God made a covenant with David described as unalterable! God said he would never go back on what he had sworn. David’s children would always retain the right to reign over Israel and their throne (thus, the “throne of David”) would be as secure as the sun or the moon in the heavens. However, if the children were disobedient God would severely punish them, but would never suffer his faithfulness to fail nor would he “alter the thing that is gone out of’ his lips, and, he says, “my covenant I will not break”. When the line of David fell it certainly looked as if God had “abhorred the covenant of thy servant: thou hast profaned his crown by casting it to the ground.”
The punishment under which the Jews labored was not faithlessness on God’s part but rather a strict application of the Davidic covenant. The Gentile dominion of the Jew was not to be understood as treachery on God’s part! Daniel makes it clear that the sovereignty would be restored again to the saints.
Could God, at one and the same time, be a lover of his people and omnipotent? Would an adequately powerful God who loved his people permit them to be treated as they were being treated? It might well have occurred to many (as it has occurred to many atheists ancient and modern) that a good God if he were powerful enough would have put an end to the terrible suffering witnessed on every hand. Since he didn’t do it, it might be that he was either good but not sufficiently powerful or powerful enough but not sufficiently good. Daniel makes it very clear that God is sovereign over the whole earth. He alone raises kings and puts them down (2:21; 4:17,25); no battle or siege is successful unless God so wills it (1:2a; 5:25-30); no decree against the saints is successful (chapters 3 and 6). The Jewish pain is due to their iniquity and not to the weakness of God or his lack of love. We are reminded again and again of the sins of the Jews (8:12,23; 9:3- 19,24,27b; 11:30,32,34; 12:2,10) and that although God is full of loving kindness He will punish iniquity. God is omnipotent and a lover of His people – but He will chasten those He loves!
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