I, Daniel: compare “me, Daniel” in 7.15, 28; 8.1. Once again this use of the emphatic pronoun followed by the proper name seems to establish the fact that the prophet is emerging from the vision to the real world; thus it marks an important point in the discourse of the book.

When I … had seen the vision, I sought to understand it: it may be important in some languages to alter the verb tenses to make the meaning clearer. The idea is something like “after having seen the vision I was making an effort to understand it,” or “while I was thinking about the vision I had seen and trying to figure it out.”

Behold: in this case the Hebrew particle is translated as “suddenly” in Good News Translation (as well as Revised English Bible and Moffatt) because the context seems to require some such word in English. Many other languages will have similar ways of marking a surprising turn of events.

One having the appearance of a man: in spite of the similarity in English between this expression and the one in 7.13, the Hebrew here is in reality quite different from the Aramaic expression in the previous chapter. Consequently it here designates a being that is different from the “son of man” in the previous chapter. Here the word for man, gever, signifies an adult male person and not the more generic “human being.” The Hebrew word has the same root as the proper name “Gabriel,” one of the angels in the service of God, who is named in the following verse (compare 9.21 and Luke 1.19, 26).

Quoted with permission from Péter-Contesse, René & Ellington, John. A Handbook on Daniel. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1994. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .