Chapter 139

¹ Now that these things have been said in this way, the prophet recounts to us yet another vision; for the blessed Daniel was anxious about nothing else than that, having been accurately taught all that was to come, he might in turn be shown teaching us as well.

² He says, then: “In the third year of Cyrus king of the Persians a word was revealed to Daniel, whose name was called Belshazzar; and the word was true, and great power and understanding were given to him in the vision. In those days I Daniel was mourning three weeks of days; bread of desire I did not eat, and meat and wine did not enter my mouth, and with oil I did not anoint myself until the completion of three weeks of days; on the twenty-fourth day of the first month.”

³ “I humbled myself,” he says, “for twenty-one days, praying to the living God, asking of him the revelation of mysteries.”

⁴ And indeed, having heard him, the Father sent forth his own Word, indicating what was to come to pass through him; and so it happened beside the great river. For it was fitting that the Child be shown there, where he was also about to forgive sins.

⁵ “And I lifted up,” he says, “my eyes and saw, and behold, one man clothed in linen.” Now in the first vision he says, “Behold, the angel Gabriel flying”; but here it is not so, but he sees the Lord himself—not yet perfectly man, but appearing in the form of a man—just as he says, “and behold, one man clothed in linen.”

⁶ For Christ, clothed in the manifold calling of the gifts of grace, displayed a many-colored tunic of mysteries; because the priestly tunic was fashioned of various colors, as a sign of the manifold nations awaiting the coming of Christ, so that we might be enabled to be fashioned with manifold gifts of grace.