a secret: a hidden matter that no human skill can uncover and that God alone brings to light
Nearly every use of this word sits in one scene. In Daniel 2 King Nebuchadnezzar wakes from a disturbing dream and demands that his advisers tell him both what he dreamed and what it meant, without being told the dream first. Their answer is that no one on earth can do it. This word names exactly what they cannot reach: a matter shut away from human access, however skilled the person asked.
Daniel uses it two ways, and the two fit together. Usually it is the one secret at issue, spoken of as "this secret," meaning the king's dream and its meaning. He also widens it to hidden things in general and turns that into a description of God, the one "who reveals secrets," a title the king himself repeats once Daniel succeeds. Either way the word carries a claim about ownership: a secret is not a puzzle waiting for a clever solver, it is information somebody is holding, and only that somebody can release it.
The story keeps one order, and the word marks its first step:
- A dream arrives that nobody at court can account for.
- God shows the hidden matter to Daniel in a vision at night.
- Daniel then gives the king the interpretation that unlocks it.
The last use, in Daniel 4, shows the effect. The king now assumes that no secret at all is too hard for Daniel, because he takes him to be a man the gods inform.
The word did not stay in Daniel. Later Jewish writers, above all the community behind the Dead Sea Scrolls, made it a standard term for God's hidden purposes, and the ancient Greek translation of Daniel rendered it with the very word the New Testament uses for the "mystery" now made public (μυστήριον). The nearest word in the Hebrew Bible is the one for a trusted inner circle and the plans shared inside it (סוֹד), which Amos uses in saying that the LORD does nothing without telling his servants the prophets.