Who Is the Son of Man in Daniel 7?

Daniel never gives him a name. In the middle of a vision full of monsters, a figure in human shape arrives on the clouds, is presented to God, and is handed a kingdom that never ends. That is all the chapter says about who he is.

So the honest answer is that Daniel 7 describes the figure without identifying him, and readers have filled the gap in three main ways: as a symbol for the faithful people of God, as an individual heavenly being, or as the Messiah. Christians take the third and add that Jesus settled the question by taking the title as his own, more often than any other title in the Gospels. What follows is why each reading has weight, and why the passage matters so much for Revelation.

The scene itself

I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed. Daniel 7:13-14

Two details set the scene. First, this comes after four beasts have risen out of the sea, each one a predator, each one worse than the last. Second, the giving happens in a courtroom. Thrones are set, books are opened, and the beasts lose what they held.

What "son of man" actually meant

Daniel 7 is written in Aramaic, not Hebrew, and the phrase is bar enash. Bar is son, enash is man or humankind. In ordinary speech it means nothing more than "a human being". The Hebrew equivalent, ben adam, is what God calls Ezekiel about ninety times, and it emphasises exactly that: you are mortal, and I am not.

Notice also that Daniel writes "one like a son of man". He is describing an appearance, the way he describes the earlier creatures as "like a lion" and "like a bear". Nobody thinks a literal leopard ruled the world. The phrase tells you what the figure looked like, not what he was.

That contrast is the point of the chapter. Four empires appear as animals dragged up out of the churning sea. What replaces them looks human. Whatever else Daniel 7 is doing, it is saying that the kingdom which lasts is the one that finally looks like a person rather than a predator.

Three readings, side by side

The collective reading

The strongest argument here is that the chapter appears to interpret itself. When Daniel asks what the vision means, the answer he receives is about a people.

But the saints of the most High shall take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom for ever, even for ever and ever. Daniel 7:18

Verse 27 repeats it: the kingdom is given "to the people of the saints of the most High". If the everlasting kingdom in verse 14 is given to the son of man, and the everlasting kingdom in verses 18 and 27 is given to the saints, the simplest conclusion is that the son of man stands for the saints, the way the beasts stand for empires.

The most thorough modern defence of that view is Maurice Casey's Son of Man: The Interpretation and Influence of Daniel 7 (SPCK, 1979), which argues the figure is a corporate symbol for the righteous of Israel and nothing more.

The individual reading

The counter-argument turns on how he arrives. In the Old Testament, riding the clouds is not something people do. God "maketh the clouds his chariot" in Psalm 104:3. He "rideth upon a swift cloud" into Egypt in Isaiah 19:1. Deuteronomy 33:26 has him riding the heavens to help his people. The imagery belongs to divine transport, and Daniel gives it to this figure without explanation.

Add that he is brought before the Ancient of Days as a distinct party in the scene, and receives worship-language service from all nations, and the collective reading starts to strain. A symbol for persecuted saints is not the sort of thing that rides in on the storm.

Critical scholars who accept that he is an individual do not all reach the Messiah. John J. Collins, in his Hermeneia commentary on Daniel (1993), argues that the figure is the archangel Michael, who appears later in the book as the guardian of Daniel's people. On that reading the son of man is an individual and the saints are still the beneficiaries, with a heavenly representative standing for an earthly community.

What Jewish interpreters have said

This is worth stating carefully, because it is frequently misrepresented in both directions.

The two earliest surviving Jewish readings of Daniel 7 both treat the figure as an individual. The Similitudes of Enoch (1 Enoch 37 to 71) describes a son of man who is also called the Elect One, hidden with God before creation and seated on a throne of glory to judge. In 4 Ezra 13 the seer watches a man come up out of the sea and fly with the clouds of heaven, and the text connects him to David's line.

In the Talmud, Rabbi Joshua ben Levi notices that Daniel 7:13 has the Messiah coming with clouds while Zechariah 9:9 has him arriving humbly on a donkey, and resolves it by merit: if Israel is worthy, the clouds; if not, the donkey (b. Sanhedrin 98a). Rabbi Akiva read the plural "thrones" in Daniel 7:9 as one throne for God and one for David, meaning the Messiah, and was sharply rebuked by Rabbi Yose for it (b. Sanhedrin 38b). That rebuke matters: it shows the messianic reading existed early and that it was controversial early.

Rashi, the eleventh-century commentator whose notes still sit on most printed pages of the Hebrew Bible, identifies the figure as the King Messiah. Other Jewish interpreters, then and now, read him as a personification of Israel receiving its vindication. Both readings are genuinely Jewish. What Jewish interpretation does not do is identify him with a divine person alongside God, and Rabbi Yose's objection to Akiva shows why: that move is understood as compromising God's uniqueness.

The title Jesus chose

In the Gospels, "Son of Man" appears about eighty times, almost always on Jesus' own lips. He rarely called himself Messiah in public. He called himself this constantly.

The usefulness of the phrase was its double edge. To most hearers it sounded like a modest way of saying "this man". To anyone holding Daniel 7 in mind, it was a claim to the everlasting dominion of verse 14.

At his trial he removed the ambiguity by fusing two texts.

And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven. Mark 14:62

The first half is Psalm 110:1, "Sit thou at my right hand". The second is Daniel 7:13. Matthew 26:64 records the same combination. The high priest tore his clothes and called it blasphemy, and whatever else that reaction proves, it proves the claim was heard as far larger than a claim to be a human being.

Where Revelation picks it up

John's opening chapter reaches for Daniel 7 twice within fourteen verses. Revelation 1:7 says "Behold, he cometh with clouds". Revelation 1:13 says John saw "one like unto the Son of man" walking among the lampstands. Revelation 14:14 seats him on a white cloud with a golden crown.

None of these is a quotation. Revelation never quotes the Old Testament with a formula the way Matthew or Paul do. It alludes, constantly, and Daniel supplies more of the raw material than any other book. Once you can hear Daniel 7 underneath Revelation 1, the same trick starts working in Revelation 4, 5 and 13, and the last book of the Bible begins to read like a book written out of an earlier one.

The connections are checkable. You can lay the verses side by side and grade each link as clear, probable or possible, and most of the argument about Revelation turns on how many of them you accept.