Daniel 1:21

21. For Cyrus see Introduction, III, 3, (6). If continued (Hebrews, was) means in this connection “remained alive,” as many suppose, and as seems a very natural sense, then this verse contradicts Daniel 10:1. Several explanations are offered: certain words may have dropped out of the text (for example, “in the king’s court”); or “first” is a copyist’s blunder for “third;” or, as it was some time after the capture of Babylon before Cyrus took the title “King of Babylon” [Introduction, III, 3, (5); 4], this first year as king of Babylon might coincide with his third year as “king of Persia” (see Introduction, II, 8). While no explanation relieves the matter of difficulty, it is so incredible that a writer would have permitted a plain contradiction to remain uncorrected in his original treatise that it seems likely either that the author had a satisfactory explanation of the discrepancy or else that this verse, as Prince maintains, is a marginal note which has slipped by accident into the text.