7. An account of the time in which he prophesied is sought.
With respect to the age of Daniel and an account of the time, it is not reckoned in one manner. For, it is not certain, in what year of age he was taken away to Babylon with Jehoiakim. Some assert that he was taken away in his tenth or twelfth year, because he is called a יֶלֶד/child in Daniel 1:4. But it is well-known that even more mature men are called children in the Sacred books: and that the King commanded children to be chosen, who were learned in all wisdom, which description does not agree with little children. And so others think that he was taken away around the eighteenth or twentieth year of his age. Now, he began to prophesy either in the fifth year of captivity, as it is gathered by some out of Daniel 2:1 compared with Daniel 1:5: or, which to me is more probable, immediately after the completion of three years in captivity, when he, together with his companions, began to stand before the King (Daniel 1:5, 17, 18; 2:1), and so in the sixth year of King Jehoiakim, and the fourth year of his defeat and subjugation, in which, although he had remained for three years in the assurance given to Nebuchadnezzar, he began to make war against him, but was captured afterwards by the Chaldeans in the fourth year, and was buried with the burial of an ass. But, while the seventy years of captivity begin from the third year of Jehoiakim, in which he and his people were reduced to the service of Nebuchadnezzar, it comes to pass that Daniel begins to discharge the prophetic office in the fourth year of captivity, which he continues thereafter to the end under five most powerful Monarchs, Nebuchadnezzar, Evil-merodach, Belshazzar, Darius, and Cyrus. At the same time Jeremiah was prophesying in Jerusalem, and in the ninth year of Daniel prophesying Ezekiel also by the river Chebar in Mesopotamia, and also in the sixteen year Obadiah, began to engage in the Prophetic office.