but there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets, and he has made known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days. Your dream, and the visions of your head on your bed, are these: as for you, O king, your thoughts came on your bed, what should happen hereafter; and he who reveals secrets has made known to you what shall happen.
⛓ Read Daniel 2 forward — the whole chapter and its afterlife →Where this passage surfaces again, sorted by the strength of the link. Each kind of reuse — formal quotation, deliberate allusion, faint echo, figural pattern — carries its own mark. Follow any reference to read it in place.
Allusion6
A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.
'Making known to us the mystery of his will' draws on Daniel's God 'who reveals mysteries' and 'made known... what will be.' Volume is strong (mysterion + the verb 'make known' is distinctively Danielic in the LXX); recurrence (Dan 2:19,30,47) and thematic coherence (eschatological disclosure of God's hidden purpose) make this the primary subtext for Ephesians' mystery language.
High confidenceThe programmatic phrase 'the things which must happen' (ha dei genesthai) reworks Daniel's 'what must happen hereafter' (LXX Dan 2:28–29, ha dei genesthai). High verbal volume on the apocalyptic-disclosure formula; John shortens Daniel's 'in the latter days' to 'soon,' compressing Daniel's eschatology into imminence.
High confidence'The things which will happen hereafter' (and 'mystery,' mystērion) restates the Danielic disclosure formula from 1:1, framing the book. High recurrence; 'mystery of the seven stars' uses Daniel's revelation-of-secrets vocabulary (LXX mystērion, Dan 2:28–29).
High confidence“I will show you the things which must happen after this” (ha dei genesthai meta tauta) reproduces the apocalyptic-disclosure formula of Daniel 2:28-29 LXX/Theodotion (ha dei genesthai... — what God reveals as what must take place). The Greek dei (divine necessity) plus the temporal phrase is verbally distinctive and recurs as a structural frame across Revelation (1:1; 1:19; 22:6). Theodotion's Daniel is the closer textual base than the OG. The formula reframes the whole vision as Danielic unveiling of the determined future.
High confidenceDaniel speaks of what 'must happen' (dei genesthai) in the latter days, language Jesus reuses verbatim in 'these things must happen first.' Daniel's apocalyptic framework of divinely-decreed end-time events shapes the whole discourse's logic of necessity. Strong verbal coherence with Danielic apocalyptic.
Medium confidence'There is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries (mysteria)' — the only OT source of the technical 'mysteries' disclosed to the elect, behind 'to know the mysteries of the Kingdom' (v.11).
Medium confidenceEcho1
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
'There is a God in heaven who reveals secrets and has made known what shall come to pass' parallels the Spirit declaring 'things that are coming.' The apocalyptic disclosure of the future coheres with the Paraclete's revelatory role.
Low confidence