{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-3527","native_reference":{"book_number":340,"chapter_from":10,"chapter_to":10,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":2,"verse_to":2},"public_import_allowed":false,"record_kind":"verse-keyed-module-record","review_required":["English edition and exact text","author/work attribution","dating","verse mapping and citation kind","reuse and attribution","split author quotations and deduplicate"],"review_status":"unreviewed","source_html":"<p><b>Ephrem the Syrian</b>: He says that the mourning had been protracted \"for three weeks,\" because he had fasted for all that space of time. He calls fasting \"mourning\" in the same sense used by our Lord, when he defended himself and his disciples from the detractions of the Pharisees. When the disciples were reproached by the Pharisees because they were not fasting, the Lord answered, \"The wedding guests cannot mourn,\" that is, fast, \"as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they\"?<br/><i>— COMMENTARY ON Daniel 10:1-2</i></p><p><b>Jerome</b>: Verses 2, 3. \"In those days I, Daniel, mourned for the days of three weeks; I ate no desirable bread, and neither flesh or wine entered into my mouth; neither was I anointed with ointment until the days of three weeks were accomplished.\" By this example we are taught to abstain from the pleasanter types of food (I think that the term \"desirable bread\" is that inclusive) during a period of fasting, and that we neither eat flesh nor drink wine, and especially that we desire no anointing with ointments. This custom is maintained among the Persians and Indians even to this day, that they use ointment as a substitute for baths. Also, Daniel afflicted his soul for three consecutive weeks, so that his intercession might not appear cursory or casual. By inference, indeed, we ought to make the observation that a person in mourning who bemourns the absence of one betrothed partakes of no desirable bread though it comes down from heaven itself; neither does he touch solid food, which is to be understood in the sense of meat, nor does he drink any wine, which gladdens the heart of man, or make his face cheerful with oil (as we read in the Psalms: \"That he may make the face cheerful with oil\" Psalms 104:15). By means of such a fast as this the betrothed girl sheds tears which will be convincing, when her fiance has been taken from her. Daniel also did well to supplicate the Lord with boldness, inasmuch as in the first year of Cyrus's reign the captivity of the Jews had already been somewhat relaxed in its severity.<br/><i>— St. Jerome, Commentary on Daniel, CHAPTER TEN</i></p><p><b>Philoxenus of Mabbug</b>: And thou must also understand from the testimony of the Prophets, that they too, whenever they were held worthy to receive a vision of God or of the angels, led a life of much fasting, and then were they worthy to receive the vision of revelations, even as it is written of that beloved man Daniel, that after his fast of three weeks he was wholly worthy of the sight of angels. And if for that man who was looking for the advent of an angel all this fasting was necessary, and he was only then worthy to receive spiritual revelations, how much more for thee who awaitest the spiritual sight of Christ, and hopest to receive within thy soul the perception which is above nature, are much fasting, and abstinence, and the subduing of the body necessary, if thou wouldst arrive at things which are greater than those of Daniel?<br/><i>— 13 Ascetic Discourses, Discourse 11 -- On Abstinence</i></p><p><b>Theodoret of Cyrus</b>: We must seek the source of his grief.… Although the king permitted all who wanted their freedom and permission to return [to their homeland and rebuild the temple], most had built homes in Babylon and were held back by their bond to these houses and, thinking lightly of the chance to return, preferred a foreign land to their own. Only the lovers of godliness and guardians of the ancestral laws despised their possessions in Babylon and preferred their desolate homeland and its kingdom. Then the following fact also wrought a great pain for blessed Daniel: when he saw the trustworthiness of the divine promise and the kindness and benevolence of the king—and the stubborn and ungovernable nature of the people—he was very despondent in his soul, and he spent his time grieving.… He spent three weeks fasting.<br/><i>— COMMENTARY ON Daniel 10:2-3</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"34e5c56dd86a095d3000df7a9ba093df2cba12ade973f87eca8d5914f2c12150","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":3527,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"efb6f622c027d029defda2b97d759f65e63baa28ae643127e4c505de2705fdd6","translator":null,"work":null}