over Israel And His strength is in the skies.” Read full chapter Psalm 68:4, 33-34 LSB

“Bless Yahweh, O my soul! O Yahweh my God, You are very great; You are clothed with splendor and majesty, Wrapping Yourself with light as with a cloak, Stretching out the heavens like a tent curtain. He lays the beams of His upper chambers in the waters; He sets up the clouds to be His chariot; He walks upon the wings of the wind;” Psalm 104:1-3 LSB

“The oracle concerning Egypt. Behold, Yahweh is riding on a swift cloud and is about to come to Egypt; The idols of Egypt will shake at His presence, And the heart of the Egyptians will melt within them.” Isaiah 19:1 LSB

“Yahweh is slow to anger and great in power, And Yahweh will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. Beth In whirlwind and storm is His way, And clouds are the dust beneath His feet.” Nahum 1:3 LSB

In fact, in the Ancient Near Eastern understanding cloud riding was a typical divine function, one which gods did. For example, in the so-called Baal Cycle, which was recently discovered in Ugarit, Kothar wa-Hassis encourages Baal to kill the god Yamm (“sea”) in order to gain dominion over the earth. In this exhortation, Baal is expressly called the cloud rider:

lrgmt/lk.lzbl.bʿl

tnt.lrkb.ʿrpt.

ht.ibk./ bʿlm.

ht.ibk.tmḫṣ.

ht.tṣmt.ṣrtk.

tqḥ.mlk.ʿlmk.

drktdtdrdrk.

…

ym.lmt.bʿlm.yml[k]

Indeed, I tell you, Prince Baal,

I reiterate, O Cloud-rider:

Now your enemy, Baal,

Now smash your enemy,

Now vanquish your foe.

So assume your eternal kingship,

Your everlasting dominion.

So Yamm is dead! Baal reig[ns! (?)]¹⁵

A further indication of the Son of Man’s Deity and essential equality with the Ancient of Days comes from Daniel’s use of plural terms all throughout the chapter:

“But the Most High Holy Ones (qaddishe Elyonin– lit. Holy Ones, Highest Ones) will receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever, for all ages to come.” Daniel 7:18

“I kept looking, and that horn was waging war with the saints and overcoming them until the Ancient of Days came and judgment was given in favor of the Most High Holy Ones (laqaddishe Elyonin), and the season arrived when the Holy Ones (qaddishin) took possession of the kingdom.” Daniel 7:21-22

“He will speak words against the Most High and wear down the Most High Holy Ones (ulaqaddishe Elyonin), and he will intend to make changes in seasons and in law; and they will be given into his hand for a time, times, and half a time.” Daniel 7:25

“Then the reign, the dominion, and the greatness of all the kingdoms under the whole heaven will be given to the people of the Most High Holy Ones (qaddishe Elyonin); His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and all the dominions will serve and obey Him.” Daniel 7:27

The Aramaic words qaddishe Elyonin are plural in form, and can be interpreted as “the Most High Holy Ones,” “the Holy Ones who are the Most Highs,” etc.

Interestingly, there are places in the Hebrew Bible where the plural form of holy (qadosh) is used for YHWH:

“The commencement of wisdom [is] the fear of Jehovah, And a knowledge of the Holy Ones (qadoshim) [is] understanding.” Proverbs 9:10 Young's Literal Translation (YLT)

This next example is most intriguing:

"Nor have I learned wisdom, Yet the knowledge of Holy Ones (qadoshim) I know. Who went up to heaven, and cometh down? Who hath gathered the wind in his fists? Who hath bound waters in a garment? Who established all ends of the earth? What [is] His name? and what His son's name? Surely thou knowest!” Proverbs 30:3-4

The reference to the name of God and his Son who alone are able to do wonders beyond human comprehension shows that qadoshim is not a case of the plural of majesty. Rather, it is a numerical plural referring to God and the Son of God, since they are the Holy Ones whose nature surpass human comprehension.

Orthodox Jewish scholar and Hebrew University professor Dr. Michael Segal explains why the phrase qaddishe elyonin should be taken as a reference to one and the same entity, and not to two different groups:

The context of these passages is the transition from the reign of the four kingdoms to the subsequent bestowal of dominion upon qaddishe elyonin עליונין קדישי.

The identification of the am qaddishe elyonin עליונין קדישי עם in v. 27 with bar enosh אנש בר in the vision is mediated by the occurrence of qaddishe elyonin עליונין קדישי in these three verses. To whom does this latter appellation refer? Much ink has been spilled over precisely this question, among the many interpretive issues in this chapter. The form qaddishe י ֵקדיש is a plural noun in construct form, generally translated as “holy ones.” The substantival form of the adjective qadosh קדוש in Biblical and Qumranic Hebrew overwhelmingly refers to heavenly beings.²⁵ The plural can reflect number, as in this translation, yet it can also be the result of other considerations. Among alternative explanations, the most likely is the pluralis excellentiae or maiestatis, which is often used to refer to God (GKC § 124g–h). The most common example of this usage is of course elohim אלהים. Interestingly enough, in Biblical Hebrew the same usage occurs with the appellative qadoshim קדושים. Thus in Prov 9:10 one finds:

The beginning of wisdom is fear of Yhwh, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.

The verse exhibits a clear synonymous parallelism, in which Yhwh and qadoshim קדשים (“the Holy One”) can be viewed as equivalent elements.²⁶ Most commentators already assume that this same use of the plural is in fact the most plausible explanation for the plural form of the word elyonin עליונין in vv. 18,22,25, and therefore translate the term in Daniel 7 as a singular adjective, functioning as a substantive referring to God: “the Most High (One).”²⁷ The earliest source for this interpretation is both Greek translations of Daniel, which render the Aramaic as ὑψίστου; and they have influenced almost all subsequent analyses of this expression. Alternatively, scholars such as Bauer and Leander, posit that elyonin עליונין is singular in meaning but plural in form due to the attraction to the plural qaddishe (ן(קדישי.²⁸

When the collocation is analyzed as a unit, the issue that needs to be addressed is the syntactical relationship between the two words. Almost all commentators, starting with OG and Theod, interpret this as a construct relationship in which the first element signifies a plural noun and the second a plural noun with singular meaning, as described above, translated, “the holy ones of the Most High.” This in turn is interpreted in reference to a collective body, whether it be angelic beings or Israel itself. However, in light of the use of qadoshim קדושים as a reference to Yhwh in the biblical passages cited above, and in light of the analysis of the vision itself, I would like to offer two alternative proposals for the syntax of this phrase:

(1) It could be understood as the construct of a synonymous word pair, whose components complement one another. This phenomenon has been documented extensively by Avishur, in both the Bible and in Semitic languages more generally, although he did not discuss this example.²⁹ The terms can be shown to be synonymous based upon expressions in which they can be interchanged. Thus we find in Prov 9:10; 30:3 – da’at qadoshim  שיםֹקד דעת and in Num 24:16 – da’at elyonin עליון דעת) parallel to ‘imre el אמרי־אל” God’s speech”). In each of these contexts, the reference is to divine wisdom. The terms also appear in semi-parallelism in Deut 26:19:

And that He will set you, in fame and renown and glory, high above all the nations that He has made; and that you shall be, as He promised, a holy people to the Lord your God.

The construct expressions in this subcategory denote single concepts where one element modifies the other, functioning similarly to the phenomenon of hendiadys.³⁰ The phrase qaddishe elyonin עליונין קדישי could therefore be translated as “the most high holy one(s).”

(2) Morphologically, the word qaddishe י ֵקדיש is clearly in the construct state. This simple observation has been the trigger that has led scholars to analyze the phrase as two nouns in a construct relationship. However, there is another grammatical precedent for this configuration, which although it reflects a much less common phenomenon, offers yet another way to read the expression qaddishe elyonin עליונין קדישי. One finds in a number of biblical passages the collocation of a nomen regens and an adjective in agreement with that noun. In these instances, there is no nomen rectum to “complete” the noun in construct state. Instead, the meaning of the expression is essentially identical to the more common collocation of absolute noun + adjective. This phenomenon can be identified in the following expressions, for example, according to the Masoretic vocalization:³¹

Isa 36:2 (= 2Kgs 18:17): behel kabed 

Zec 14:4: ge gadolah me'od 

Qo 8:10: wa'saday kammigdalot

According to this explanation too, the expression can be translated as “the Most High Holy One(s).” The plural forms of both noun and adjective are the result of the agreement in number (and gender) of both elements, and not due simply to the syntactical juxtaposition of two independent nouns. The use of the plural would therefore have the same connotation for both the noun and the adjective.

According to both of these alternatives, the decision whether to interpret qaddishe קדישי as a reference to one or multiple divine figures would therefore be a matter of interpretation. The use of the pluralis excellentiae or maiestatis in this phrase is already acknowledged by almost all scholars with reference to the word elyonin עליונין. The interpretation proposed here suggests that the same argument can be made regarding the word qaddishe קדישי. ³² In that case, the phrase may be read “the most high Holy One,” identified as Yhwh himself, who stands out among the various divine characters in Daniel 7. The correspondence of the “one like a man” in the vision to the qaddishe elyonin  עליונין קדישי in the interpretation would on this reading be eminently plausible – both refer to Yhwh, who is to receive eternal dominion and sovereignty. The extended phrase am qaddishe elyonin עליונין קדישי עם would then refer to the nation of Yhwh, a reference to the people of Israel, who will benefit in the earthly realm from Yhwh’s dominion in the heavenly plane.³³ (Segal, Dreams, Riddles, and Visions: Textual, Contextual, and Intertextual Approaches to the Book of Daniel, edited by John Barton, Reinhard G. Kratz, & Markus Witte [De Gruyter, 2016], 5. Reconsidering the Theological Background of Daniel 7, pp. 140-143)

If we take this as the correct interpretation of the Aramaic phrasing, then the Holy Ones that reign as the Highest Ones must be the Ancient of Days and the Son of Man. As such, this simply provides further substantiation that these two distinct figures are equal to one another in nature, power, glory and honor.

Further Reading

How Many Ancient of Days did Daniel See?