human being; mankind: a person, or humanity as a whole, set apart from God and from the animals
This is the ordinary Aramaic word for a human. It stretches across a wide range without ever leaving that core. At its broadest it names the whole human race: the book of Daniel returns again and again to the theme that the Most High rules over the kingdom of mankind and hands it to whomever he chooses, and phrases like the sons of men or the seed of men gather all people under this one word.
Narrowed down, the word marks a human as a kind, standing over against the animals or over against God. When a proud king is given the mind of a beast in place of a human mind, or when a lion in a vision is given a human heart, human eyes, or a human hand, this is the word that draws the line between people and creatures. When a decree forbids asking a request of any god or man, it is this word that names the human side of that pair.
The word also thins out into an everyday indefinite sense: anyone, someone, and with a negative, no one. There is no man on earth who can tell the king his dream; whoever reads the writing will be rewarded; any person who breaks the decree faces punishment. Here the word works almost like a pronoun for an unnamed person.
Finally it appears in the phrase one like a son of man, which in Aramaic simply means one who looks human, a figure in human form. That plain sense is the starting point for the heavily discussed vision in Daniel 7, where the meaning of the figure, though not of the word, has been argued for centuries.
Nuances
What the human-like figure (one like a son of man) in Daniel 7:13 represents.
- majorityA symbol for the holy people of the Most High, since the vision's own interpretation gives the everlasting kingdom to the saints.; Maurice Casey, Son of Man: The Interpretation and Influence of Daniel 7 (1979)
- minorityAn individual heavenly figure, often identified with the archangel Michael, who represents and champions the saints.; John J. Collins, Daniel (Hermeneia, 1993)
- minorityA messianic individual, a reading developed in later Jewish and Christian interpretation and taken up in the Gospels.; TDNT, s.v. ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου (C. Colpe)