to render service to someone: the work and loyalty a person owes to a god, a sanctuary, or a sovereign
This Aramaic verb names the service a person renders to someone they belong to: doing their work, being at their disposal, standing under their authority. In Daniel the one served is almost always a god, so in practice the word covers both serving and worshiping, and in those chapters the two ideas cannot be pulled apart.
The everyday side of the word still shows. In Ezra 7:24 the people it names are simply the staff who do the work of the temple, listed alongside the priests, singers, and gatekeepers, and the Aramaic noun built from it (פָּלְחָן) means the service itself. In neighboring languages the same root covers ploughing a field, holding a job, and even soldiering. Hebrew does something similar with עָבַד, which stretches from working the ground to serving God, much as English keeps "cultivate" and "cult" in one family.
What the word never describes on its own is a gesture or a feeling. Daniel 3:28 sets it beside a second verb (סְגִד) for bowing to the ground: this word is the allegiance, the other is the act that shows it. Daniel 7:27 pairs it with obeying (שְׁמַע) in the same way.
Because the word says only "render service," who is being served decides what the service is.
- When it is God or an idol, the service is worship, as all through Daniel 3 and 6.
- When it is a sanctuary, the service is the work its staff performs, as in Ezra 7:24.
- When it is a figure handed royal power, the service may be homage or political submission, which is exactly why Daniel 7:14 and 7:27 are argued over.
Nuances
Whether the service that all peoples render to the one like a son of man in Daniel 7:14 is the cultic worship due to God alone, or political allegiance to a divinely installed ruler.
- contestedThe verb denotes divine worship, so the figure who receives it shares the status of God. The Old Greek renders it with latreuo, a verb the Greek Bible effectively reserves for the religious service owed to God, and the eternal kingdom granted in the same verse is taken to confirm the reading.; Andrew E. Steinmann, Daniel (Concordia Commentary), 358-359, 384; Benjamin E. Reynolds, Biblica 89 (2008): 70-80; Darrell L. Bock, Blasphemy and Exaltation in Judaism (1998), 203
- contestedThe verb states service or honour rendered to a sovereign and does not by itself make the figure an object of cultic worship. Theodotion renders it with douleuo, which covers religious and political servitude alike, and the Targums repeatedly use this Aramaic verb for the subjection of one people to another.; John E. Goldingay, Daniel (Word Biblical Commentary); John J. Collins, Daniel (Hermeneia); James A. Montgomery, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Daniel (International Critical Commentary)
Whether the service in Daniel 7:27 is rendered to the holy people who receive the kingdom or to the Most High, and correspondingly whether it means political submission or worship.
- contestedThe pronoun refers back to the people of the holy ones named just before, so the verse describes the submission of all dominions to the vindicated people rather than worship of God. The Old Greek supports a political reading by rendering the verb as being subjected.; Louis F. Hartman and Alexander A. Di Lella, The Book of Daniel (Anchor Bible), 207; John E. Goldingay, Daniel (Word Biblical Commentary)
- contestedBoth Greek versions read a masculine singular object here, whose nearest suitable antecedent is the Most High, so the service in this verse properly belongs to God.; Robert M. Bowman Jr. and J. Ed Komoszewski, Putting Jesus in His Place (2007), 303 n.6