What does Daniel 9:22 mean?
Gabriel, the messenger angel (Daniel 8:15–16; Luke 1:19, 26) has arrived in response to Daniel's passionate prayer (Daniel 9:1–3) for Israel's restoration from exile (2 Kings 17:1–8; 2 Chronicles 36:5–7; Jeremiah 25:7–11; Daniel 1:1–7). Daniel's previous experiences concerned future Gentile kingdoms but said extraordinarily little about Israel (Daniel 2:19–20; 7:1; 8:1). After the fall of Babylon, Daniel began to pray in response to promises he read in Jeremiah. In response, God dispatched Gabriel to reveal information about Israel's future and to enable Daniel to understand.It has always been God's will that believers not only read His Word but also that they understand it. In one of the Gospels, Jesus makes comments which the writer, Matthew, encourages the reader to carefully grasp (Matthew 24:15). After Daniel, when the exiles returned to Jerusalem, they gathered in the square before the Water Gate to hear the reading of the written words of God's laws. There, certain Levites "helped the people to understand the Law" (Nehemiah 8:7). The Levites read from the Law and "gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading" (Nehemiah 8:8).