Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Daniel 6:1
It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom a hundred and twenty princes, which should be over the whole kingdom;
1. an hundred and twenty satraps ] see on Dan 3:2. No other notice of this organization has come down to us. The Persian empire was first organised into provinces under ‘satraps’ by Darius Hystaspis (522 485 b.c.); and then the satrapies were only 20 in number (Herod. iii. 89 [264] ). The statement, upon independent grounds, is not probable; and if it is true that there was no king ‘Darius the Mede,’ some error or confusion must manifestly underlie it. It may have been suggested by the 127 provinces, into which, according to Est 1:1; Est 8:9, the Persian empire was divided under Xerxes.
[264] The Behistun Inscription; of Darius (col. i. par. 6) enumerates 23 provinces; the later (sepulchral) inscription of Naksh-i-Rustam (l. 7 9), 29: see RP. 1 iii, v. 151 f. Darius, in the first of these inscriptions, mentions the ‘satrap’ of Bactria, and the ‘satrap’ of Arachotia (col. iii par. 3 and 9). See further details in Rawl., Anc. Mon. 4 iii. 417 ff.
over ] in, i.e. (R.V.) throughout.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom – Evidently over the kingdom of Babylon, now united to that of Media and Persia. As this was now subject to him, and tributary to him, it would be natural to appoint persons over it in whom he could confide, for the administration of justice, for the collection of revenue, etc. Others however, suppose that this relates to the whole kingdom of Persia, but as the reference here is mainly to what was the kingdom of Babylon, it is rather to be presumed that this is what is particularly alluded to. Besides, it is hardly probable that he would have exalted Daniel, a Jew, and a resident in Babylon, to so important a post as that of the premiership over the whole empire, though from his position and standing in Babylon there is no improbability in supposing that he might have occupied, under the reign of Darius, a place similar to what he had occupied under Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar. In dividing the kingdom into provinces, and placing officers over each department, Darius followed the same plan which Xenophon tells us that Cyrus did over the nations conquered by him, Cyrop. viii.: Edokei auto satrapas ede pempein epi ta katestrammena ethne – It seemed good to him to appoint satraps over the conquered nations. Compare Est 1:1. Archbishop Usher (Annal.) thinks that the plan was first instituted by Cyrus, and was followed at his suggestion. It was a measure of obvious prudence in order to maintain so extended an empire in subjection.
An hundred and twenty princes – The word here rendered princes ( ‘achashedarepenaya’) occurs only in Daniel in the Chaldee form, though in the Hebrew form it is found in the book of Esther Est 3:12; Est 8:9; Est 9:3, and in Ezra Ezr 8:36; in Esther and Ezra uniformly rendered lieutenants. In Daniel Dan 3:2-3, Dan 3:27; Dan 6:1-4, Dan 6:6-7 it is as uniformly rendered princes. It is a word of Persian origin, and is probably the Hebrew mode of pronouncing the Persian word satrap, or, as Gesenius supposes, the Persian word was pronounced ksatrap. For the etymology of the word, see Gesenius, Lexicon The word undoubtedly refers to the Persian satraps, or governors, or viceroys in the large provinces of the empire, possessing both civil and military powers. They were officers high in rank, and being the representatives of the sovereign, they rivaled his state and splendor. Single parts, or subdivisions of these provinces, were under inferior officers; the satraps governed whole provinces. The word is rendered satraps in the Greek, and the Latin Vulgate.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Dan 6:1-10
It pleased Darius to set over the Kingdom.
Daniel and his enemies
Darius appointed an entirely new administration, but it does not appear that he made any material change in the financial system of the Empire. Daniel we may call the First Lord of the Treasury. Daniel s high reputation was confirmed by experience of his wisdom, integrity, and self-renouncing devotion to the public good. The King intended to set him over the whole realm, to give him all the power over the several departments of the State, that would have enabled him to enforce obedience, and to punish dereliction This would have involved a grand official revolution, and the transpiring of such an intention of the King was enough to alarm the hundred and twenty chief publicans, and raise up the whole body of presidents and princes against their watchful chief. A plot was planned and executed. They came tumultuously to the King, on the strength of a conspiracy. This could hardly have taken place under the rule of a Sardanapalus or a Nabonadius. Daniels enemies saw no remedy for their discontent, except in procuring his immediate ruin. Darius was a very weak-minded and vain-glorious prince. The conspirators knew how to play upon his weakness. They proposed to him an easy method of rising above every rival, at least for one happy month, during which time not even Cyrus shall be permitted to receive a prayer. No man, no god even, shall be approached in the language of petition. Their object, however, the King does not perceive. As to the kind of death denounced on recusants, it is apparent, from the testimony of Quintus Curtius, that lions were kept in dens at Babylon, and produced on festive occasions, With regard to the immutability of the laws of the Medes and Persians, that can only mean that, when law was made, the King could not change it, but he might, nevertheless, find, or even make, another law to counteract its force. Did Darius believe, or did he only struggle to persuade himself, that the God of Daniel would deliver him, as he once delivered three of his fellow-captives from the fiery furnace? Or did he only ejaculate a wish that God would deliver him? For the Chaldee may mean either . . . One word in Daniels answer to the King, from the den, conveys an intimation that his enemies, not content with charging him with disobedience to the Kings monstrous decree, had also endeavured to fix on him a suspicion, if not a direct accusation, of dishonesty, in spite of their previous confession to one another, that they could find none occasion nor fault. Now there can be no suspicion. The loyalty of Daniel, even to so insignificant a king as Darius, shines no less clearly than his faithfulness to God, leaving to all generations a bright example of loyalty, a virtue commended by the supreme example of our blessed Saviour, and strictly inculcated by the spirit of inspiration, through His servants the apostles. (W. H. Rule, D.D.)
Of whom Daniel was first.
The promotion of Daniel
Men have to pay for all exaltation; a sense of responsibility comes with it where it is honest and worthy, and men do not ascend to the primary positions instantly, but gradually, and as they ascend they become accustomed to the air, so that when they do reach the throne it seems as if they had but a step to take from the common earth to the great altitude. Thus we are trained, graduated, perfected, not by suddenness, abruptness, not by any vulgarity of government, but by that fine shading and graduation which is all but imperceptible, and which only makes itself known in all the fulness of its reality and value when we are prepared to accept the throne, the crown, the sceptre, humbly, modestly. How could Daniel bear all this exaltation? Because it was nothing to him: He had been in prayer. The man who prays three times a day, really prays, whose window opens upon heaven, cannot receive any honour; he cannot be flattered. If Darius had asked him to take the throne it would have been but a trifle to Daniel. A man who has been closeted with God cannot be befooled by earthly baubles and temporal vanities. It is with these things as with miracles. So with this greatness of such men as Daniel; it is not greatness to them: it is but a new responsibility, another opportunity for doing good, a larger opening for higher usefulness. The man should always be greater than his office; the author should always be greater than his book; the picture should be nothing compared with the picture the artist wanted to paint. The musician does well to set aside his thousand-voiced organ because it is useless when he wants to express the ineffable. If we prayed aright, if we loved God truly, then all honour would be accepted with an easy condescension, and every gift and recognition and promotion would be used with modesty, and every honour given by men would not be despised, but would be used to the promotion of the highest ends of being. It is thus the Daniels of the world sit upon their thrones; verily, they sit upon them; they use them, they are mere temporary conveniences and symbols to them; the real king is intellectual, spiritual, moral, sympathetic, invisible, divine. It is useless for us to wish to be what Daniel was; we shall be what Daniel was, and where he was, when we have the same qualifications. The universe is not being built by an unskilled carpenter; it is being constructed–I mean that inward and spiritual universe of which all other universes are but the scaffolding–by a divine Builder; and He will not put the top stone in the foundation, or the foundation stone in the pinnacle; He will put us just where we ought to be. Daniel and Paul, Peter and John, the seraph all aflame, the cherub all contemplation, each will have his place. O foolish soul, do not build thyself into Gods wall; let the Builder handle thee, and be glad that thou hast any place in the spiritual masonry. (Joseph Parker, D.D.)
The Second Throne; or Character Honoured
Daniel shows us that the law of life is this–character shall be honoured with respect, confidence, high place, and success. If the law does not work out these results, in any particular case, it must be because of some special hindrance. Sooner or later every man finds his place, and gets what he is worth. Life is not a lottery. In speaking of Daniels honour, it will at once appear that it was political, And we need more Godly men in high places. Daniel did not reach his position by any sudden spring. He had lesser offices first, in which his faithfulness was proved. Daniel won his position because an excellent spirit was in him. Before dealing with the honours that wait on character, a word must be said on the relation between talent and character. These two things are often separated. Men of genius are not always men of character. Byron is an extreme instance of this. And men of character are not always men of talent. We have very often to say, Yes, he is a very good man, but not very clever. No man of genius can afford to despise character; and no man of character should rest until he has added to it ability and skill. Daniel took every advantage of Persian culture, and in him we find talent and character blended. With what honour then will God, and the world, crown good character?
I. THE WORLD HONOURS CHARACTER WITH ITS RESPECT. And that is far better thing than position, riches, and fame. Have character rooted in God, and if men mock you to the face, you may be sure that in your deep heart they think of you as Balaam did of Sarah. The respect in which the good man is held comes out when he is dead.
II. THE WORLD HONOURS CHARACTER WITH ITS MATERIAL BLESSINGS. This is not an invariable rule. Some cannot bear the risks of prosperity. Many of us do well to pray, Give me neither poverty nor riches. Yet it is generally true that character wins the places of trust, and character keeps the places it gains. Illustrated by Joseph and Obadiah. But how does God honour character? With His approval, and with the sense of that approval in a mans own soul. With His special acceptance in the world to come. By making it witness for him here on earth; as in this case of Daniel God makes the men of character to be in His world as salt, as cities on hills, and as the Light. Their highest honour lies in their influence, their witness, and their work. (Robert Tuck, B.A.)
The Power of Christian Principle
It is the silent but continuous and irrepressible power of Christian principle which really tells upon the world around us. It is not a mere syllogism that will convert a sceptic. It is not a powerfully constructed argument that will alone convert a Roman Catholic; it is not such specimens of Christianity as Church and Chapel often furnish, which make men feel that Christianity is the ambassadress of God, and the benefactress of mankind. It is when the world sees Christianity softening all, sweetening, subduing, sanctifying, inspiring, directing all–giving its tone, shape, colour, and freshness to all; it is when the world sees Christianity in self-sacrifice–in submitting our own temper and inclinations to those of others–in giving way and suffering, rather than appearing to dictate and presume–it is in the quiet by-paths of human life, that Christianity acts with the greatest force, and in which, if detected by the sceptic, he owns that there is there the finger of God, the evidence of a power greater and holier than human. So Darius saw Daniels Christianity; he understood not his sublime creed, but he appreciated his honesty, his integrity, his truthfulness, his faithfulness. The world itself, if it do not practice, yet appreciates faithfulness and integrity. The merchant on the exchange understands character, when he neither studies nor subscribes a creed. Hence the pulpit is not the only place for preaching. (John Cumming, D.D.)
The Supremacy of Character
This Daniel–what surprises and scorn, what bitter jealousy and mortification, rankles beneath this apparently simple allusion. That this Hebrew stranger and captive should have won any place at court; that when admitted he should be allowed to defy its customs; that he so gained the favour of his royal master as to be called into his most intimate counsel, and to be placed above those who had preceded him in office–these circumstances constituted a grievance of no common magnitude, and for which there was no forgiveness. What led to the rapid promotion of one who had neither rank or friends to recommend him? On this point a clear and satisfactory explanation is afforded. Because an excellent spirit was in this Daniel, the king thought to set him over the whole realm. What have we here but a signal testimony to the intrinsic sovereignty of character, a testimony which ever succeeding age reveals with greater calmness and recognises with deeper veneration. It has been affirmed that the religion of the day is reverence for character. The archbishop of Canterbury, in addressing a mass meeting of working men in connection with the Church Congress, and pleading for the establishment of more satisfactory relations between employers and employed, warned his hearers against seeking, from the enactments of Parliaments or the rules of trades unions, for the solution of problems which could only be effectually met by a conversion of character alike in masters and servants. What, then, do we understand by this word so constantly upon, the lips of great leaders in Church and State? Strange to say, we search for it in vain in our translation of the Bible, and only find it once in the original text. But many of you are aware that it comes to us from a Greek word which signifies a graving tool. The first mention of such a thing occurs curiously enough in connection with the act of Aaron in making the golden calf. Though he would fain have us believe that the molten gold took that peculiar shape of its own accord, it appears in evidence that he fashioned it with a graving tool–a cheret as it was called in the Hebrew tongue–in which we distinctly trace the original derivation of our word character. At first, then, this term stood for an instrument–a means to an end. But by a very natural transition it came to be applied to the result. From the tool attention is inevitably directed to the work of art, from the pencil to the painting, from the chisel to the finished sculpture. We preserve, however, the original use of the word when speaking of a man of parts. We say, He is a character, thereby signifying that he impresses others, that he cannot be overlooked, that he is indeed a graving tool with the added element of life. It is, in fact, this power of impressing others by the force of our own personality that distinguishes man from the brute creation. Charles Dickens once remarked that some very fine ladies and gentlemen might as well have been born caterpillars for any good they do, or any impression they make on the world. But, dear friends, God has not placed us here to be caterpillars lazily crawling over the smooth surface of things, and leaving no trace behind. He intends that we should be carving tools; that under His hand, and each in his own sphere, we should press heavily upon and cut deeply into this disordered world, seeking to shape it more after the mind and will of its Lord. This brings us at once to the practical question. We cannot stop at the tool.
That is often a very rude and primitive affair. But the design or inscription written or graven therewith, what vast and varied possibilities are there? Even animals can make marks after a fashion–as some of us possibly know by experience–very ugly and painful ones. But they can usually be predicted. Every youth secretly hopes to make his mark and to pass for something in the world. What sort of a mark will be yours. No one can predict that. We can only hope and pray. Much might be said as to the elements of character, for, as Bishop Butler reminds us, it is, of a complex nature, there being greater variety of parts in it than there are features in a face. Giving all diligence add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience, and to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity. For if these things be in you and abound, they make you that ye shall be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. These being the elements which make a manly and Christian life a word may be said as to their cultivation. Human nature is the raw material out of which character has to be manufactured, and very tough stuff it is. It has to pass through the mill a good many times before it is good for anything. Not forgetting the requirements mentioned by the apostle in the passage just quoted, we may add one or two others that go to the making of a man. One important factor is Labour. Dr. Arnold insisted that the difference between one man and another was not usually ability but energy; and Lord Lytton tells us that he made it a rule never to trust to genius for what could be won by toil. Another and most unwelcome agent in this process is trouble. Great sufferings, says a powerful writer, swell the soul to gigantic proportions. This had probably much to do with the strength of Daniel. Simplicity of aim, sincerity of aim, and modesty of manners are also essential to a healthy nature. And so is a perfectly trained will. The importance of arriving at and adhering to an intelligent decision cannot be too strongly emphasized. We are all acquainted with the description of the irresolute man who wastes the first half of the day in hesitating which of two courses to take, and the other in reproaching himself for not having taken the other. Only when all these qualities are present and active; only when those springs of action–our thoughts, desires, and affections–are cleansed by the Spirit of God and fed by communion with Him, do we attain our complete and destined development. We fall short of our own capabilities if we fall short of God. The result of this varied discipline and careful training is to exhibit what comes out so clearly in the life of Daniel. One of the most accomplished scoundrels of the last century declared that he would give ten thousand pounds for a character, because he could make above twenty thousand by it. Considered even from this sordid standpoint character represents capital, commands credit, and is a negotiable asset. The day has passed when is this land a man could rise to the highest place in the estimation of his fellows merely by the circumstance of noble birth. He must be and do something. Merchants and tradesmen often complain of the havoc and loss entailed by excessive competition. But there is a rising market for moral integrity and a brisk demand for it. To men of different callings I often put the question, Is there s good prospect now for a young fellow in your business? And the answer is almost invariably this, Yes, he may do nicely if he is square, sober, and industrious; there are so many of the other sort, you know. So it is vice not virtue that is the drug on the market. Cleverness minus character–the world reeks with it. Most of the worlds woes are in fact traceable to this pestilence, Satan himself being the chief example and promoter of it. In the hour when, after sufficient trial, it becomes known that you at least can be depended upon, you will become a person of importance. The world surely needs and is waiting for such as you. King Darius had that gift so essential to a ruler–the power to discern moral excellence. And finding it, he had a courage to utilise and reward it. He is worthy to be king who prizes virtue above rank. Hence this Daniel was preferred above the presidents and princes; and the king thought to set him over the whole realm. Only when men of sincere conviction, high principle, and indisputable integrity are at the helm of affairs is there any hope for the prosperity of any people. Not politics, not commerce, not creed, but character is the supreme test of prosperity and the harbinger of peace. When the righteous are in authority the people rejoice. Thus the welfare of nations comes at last to be simply a matter of the individual spirit and conduct. (A. E. Hutchinson.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CHAPTER VI
Darius the Median, who succeeded Belshazzar in the kingdom of
Babylon, having heard of Daniel’s extraordinary wisdom and
understanding, constitutes him the chief of the three
presidents who were over the whole empire, and purposed also
to make him prime minister or viceroy, 1-3.
This great partiality of the king towards a stranger of Jewish
extraction, and who had been carried captive into Chaldea,
raised up a great many enemies to Daniel; and a scheme was even
contrived by the presidents and princes to ruin him, 4-15;
which succeeded so far that he was cast into a den of lions,
but was miraculously delivered, 16-23.
Darius, who was greatly displeased with himself for having been
entrapped by the governors of the provinces to the prejudice of
his faithful minister, is pleased and astonished at this
deliverance; punished Daniel’s enemies with the same kind of
death which they had designed for the prophet; and made a
decree that, throughout his dominions, the God of Daniel should
be had in the greatest veneration, 24-38.
NOTES ON CHAP. VI
Verse 1. A hundred and twenty princes] A chief or satrap over every province which belonged to the Medo-Persian empire. Afterwards we find it enlarged to one hundred and twenty-seven provinces, by the victories of Cambyses and Darius Hystaspes. See Es 1:1. Josephus reckons three hundred and sixty satrapies or lordships; but this is most probably an exaggeration or mistake.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
1. DariusGROTEFENDhas read it in the cuneiform inscriptions at Persepolis, as Darheush,that is, “Lord-King,” a name applied to many of theMedo-Persian kings in common. Three of that name occur: DariusHystaspes, 521 B.C., inwhose reign the decree was carried into effect for rebuilding thetemple (Ezr 4:5; Hag 1:1);Darius Codomanus, 336 B.C.,whom Alexander overcame, called “the Persian” (Ne12:22), an expression used after the rule of Macedon was set up;and Darius Cyaxares II, between Astyages and Cyrus [AELigSCHYLUS,The Persians, 762, 763].
hundred and twentysatraps;set over the conquered provinces (including Babylon) by Cyrus[XENOPHON, Cyropdia,8.6.1]. No doubt Cyrus acted under Darius, as in the captureof Babylon; so that Daniel rightly attributes the appointment toDarius.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom an hundred and twenty princes,…. This is the same Darius mentioned in the latter part of the preceding chapter; who, as soon as he took the kingdom of Babylon, divided it into a hundred and twenty provinces, as Jacchiades observes; as was the manner of the Medes and Persians. So Darius the son of Hystaspes divided the kingdom of Persia into twenty provinces, and set governors over each, according to Herodotus r; to these hundred and twenty provinces seven more were afterwards added, through the victories of Cyrus and Cambyses, and Darius Itystaspes, Es 1:1. Josephus s, through forgetfulness, makes these princes and provinces three hundred and sixty:
which should be over the whole kingdom; or, “in the whole kingdom” t; in the several parts of it, and take care of all things relative to the civil government of it, both for the honour and advantage of the king, and the good of the subjects.
r Thalia, sive l. 3. c. 89. s Antiqu. l. 10. c. 11. sect. 4. t “in toto regno”, Pagninus, Montanus, Piscator, Cocceius; “toti regno”, Junius & Tremellius.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(5:31-6:9)
Transference of the kingdom to Darius the Mede; appointment of the regency; envy of the satraps against Daniel, and their attempt to destroy him.
The narrative of this chapter is connected by the copula with the occurrence recorded in the preceding; yet Dan 6:1 does not, as in the old versions and with many interpreters, belong to the fifth chapter, but to the sixth, and forms not merely the bond of connection between the events narrated in the fifth and sixth chapters, but furnishes at the same time the historical basis for the following narrative, vv. 2-29 (vv. 1-28). The statement of the verse, that Darius the Mede received the kingdom when he was about sixty-two years old, connects itself essentially with Dan 5:30, so far as it joins to the fulfilment, there reported, of the first part of the sacred writing interpreted by Daniel to Belshazzar, the fulfilment also the second part of that writing, but not so closely that the designation of time, in that same night (Dan 5:30), is applicable also to the fact mentioned in Daniel 6:1 (Dan 5:31), and as warranting the supposition that the transference of the kingdom to Darius the Mede took place on the night in which Belshazzar was slain. Against such a chronological connection of these two verses, Dan 5:30 and 6:1 (Dan 5:31), we adduce in the second half of v. 1 (Dan 5:31) the statement of the age of Darius, in addition to the reasons already adduced. This is not to make it remarkable that, instead of the young mad debauchee (Belshazzar), with whom, according to prophecy, the Chaldean bondage of Israel was brought to an end, a man of mature judgment seized the reigns of government (Delitzsch); for this supposition fails not only with the hypothesis, already confuted, on which it rests, but is quite foreign to the text, for Darius in what follows does not show himself to be a ruler of matured experience. The remark of Kliefoth has much more in its favour, that by the statement of the age it is designed to be made prominent that the government of Darius the Mede did not last long, soon giving place to that of Cyrus the Persian, v. 29 (Dan 6:28), whereby the divine writing, that the Chaldean kingdom would be given to the Medes and Persians, was fully accomplished. Regarding Darjawesch, Darius, see the preliminary remarks. The addition of ( Kethiv) forms on the one hand a contrast to the expression “the king of the Chaldeans” (Dan 5:30), and on the other it points forward to , v. 29 (Dan 6:28); it, however, furnishes no proof that Daniel distinguished the Median kingdom from the Persian; for the kingdom is not called a Median kingdom, but it is only said of Darius that he was of Median descent, and, v. 29 (Dan 6:28), that Cyrus the Persian succeeded him in the kingdom. In , he received the kingdom, it is indicated that Darius did not conquer it, but received it from the conqueror. The in intimates that the statement of the age rests only on a probable estimate.
Daniel 6:2 (Dan 6:1) For the government of the affairs of the kingdom he had received, and especially for regulating the gathering in of the tribute of the different provinces, Darius placed 120 satraps over the whole kingdom, and over these satraps three chiefs, to whom the satraps should give an account. Regarding ( satraps), see at Dan 3:2. , plur. of ; has in the Semitic no right etymology, and is derived from the Aryan, from the Zend. sara, ara, head, with the syllable ach. In the Targg., in use for the Hebr. , it denotes a president, of whom the three named in Dan 6:2 (1), by their position over the satraps, held the rank of chief governors or ministers, for which the Targg. use , while in Dan 6:8 denotes all the military and civil prefects of the kingdom.
The modern critics have derived from this arrangement for the government of the kingdom made by Darius an argument against the credibility of the narrative, which Hitzig has thus formulated: – According to Xenophon, Cyrus first appointed satraps over the conquered regions, and in all to the number of six ( Cyrop. viii. 6, 1, 7); according to the historian Herodotus, on the contrary (iii. 89ff.), Darius Hystaspes first divided the kingdom into twenty satrapies for the sake of the administration of the taxes. With this statement agrees the number of the peoples mentioned on the Inscription at Bisutun; and if elsewhere (Insc. J. and Nakschi Rustam) at least twenty-four and also twenty-nine are mentioned, we know that several regions or nations might be placed under one satrap (Herod. l.c.). The kingdom was too small for 120 satraps in the Persian sense. On the other hand, one may not appeal to the 127 provinces ( ) of king Ahasuerus = Xerxes (Est 1:1; Est 9:30); for the ruler of the is not the same as (Est 8:9) the satrap. In Est 3:12 it is the , as e.g., of the province of Judah (Hag 1:1; Mal 1:8; Neh 5:14). It is true there were also greater provinces, such e.g., as of Media and Babylonia (Ezr 6:2; Dan 2:49), and perhaps also pecha ( ) might be loosely used to designate a satrap (Ezr 5:3; Ezr 6:6); yet the 127 provinces were not such, nor is a satrap interchangeably called a pecha. When Daniel thus mentions so large a number of satraps, it is the Grecian satrapy that is apparently before his mind. Under Seleucus Nicator there were seventy-two of these.
The foundation of this argument, viz., that Darius Hystaspes, “according to the historian Herodotus,” first divided the kingdom into satrapies, and, of course, also that the statement by Xenophon of the sending of six satraps into the countries subdued by Cyrus is worthy of no credit, is altogether unhistorical, resting only on the misinterpretation and distortion of the testimonies adduced. Neither Herodotus nor Xenophon represents the appointment of satraps by Cyrus and Darius as an entirely new and hitherto untried method of governing the kingdom; still less does Xenophon say that Cyrus sent in all only six satraps into the subjugated countries. It is true he mentions by name (Dan 8:6-7) only six satraps, but he mentions also the provinces into which they were sent, viz., one to Arabia, and the other five to Asia Minor, with the exception, however, of Cilicia, Cyprus, and Paphlagonia, to which he did not send any , because they had voluntarily joined him in fighting against Babylon. Hence it is clear as noonday that Xenophon speaks only of those satraps whom Cyrus sent to Asia Minor and to Arabia, and says nothing of the satrapies of the other parts of the kingdom, such as Judea, Syria, Babylonia, Assyria, Media, etc., so that no one can affirm that Cyrus sent in all only six satraps into the conquered countries. As little does Herodotus, l.c., say that Darius Hystaspes was the first to introduce the government of the kingdom by satraps: he only says that Darius Hystaspes divided the whole kingdom into twenty which were called , appointed , and regulated the tribute; for he numbers these satrapies simply with regard to the tribute with which each was chargeable, while under Cyrus and Cambyses no tribute was imposed, but presents only were contributed. Consequently, Herod. speaks only of a regulation for the administration of the different provinces of the kingdom for the special purpose of the certain payment of the tribute which Darius Hystaspes had appointed. Thus the historian M. Duncker also understands this statement; for he says ( Gesch. des Alterth. ii. p. 891) regarding it: – ”About the year 515 Darius established fixed government-districts in place of the vice-regencies which Cyrus and Cambyses had appointed and changed according to existing exigencies. He divided the kingdom into twenty satrapies.” Then at p. 893 he further shows how this division also of the kingdom by Darius was not fixed unchangeably, but was altered according to circumstances. Hitzig’s assertion, that the kingdom was too small for 120 satrapies in the Persian sense, is altogether groundless. From Est 8:9 and Est 8:3:19 it follows not remotely, that not satraps but the represent the . In Dan 8:9 satraps, , and are named, and in Dan 3:12 they are called the king’s satraps and . On Est 3:12 Bertheau remarks: “The pechas, who are named along with the satraps, are probably the officers of the circles within the separate satrapies;” and in Dan 8:9 satraps and pechas are named as , i.e., presidents, superintendents of the 127 provinces of the kingdom from India to Ethiopia, from which nothing can be concluded regarding the relation of the satraps to the pechas. Berth. makes the same remark on Ezr 8:36: – ”The relation of the king’s satraps to the pachavoth abar nahara (governors on this side the river) we cannot certainly determine; the former were probably chiefly military rulers, and the latter government officials.” For the assertion that pecha is perhaps loosely used for satrap, but that interchangeably a satrap cannot be called a pecha, rests, unproved, on the authority of Hitzig.
From the book of Esther it cannot certainly be proved that so many satraps were placed over the 127 provinces into which Xerxes divided the kingdom, but only that these provinces were ruled by satraps and pechas. But the division of the whole kingdom into 127 provinces nevertheless shows that the kingdom might have been previously divided under Darius the Mede into 120 provinces, whose prefects might be called in this verse , i.e., kschatrapavan , protectors of the kingdom or of the provinces, since this title is derived from the Sanscrit and Old Persian, and is not for the first time used under Darius Hystaspes of Cyrus. The Median Darius might be led to appoint one satrap, i.e., a prefect clothed with military power, over each district of his kingdom, since the kingdom was but newly conquered, that he might be able at once to suppress every attempt at insurrection among the nations coming under his dominion. The separation of the civil government, particularly in the matter of the raising of tribute, from the military government, or the appointment of satraps … , along with the and the , for the protection of the boundaries of the kingdom, was first adopted, according to Xenophon l.c., by Cyrus, who next appointed satraps for the provinces of Asia Minor and of Arabia, which were newly brought under his sceptre; while in the older provinces which had formed the Babylonian kingdom, satrapies which were under civil and military rulers already existed from the time of Nebuchadnezzar; cf. Dan 2:32. This arrangement, then, did not originate with Darius Hystaspes in the dividing of the whole kingdom into twenty satrapies mentioned by Herodotus. Thus the statements of Herodotus and Xenophon harmonize perfectly with those of the Scriptures, and every reason for regarding with suspicion the testimony of Daniel wholly fails.
Daniel 6:2-3 (Dan 6:1-2) According to v. 2, Darius not only appointed 120 satraps for all the provinces and districts of his kingdom, but he also placed the whole body of the satraps under a government consisting of three presidents, who should reckon with the individual satraps. , in the Targg. , the height, with the adverb , higher than, above. , to give reckoning, to account. , part. of , to suffer loss, particularly with reference to the revenue. This triumvirate, or higher authority of three, was also no new institution by Darius, but according to Dan 5:7, already existed in the Chaldean kingdom under Belshazzar, and was only continued by Darius; and the satraps or the district rulers of the several provinces of the kingdom were subordinated to them. Daniel was one of the triumvirate. Since it is not mentioned that Darius first appointed him to this office, we may certainly conclude that he only confirmed him in the office to which Belshazzar had promoted him.
Daniel 6:4 (Dan 6:3) In this situation Daniel excelled all the presidents and satraps. , to show one’s self prominent. Regarding his excellent spirit, cf. Dan 5:12. On that account the king thought to set him over the whole kingdom, i.e., to make him chief ruler of the kingdom, to make him (Est 10:3). for , intrans. form of the Peal, to think, to consider about anything. This intention of the king stirred up the envy of the other presidents and of the satraps, so that they sought to find an occasion against Daniel, that he might be cast down. , an occasion; here, as , Joh 18:38; Mat 27:37, an occasion for impeachment, , on the part of the kingdom, i.e., not merely in a political sense, but with regard to his holding a public office in the kingdom, with reference to his service. But since they could find no occasion against Daniel in this respect, for he was , faithful, to be relied on, and no fault could be charged against him, they sought occasion against him on the side of his particular religion, in the matter of the law of his God, i.e., in his worship of God.
Daniel 6:7 (Dan 6:6) For this end they induced the king to sanction and ratify with all the forms of law a decree, which they contrived as the result of the common consultation of all the high officers, that for thirty days no man in the kingdom should offer a prayer to any god or man except to the king, on pain of being cast into the den of lions, and to issue this command as a law of the Medes and Persians, i.e., as an irrevocable law. , from to make a noise, to rage, in Aphel c. , to assail one in a tumultuous manner, i.e., to assault him. “These presidents and satraps (princes),” v. 7 (Dan 6:6), in v. 6 (Dan 6:5) designated “these men,” and not the whole body of the presidents and satraps, are, according to v. 5 (Dan 6:4), the special enemies of Daniel, who wished to overthrow him. It was only a definite number of them who may have had occasion to be dissatisfied with Daniel’s service. The words of the text do not by any means justify the supposition that the whole council of state assembled, and in corpore presented themselves before the king (Hvernick); for neither in v. 5 (Dan 6:4) nor in v. 7 (Dan 6:6) is mention made of all ( ) the presidents and satraps. From the fact also that these accusers of Daniel, v. 25 (Dan 6:24), represent to the king that the decree they had framed was the result of a consultation of all the prefects of the kingdom, it does not follow that all the satraps and chief officers of the whole kingdom had come to Babylon in order, as Dereser thinks, to lay before the three overseers the annual account of their management of the affairs of their respective provinces, on which occasion they took counsel together against Daniel; from which circumstance Hitzig and others derive an argument against the historical veracity of the narrative. The whole connection of the narrative plainly shows that the authors of the accusation deceived the king. The council of state, or the chief court, to which all the satraps had to render an account, consisted of three men, of whom Daniel was one. But Daniel certainly was not called to this consultation; therefore their pretence, that all “presidents of the kingdom” had consulted on the matter, was false. Besides, they deceived the king in this, that they concealed from him the intention of the decree, or misled him regarding it. means not merely that they consulted together, but it includes the result of the consultation: they were of one mind (Hitz.).
Daniel 6:8 (Dan 6:7) does not denote the three presidents named in v. 3 (2), but all the prefects of the kingdom, of whom there were four classes, as is acknowledged by Chr. B. Michaelis, though Hitz. opposes this view. Such an interpretation is required by the genitive , and by the absence of , or at least of the copula , before the official names that follow; while the objection, that by this interpretation just the chief presidents who are principally concerned are omitted (Hitz.), is without foundation, for they are comprehended under the word . If we compare the list of the four official classes here mentioned with that of the great officers of state under Nebuchadnezzar, Dan 3:2, the naming of the before the , satraps) (which in Dan 3:2 they are named after them) shows that the are here great officers to whom the satraps were subordinate, and that only the three could be meant to whom the satraps had to render an account. Moreover, the list of four names is divided by the copula into two classes. To the first class belong the and the satraps; to the second the , state councillors, and the , civil prefects of the provinces. Accordingly, we will scarcely err of by we understand the members of the highest council of state, by the ministers or members of the ( lower) state council, and by the satraps and pechas the military and civil rulers of the provinces. This grouping of the names confirms, consequently, the general interpretation of the , for the four classes named constitute the entire chief prefecture of the kingdom. This interpretation is not made questionable by the fact that the had in the kingdom of Darius a different position from that they held in the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar; for in this respect each kingdom had its own particular arrangement, which underwent manifold changes according to the times.
The infinitive clause presents the conclusion arrived at by the consultation. is not the genitive to , but according to the accents and the context is the subject of the infinitive clause: that the king should appoint a statute, not that a royal statute should be appointed. According to the analogy of the pronoun and of the dimin. noun, the accusative is placed before the subject-genitive, as e.g. Isa 20:1; Isa 5:24, so as not to separate from one another the ( to establish a statute) and the ( to make a firm decree). Dan 6:9 requires this construction. It is the king who issues the decree, and not his chief officers of state, as would have been the case if were construed as the genitive to ot evit . , manifesto, ordinance, command. The command is more accurately defined by the parallel clause , to make fast, i.e., to decree a prohibition. The officers wished that the king should issue a decree which should contain a binding prohibition, i.e., it should forbid, on pain of death, any one for the space of thirty days, i.e., for a month, to offer any prayer to a god or man except to the king. is here not any kind of request or supplication, but prayer, as the phrase v. 14 (Dan 6:13), , directing his prayer, shows. The word does not prove the contrary, for the heathen prayed also to men (cf. Dan 2:46); and here the clause, except to the king, places together god and man, so that the king might not observe that the prohibition was specially directed against Daniel.
Daniel 6:9 (Dan 6:8) In order that they may more certainly gain their object, they request the king to put the prohibition into writing, so that it might not be changed, i.e., might not be set aside or recalled, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, in conformity with which an edict once emitted by the king in all due form, i.e., given in writing and sealed with the king’s seal, was unchangeable; cf. Dan 6:15 and Est 8:8; Est 1:19. , which cannot pass away, i.e., cannot be set aside, is irrevocable. The relative refers to , by which we are not to understand, with v. Lengerke, the entire national law of the Medes and Persians, as if this were so unalterable that no law could be disannulled or changed according to circumstances, but is every separate edict of the king emitted in the form of law. This remains unchangeable and irrevocable, because the king was regarded and honoured as the incarnation of deity, who is unerring and cannot change.
Daniel 6:10 (Dan 6:9) The king carried out the proposal. is explicative: the writing, namely, the prohibition (spoken of); for this was the chief matter, therefore alone is here mentioned, and not also ( edict), Dan 6:8.
The right interpretation of the subject-matter and of the foundation of the law which was sanctioned by the king, sets aside the objection that the prohibition was a senseless “bedlamite” law (v. Leng.), which instead of regulating could only break up all society. The law would be senseless only if the prohibition had related to every petition in common life in the intercourse of civil society. But it only referred to the religious sphere of prayer, as an evidence of worshipping God; and if the king was venerated as an incarnation of the deity, then it was altogether reasonable in its character. And if we consider that the intention of the law, which they concealed from the king, was only to effect Daniel’s overthrow, the law cannot be regarded as designed to press Parsism or the Zend religion on all the nations of the kingdom, or to put an end to religious freedom, or to make Parsism the world-religion. Rather, as Kliefoth has clearly and justly shown, “the object of the law was only to bring about the general recognition of the principle that the king was the living manifestation of all the gods, not only of the Median and Persian, but also of the Babylonian and Lydian, and all the gods of the conquered nations. It is therefore also not correct that the king should be represented as the incarnation of Ormuzd. The matter is to be explained not from Parsism alone, but from heathenism in general. According to the general fundamental principle of heathenism, the ruler is the son, the representative, the living manifestation of the people’s gods, and the world-ruler thus the manifestation of all the gods of the nations that were subject to him. Therefore all heathen world-rulers demanded from the heathen nations subdued by them, that religious homage should be rendered to them in the manner peculiar to each nation. Now that is what was here sought. All the nations subjected to the Medo-Persian kingdom were required not to abandon their own special worship rendered to their gods, but in fact to acknowledge that the Medo-Persian world-ruler Darius was also the son and representative of their national gods. For this purpose they must for the space of thirty days present their petitions to their national gods only in him as their manifestation. And the heathen nations could all do this without violating their consciences; for since in their own manner they served the Median king as the son of their gods, they served their gods in him. The Jews, however, were not in the condition of being able to regard the king as a manifestation of Jehovah, and thus for them there was involved in the law truly a religious persecution, although the heathen king and his satraps did not thereby intend religious persecution, but regarded such disobedience as only culpable obstinacy and political rebellion.”
(Note: Brissonius, De regio Persarum princ. p. 17ff., has collected the testimonies of the ancients to the fact that the Persian kings laid claim to divine honour. Persas reges suos inter Deos colere, majestatem enim imperii salutis esse tutelam . Curtius, viii. 5. 11. With this cf. Plutarch, Themist. c. 27. And that this custom, which even Alexander the Great (Curt. vi. 6. 2) followed, was derived from the Medes, appears from the statement of Herodotus, i. 99, that Dejoces , withdrew his royal person from the view of men. The ancient Egyptians and Ethiopians paid divine honours to their kings, according to Diod. Sic. i. 90, iii. 3, 5; and it is well known that the Roman emperors required that their images should be worshipped with religious veneration.)
The religious persecution to which this law subjected the Jews was rendered oppressive by this: that the Jews were brought by it into this situation, that for a whole month they must either omit prayer to God, and thus sin against their God, or disregard the king’s prohibition. The satraps had thus rightly formed their plan. Since without doubt they were aware of Daniel’s piety, they could by this means hope with certainty to gain their object in his overthrow. There is no ground for rejecting the narrative in the fact that Darius, without any suspicion, gave their contrivance the sanction of law. We do not need, on the contrary, to refer to the indolence of so many kings, who permit themselves to be wholly guided by their ministers, although the description we have of Cyaxares II by Xenophon accords very well with this supposition; for from the fact that Darius appears to have sanctioned the law without further consideration about it, it does not follow that he did not make inquiry concerning the purpose of the plan formed by the satraps. The details of the intercourse of the satraps with the king concerning the occasion and object of the law Daniel has not recorded, for they had no significance in relation to the main object of the narrative. If the satraps represented to the king the intention of compelling, by this law, all the nationalities that were subject to his kingdom to recognise his royal power and to prove their loyalty, then the propriety of this design would so clearly recommend itself to him, that without reflection he gave it the sanction of law.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| Daniel Preferred by Darius. | B. C. 537. |
1 It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom a hundred and twenty princes, which should be over the whole kingdom; 2 And over these three presidents; of whom Daniel was first: that the princes might give accounts unto them, and the king should have no damage. 3 Then this Daniel was preferred above the presidents and princes, because an excellent spirit was in him; and the king thought to set him over the whole realm. 4 Then the presidents and princes sought to find occasion against Daniel concerning the kingdom; but they could find none occasion nor fault; forasmuch as he was faithful, neither was there any error or fault found in him. 5 Then said these men, We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God.
We are told concerning Daniel,
I. What a great man he was. When Darius, upon his accession to the crown of Babylon by conquest, new-modelled the government, he made Daniel prime-minister of state, set him at the helm, and made him first commissioner both of the treasury and of the great seal. Darius’s dominion was very large; all he got by his conquests and acquests was that he had so many more countries to take care of; no more can be expected from himself than what one man can do, and therefore others must be employed under him. He set over the kingdom 120 princes (v. 1), and appointed them their districts, in which they were to administer justice, preserve the public peace, and levy the king’s revenue. Note, Inferior magistrates are ministers of God to us for good as well as the sovereign; and therefore we must submit ourselves both to the king as supreme and to the governors that are constituted and commissioned by him, 1Pe 2:13; 1Pe 2:14. Over these princes there was a triumvirate, or three presidents, who were to take and state the public accounts, to receive appeals from the princes, or complaints against them in case of mal-administration, that the king should have no damage (v. 2), that he should not sustain loss in his revenue and that the power he delegated to the princes might not be abused to the oppression of the subject, for by that the king (whether he thinks so or no) receives real damage, both as it alienates the affections of his people from him and as it provokes the displeasure of his God against him. Of these three Daniel was chief, because he was found to go beyond them all in all manner of princely qualifications. He was preferred above the presidents and princes (v. 3), and so wonderfully well pleased the king was with his management that he thought to set him over the whole realm, and let him place and displace at his pleasure. Now, 1. We must take notice of it to the praise of Darius that he would prefer a man thus purely for his personal merit, and his fitness for business; and those sovereigns that would be well served must go by that rule. Daniel had been a great man in the kingdom that was conquered, and for that reason, one would think, should have been looked upon as an enemy, and as such imprisoned or banished. He was a native of a foreign kingdom, and a ruined one, and upon that account might have been despised as a stranger and captive. But, Darius, it seems, was very quick-sighted in judging of men’s capacities, and was soon aware that this Daniel had something extraordinary in him, and therefore, though no doubt he had creatures of his own, not a few, that expected preferment in this newly-conquered kingdom, and were gaping for it, and those that had been long his confidants would depend upon it that they should be now his presidents, yet so well did he consult the public welfare that, finding Daniel to excel them all in prudence and virtue, and probably having heard of his being divinely inspired, he made him his right hand. 2. We must take notice of it, to the glory of God, that, though Daniel was now very old (it was above seventy years since he was brought a captive to Babylon), yet he was as able as ever for business both in body and mind, and that he who had continued faithful to his religion through all the temptations of the foregoing reigns in a new government was as much respected as ever. He kept in by being an oak, not by being a willow, by a constancy in virtue, not by a pliableness to vice. Such honesty is the best policy, for it secures a reputation; and those who thus honour God he will honour.
II. What a good man he was: An excellent spirit was in him, v. 3. And he was faithful to every trust, dealt fairly between the sovereign and the subject, and took care that neither should be wronged, so that there was no error, or fault, to be found in him, v. 4. He was not only not chargeable with any treachery or dishonesty, but not even with any mistake or indiscretion. He never made any blunder, nor had any occasion to plead inadvertency or forgetfulness for his excuse. This is recorded for an example to all that are in places of public trust to approve themselves both careful and conscientious, that they may be free, not only from fault, but from error, not only from crime, but from mistake.
III. What ill-will was borne him, both for his greatness and for his goodness. The presidents and princes envied him because he was advanced above them, and probably hated him because he had a watchful eye upon them and took care they should not wrong the government to enrich themselves. See here, 1. The cause of envy, and that is every thing that is good. Solomon complains of it as a vexation that for every right work a man is envied of his neighbour (Eccl. iv. 4), that the better a man is the worse he is thought of by his rivals. Daniel is envied because he has a more excellent spirit than his neighbours. 2. The effect of envy, and that is every thing that is bad. Those that envied Daniel sought no less than his ruin. His disgrace would not serve them; it was his death that they desired. Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous, but who can stand before envy? Prov. xxvii. 4. Daniel’s enemies set spies upon him, to observe him in the management of his place; they sought to find occasion against him, something on which to ground an accusation concerning the kingdom, some instance of neglect or partiality, some hasty word spoken, some person borne hard upon, or some necessary business overlooked. And if they could but have found the mote, the mole-hill, of a mistake, it would have been soon improved to the beam, to the mountain, of an unpardonable misdemeanour. But they could find no occasion against him; they owned that they could not. Daniel always acted honestly, and now the more warily, and stood the more upon his guard, because of his observers, Ps. xxvii. 11. Note, We have all need to walk circumspectly, because we have many eyes upon us, and some that watch for our halting. Those especially have need to carry their cup even that have it full. They concluded, at length, that they should not find any occasion against him except concerning the law of his God v. 5. It seems then that Daniel kept up the profession of his religion, and held it fast without wavering or shrinking, and yet that was no bar to his preferment; there was no law that required him to be of the king’s religion, or incapacitated him to bear office in the state unless he were. It was all one to the king what God he prayed to, so long as he did the business of his place faithfully and well. He was at the king’s service usque ad aras–as far as the altars; but there he left him. In this matter therefore his enemies hoped to ensnare him. Qurendum est crimen ls religionis ubi majestatis deficit–When treason could not be charged upon him he was accused of impiety. Grotius. Note, It is an excellent thing, and much for the glory of God, when those who profess religion conduct themselves so inoffensively in their whole conversation that their most watchful spiteful enemies may find no occasion of blaming them, save only in the matters of their God, in which they walk according to their consciences. It is observable that, when Daniel’s enemies could find no occasion against him concerning the kingdom, they had so much sense of justice left that they did not suborn witnesses against him to accuse him of crimes he was innocent of, and to swear treason upon him, wherein they shame many that were called Jews and are called Christians.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
DANIEL – CHAPTER 6
DANIEL’S HISTORY TO ASCENDANCY OF CYRUS
Verses 1-3:
Verse 1 explains that it pleased Darius (the Lord-King-ruler) a common title that referred to the ruler of Medo-Persia, as “Caesar” was used of the head Roman ruler and “Pharaoh” was so used in Egypt, to set up an administrative government with 120 princes, who were to govern his entire kingdom, Ezr 1:1.
Verse 2 adds that over these 120 general ruling princes he set up a presidential cabinet of three presidents, of whom Daniel, the aged Jew was first in power. They were set up as certified public accountants to see that the king should receive all tribute, suffer no business loss, that had been assessed to come to him, 1Sa 2:29-30.
Verse 3 relates that Daniel then came to be preferred above the other two presidents because an excellent spirit, attitude, or disposition was (existed) in him, as formerly stated by the queen mother, Dan 5:12. And the king (Darius or Cyrus) thought or resolved to set Daniel over the material welfare of all his kingdom, as Pharaoh did Joseph, Gen 41:38; Neh 7:2; Dan 5:12; Dan 9:23.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
As to the translation, some translate the last clause of the second verse, “That the king should not have any trouble;” but since נזק, nezek, signifies “to suffer loss,” I willingly adopt this sense; because the king did not escape trouble, through a desire for ease, as he might have done, being an old man, but he willingly managed his own affairs, and committed the care of them to three men, lest anything should be lost through passing through too many hands. For experience shews us how confusion is caused by a multitude. If there had been only there an hundred and twenty governors of provinces, many inconveniences must have happened, and much loss would have occurred; hence the king placed three prefects over these hundred and twenty.
Here again we may perceive how God cared for his Prophet, not so much for any private reason or through private respect, as by his aid the wretched captives and exiles should be benefited. God wished to stretch forth his hand to the Jews by means of Daniel. And we may deservedly call him God’s hand in sustaining the Jews. The Persians, being barbarians, were not naturally more merciful than others; hence God interposed his servant Daniel to succor them. We must notice, in the context of this history, how Daniel alone was chosen by Darius one of these three superior officers. He was the third in rank under king Belshazzar, although for a moment, yet it might occasion envy under the new king that so great an honor was conferred upon him. Very probably Darius was informed of the previous predictions of Daniel; how the hand appeared upon the wall, how he interpreted the writing, and became a heaven-sent messenger to denounce destruction on king Belshazzar. For unless this rumor held reached Darius, Daniel would never have obtained so much authority under him. His own army abounded in numbers, and we know how every conqueror is surrounded in war by many dependents, all of whom wish to share in the spoil. Darius, therefore, would never have noticed a stranger and a captive, and admitted him to such great honor and power, unless he had understood him to be a known Prophet of God, and also a herald in denouncing destruction against the Babylonish monarchy. Thus we gather how providential it was for him to be among the first satraps, and even third in the kingdom, as this brought him more quickly under the notice of Darius. For if Daniel had been cast down by king Belshazzar he would have remained at home in concealment; but when he appeared clothed in royal apparel, the king inquired who he was? He heard the means of his arriving at so high an honor; hence he acknowledged him as God’s Prophet, and appointed him one of the three prefects. Here also God’s providence is again set before us, not only in preserving his servant in safety, but in providing for the safety of the whole Church, lest the Jews should be still more oppressed by the change of masters. But a temptation is afterwards inflicted, by which the holy Prophet and the whole people were severely tried; for the Prophet says:
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
DANIELS INTERPRETATION OF BELSHAZZARS VISION
Dan 5:1 to Dan 6:28
WE invite the attention today to the 5th and 6th chapters of this prophecy.
We have considered already, Daniela Dream of a Lad; Daniel, the Interpreter of Dreams; Daniel, and the Doom of World Governments; Daniels Brethren, or the Victory of Faith; and Nebuchadnezzars Dream of the Great Tree.
This chapter introduces a new name,another king.
Evidently a considerable period of time elapsed between the close of the fourth chapter and the opening of the fifth. The old king Nebuchadnezzar was dead, and Nabonidus, his warlike son, coming to the throne, shared the same with Belshazzar, the heir apparent; and, as Vice-regent of the Empire, Belshazzar is called The King.
The opening sentences of this study provide another illustration of the sins and swift living to which the children of special privileges and power are both surely and sorely tempted.
Our first introduction to Belshazzar finds him the host of a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and the whole setting of the same is thoroughly Bacchanalian.
Three words will well-nigh compass the content of these two chapters. These are Sensualism, Supernaturalism, and Supremacy.
SENSUALISM
Sensualism was expressed by the flowing of wine!
The king * * drank wine before the thousand.
The king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, drank.
Wine-drinking has always been the curse of kings. Solomon could not forget his own experience, nor yet disregard his observation, and from the place of the throne he wrote,
Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.
And again this inspiring Sage of the ages declared,
It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine; nor for princes strong drink:
Lest they drink, and forget the law, and pervert the judgment of any of the afflicted (Pro 31:4-5).
If there is any one thing upon which the wise of the earth have agreed for four thousand years, it has been the deleterious effects of strong drink; and if there is any one thing to which the foolish of the earth, from the king on his throne to the most forlorn tramp begging bread at the back door, have been addicted, to the degradation of each, it is this same strong drink.
The United States is experiencing what is called by some the noble experiment of attempting to abolish, by law, strong drink. Whether this endeavor succeeds or not, her government has already enjoyed practically fourteen years of freedom from the accursed saloon traffic, a traffic that was destructive alike to the bodies and souls of men.
We discuss in America questions of employment, and are constantly debating what we shall do for the unemployed, but we know that, with very few exceptions, the statement of Mr. Lloyd George, Englands first citizen, applies to the down and outs of this land who drink, as perfectly as it did to that.
They are unemployed because unemployable. The stamina which should be theirs was lost because of drink. They are only a sort of weak vegetabletoo weak for the serious uses of the world.
It is related that at a wedding the young bride declined to pledge her husband with wine. When her father remonstrated with her, she replied by holding up a wine glass and saying, The color and sparkle mock me, for there I see a debauched brother, a broken-hearted mother and a saddened, darkened homeour home! Ten thousand times ten thousand her statement would have applied to other homes as well; and the house of the king was not exempt.
The words of Isaiah are: Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink. * * As the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust (Isa 5:22-24).
Let kings hear it! Let the self-supposed cultured of the earth give audience to it! Let the great and the rich as well as the degraded and the poor, ponder itstrong drink and sensualism are synonyms!
Sensualism is represented in the character of the women. We have no detailed description of these women beyond the statement that they were the kings wives and concubines; but one does not need much more. The wine-room witnesses to the character of its own patrons.
Some years since Chief of Police Delaney ordered a raid of the Denver resorts. In a few hours forty young women were behind prison bars. Some of them were daughters of elite homes; others of them stenographers, milliners, cashiers, waitresses, etc. It was a night of weeping! Indignant parents protested that their daughters were young women of good reputations and should not have the treatment of criminals; but the consistent chief replied, The frequenting of these wine rooms will very shortly convert your so-called respectable girl into a subject of the Market Street tenderloin. If she is decent and desires to remain so, let her desist!
The man has not yet been born who can make constant associates of lustful, wine-bibbing women, and maintain his royal standing.
Andrea Delsarto was an artist of such high ideals that he gave to the world a face of Christ, never equalled. But the woman he chose to share life with him, by the charms of her personal beauty and the criminal tendencies of her low ideals, carried him to such depths of dishonesty and deeds of degradation as to compel him to confess his craftsman hand low-pulsed.
Goethe said, Tell me with whom thou dost company, and I will tell who thou art. And Goethes women associates dragged him to moral depths more godless even than was his atheistic philosophy.
Solomon writes it down as a proverb,
The lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil:
But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.
Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.
Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house:
Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel (Pro 5:3-5; Pro 5:8-9).
Again, the sacrilegious use of the sacred vessels was sensualism. Belshazzar must have known what sacredness attached to the golden and other vessels brought away from the Templethe House of Godwhich was at Jerusalem. And when he called for them, and with them served his princes, his wives, and his concubines, the spirit of sacrilege was with him, and when, while they were drinking, they praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone consciously and intentionally he offered an insult to Jehovahthe very God concerning whom Nebuchadnezzar, his grandfather, had made a decree that every people, and nation, and language should worship Him.
And yet Nebuchadnezzars sin is not an antiquity. It is the very same mistake into which Kant fell when he concluded that two things there are, which, the oftener and the more steadfastly we consider them, fill the mind with an ever new, an ever rising admiration and reverencethe Starry Heaven above and the Moral Law within.
The modern theologian is more disposed to worship the stars than he is to worship the God who made them, and to trust his own inner consciousness than the Holy Ghost who quickens and renews; and the praise goes to the creation or creature rather than to the Creator. As in the old day a king sat on the throne who knew not Joseph, nor yet regarded his God, so now Belshazzar is alike ignorant of the greatest Prophet of the realm, and the very God for whom Daniel stood.
This sensualism, this sacrilege, were alike an insult to God, and resulted in the writing on the wall.
SUPERNATURALISM
The sight of the hand was its first expression.
In the same hour came forth fingers of a mans hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the kings palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.
Then the kings countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another.
What is the interpretation of this report? Let the Rationalist answer; and he will tell you Daniel had delirium tremens, and will cite many instances from history to prove that when men drink wine they experience visions. But the vision is wholly subjective; in other words, no hand ever appeared. Belshazzar only imagined he saw a hand.
Then perhaps this same Rationalist will tell us how it happened that Daniel interpreted this vision so correctly, that that very night his interpretation became history.
The longer one lives the more is he impressed with the fact that the most credulous company of people on earth are the critics of Sacred Scripture the opponents of the supernatural. Let me illustrate what I mean. There is an old and unscientific opinion to the effect that the vibration in every building and structure of wood or stone or other material has what is called its key note; and if a fiddler can only find that, he can play down the biggest bridge that was ever built; and they even claim that historically the first iron bridge built was at Colebrook Dale, and a fiddler did play until he struck the key note and the structure swayed so perceptibly that the workmen compelled him to stop.
Now upon that basis a recent writer, who boasts himself an exponent of modern thought, speaking of the falling of the walls of Jericho in articles published by a leading magazine, says, It is not in any sense robbing this story of its miraculous element to say that God was making use here of one of His own laws and that the shouting of the people caused vibrations serious enough to topple the walls. Some shout!
It is strange how deniers of supernaturalism swallow with ease a greater supernaturalism. Bishop Wilberforce had such teachers in mind when he spoke of those who are borne on the wings of a boundless skepticism into the bosom of an unfathomable superstition. If a man believe in God at all he must believe that the walls of Jericho could come down before His breath a thousand times more easily than they could crumble at the shout of man.
Bettex, the great German believer, says with his accustomed superficiality the man of the world treats miracles either disdainfully dismissing them as silly stuff or ascribing to God and His Son a few smaller and easier miracles, as a well-known Berlin professor does, but energetically protests against the greater and more difficult ones. Confounded he sits before Lots wife and Balaams ass, like one who has never seen an egg, and now takes one, opens it, and exclaims, What! Am I to believe that simply by virtue of a certain degree of warmth in the incubator there will come forth from this slimy white and yellow fluid a perfect animal that can walk and fly and cackle? Why, whence shall feathers, and feet and claws, and the hard bill come? I shall never believe such stuff. For in the presence of this fact, as well as of thousands of others, science as a whole is as helpless as in the presence of the miracles of the Bible. But we wise people consider the miracle quite simple and natural that is repeated daily, and deny it if it occurs only once within a hundred or a thousand years.
T. Dewitt Talmage has been too shortly forgotten by the generation he served, and the land in which he won his fame. No man of modern times thought more clearly nor spoke more forcefully; and Talmage reminded his auditors of the fact that God makes no special regulation for the graduate of Harvard or Princeton, and asserts that the scorn and criticism and anathemas of the modern man can in no wise change the fact that we have an infallible Bible, a supernatural religion, and a Divine and all sufficient Saviour!
The record says, The king saw the part of the hand and Daniel interpreted it as a supernatural revelation. Who can dispute either the historical fact or its prophetic import?
Supernaturalism was also in the content of the sentences. The Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin,was Numbered, Numbered, Weighed; Divided! Our report is a somewhat free translation: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.
That this was Gods word concerning the king and his kingdom, history immediately demonstrates. Your telephone rings; you take up the instrument and put the receiver to your ear; you hear a voice, but you see no face. The language is clear, the idea conveyed is perfect; will you deny that it is a message to you because you cannot see the spokesman? Will you be indifferent to its import because it comes to you over a long distance?
Some years ago there was a hard controversy raging between Mr. Robert Blatchford, the atheistic editor of the Socialistic paper in England, and Mr. G. K. Chesterton, the brilliant Daily News staff writer; and in that discussion Mr. Chesterton said some things that ought never to be forgotten by the advocates of Christianity, and among them this,
The strength of Christianity lies not in the fact that it is eloquent or successful, or well represented; it lies in the incidental fact that it is indispensable. By indispensable I mean this: It is, to all mortal appearance, impossible for men to attack Christianity without eventually ending up in positions that no sane masses of men have ever held; in positions which would horrify a decent pagan or an unbaptized savage. Schopenhauer ends by saying that life itself is a delusion. Nietzsche ends by saying that charity itself is a delusion. Mr. Blatchford ends by saying that human goodness and badness are delusions. Christianity does not answer: a few of her apologists answer, and generally badly. But she is silent, for she is old, and has seen so many paradoxes. She knows the path you are on, and has seen many on it; she knows that on it are delightful hypotheses and luxurious negations, and that that way madness lies. She knows that as soon as you want any conceivable human reality, if it be only to say Thank you for the mustard, you will be forced to return to her and her hypotheses, where she sits, guarding through the ages the secret of an eternal sanity.
Certainly; and if any man believes that he can visit the wine room and make consorts of strange women, treat sacred things with sacrilegious hands, and not see a hand writing on the wall and read in the finished sentence his own doom, the end to which he will come will compel him, as it compelled the king, to call for Gods Prophet, to hear Gods truth, and endure Gods judgment.
Supernaturalism was in every sentence of Daniels interpretation. God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.
This was not history; it was only prophecy as yet. If Daniels interpretation is not supernatural, if these sentences themselves are not from God, nothing will come of it. But if God wrote the declaration, and God inspired Daniels interpretation, then history will run into the mould of this prophecy.
What does history say?
In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain.
And Darius the Median took the kingdom.
And that is not biblical history only; that is world history as well.
There is many a man upon whose sins sentence is already passed. His doom is a divinely determined fact, and yet he does not know it. Laughter may fill his lips, wine inflame his brain, false friends may regale him with flattery, and yet in the eternal counsels of God, judgment is already pronounced, and the Executor of the same is at hand. The fact that he does not appreciate his danger in no wise detracts from its awful reality!
Some years ago a mine near Pottsville, Pa., caved in. Three miners were entombed. The rescuing gang worked strenuously for hours until at last they reached them, and lo, the men for whose lives they had feared, sat calmly about their dinner pails, eating with relish. They knew not that anything had happened. The silent rush of sand and clay had given them no notice that they were cut off from the outside world and buried alive.
Ignorance of facts and lack of fear in no wise saves men from doomed estate. Oh men, look up from your wine! Cease from the prattle of consorts; take your eyes off your gold vessels and cups of silver; see the hand writing on the wall! Gods hand is still capable, and His fingers can frame the sentences of judgment and His power is adequate to the execution of the same.
But we pass to the sixth chapter, and to the last word:
SUPREMACY
Daniels interpretation affected his political preferment. Belshazzar commanded that Daniel be clothed with scarlet, and that a chain of gold be put about his neck; and made a decree concerning him that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom. But he never lived to see it done.
Darius, the Mede, in organizing the kingdom to which he had suddenly come set over it an hundred and twenty princes * * and over these three presidents, of whom Daniel was first, and this Daniel was preferred above the presidents and princes, because an excellent spirit was in him; and the king thought to set him over the whole realm.
How like the history of Joseph, this! And yet, that is only another way of saying, How like the custom of God! The man that Joseph befriended in prison, once liberated, forgot him. God never did! God never forgets the man who is loyal to Him; and God is able, when He will, to take him from behind prison bars and put him in the place of power.
Moses may be determined upon as a victim of Egyptian wrath against the Jew, and the life of this weak, wailing infant can only be protected by the false pretenses of an affectionate mother. But God can pick him out of the cradle of rushes and pitch and put him in the palace for training and equip him to become a greater than the king. David may be looked upon by his fellows as nothing better than a ruddy, beautiful lad, and even treated by his elder brothers with contempt, and his very life may be sought by the mad Saul; but when God makes up His mind to set David on the throne, nothing can stand in the way. And when did God ever do other than He did with Daniel, viz.: exalt the loyal man, put sacred trusts into the hands of the trustworthy, and bring to the place of power the man He had perfected?
Daniels trials simply demonstrated the Divine favor. The jealousy of the princes landed him in the lions den. The method employed in doing it was a true measure of the men engaging in it. They held a secret session. It is commonly so with officials who propose to undo Gods anointed.
In my lengthy career I have scarcely known a company of men, members of a church and occupying official position, to remove a pastor from the pulpit by open session and frank and fair discussion. The report of these presidents to the king was false. It indicated that they had all assembled. But as Daniel was not present, nor even apprised of the meeting, they plainly lied.
How many men report that all of the officers are of one opinion; all of the leading people of the church think so and so; all the members of the board have come to this conclusion. A young man in a Western state was asked to resign and told that all the people in the church felt it were better to have a change. When he got up in prayer-meeting and asked his own people to tell him frankly what was wrong and why they so disliked him, that same people rose in wrath and excluded the two men who had made the secret report and demand.
It is interesting to note Daniels method of meeting this indictment. He is an old man now. His hoary head is a crown of glory! I delight to watch him go into his house and then to that window in his chamber that opened toward Jerusalem, and see him kneel upon his knees three times a day and pray. What wisdom there! How much better than assembling his friends for his defense. How much better than trying to uncover the conduct of his enemies to the eyes of the king. How much better than calling an assembly of them and charging them with falsehood and deceit, and the spirit of murder.
Gods man has all the resources he needs in every time of trial; and the man who knows how to pray is the one man destined to prevail. To him the combined forces of enemies are little more than a farce. To him hungry lions have no hint of harm.
A mans conduct is always the evidence of his creed! Campbell Morgan says two small boys on the first sharp morning of autumn, took their skates and hied themselves to a pond near by. One of them said to the other, See, it is frozen; it will hold us up. All right, replied his chum, You put on your skates and try it. No, I do not want to try it; but I am sure it will hold us up; you go. He didnt really believe or he would have gone on.
Daniel had no hesitancy at the lions den. Like his three Hebrew brethren he was saying, If it be so, my God, whom I serve, He is able to deliver me, and He will deliver me, oh king. But if not, be it known unto thee, that I will not serve any other god, nor worship any other than Jehovah.
The preservation of Daniel is a precious record. His deliverance was the Kings delight; and the decree of Darius introduces another truth to which I call your attention, namely,
Daniels testimony gave another victory to the Divine message.
Then king Darius wrote unto all people, nations, and languages, that dwell in all the earth; Peace he multiplied unto you.
I make a decree, That in every dominion of my kingdom men tremble and fear before the God of Daniel: for He is the Living God, and stedfast for ever, and His Kingdom that which shall not be destroyed, and His dominion shall be even unto the end (Dan 6:25-26).
That is the only way the Divine message of truth will ever reach men, through your testimony and mine. You have often heard that strange, sweet story of Van Dykes in which he tells of Christ having completed His work and returned to Heaven, and as He talked with Gabriel, that arch-angel asked Him how He proposed to have His plan of salvation reach the ears of men, and Jesus answered: I have told John, and Andrew and Peter, and James and the others, and have asked them to bear witness. But suppose, said Gabriel, that they should forget; or suppose they are faithful, but, in the far-off twentieth century, men who know this truth should forget to tell the same, what then? Jesus solemnly answered, I have made no other plan.
Africa has a little light; but the greater portion of her people still sit in darkness and the only possible hope of salvation for millions and millions of the inhabitants of the black continent is with us! Are we bearing our testimony by our gifts of money, by our offers of self? China, Japan, India, the Isles, these are a part of the peoples, and nations, and languages of the earth. How are they ever to come to a knowledge of the Living God; how are they ever to know of His Kingdom, of His endless dominion, except we speak by every power at our command?
Oh, the hour will break when the money we have hoarded will burn as might coals of fire; when the gold we have refused to make speak for our Master will eat as doth the gangrene, for the hour will come when we will have to stand before Him to give an account of our stewardship!
What are we doing today to bring the knowledge of Jehovah to all people, nations, and languages, that dwell in all the earth? Daniels example was a worthy one. The God of Daniel wants us to be alike faithful. We have long known something of the legend which was employed in the immortal Polish romance Quo Vadis; of how, under the fearful persecution of Nero the Christians at Rome went through fiery trials, multitudes of them being burned at the stake, soaked in oil, securely tethered in the Roman square. The very streets themselves were lighted at night by ghastly sights of flaming men and burning women! It was reported that Peter himself, with a little band of fugitive Christians, fleeing from the persecutions, came face to face with His Master, walking toward the city, and Peter said to Him: Lord, whither goest Thou? I am going back to Rome to be crucified again because My servant Peter has turned his back to the Cross.
And Peter answered, Not so, Lord; I will go back again and gladly die for Thee. And so, as tradition tells us, with head down he let them nail him to the cross, trusting that his blood would be the seed of the Church and that his sacrifice would send the message of truth and salvation farther than would his living speech.
There is a passage in the Scriptures which speaks of our filling up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ. Are we doing it, or are we so far failing to get the blessed message of His salvation to all people, nations, and languages that our very failure crucifies Him afresh and puts Him to an open shame?
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
HOMILETICS
SECT. XVIII.THE PLOT (Chap. Dan. 6:1-9)
Another of the deeply interesting chapters of Daniel. A former one exhibited faith quenching the violence of fire; this presents the same faith stopping the mouths of lions. The events recorded took place in the reign of a Persian monarch named Darius, generally understood to be the Darius mentioned in the conclusion of the previous chapter, and the same who is called by a Greek historian Cyaxares the Younger or Cyaxares II., the son of Astyages and uncle of Cyrus [142]. We have
[142] Darius. Keil observes that Hitzig confesses that the identity of this Darius of Daniel with the Cyaxares of Xenophon is placed beyond a doubt. How long his reign in Babylon lasted is not stated in this book, or learned from any other direct source; but it is correctly supposed that he reigned two years, his reign giving place to that of Cyrus, by whom the writing on the wall was fully accomplished. The character of Darius fundamentally different from that of Nebuchadnezzar, the latter being distinguished by energy and activity, while Darius was a weak prince, wanting in energy, and allowing himself to be guided and governed by his officers of state. Some, as Mr. Bosanquet, still think that the Darius, under whom Daniel lived and wrote his later prophecies, was Darius Hystaspes, who is mentioned in the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah and in the Book of Ezra (Hag. 1:1; Zec. 1:1; Ezr. 4:24; Ezr. 5:6; Ezr. 6:1). Dr. Pusey observes that the identification of Cyaxares II. with Darius the Mede is only a probable historical conjecture, with which Daniel is in no way concerned.
I. Daniels elevation (Dan. 6:1-3). The Medes and Persians were now in possession of Babylon. The first of the four great monarchies had passed away, and the second, indicated by the silver breast and arms of the great image, had succeeded it. Darius, the first ruler of the new empire, had, probably at the suggestion of Cyrus, divided the kingdom into a hundred and twenty provinces or satrapies [143], afterwards increased under Xerxes or Ahasuerus to a hundred and twenty-seven (Est. 1:1). Over each of these provinces was a prince or satrap, and over the whole of the princes were placed three presidents, of whom Daniel was the chief [144], Darius having probably only confirmed him in the office to which he had already been promoted by Belshazzar. Indeed, for the excellent spirit that the king found to be in him, he even thought to place him over the whole empire as his viceroy or khedive, giving him all the power over the several departments of the state that would have enabled him to enforce obedience and punish dereliction. [145]
[143] An hundred and twenty princes. Keil remarks that when Daniel mentions so large a number of satrapies, it is no argument against the credibility of the narrative, as if, according to Hitzig, the kingdom was too small for so many satrapies in the Persian sense, so that they must be understood rather as Grecian ones. The division of the kingdom, however, by Xerxes (Est. 1:1) into 127 provinces shows that it might have been previously divided by Darius the Mede into 120. The Median Darius might be led to appoint one satrap or prince, i.e., a prefect clothed with military power, over each district, since the kingdom was but newly conquered, that he might be able to suppress every attempt at insurrection among the nations coming under his dominion. Dr. Cox remarks that Xenophon informs us that Cyrus devised the plan of government with regard to conquered nations, which is here ascribed to Darius; and that Archbishop Ussher therefore supposes, with great probability, that it was first devised by Cyrus, and at his suggestion pursued by Darius. Dr. Rule observes that the presidents of the 120 princes, viceroys or satraps, received and administered the revenue, Daniel being First Lord of the Treasury.
[144] Of whom Daniel was first. M. Gaussen remarks: What profound wisdom, vast capacity, and extensive knowledge must he have possessed! But also what decision, integrity, and equanimity, for the princes of the Medes and Persians to think of putting at the head of so powerful an empire a man, a stranger, a Jew, a captive, a servant of their enemies, and, moreover, an old man, now eighty-five years of age at least!
[145] Save thee, O king. The Persian kings were regarded as incarnations of the deity. Gaussen observes that Nebuchadnezzar claimed divine honours. Alexander the Great pretended to be a god, and the son of a god. The Roman emperors required themselves and their images to be worshipped. And in our own day the Pope lays claim to religious homage, being at his consecration fumed with incense and placed on the altar of God, while the people kiss his feet, and all the cardinals cry, Venite adoremus, Come let us adore him!
Darius had seen and heard enough of Daniel to convince him that his own interest lay in employing him in the most responsible office in the realm. Wisdom, prudence, disinterestedness, conscientiousness, and fidelity, so combined in his character as to mark him out as the man on whom above all others the king could depend. The resemblance in this, as in some other respects, between Daniel in Persia and Joseph in Egypt, is obvious and striking. Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings, and shall not stand before mean men? Them that honour me I will honour.
II. The conspiracy (Dan. 6:4-5). Promotion to honour often the precursor of trouble. The presidents and princes could not see Daniel, a foreigner, a captive, a Jew, a man of an entirely different religion from their own, without the worst feelings of our fallen humanity coming into play. Wrath is cruel and anger is outrageous; but who can stand before envy? (Pro. 27:4). Daniel, too, was a man of uprightness and principle, which the presidents and princes were not. The former, were to receive and examine the revenue accounts of the latter, that the royal exchequer might not be defrauded. But the presidents might be corrupt as well as the princes. Will Daniel connive at their peculation? Daniel was faithful to his sovereign, because faithful to his God. Duty to God secures the faithful discharge of our duty to man. Daniel made his masters interest his own; and hence kept a strict look-out on both presidents and princes. He aimed, according to his office, not only at doing his own duty to the king, but at keeping others at theirs also. Hence his troubles. In a corrupt world, he that departeth from evil too often maketh himself a prey. Daniels colleagues became his enemies. Like Josephs brethren in Egypt, they hated him, and must have him out of the way. The question was how? Accusation against his moral or official conduct they could find none. Every attempt to find a flaw, to prove a weakness, or to justify a suspicion, either of disloyalty or maladministration, failed. The only way to entrap him must be in connection with his religion, in which they knew him to be as strict and conscientious as he was in his official duties. A clever and diabolical scheme was concocted that promised complete success. This was by placing his obedience to God in antagonism with his obedience to the king.
III. The decree (Dan. 6:6-9). The scheme was this. Daniel was known to be a man of prayer, and to repair to his chamber at stated times in the day for that purpose. Get the king to sign a decree forbidding any one to present a petition to either God or man for a whole month on pain of being cast in a den of lions. The king will be flattered by the proposal, and Daniel will be caught. They will watch him, whether he will observe the decree and save his life, or go to his knees as usual. In the latter and most likely case, the decree once signed by the king, the representative of the unchanging deity, being irrevocable, Daniel is a lost man, and they are rid of their rival. The decree being accordingly drawn up, was presented to the king for signature. The weak monarch, not perceiving the object of the princes, perhaps flattered with the appearance of their loyalty and devotion, and pleased at the idea of being thus for a time superior to both gods and men, readily complied with the proposal and signed the decree.
Oh, purblind race of miserable men!
How many among us at this very hour
Do forge a lifelong trouble for ourselves
By taking true for false, or false for true!
But for divine interference, this would now have been realised in Darius. The presidents and princes, having obtained their desire, returned home triumphant. Daniels doom was sealed. Observe from the passage
1. Godliness no hindrance to greatness, and prayer no obstacle to promotion. Daniel in Babylon and Joseph in Egypt notable examples. In many respects natural. But for prevailing sin in the world, and the influence of him who is its prince and the enemy of all goodness, godliness would be the surest way to greatness, and prayer the certain path to preferment. Godliness and prayer secure the necessary requisites for positions of trustwisdom, uprightness, and fidelity. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. If any man lack wisdom, let him ask it of God, and it shall be given him. Abraham Lincoln, the President of the United States, was pre-eminently a man of prayer. General Havelock, though burdened with the care of the army during the terrible mutiny in India, managed to keep sacred for prayer a considerable time in the morning of every day. Sir Thomas Browne wrote in his journal as an admonition to himself, to be sure to let no day pass without calling upon God in a solemn manner seven times in the course of it.
2. The excellence of true religion. The righteous is more excellent than his neighbour. Seen even by a heathen monarch in the case of Daniel. Hence his elevation. His enemies unable to find a flaw in him. His steadfastness in religion the only ground for accusation against him. A godly man firm and fearless in the discharge of his duty. His religion not put on or off to suit the season. Daniel known to prefer fidelity to life, and death to deviation from duty. The part of a truly godly man to act not from expediency but from principle. His inquiry, not what will be most advantageous, but what is right. His concern not to appear, but to be just and good. His aim to please God in the first place, and man in the second. True godliness, symmetrical and all-embracing; extends to principles and practice, to the temper and the tongue, to private and to public conduct, to our duty to God and our duty to man in every relation of life.
3. The depth of human depravity. Seen in the conduct of Daniels enemies. Hates the good because they are good, and because their goodness rebukes our evil, and stands in the way of our sinful courses. Contrives their overthrow, and even plots their death. Commits murder in the heart, and then, when it can be done safely, in the act. Practises hypocrisy in order to conceal our wickedness and make others accomplices of our crimes. Steels the heart against pity, and finds pleasure in the torture of the innocent. The character and conduct of Daniels enemies shows what man is by nature since the first sin robbed him of his Makers image. Left to himself, man exhibits the image of his tempter. It was the testimony of Him who was at once Truth and Love, Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. The witness true of unrenewed men, whether Persian princes or pharisaic Jews. History as well as daily observation and experience prove that the Bible picture of mans depravity is not overdrawn,Foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another; full of envy, murder, deceit, malignity (Tit. 3:3; Rom. 1:29). Verily man needed a Saviour, and, thanks to divine mercy, a Saviour has been found. Such were some of you; but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God (1Co. 6:11).
4. The certain exposure of the godly to persecution. Moral excellence no shelter from the shafts of malice, but rather their natural butt. Socrates and Aristides examples among the heathen. A natural and necessary antagonism between light and darkness, good and evil. The world cannot hate you, but me it hateth, because I testify of it that the deeds thereof are evil. If ye were of the world, the world would love its own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. The natural consequence, so long as the world is what it is, lying in wickedness, or under the power of the wicked one. Its hatred, opposition, and persecution, in one form and at one time or another, the necessary accompaniment of fidelity to God and conformity to Christ. Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you. Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you. All they that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. To possess Daniels character, we must be prepared, sooner or later, more or less, to share Daniels experience. The experience of Daniel only that of Daniels Lord. The disciple not greater than his Master.
5. The responsibility of men in power. Darius made the tool of wicked designing men, and virtually the author of a cruel murder. Forgetting the claims of justice, truth, and mercy, and blinded by a foolish ambition, he heedlessly consigned to a dreadful death the best and most faithful subject in his realm. Rulers in a condition either to further or defeat the designs of the wicked. Princes too often allow themselves to be the tool of priests in carrying out their persecuting projects, and so made participators in the death of Gods saints. To this source much of the persecutions of Papal Europe to be ascribed. Men responsible for the evil they might prevent, as well as for the good they might accomplish.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
TEXT: Dan. 6:1-9
1
It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom a hundred and twenty satraps, who should be throughout the whole kingdom;
2
and over them three presidents, of whom Daniel was one; that these satraps might give account unto them, and that the king should have no damage.
3
Then this Daniel was distinguished above the presidents and the satraps, because an excellent spirit was in him; and the king thought to set him over the whole realm.
4
Then the presidents and the satraps sought to find occasion against Daniel as touching the kingdom; but they could find no occasion nor fault, forasmuch as he was faithful, neither was there any error or fault found in him.
5
Then said these men, We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God.
6
Then these presidents and satraps assembled together to the king, and said thus unto him, King Darius, live for ever.
7
All the presidents of the kingdom, the deputies and the satraps, the counsellors and the governors, have consulted together to establish a royal statute, and to make a strong interdict, that whosoever shall ask a petition of any god or man for thirty days, save of thee, O king, he shall be cast into the den of lions.
8
Now, O king, establish the interdict, and sign the writing, that it be not changed, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not.
9
Wherefore king Darius signed the writing and the interdict.
QUERIES
a.
Why should Daniel be appointed a president over the satraps?
b.
Why could they find no fault with Daniels relationship to the kingdom?
c.
Why was the law of the Medes and Persians unalterable?
PARAPHRASE
Gubaru (Darius) divided the administration of the kingdom over which Cyrus had placed him among 120 governors. Over these lesser governors he appointed three presidents (Daniel was one of them) to whom they should be accountable in order that the finances of the kingdom might be managed profitably and efficiently. Daniel quickly proved more capable than all the other presidents and governors. He had great ability and the king began to think of placing him over the entire empire as his administrative officer. This made the other presidents and governors very jealous, and they began searching for some fault in the way Daniel was administering the affairs of his office for the king so that they could accuse him to the king. But they could not find one mistake or fault. Daniel was faithful, honest, and absolutely accurate and efficient. After deliberating, their conclusion was that their only opportunity to bring him into disfavor with the king would be through his religion. They decided to go to the king and use him to trap Daniel. After all due ceremony of saluting the king with, O King Darius, may you live forever, the governors approached the king so eagerly they very nearly bordered on disrespectful behavior in his court. They said, We presidents, governors, counsellors, and deputies unanimously suggest that you should make a law, irrevocable under any circumstances, that for the next thirty days anyone who should pray to any god except yourself, Your Majesty, shall be thrown to the lions. Your Majesty, we suggest your signature on this law; sign it so that it cannot be cancelled or changed; it will be a law of the Medes and Persians that cannot be revoked. So King Darius signed the law.
COMMENT
Dan. 6:1-2 . . . DARIUS . . . SET OVER THE KINGDOM A HUNDRED AND TWENTY SATRAPS . . . We have discussed the problem of identifying this Darius in the preceeding chapter. The Nabonidus Chronicle substantiates the fact that Gubaru (Darius) appointed governors in Babylon. These men were an expedient of the king to make the administering of the Persian system of taxes profitable. The kings treasury must suffer no losses. This was a definite characteristic of the Persian erathe hoarding of money (see our comments on chap. Dan. 2:39). Over these 120 administrators (satraps) the king appointed three top-echelon cabinet members (presidents) and Daniel was one of the three.
Through the courtesy of Dr. John C. Whitcomb and Eerdmans Publishing Co., we now insert a study of the Medes and Persians from Mr. Whitcombs book, Darius The Mede, pages 6874:
HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE
MEDES AND PERSIANS
DOWN TO 520 B.C.
Around 1500 B.C. Aryan peoples first moved into that high plateau region to the east of the Tigris River and to the south of the Caucasus Mountains and Caspian Sea which constitutes the northwestern part of a large country known since 1935 as Iran (from Airyana or land of the Aryans). The two principal Aryan tribes were the Medes and the Persians. The Medes lived to the east and south of Lake Urmia, and the Persians lived in Parsua, a region to the west of that large lake.
It is in 836 B.C. that we find the first mention of the Medes and Persians in Assyrian records. In that year, Shalmaneser III received tribute from the kings of Parsua and reached eastward to the lands of the Mada. Just one hundred years after this, Tiglathpileser III invaded Parsua and received tribute from Medina chiefs. Deioces was the first to unite the nomadic Median tribes into one nation; but he was taken captive by the Assyrians in 715 B.C. and was deported to Syria. His successor, Cyaxares I paid tribute to Sargon, king of Assyria, and attacked the Assyrian province of Harhar in 702 B.C.
About the year 700 B.C., Cimmerian and Scythian tribes began to move south into the Iranian plateau, pushing the Medes before them. Also, the Persians moved south from Parsua to a region south of the Elamite land of Anzan (or Anshan) and named it Parsumash in memory of their original home. At this time their leader was Achaemenes (700675 B.C.), founder of the Achaemenian dynasty, who is noted for having led troops from Parsumash and Anzan against Sennacherib at Halulina in 681 B.C.
Phraortes, king of the Medes, began his twenty-two-year reign in 675 B.C. by forming an anti-Assyrian coalition of Medes and Cimmerians, and causing the Persians to become his vassal. But the Persians, under the leadership of Teispes (675640 B.C.), son of Achaemenes, regained their independence from the Medes following the death of Phraortes in 653 B.C. The Persians were also able to conquer some territory to the east of Parsumash, which they named Parsa; and after the destruction of Elam by the Assyrians in 646 B.C., Teispes assumed the title, Great King, King of the City Anshan.
Cyaxares II (635585 B.C.), the new Median king, remained under the power of the Scythians during the first twenty-eight years of his reign; but he finally threw off their yoke and succeeded again in dominating the Persians. In 615 B.C. he led the Medes in a mighty invasion of Assyria, and with the aid of Nabopolassar, King of Babylon, conquered Nineveh in 612 B.C. Two year later he delivered the final blow to the Assyrian army by defeating Ashuruballit at Harran. Absorbing all of northern Mesopotamia, he moved into Asia Minor, met the powerful Lydians, and was forced to establish a common frontier with them at the river Halys (May 28, 585 B.C.).
In the meantime, Teispes had divided his territory between his two sons, Ariyaramnes (640615) and Cyrus I (640600), the former taking the eastern region of Parsa and the latter ruling over Parsumash and the city of Anshan. However, both of these Persian Kings remained vassals of the Medes. The son and grandson of Ariyaramne, Arsames and Hystaspes, remained petty rulers; but the son of Cyrus I, Cambyses I (600559), married Mandane the daughter of Astyages (585550), successor to the throne of Media. Their son was Cyrus II, the Great. Amytis, another daughter of Astyages, became a wife of Nebuchadnezzar; and it was for her sake that he ordered the famous Hanging Gardens of Babylon to be constructed. The Achaemenian dynasty down to the time of Cyrus II, the Great, may be represented by the following genealogical table (the earlier dates are approximate):
Cyrus II became king of Anshan about 559 B.C., and soon began an insurrection against the weak and corrupt Astyages, king of the Medes, with the help of Nabonidus, the new king of Babylonia. Astyages attempted to crush the revolt, but his general Harpagus, whom he had previously wronged, deserted the cause of Astyages, and brought his soldiers over to the side of young Cyrus. The Median king was soon seized by his men, and the Persians took the capital city of Ecbatana in 550 B.C. without a battle. From this time forward, the Medes and Persians fought and served together as one unit under the brilliant leadership of Cyrus.
After the conquest of Media, Cyrus moved swiftly to the west, absorbing all of the Median territories as far as the river Halys in Asia Minor. When Croesus, the fabulously wealthy king of Lydia, refused to recognize the sovereignty of Persia, Cyrus defeated him in battle and took over his empire (546 B.C.). Seven years later he was ready to launch the great assault against Babylon itself.
The Neo-Babylonian empire was in no condition to resist a Medo-Persian invasion in the year 539 B.C. During the preceding fourteen years Nabonidus, the Neo-Babylonian king, had not so much as visited Babylon, leaving the administration of that great city in the hands of his profligate son Belshazzar, whose name appears on the cuneiform tablets as the son of the king. Nabonidus weakened the empire by concentrating his favors upon the cult of the god Sin at the expense of Babylonian deities, thus incurring the wrath of the priesthood.
Realizing that danger was near, Nabonidus came to Babylon for the New Years festival of April 4, 539 B.C., and began to bring the images of Babylonian divinities into the city from surrounding areas. But it was all to no avail. Toward the end of September, the armies of Cyrus under the command of Ugbaru, governor of Gutium, attacked Opis on the Tigris and defeated the Babylonians. On October 10 Sippar was taken without a battle and Nabonidus fled. Two days later Ugbarus troops were able to get into Babylon while Belshazzar, completely oblivious of the doom that awaited him, was engaged in a riotous banquet within the impregnable walls of the city. The fateful day was October 12; in that same night Belshazzar was slain. Not ling afterwards Nabonidus was taken captive.
Cyrus entered Babylon on October 29 and presented himself to the people as a gracious liberator and benefactor. He permitted the gods whom Nabonidus had brought into Babylon to be carried back to their respective cities, and pursued a benevolent policy toward various captive peoples who had suffered under the rule of Nebuchadnezzar and his successors. The Jews were favored with a special decree permitting them to return to Palestine and rebuild their ruined temple (Ezra I).
The same day that Cyrus came to Babylon, Gubaru, the new governor or satrap of Babylon and the Region beyond the River, began to appoint sub-governors to rule with him over the vast territories and populations of the Fertile Crescent. On November 6, Ugbaru, the conqueror of Babylon, died; and in March the mother of Belshazzar (Nitocris, wife of Nabonidus and daughter of Nebuchadnezzar) died in Babylon and was publically mourned for five days. Turning the administration of the huge satrapy of Babylonia over to Gubaru, Cyrus left for Ecbatana toward the end of his accession year.
In the meantime, Cambyses, son of Cyrus, lived in Sippar and represented his father at the New Years festivals in Babylon as the Kings son. He was also given the task of preparing for an expedition against Egypt. In 530 B.C., Cyrus appointed his son to be his successor and co-regent just before setting out upon a campaign to the far northeast in the Oxus and Jaxartes region; and at the New Years festival of March 26, 530 B.C., Cambyses assumed the title King of Babylon for the first time, while Cyrus retained the broader title King of Lands. In the autumn of the same year news reached Babylonia that Cyrus had died on the field of battle. Cambyses was now the sole ruler of the great Persian Empire.
After securing his position on the throne, Cambyses began his conquest of Egypt. He defeated Psammetichus III at Pelusium in 525 B.C. and occupied the entire country. But news of troubles in the homeland disturbed him; and when, on his way home in Palestine, he heard that a pretender had taken the throne, he committed suicide. Fearing disloyalty, Cambyses had previously ordered his brother Smerdis (or Bardiya) to be killed; but now a man named Gaumata set himself up as the king of Persia, claiming to be Smerdis. The Pseudo-Smerdis, as he was later called, gained a huge following by remitting taxes for three years throughout the Empire.
This would have been the end of the Achaemenian dynasty had not Darius, son of Hystaspes and great-grandson of Ariyaramnes (brother of Cyrus I), retained the loyalty of the Persian army. Within the brief space of two months he succeeded in capturing and killing the Pseudo-Smerdis (522 B.C.), and during the next two years defeated nine kings in nineteen battles. His own account of these victories is recorded in the famous Behistun Inscription, carved on the face of a rock cliff three hundred feet above the level of the plain near the old road from Ecbatana to Babylon. Thus the second major phase of Achaemenian rule was launched, to end only with the conquests of Alexander the Great in 331 B.C.
DATED EVENTS IN THE YEAR OF BABYLONS FALL
New Years festival observed by the
Babylonians (4th of Nisan)
April 7, 539 B.C.
Opis attacked by Cyrus (Tishri),
Sippar captured by Cyrus
Sept.-Oct., 539 B.C.
(14th of Tishri)
Oct. 10, 539 B.C.
Babylon taken by Ugbaru
(16th of Tishri)
Oct. 12, 539 B.C.
First tablet dated in the reign of
Cyrus (Tishri)
Sept.-Oct., 539 B.C.
Babylon entered by Cyrus; and Gubaru, his governor, appoints governors in Babylon (3rd of Marchesvan)
Oct. 29, 539 B.C.
Next to last Nabonidus tablet
(10th Marchesvan)
Nov. 5, 539 B.C.
Death of Ugbaru
(11th of Marchesvan)
Nov. 6, 539 B.C.
Second Cyrus tablet
(24th of Marchesvan)
Nov. 19, 539 B.C.
Last Nabonidus tablet (Kislev),
Nov. Dec, 539 B.C.
Beginning of period of mourning for some prominent person, possibly Belshazzars mother (28th of Adar)
Mar. 21, 538 B.C.
End of period of mourning
(3rd of Nisan)
Mar. 26, 538 B.C.
Cambyses, son of Cyrus, enters the Temple, apparently for some religious ceremony (4th of Nisan)
Mar. 27, 538 B.C.
NEO-BABYLONIAN AND PERSIAN KINGS
1.
Nabopolassar (Nabu-apal-usur) founder of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. (626605 B.C.)
2.
Nebuchadnezzar (Nabu-kudurri-user)his son and the greatest of the Neo-Babylonian kings. (605562 B.C.)
3.
Evil-Merodach (Amel-Marduk)his son. (562560 B.C.)
4.
Neriglissar (Nergal-shar-usur)a son-in-law of Nebuchadnezzar. (560556 B.C.)
5.
Laborosoarchad (Labashi-marduk)his son (a few months in 556 B.C.)
6.
Nabonidus (Nabu-naid)probably the husband of Nitocris, a daughter of Nebuchadnezzar, and the father of Belshazzar, who shared the throne during the last years of his reign. (556539 B.C.)
7.
Cyrus the Great (539530 B.C.)
8.
Cambyses (530522 B.C.)
9.
Gautama, or Smerdis, or Bardiya (a few months in 552 B.C.)
10. Darius I Hystaspes (521486 B.C.)
11.
Xerxes (586465 B.C.)
12.
Artaxerxes I Longimanus (464423 B.C.)
13.
Darius II Ochus (423404 B.C.)
14.
Artaxerxes II Memnon (404359 B.C.)
15.
Artaxerxes III Ochus (359338 B.C.)
16.
Arses (338335 B.C.)
17.
Darius III (335331 B.C.)
Dan. 6:3-4 . . . DANIEL WAS DISTINGUISHED ABOVE THE PRESIDENTS . . . THE PRESIDENTS . . . SOUGHT TO FIND OCCASION AGAINST DANIEL . . . Many commentators insist that the excellent spirit . . . in him was a direct, supernatural, extraordinary gift of God to Daniel such as the special gifts of the Holy Spirit in the N.T. We cannot agree. We believe it involved much more than technical excellence. It was not mere talent that raised Daniel to such exceeding favor with the king. No doubt he had talent, but talent without moral strength counts for little in such a position as Daniel was placed. Moral strength is not an irresistible gift of the Holy Spirit. It is the moral character even more than the brain that determines the man.
This excellent spirit means literally that in Daniel the spirit was predominant, was uppermost, was enthroned. Excellent is something that excels, goes beyond, predominates. We might translate literally, A spirit that excelled was in him . . . a spirit that jutted out was in him. The spiritual was the chief thingnot the flesh. This excellent spirit was (a) A spirit of self-control; (b) A spirit of genuine pietyto him God was a reality, a living and reliable friend, to whom he could take every difficulty, and on whom he could trust in every danger; (c) A spirit of unshaken faith in God. The man of excellent spirit, in whom spirit excels is (1) a man of purpose; (2) a man of prayer; (3) a man of perception; (4) a man of power. Daniel was all of this. By unswerving faith in God Daniel made use of every circumstance and did not allow circumstances to rule him.
It does not take jealous enemies to find some flaws in all of usbut not even these envious schemers could find fault with Daniels responsibilities to his pagan ruler! This does not mean, of course, that Daniel was no sinner, but there was no open departure from righteousness and justice which could be brought against him. Daniel was above reproach in honesty, fairness, fidelity, and integrity toward his king.
Daniels irreproachable integrity is little short of incredible in view of his circumstances! He had come to this land against his will as a prisoner of war; he was requested by a pagan despot to study pagan literature and science and be trained to serve in a pagan court surrounded by luxury, sensuality, lust, self-seeking, idolatry, and ruthless cruelty. In the middle of all this there grew up this fair flower of a character, pure, true, holy, and stainless, by the acknowledgement of enemies, and in which not even accusers could find a fault! There are no circumstances in which a man must have his garments spotted by the world! In fact, unfavorable circumstances are the most favorable for the development of the godly character. Development of godly character comes, not by what we draw from the things around, but by what we draw from the things from above (Col. 3:1-4).
Dan. 6:5-9 . . . WE SHALL NOT FIND ANY OCCASION AGAINST THIS DANIEL, EXCEPT WE FIND IT AGAINST HIM CONCERNING THE LAW OF HIS GOD . . . MAKE A STRONG INTERDICT . . . This is a typical trick of corrupt politicians. If no flaw in a mans social or vocational relationships can be found, the unjust enemy will try to pit the godly mans relationship to God against his relationship to necessary secular loyalties. The enemies of God attempted the same trick against the Son of God but He defeated it in much the same way as Danielrender unto Caesar the things that are Caesars and unto God the things that are Gods.
It should not seem unusual even to twentieth century minds that pagan societies would deify their rulers. Adolph Hitler was practically defied in the office of Fuehrer. Lenin has been practically deified by the Russian communists. The kings of Egypt were worshipped as gods as far back as recorded history can determine. The envious presidents, satraps, and other officials were not suggesting anything unusual to king Darius. Even Herod (Acts 12) revealed in the foolishness of the Jews calling him a god!
They had heard of Daniels religious practices and observed how faithful he was to them. They were convinced that Daniel would not compromise his religious convictions even at the threat of his life. Thus their scheme is presented to the kingits purpose hidden from him.
It was common for the Babylonians to administer capital punishment by burning (the fiery furnace). To the Persians, who were worshippers of fire, this was regarded as something of an abomination, and so they destroyed their condemned criminals by casting them to savage beasts.
Nevertheless Daniel Prayed
Darius yielded to the subtle flattery of thinking of himself as being prayed to as a god. Prayer had a very significant place in Persian religion. It was the chief factor in their worship. A great part of the holy writings (the Zend-Avesta, etc.) contains only formulas of prayer and a certain type of litanies. Prayer is regarded as irresistible, as operating with a certain magic power. To omit prayer would mean the collapse of the world. One can readily see why Daniels enemies centered their attention on prayer.
It is a logical deduction that if the Persian king is a god or an earthly representative of a god, then his decrees ought to be irrevocable (cf. Est. 1:19; Est. 8:8). Diodorus Siculus, ancient historian, reports a case where Darius III (335 B.C.) passed sentence of death upon a certain Charidemos, but immediately he repented and blamed himself, as having greatly erred; but it was not possible to undo what was done by royal authority. These jealous politicians had taken this custom into account and were banking on it to help them achieve their purpose when the king should later discover their trick!
QUIZ
1.
Where did the Medes and the Persians originate?
2.
When were the Babylonians and Persians allied and for what purpose?
3.
What did Cyrus II, the Great, do for the Jews in captivity?
4.
Why is Daniels irreproachable integrity so unique?
5.
What trick did the enemies of Daniel use after no flaw in his job can be found?
6.
How important was prayer in the pagan Persian religion?
b. PERSISTENCE
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
VI.
(1) Princes.See Excursus A. The LXX. make the number 127, so as to agree with Est. 1:1.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
THE FATE OF A RIGHTEOUS MAN UNDER ANOTHER WORLD-KINGDOM.
1. Princes Rather, as R.V., “satraps.” As to the number of satraps the Greek has one hundred and twenty-seven and Josephus gives the number as three hundred and sixty. That Gubaru who was probably Darius the Mede, see Daniel 6:31 and Introduction, III, 3, (5) did appoint “governors” over the province of Babylon, the inscriptions prove, though they do not state the number of these governors, or whether the legislation ever took practical effect. This act of Gubaru may have been confused later with the well-known division of the empire into some twenty satrapies by Darius Hystaspes.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
The Setting Up of the Administration.
‘It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom one hundred and twenty satraps, who would be throughout the whole kingdom, and over them three presidents, of whom Daniel was one, that these satraps might give account to them, and that the king should have no damage (suffer no loss).’
Darius immediately set about establishing the administration of the conquered kingdom. He appointed one hundred and twenty ‘kingdom guardians’ over whom were three presidents. Babylonian ‘satraps’ have already been mentioned in Dan 3:2-3. We must not read into the title the same position as that of the satraps of the later Persian kings who were given large satrapies to administer (much larger than anything that could possibly be in mind here). Indeed ‘Satraps’ are also mentioned in inscriptions who were nothing like either. Their purpose here was to pacify the territory, prevent any rebellion, and collect revenues, reporting back to the three presidents. The use here and in Dan 3:2 may be simply an instance of using a title current to the writer under the Persian empire to translate a different title in Akkadian, or it may be that the old Persian title had been borrowed and had crept in to describe Babylonian administrators. Such borrowings between languages constantly took place then as they do today.
One of the presidents was Daniel. When Darius took over the throne Daniel was ‘third in the kingdom’ and a foreigner with no specific loyalty to Belshazzar, and yet known to the Chaldeans. And what was more he had proclaimed his downfall and a Persian victory. He was thus an ideal person to help to cement together the new Babylon.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Daniel and the Lion’s Den (538-536 B.C.) Dan 6:1-28 tells the famous story of Daniel being thrown into the lion’s den. As the Babylonian kingdom comes to a close and the Medo-Persian Empire takes control of this region of the world, we find Daniel being placed in a strategic position of administration by the divine providence of Almighty God. The entire kingdom was divided into one hundred and twenty provinces with a prince over each one. Over these provinces King Darius appointed three chief governors, of whom Daniel was placed first. Perhaps the incoming king was wise enough to appoint Daniel in an effort to people in leadership who were already familiar with the affairs of these provinces. Thus, he found several men whose reputation qualified them for such a task.
Illustration – It is important to understand that God had a purpose in allowing Daniel to experience the lion’s den. Juanita Bynum says that “God will speak things to us in the lion’s den that he will not say to us on the mountain tops.” [95] This event established Daniel in the kingdom with a level of respect and influence that he could have gained in no other way. It positioned his ministry to have more effect during his lifetime had he not going through the lion’s den.
[95] Juanita Bynum, Weapons of Power, on Trinity Broadcasting Network (Santa Ana, California, July 2008), television program.
Dan 6:24 And the king commanded, and they brought those men which had accused Daniel, and they cast them into the den of lions, them, their children, and their wives; and the lions had the mastery of them, and brake all their bones in pieces or ever they came at the bottom of the den.
Dan 6:24
“Set in woodland southwest of Baghdad, the huge presidential compound of Radwaniyah has been variously described as a palace, a death camp and a secret center for the development of weapons of mass destruction. A former Iraqi army colonel who calls himself Abu Ahmad knows what really went on there. He cannot forget the day four years ago when he took two young students to Radwaniyah on the orders of Uday Hussein (son of Saddam Hussein, leader of Iraq). Ahmad was Uday’s chief executioner. Last week, as Iraqis celebrated the death of his former boss and his equally savage younger brother Qusay, he nervously revealed a hideous story. His instructions that day in 1999 were to arrest the two 19-year-olds on the campus of Baghdad’s Academy of Fine Arts and deliver them at Radwaniyah. On arrival at the sprawling compound, he was directed to a farm where he found a large cage. Inside, two lions waited. They belonged to Uday. Guards took the two young men from the car and opened the cage door. One of the victims collapsed in terror as they were dragged, screaming and shouting, to meet their fate. Ahmad watched as the students frantically looked for a way of escape. There was none. The lions pounced. ‘I saw the head of the first student literally come off his body with the first bite and then had to stand and watch the animals devour the two young men. By the time they were finished there was little left but for the bones and bits and pieces of unwanted flesh,’ he recalled last week. He felt horror and disbelief but showed no emotion. ‘It was simply forbidden. Any slight show of disagreement, fear, anger, repulsion or disapproval could be noted against you. Even punished. You had to watch and pretend all was fine.’” [96]
[96] The Sunday New Vision, 3 August 2003, Kampala, Uganda.
Dan 6:28 So this Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius, and in the reign of Cyrus the Persian.
Dan 6:28
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Daniel’s Ministry to Gentile Kings Daniel 1-6 contains the historical section of the book, while Daniel 7-12 is called the prophetic section. Chapters 2-6 emphasize Daniel’s ministry to the kings of Babylon and Media. In these passages he interprets two dreams and the writing on the wall for these Gentile kings. Note that the stories recorded in the first six chapters of the book of Daniel have been arranged in chronological order. In addition, chapters 3 and 6 tell of the persecutions that Daniel and his three Hebrew friends faced from the Gentiles, while chapters 2, 4 and 6 tell of Daniel’s ministry to these Gentile kings. But the underlying theme of each of these stories is the glorification of the God of Israel.
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Justification: God Exalts the Righteous and Humbles the Proud Dan 4:1 to Dan 6:28 records the stories of Daniel’s prophetic interpretation and fulfillment of King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, which predicted his madness for a season (Dan 4:1-27). In this interpretation Daniel calls the king to repent and stand righteous before God in order to obtain His mercies (Dan 4:27). The king is struck mad in the midst of his boasting, only having his mind restored after the season predicted by Daniel’s interpretation of the dream. King Nebuchadnezzar repents when his mind is restored, gives all glory to God, declaring Him true and just, and he finds God’s mercy in that God restores to him his kingdom and his splendor (Dan 4:28-37). This story is followed by King Belshazzar’s drunken pride, when his boasting is interrupted by a divine handwriting upon the wall. Daniel interprets the dream as divine judgment upon the king, only to find its fulfillment that same night in the death of the king and the fall of Babylon (Dan 5:1-31). Darius the Mede exalts Daniel above his other governors because of his just character. Daniel’s right standing before God is tested in the lion’s den and he is proven genuine. Thus, he prospers during the reigns of Darius and Cyprus (Dan 6:1-28).
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Daniel a Victim of Jealousy
v. 1. It pleased Darius, v. 2. and over these three presidents, v. 3. Then this Daniel was preferred above the presidents and princes, v. 4. Then the presidents and princes, v. 5. Then said these men, v. 6. Then these presidents and princes assembled together to the king, v. 7. All the presidents of the kingdom, v. 8. Now, O king, establish the decree and sign the writing, v. 9. Wherefore King Darius, v. 10. Now, when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, v. 11. Then these men assembled, v. 12. Then they came near, v. 13. Then answered they and said before the king, v. 14. Then the king, when he heard these words, was sore displeased with himself, v. 15. Then these men assembled unto the king, v. 16. Then the king, v. 17. And a stone was brought,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
Dan 6:1-28
DANIEL IN THE LIONS‘ DEN.
Dan 6:1-3
It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom an hundred and twenty princes. which should be over the whole kingdom; and over these three presidents; of whom Daniel was first: that the princes might give accounts unto them, and the king should have no damage. Then this Daniel was preferred above the presidents and princes, because an excellent spirit was in him; and the king thought to set him over the whole realm. The variations from the Massoretic text in the Septuagint are, in regard to the verses before us, very considerable. It assumes the last verse of the preceding chapter, and begins, “And he set up a hundred and twenty and seven satraps over all his kingdom. And over them he set three men as presidents (), and Daniel was one of the three men [and had authority over all men in the kingdom. And Daniel was clothed in purple, and was great and honourable () before Darius the king, because he was honourable () and understanding and prudent, and there was an holy spirit in him, and he prospered in the affairs of the kingdom which he did]. Then the king thought () to place Daniel over all his kingdom [(and the two men who stood with him and the hundred and twenty-seven satraps) when the king thought to place Daniel over his whole kingdom].” The passages within brackets, we think, are additions to amplify the description, and to connect it with the honor given Daniel by Belshazzar. The bracketed parts are easily separable from the rest, and then what remains forms a continuous narrative. Theodotion differs, though slightly, from the Massoretic text, Darius “set () Daniel over the kingdom”did not merely take counsel to do it. The Peshitta agrees also very closely with the Massoretic, only the word for “princes” is not, as in the Massoretic text, ahashdarpnayya’, but rabu heel. This is the common rendering in the Peshitta of this word, and points to the Massoretic term being an adaptation. the use of the word “satrap” here has led to the idea that this is derived from the hundred and twenty-seven provinces (Est 1:1). This identification is supported certainly by the LXX; which gives a hundred and twenty-seven as the number of the satraps set up by Darius. Josephus, it may be noted (‘Ant., ‘ 10.11.4), mentions the satrapies as three hundred and sixtya reading that seems scarcely to be drawn by any conceivable mistake from the Massoretic text, nor any tradition of the actual number of satrapis under the Persian rule. The probability is that there has been some early corruption of the number. On the supposition that Darius is Gobryas, these satraps would really be governors of cities and small districts in the populous province of Babylon. We have in the inscriptions of the Assyrian monarchs who intervened in the affairs of Babylon and Chaldea, notices of a large number of small kingships: each of these would require a special governor. In harmony with this, we are informed by Mr. Pinches that Gobryas appointed subordinate governors in the territory of Babylon. The phrase which states this occurs in the Annals of Nabunahid (col. 3. line 20), “And Gobryas his governor appointed governors in Babylon.” Delitzsch points out that the sign of the plural after the second occurrence of the word “governor” proves that we cannot translate as if “Cyrus” were the nominative to the sentence, and “Gobryas,” who was governor of Gutium or Guti, was object. From the fact that the text of Daniel was not protected by being regularly read in the synagogues, as was the Law, the Prophets, the Megilloth, the Psalms, and some other books, it was more at the mercy of scribes. The change of “Gobryas” into “Darius” led easily to other modifications. Probably medeena, “province,” was the word in the original text, but it was modified to malcoutha, “kingdom,” and “governors” of cities became “satraps” over provinces. After having appointed these subordinate governors, that a board of three should be set over them was a necessary arrangement. The name given to them, sarekeen, is asserted by some to be of Persian origin. On the other hand, the fact that the first syllable is sar, the Assyrian for “king,” one is tempted to think of a Semitic etymology. The Authorized is wrong in making Daniel “first” of these presidents; all that is asserted is that Daniel was one of these presidents. That the king should have no damage applies most probably to the revenue. The country, in the East, is divided off into small districts for the purpose of tax-collecting, and in the division of the Persian Empire into twenty satrapies, this was greatly the object. The repetition of the word “king” here might imply that Darius was not the king whose loss of revenue was to be guarded against; but we weald not be held as pressing this. Although Daniel was not, on the creation of this board, made chief of it, he soon acquired an influence over Darius which gave him, in effect, such a position. We arc to understand that these officials were mainly Babylonians. We learn now that the capture of Babylonia by Cyrus was not accomplished by a skilful diverting of the waters of the Euphrates, so that the Persian troops were enabled to wade in by the bed of the stream, nor to the fact that in the revelry of a feast the river-gates were left open, and the sentinels were careless; but to the fact that the whole official class were at enmity with the court, and so treachery opened the gates to Gobryas, the governor of Gutium, the name given to Mesopotamia as a Persian province, and when morning broke one day, the sixteenth of Tammuz, the inhabitants of Babylon saw the shields of Gutium guarding the citadel and the temple Esakkil. This being the case. naturally the official class of the former monarchy would be largely drawn upon to supply the needs of the new government; naturally the native Babylonians would think that the preference in all matters of office ought to be given to them; that, above all, the principal place should not be given to a Jew by Cyrus, or by any one under him, since Cyrus professed to be moved by reverence for the national gods of Babylon in his war against Nabunahid. And the king thought to set him over the whole realm. This really means over the province of Babylon, malcoutha being written instead of medeena. His object was not to make Daniel satrap instead of himself, but to make him his “vizier.” His knowledge of the business of the province would of necessity be very thorough, dating, as it did, from the days of Nebuchadnezzar. He, as no other, would be acquainted with the various religious beliefs of the different captive communities in Babylonia. Himself belonging to one of these communities, his interest would be excited by all in similar circumstances. His age, the dignity he had enjoyed in the courts of Nebuchadnezzar and Nabunahid, along with his zeal and ability, naturally explain the desire of Darius (Gobryas) to make him his vizier.
Dan 6:4, Dan 6:5
Then the presidents and princes sought to find occasion against Daniel concerning the kingdom; but they could find none occasion nor fault; forasmuch as he was faithful, neither was there any error or fault found in him. Then said these men, We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God. The rendering of the Septuagint is here very paraphrastic, “Then the two young men () took counsel, and planned among themselves with each other, saying, Since they found no error nor neglect () against Daniel, about which they might accuse him to the king, and they said, Come, let us make a decree () among ourselves, that no man shall make any request, or offer any prayer, to any god for thirty days, but only from Darius the king, and if not he shall die; in order that they might lower () Daniel before the king, and that he be thrown into the den of lions; for they knew that Daniel prayed and made supplication to the Lord his God three times a day.” There are elements here of interpolation and of the coalescence of different renderings. It is difficult to understand how “the presidents” could be called . There seems no Aramaic word with that meaning, into which sarekeen could be read; certainly it is as difficult to imagine any one thinking of introducing that as a logical equivalent. Young men would not be put in such a responsible place, nor would they have thought of Daniela man of about eighty yearsas a colleague with youths. There are evident traces of two readings having coalesced; thus we have followed by , after the course of the narrative has been interrupted by an inserted clause. As to the punishment to befall the transgressor of this decree, one statement is, “If not, he shall die” The next version of the punishment is brought into connection with the humiliation to be inflicted on Daniel, that “he may be cast into the den of lions.” At the same time, the fact that we hear of the decree in connection with the consultation of these conspirators in the present text, is in harmony with what we find in the fourth chapter. In the original document not improbably the statement would be givenas in Gen 41:1-57. in regard to Pharaoh’s dreamsalike when the conspirators devise the plan, and when they carry it out. In regard to some of the differences, an explanation may be hazarded, but we will not delay. Notwithstanding that the Massoretic here is shorter than the Greek text, we fancy it is not difficult through it to find a shorter text still. The text of Theodotion is much briefer than either of the other texts, “And the presidents () and the satraps sought to find occasion against Daniel, and they found neither occasion, nor fault, nor error against him, because he was faithful. And the presidents said, We shall not find occasion against Daniel except in regard to precepts () of his God.” The Peshitta agrees in the main with the Massoretic. It makes Daniel faithful “towards God.” That these co-presidents and the under-governors should be indignant that a Jew, who had actually been employed in the court of Nabunahid, should be put above those Babylonians who had admitted the shields of Guti into Esakkil, was natural. Of course, they could not seriously plead this before the governor Gobryas. They could not accuse Daniel directly of worshipping his national Deity, for the Persian rule in:Babylon, while zealous for the gods of Babylon, did not imply any assault on the deities of other subject races. It is to be noted that in the Septuagint the plot is concoeted by the two “youths,” Daniel’s co-presidents. They, most likely men of high rank, would feel most keenly that they were superseded by a Jew, and their feelings would naturally spread to those beneath them.
Dan 6:6-9
Then these presidents and princes assembled together to the king, and said thus unto him, King Darius, live for ever. All the presidents of the kingdom, the governors, and the princes, the counsellors, and the captains, have consulted together to establish a royal statute, and to make a firm decree, that whosoever shall ask a petition of any God or man for thirty days, save of thee, O king, he shall be cast into the den of lions. Now, O king, establish the decree, and sign the writing, that it be not changed, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not, Wherefore King Darius signed the writing and the decree. The Septuagint, in regard to those verses, is much briefer, and reveals a better text. “Then those men came and said before the king, We have made a decree and a statute, that any man who offereth prayer or presents petition to any god for the space of thirty days, save only to Darius the king, shall be cast into the den of lions; and thus Darius decreed, and confirmed it.” The fact that requests to uther men are not forbidden is to be observed. The long catalogue of officials is omitted; the whole conspiracy is the work of Daniel’s co-presidents. Theodotion and the Peshitta are in practical agreement with the Massoretic text. To understand the point of this decree, that seems to us so absurd, and comprehend how any one with sufficient mental vigour left to be placed by Cyrus as governor in Babylon could be led to yield to confirm it, we must recognize the state of matters in Babylon. During the reign of Nabunahid there had been many religious changes. The seclusion of the monarch had led to the neglect of many of the regular rites of the gods of Babil. The policy he pursued of bringing the gods of various provinces to Babylon tended, as did the similar policy in Rome, to draw off from the importance of the national religion by forming rival cults. One of the first acts of Cyrus’s reign was to order the replacing of these deities in their ancient shrines. This would necessarily be most distasteful to the worshippers of these imported deities. There would be much murmuring among the huge heterogeneous population; and there would be thus a well-grounded fear of a religious riot. A bold soldier as Gobryas (Darius) was, he probably was but a timid ruler, and nothing would he dread more than a religious riot. Would it not be a plausible way of meeting this difficulty to order for one month all worship to cease? The British Government in India regulates the religion of the inhabitants as summarily, forbidding religious observances that are liable to cause excitement in votaries of rival creeds. Thus Moses assigned, as a reason for refusing to sacrifice in Egypt, the wrath of the Egyptians (Exo 8:26). The offering of a prayer among heathen peoples generally meant the offering of sacrifices, also accompanied possibly by processions. That the decree was made by Darius in the absence of his favourite minister might have two reasons: either from the fact that the word used (hargishoo) implies that the presidents rushed in tumultuously into the royal presence; that there was an emergency which must be met by instant action; or that, being a weak man, he did not wish his other counsellors to think that he was so under the influence of this Jew that he could do nothing without first consulting him; so, by way of showing his independence, he signed the decree. As for the practical deification of himself required from the subject races, that would not appear to him a matter of importance. It might even seem to him as the surest way of doing away with the rancour of religious rivalries to give these conflicting creeds a common object. He, Gobryas, was the representative of Cyrus, in whom deity was incarnate, therefore let them worship him in his representative capacity. That Daniel should be affected by this decree might easily never occur to Gobryas Jewish worship, now that the temple at Jerusalem was in ruins, must have become very much the synagogue worship of the present day. A worship that had neither idols nor sacrifices, neither temple nor altar, would seem to the Babylonians, and for that matter to the Medians and Persians also, as much the same as atheism. Christianity seemed so to the Roman Government. Darius, then, would readily think that Daniel could make no serious objection to this order That Daniel always spoke of a God in heaven did not matter much, since, to all appearance, he never worshipped him. Some have maintained that the punishment was an impossible one. It is certain that Asshur-bani-pal inflicted a similar punishment on Saulmugina, a rebel King of Babylon, and did it in honour of the gods. The main objection has been urged from the mistaken assumption that the text implies that the lions’ den was a bottle shaped dungeon. There is nothing in the narrative that necessitates this. In regard to the decree, there is reference to the “laws of the Medea and Persians,” “the Medea” being placed first. It has been attributed to court flattery, as Darius was a Merle; probably, however, there may be another explanation. The small canton of Ansan, over which Cyrus was king, lay between Elam and Media, but belonged more to the former than to the latter of these countries. Both countries bad been overrun by a nomadic race, the Manda, under Astyages, who had overthrown Cyaxarcs the King of Media. Against Astyages Cyrus rebelled, and gathered to him the Medea, Elamites, and other cognate races. Dr. Winckler thinks that, on his victory over Astyages, Cyrus assumed the name Persian, Parsu, from his race. The name Parsua appears in connection with the Medea in an inscription of Shalmaneser, where it seems to indicate a small kingdom occupying much the same geographical posit;on as Ansan. By taking this old name, not impossibly Cyrus avoided making the Medea feel themselves subject to the Elamites, or the Elamites to the Medea, or either to the little kingdom of Ansan. The Median had comparatively recently been an imperial power, therefore its laws and constitution would be placed before the more recently prominent Persian. One thing that must be observed is that, while the writer of Daniel mentions Medea separate from Persians, he mentions them conjointly. Had the writer been under the delusion attributed to him by all critical interpreters, that the Median Empire came between the Babylonian and the Persian, he would not have represented the Median courtiers as saying anything about the Persians or their laws; the Medes, and the Medea alone, would be considered. According to the Greek account, from which it is alleged Daniel drew his information, Persia was a small, undeveloped country before Cyrus raised it to empire. What right, then, would it have to have its laws mentioned in the same breath with those of imperial Media? If, however, Cyrus had been raised to such power, so as to be able to encounter successfully Astyages and his Scythian hordes by the adhesion to his cause of the Medea, the laws of the Medea might well get a preference, as the Medea were, in all probability, more numerous than the Persians, though the laws of the Persians would be mentioned. The claim that these laws were immutable must be regarded as on a par with several other Eastern exaggerations. Signed the writing and the decree. The reading of the Septuagint seems superior, “And so King Darius decreed (), and confirmed it.” At the same time, the verb resham, translated “sign,” really means “engrave,” and therefore might naturally enough be used for affixing a seal to a clay tablet; only hetham is the word usually used for “sealing” a document. Behrmann thinks it does not refer to the signature of the sovereign, but to the engraving the decree on the clay. If we imagine yeqeem to have fallen out before “sara, we have a reading not unlike the LXX. In the seventh verse there is a list of officials omitted from the Septuagint; it is almost identical in members with that which we find in Dan 3:1-30; but in a slightly different order, only the sareqeen are added and the edargazereen omitted.
Dan 6:10
Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime. The Septuagint rendering differs only slightly from the Massoretic. “And when Daniel knew the decree which was passed () against him, he opened the windows of his upper chamber, and fell on his face three times a day, according as he did aforctimc, and prayed.” The Septuagint translator read , “against him,” instead of , “went.” It seems to us that the Massoretic reading, “went to his house,” is an addition due to misreading . That the variations of the Septuagint arc not due to paraphrase is proved by the tact that the next clause is literally translated. It would seem that the text before the LXX. had been altered, so that we have “fell upon his face,” instead of “knelt upon his knees.” The former phrase is an echo from Dan 2:46. It is to be observed that “prayed and gave thanks” is omitted from the Septuagint. As the omission can have no purpose, and we can understand the reason of the words being added, we prefer the LXX. reading here. Theodotion and the Peshitta are at one with the Massoretic. The action of Daniel is here that of a man of true conscientiousness; he does not obtrude his religion now that the practice of it implies danger, as did some Christian fanatics in the persecution of the three first centuries; nor, on the other hand, does he hide his acts of worshiphe simply continued his previous habits. Had a Jewish fanatic of the time of the Maccabees written this, the action attributed to Daniel would have been much more uncompromising, as the story in the Midrash Rabba of Moses in regard to the crown of Pharaoh. Or Daniel would be represented as doing, as the Jews arc said in Third Maccabees to have done to Ptolemy, bowing himself down in humble abasement before the king, to get him to reverse his decree, or, if not, to devise some means of its effect being averted. Daniel does none of these things. His windows being open toward Jerusalem. The windows were lattices, and as the room was an upper one on the roof of the house, the opening of the windows enabled everything done in the apartment to be seen. The practice of prayer “toward Jerusalem” is acknowledged to have arisen in Babylon during the Captivity. Solomon, in his prayer at the dedication of the temple, refers to the contingency of captivity (l Kings 8:48), and prays that if the captives “pray unto thee toward their land, the city which thou hast chosen, and the house which I have built for thy Name, then hear thou their prayer” (see also Psa 5:8 [7]). The practice of praying towards a particular point has been maintained by the Mohammedans, who pray towards Mecca. Mohammed originally made Jerusalem the qiblah, or point of prayer; but the Jews would not receive him as their Messiah, and so from Jerusalem it was changed to Mecca. The objection of Bertholdt hardly needs to be mentioned, that “the temple was in ruins”the place was holy ground. “Three times a day” is referred to Psa 55:18 (17), “Evening and morning and at noonday will I complain.”
Dan 6:11
Then these men assembled, and found Daniel praying and making supplication before his God. The Septuagint reading is very different, “And they watched Daniel, and found him praying three times a day every day.” It is difficult to decide which is the preferable reading, and almost as difficult to deduce the one reading from the other. Thcodotion has a reading akin to that of the Septuagint, “Then those men watched, and found Daniel praying, and. making entreaty to his God.” This is akin to the Septuagint at the beginning, but is close to the Massoretic at the end. The Peshitta is in close agreement with Theodotion. It seems more in accordance with the plan of these presidents that they should not, as the Massoretic text asserts, rush tumultuously into the house of Daniel, but rather, as the three versions represent them doing, setting a watch, and then, when information reached them of Daniel’s habits, acting accordingly. Nothing in the narrative makes it probable that there was a general assembling of the governors against Daniel; it was the action of his colleagues in the presidency.
Dan 6:12-14
Then they came near, and spake before the king concerning the king’s decree; Hast thou not signed a decree, that every man that shall ask a petition of any God or man within thirty days, save of thee, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions? The king answered and said, The thing is true, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not, Then answered they and said before the king, That Daniel, which is of the children of the captivity of Judah, regardeth not thee, O king, nor the decree that thou hast signed, but maketh his petition three times a day. Then the king, when he heard these words, was sore displeased with himself, and set his heart on Daniel to deliver him: and he laboured till the going down of the sun to deliver him. The version of the Septuagint, as usual, differs from the Massoretic text,” Then these men interceded () with the king, and said, King Darius, didst thou not confirm a decree that no man should offer prayer or present petition to any god for thirty days, save only to thee, O king, otherwise he should be cast into the den of lions? And the king answered and said, The word is clear, and the decree remaineth. And they said to him, We adjure thee by the laws of the Medes and the Persians that thou change not the commandment, nor be an accepter of persons ( ), nor diminish aught of the thing spoken, but punish the man that abideth not by this decree. And he said, This will I do, according as ye have said, and the thing is confirmed () by me. And they said, Behold, we found Daniel, thy friend, praying, and making entreaty before his God three times a day. [And the king, being grieved, spake to cast Daniel into the den of lions, according to the decree which he decreed against him.] Then the king grieved exceedingly concerning Daniel, and laboured () till the going down of the sun to deliver him out of the hands of the satraps.” One of the verses here seems to have been an addition most probably to the Aramaic text, as the Semitic spirit and construction shine through. There is, further, an obvious instance of doublet; the clause within square brackets has all the appearance of being a marginal note summarizing the contents of the verse. The words, “out of the hands of the satraps,” have been added as explanatory. Theodotion is in practical agreement with the Massoretictext. The Peshitta differs in some minor points, e.g. inserting the common Eastern mode of addressing royalty, “O king, live for ever.” The clause, “concerning the decree,” is omitted; the other differences are unimportant. The fact that his Jewish origin is put in the front of their accusation of him indicates what Daniel’s great offence was. The Septuagint places the fact that he was the king’s friend in that position. It seems little likely that even to a satrap would any courtier venture to bring forward a taunting reference to his friendships. The king is caught in a trap; but no courtier would venture to press his advantage, lest he himself be taken at unawares. Darius’s efforts to save Daniel are to be noted. His effort would most probably be directed to find some way out of the constitutional dilemma into which he had been entrapped. His subordinate position, occupying the place of King of Babylon merely for a season instead of Cyrus, would make it more difficult for him to override any constitutional maxim. In the Septuagint the presidents seem to compel the king by moral argumentsa thing float seems possible, though also a feature that might very naturally be added to the story. In the Massoretic text there is an endeavor to poison the king against Daniel. Daniel has despised the king and his commandment. This is more natural than the conduct imputed to the presidents in the Septuagint. These efforts were not successful, as probably they scarcely expected they would be; the king is convinced of his own hastiness, and of their treachery also, but not of any failure on the part of Daniel, in due respect to him, as the representative of the great king.
Dan 6:15
Then these men assembled unto the king, and said unto the king. Know, O king, that the law of the Medes and Persians is, That no decree or statute which the king establisheth maybe changed. The corresponding verse in the Septuagint is much shorter, “And he was not able to deliver him from them.” This verse in the Massoretic text has very much the appearance of a doublet mollified to fit a new position. The first clause has occurred already twice before in the sixth verse and the fifteenth. The last portion of the verse is a modification of what is stated in Dan 6:9 and Dan 6:13. The first clause is omitted by Theodotion, but inserted by the Peshitta. The probability is that this verse, in its Massoretic form, has been inserted to explain the opposition the king strove in vain to overcome.
Dan 6:16
Then the king commanded, and they brought Daniel, and cast him into the den of lions. Now the king spake and said unto Daniel, Thy God whom thou servest continually, he will deliver thee. The Septuagint Version here is not so likely to represent the original text, as there are symptoms of displacement, “Then Darius the king called out and said to Daniel, Thy God whom thou servest continually three times a day, he will deliver thee out of the power of the lions; till the morning be of good cheer.” The opening clause of the next verse in the Septuagint really represents the first clause of the verse before us, “And the king was grieved, and spake to cast Daniel into the den of lions.” Theodotion and the Peshitta agree with the Massoretic text. The circumstances cannot fail to remind the reader of Herod with John the Baptist, and the still greater crime wrought by weaknessPilate and our Lord. Darius had failed to overbear the opposition of the legalists who had determined on Daniel’s death; he is obliged, therefore, to .give the order that the sentence be executed. In doing so he commends his friend to the God, or the gods, if we take the K’thib instead of the Q’ri. Darius probably knew nothing of Daniel’s religious beliefs, and therefore would be prone to imagine that he worshipped several gods, and to them he commends him. The addition of the Septuagint is picturesque, “Be of good cheer until the morning.” Moreover, it fits in to what follows, and at the same time it is not of such a nature as that it should suggest itself to the ordinary interpolator.
Dan 6:17
And a stone was brought, and laid upon the mouth of the den; and the king sealed it with his own signet, and with the signet of his lords; that the purpose might not be changed concerning Daniel. The Septuagint text begins, according to Tischendorf, with a passage elsewhere considered, “And the king was grieved, and commanded to cast Daniel into the den of lions, according to the decree which he had made concerning him.” This is repeated from the fourteenth verse, where it appears alike in the Chisian Manuscript and in the version of Paul of Tella, “Then Daniel was cast into the den of lions, and a stone was brought and placed at the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet and with the signets of his lords, in order that Daniel might not be raised by them or delivered by the king out of the den.” The reason assigned for the double sealing of the stone, while a very probable one, is from its very probability to be suspected; it is most likely an explanatory marginal remark, that has slipped into the text. It will be observed that the clause with which the Septuagint Version of this verse begins is the equivalent of the opening clause of the preceding verse. Theodotion’s rendering does not differ from the Massoretic reading. From the similarity of the dialects, the resemblance of the Peshitta to the Massoretic is even closer. There are few criticisms of Daniel more unfair than that founded on the assumption that the writer had a bottle-shaped dungeon in his mind, that might be covered over as a well by one large stone. Nothing in the words used implies this. While gob certainly means a “pit” or a “cistern,” it was by no means necessarily of small size or covered over with one stone, so that within it would be darkness. There were probably walls rising from the sides of the pit which formed the den; in that wall there would be naturally an aperture through which food could be passed to the lions. Through this door was Daniel cast, and when he had been so cast in, a stone was rolled up to the aperture and sealed. There is no necessity for arguing, as Hitzig and von Lengerke do, against this incident. The passage the former refers to in Xenophon’s ‘Anabasis’ (v. 5.25) applies to dwellings of human beings, and even if we could transfer its description to the present case, it would not damage our argument. In these dwellings Xenophon tells us “were goats, sheep, oxen, birds, and their young; all the cattle are fed within with green fodder.” These critics forget that lions’ dens were in use not only among the Assyrians and Babylonians, but also among the Greek monarchs, and so, even if the writer was of the late date attributed to him by critics, still he would not speak nonsense about what he could not fail to know something. Hitzig sees in Daniel being let down into the den of lions an imitation of what befell Joseph at the hands of his brethren. Certainly the same word is used in the Targum of Onkelos, Gen 37:22, but identity of name does not prove identity of thing. No one could argue that the pit of a theatre was necessarily dark, dirty, and damp, because a coal-pit is. That Reuben persuaded his brethren to put Joseph in the pit in order to save him alive, and the rulers had Daniel put in the lions’ den in order to destroy him, is nothing to the purpose, it would seem; that there were lions in the pit or den in which Daniel was placed, and no venomous beast in that into which Joseph was let down, is also of no moment. The further fact that this letting down into the pit occurs in the beginning of Joseph’s career, and in Daniel’s case it is near the end of a long and prosperous life, is not noticed. The life of Daniel must be proved to be written in imitation of the life of Joseph, so any means are good enough to secure this predetermined conclusion. While this resemblance is only superficial, there is another resemblance that is, at all events, full of interest. In later history there was another sealing of the stone that was rolled to the mouth of a graveit may be noted that gob is used for a “grave” alsoand fear here also was lest the innocently condemned might be taken away.
Dan 6:18
Then the king went to his palace. and passed the night fasting: neither were instruments of music brought before him: and his sleep went from him. In the Massoretic text one of the clauses, “Neither were instruments of music brought before him,” has caused great difficulty. The word dahvan, translated “instruments of music,” is rendered by Furst, “dancing-girl; “Gesenius, “concubine; “Rosenmuller renders, “odours.” The Mediaeval Greek Version translates, “instruments of music.” Furst speaks with favour of the Syriac rendering, “food-tables.” Hanayl, the aphel of eilal, has to be noted as a sign of antiquity. The version of the Septuagint is very wide from the Massoretic in the latter part of the verse, “Thus the king returned to his palace, and went to bed fasting, being grieved about Daniel.” It is evident that the Septuagint translator had before him deheel instead of dohvannun in the script of Egyptian Aramaic is very like lamed in the later mode writing, as also yodh and vav. It is possible that the name “Daniel” was read haneel or, vies versa, as two of the letters are identical If we can accept the Septuagint reading, the difficulty of this mysterious dahoun disappears. Another clause is added here in the Septuagint from verse 22 (23) Massoretic, though with variations. “Then the God of Daniel, taking thought for him ( ) closed the mouths of the lions, that they did not hurt Daniel.” This statement is not inserted in Daniel’s answer to the king in the Septuagint, as it is in the Massoretic text. It would almost seem that our present text in both cases is a condensation of a more extended document. This view receives support from the rendering of Theodotion, “And the king departed to his house, and went to bed supperless, and viands were not brought to him, and his sleep went from him, and God closed the mouths of the lions, and they did not hurt Daniel.” It will be seen that the last clause here agrees with the concluding clause of the Septuagint. The mysterious word dahvan is rendered here “food” ()a version that is suspicious from the fact that it merely repeats, under another form, the statement that the king went to bed fasting. It is supported by the Peshitta and the Vulgate. This difference can scarcely be due to a various reading. Otherwise the Peshitta and the Vulgate agree with the Massoretic text. The king’s sorrow and humiliation could not be better pictured than it is here: even the feast of the palace had no pleasure for him, he was so grieved about Daniel. But we must also bear in mind that fasting had among the Jews, and, indeed, in the East generally, a relationship to prayer (see Est 4:16, where fasting takes the place of prayer; see also Dan 10:3). It means also repentance (Jon 3:6-8). Darius, then, repented his hasty decree, and prayed for the deliverance of Daniel.
Dan 6:19, Dan 6:20
Then the king arose very early in the morning, and went in haste unto the den of lions. And when he came to the den, he cried with a lamentable voice unto Daniel: and the king spake and said to Darnel O Daniel servant of the living God, is thy God, whom thou servest continually, able to deliver thee from the lions? “Very early” is really “the glimmer of day;” (shapharpara’). The word used occurs in the Targums. It may, however, be doubted whether the word here is not the Syriac shapbra. The writing here presents so many peculiarities that suspicion is forced upon the reader. The first is small, and the second is large. There is the further difficulty that nogah is nearly equivalent to shaphra. One might suspect a doublet, as Behrmann maintains, here, did not the versions indicate something like this as the meaning of this clause. A lamentable voice (atzeeb) seems to mean “sad” or “grieved.” The version of the Septuagint shows traces of addition, “And King Darius rose early in the morning, and took with him the satraps, and went and stood at the mouth of the den of lions. Then the king called to Daniel with a loud voice, with weeping, saying, O Daniel, if thou art alive, and thy God whom thou servest continually, hath he saved thee from the lions? and have they not harmed thee?” It is possible the addition of “the satraps” may have been due to shapharpara being read ahashdarpnayya. Certainly if the purpose of the double scaling was what it is assigned to be in the first verse, then the satraps would accompany him; only the suggestion is such a natural one that it might readily slip into the text. Verse 20 (21) in the LXX. has traces of expansion. The omission of yekeel and the change of sheezab to the finite preterite is possible enough, and may indicate that in the original text the word rendered “able” was not found. Theodotion renders verse 19 (20) in accordance with the Massoretic reading, but, in verse 20 (21) instead of “lamentable voice,” has “strong voice,” a reading that seems somewhat confirmed by the LXX. Further, he translates the interrogative ha as if it were the Hebrew kee, “if.” The Peshitta, though agreeing in the nineteenth verse with the Massoretic, has some minor differences in the following verse”high voice” instead of “lamentable voice,” and “faithfully” instead of “continually.” The Vulgate singularly inserts in verse 20 putasne? “dost thou think?” That Darius should thus hasten in the semi-darkness of the first glimmer of dawn to the lions’ den to see whether Daniel were yet alive, was but natural. As the sealing of the lions’ den suggested the sealing of the holy sepulchre, so the hastening of Darius to the den in the earliest dawn suggests the action of the women who got up “a great while before day.” When Darius calls Daniel the “servant of the living God,” there is no necessary confession of faith in him on the part of the king. It is for him simply an act of politeness to a Deity who, if this were neglected, might resent. It is to be noted that this attribute “living” is omitted in the Septuagint.
Dan 6:21, Dan 6:22
Then said Daniel unto the king, O king, live for ever. My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions’ mouths, that they have not hurt me: forasmuch as before him innocency was found in me; and also before thee, O king, have I done no hurt. The Syriac construction, malleelim, is to be observed. The rendering of the LXX. differs from the Massoretic text in a way that can scarcely be due to differences merely of reading, “Then Daniel called with a loud voice and said O king, I am yet living, and God hath saved me from the lions according to the righteousness found in me before him, and before thee, O king, was neither ignorance nor sin to be found in me; but thou didst hearken to men who deceive kings, and hast east me into the den of lions for my destruction.” It is not impossible that the opening clauses of the Massoretic and the LXX. respectively, “O king, I am yet living.” and “O king, live for ever,” have been derived from the same source. The last clause is to all appearance an expansion. Theodotion and the Peshitta agree with the Massoretic text. Daniel answers the king, and declares his safety. The angelology of Daniel is an interesting subject, but here the question is complicated by the fact that there is no reference to angelic interference in the Septuagint. Still all through Scripture God does most of his works through the intervention of angels. To Darius, if he had any such beliefs as afterwards are found associated with Zoru astrianism, the ascription of deliverance to an angel would be natural enough. It is doubt ful whether Cyrus and his followers were not idolaters. The rebuke implied in the state merit that not only before God was Daniel innocent, but in the sight of the king, is sufficiently clear without passing beyond the lines of courtly decorum. The expansion in the LXX. is unnecessary, and mars the stately picture; though, on the other hand, the simple answer to the king’s question is more likely than the courtly “O king live for ever.“
Dan 6:23
Then was the king exceeding glad for him, and commanded that they should take Daniel up out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no manner of hurt was found upon him, because he believed in his God. The verse that occupies the same place in the Septuagint is not a translation of the present verse at all, but looks as if it had been a sentence in the original longer documents which followed the above Massoretic verse, “Then all the powers gathered together, and saw Daniel, that the lions had not hurt him.” It is barely possible float the first clause here represents Aramaic text that might be misread into the Massoretic text. Although it is supported by the later versions, the Massoretic text has a suspicions appearance. The last clause is a moral reflection, unlike anything else in the Book of Daniel, and is omitted, as we saw, from the Septuagint. The assertion of the king’s gladness, too, differs in colour from the other statements in the book; thus compare the language concerning Nebuchadnezzar when the three Hebrew youths were delivered from the fiery furnace. At the same time, it is to be observed that the use of the hophal form in the verb hoosaq is an evidence of the antiquity of this portion of the verse. The hypothesis that tins narrative has been condensed from a longer one, has much to support it. The lesson inculcated, that faith in God would result in deliverance, is very true, even though it was not in the text. The irregular form of the adjective t’ayb points out a possibility that there has been some modification of the text. Sometimes words not understood have resulted in known words being written in an irregular way.
Dan 6:24
And the king commanded, and they brought those men which had accused Daniel, and they cast them into the den of lions, them, their children, and their wives; and the lions had the mastery of them. and brake all their bones in pieces or ever they came at the bottom of the den. Here the Septuagint text is superior to the Massoretic, as briefer, “Then those two men who had berne witness against Daniel, they, their wives, and their children, were east to the lions, and the lions slew them, and brake their bones.” In this account of the punishment meted out to the accusers of Daniel, the victims are only two, with their wives and children. Hitzig contemptuously remarks that the lions’ den must have been large to contain a hundred and twenty-two men along with their familiesthat number he gets by adding to the governors of the provinces the two presidents,colleagues of Daniel. If, however, we assume the Septuagint text to be correct, then this objection falls to the ground. The phrase “or ever they came at the bottom of the den,” is an intensification of the narrative. In the Massoretic text it is “all their bones;” in the LXX. it is simply “their bones.” Theodotion and the Peshitta agree with the Massoretic text. The slaughter of the wives and children of offenders, with the guilty persons themselves, was the common practice. There are two other accounts of this eventone preserved in the apocryphal story of Bel and the Dragon, and the other in the pages of Josephus. According to the story of Bel and the Dragon, the king, who thus condemns Daniel, is no less a person than Cyrus the great conqueror. The reason of the condemnation is not a decree forbidding all worship, but because Daniel had laid bare the deceit of the priests of Bel, and killed the sacred dragon, the people of Babylon were incensed, and threatened Cyrus that they would burn his house if he did not deliver Daniel into their hands to be cast into the lions’ den. The seven lions were starved in order that they might be sure to devour Daniel. For six days he was there in the den. In order that Daniel might not starve, whatever befell the lions, Habacuc was brought from Judaea, carried by the hair of his head, to feed the prophet. The destruction of Daniel’s accusers is stated in a mere compendious fashion. The fact that this version is referred to by Irenaeus (‘Adv. Haeres.,’ 4.), Tertullian (‘De Jejuniis,’ 7.), and Clement of Alexandria, shows that early.in the second century this narrative was incorporated with the canonical Daniel. This makes it almost necessarily before Christ in the date of its origin. If so, it is difficult to imagine the canonical version to be only a century and a half older. Josephus shows no signs that he knew of this apocryphal addition, but adds a feature for himself, “The enemies of Daniel, when they saw that nothing evil had befallen him, unwilling to attribute his deliverance to Deity and his providence, declared that the lions had been filled with food, and therefore neither attacked Daniel nor approached him, and maintained this to the king. But he, hating their malice, ordered that much flesh be thrown to the lions, and when they had gorged themselves, that the enemies of Daniel be cast into the den, in order that he might learn whether the lions would spare them on account of their being satisfied. It was then manifest to Darius, when the satraps had been thrown in, that Daniel had been preserved by miracle, for the lions spared none of them, but tore them all to pieces as if they had been famishing.”
Dan 6:25-27
Then King Darius wrote unto all people, nations, and languages, that dwell in all the earth; Peace be multiplied unto you. I make a decree, That in every dominion of my kingdom men tremble and fear before the God of Daniel: for he is the living God, and stedfast for ever, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed, and his dominion shall be even unto the end. He delivereth and rescueth, and he worketh signs and wonders in heaven and in earth, who hath delivered Daniel from the power of the lions. This decree has a resemblance to the decrees of Nebuchadnezzar. In the Septuagint there is less magniloquence, though the divergence is too great to be the result merely of difference of reading, “Then Darius wrote to all nations and tongues and countries dwelling in all his land, saying, Let all men who are in my kingdom stand and worship, and serve the God of Daniel, for he alone abideth, and liveth to generations of generations for ever. I Darius will worship and serve him all my days, for none of the idols that are made with hands are able to deliver as the God of Daniel did Daniel.” It is to be observed that it is only to the inhabitants of his own land that Darius writes, and further, it is “all men in his kingdom” he commands, not “every dominion in his kingdom.” There is no notice taken of the kingdom of God; it is God himself who liveth and abideth for ever. The last verse, again, in the Septuagint, in which Darius professes his faith in Jehovah, is evidently spurious. Theodotion and the Peshitta agree with the Massoretic text. Removing the exaggerations from it, the decree of Darius does not mean any more than we found in the decrees of Nebuchadnezzar; it is simply a warning against showing any disrespect to a Deity with such formidable powers as Jehovah. It may be regarded as connected with the dualistic view of the universe maintained by Zoroastrianism, that deliverance from lions is spoken of with such awe. The lion was one of the beasts specially representative of the evil principle, as we see in Persepolis. There was thus evidence given that the God of the Jews was supreme over the powers of evil; therefore, without forbidding any subject of Babylonia from worshipping his own ancestral divinity. Darius yet commanded him, in so doing, to watch his conduct, so that nothing disrespectful to the powerful God of the Hebrews should be done by him.
Dan 6:28
So this Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius, and in the reign of Cyrus the Persian. The Septuagint follows a different reading, “And King Darius was gathered to his generation. And Daniel was established in the reign of Darius, and Cyrus the Persian inherited the kingdom”a reading due to the influence of Xenophon’s ‘Cyropaedia.’ Theodotion and the Peshitta agree with the Massoretic text. The statement that Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius and in the reign of Cyrus, does not necessarily imply that they were successive. The reign of Gobryas, a satrap, and perhaps in some way “King of Babylon,” would coincide with the reign of Cyrus as “king of nations.” Moreover, if Darius (Gobryas) was King of Babylon for two years, then Cyrus would succeed him in this position. Certainly in some of the earlier contract tables of his reign, Cyrus in not called “King of Babil.”
Excursus on Darius the Mode.
There is no character in Scripture who has given rise to more hypotheses than Darius the Mode. Every person whose name has come into prominence in early Persian history may be said to have been pressed into service. The apocryphal addition to DanielBel and the Dragonidentifies Darius the Mede with Cyrus. Josephus implies that Darius is Cyaxares II; as he declares him to be a relative () of Cyrus and son of Astyages. Eusebius (‘Chronicon’ ad Olym; 54) identifies him with Astyages. Later critical commentators, e.g. Bevan, have assumed that Darius Hystaspis is intended. Still more recently, by Mr. Pinches, it has been suggested that Gobryas (Gobaru), who took possession of Babylon on behalf of Cyrus is Darius the Mede.
As a preliminary to discussing the question, we must look at what is said about Darius the Mede in Daniel. He received the kingdom when he was sixty-two years of age. He was the son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Medes. From the fact that only the “first” year of his reign is mentioned, we may deduce that he reigned little more than a year. He appears in the Massoretic text especially as a supreme monarch, who appoints governors under him. We must, however, bear in mind the fact that the evidence from the Book of Daniel is complicated by the proofs of expansion which we find in it. Even when the Septuagint Version coincides with the Massoretic recension, we are not even then quite sure that the work of modification had not begun before the two families of recension were established. Bearing this in mind, let us gather up the information we have concerning Darius here. He is asserted to be an old man when he “received the kingdom.” The verb used here is used of legitimate succession; thus in Paulus Tellensis Cyrus is said “to receive,” , the kingdom on the death of Darius. From the connection this is out of the question. It must mean that from some higher power he “received” his appointment. His age we may assume to be correctly stated, notwithstanding the Septuagint rendering; this seems to have been drawn from the Massoretic reading by taking is a Syriac sense. This view is confirmed by the fact that the resulting construction is not a natural one. Further, the exactitude of statement gives a presumption of truth, as there is no reason in the narrative why this age should be taken and not another. We are not necessitated to maintain that the governors were satraps in the large sense of the word. The fact that “satraps” were Persian governors would lead that word to be inserted. As to the name, we cannot lay much stress on this, as variation in the matter of names is not uncommon in Hebrew literature, a less common name being replaced by one better known. This is rendered the more likely as in the Septuagint the name Darius is replaced by Artaxerxes in one instance.
If we take the Septuagint text, there is nothing that necessitates anything more than that the province of which he might be the governor was affected by his appointing these so-called “satraps.” As to the title “king,” we must remember that that title was used very loosely. Cyrus claims to have several ancestors who were “great kings” (Cylinder). Darius Hystaspis declares eight of his ancestors to have been “kings.” Ansan, of which Cyrus and his ancestors were kings, was a canton under the power of Elam, and Hystaspes remained satrap under his son.
Let us now investigate the various hypotheses that have been brought forward, and we shall take them in order of their probable age.
The first hypothesis is that Darius is Cyrus. This we find, as we have said, in the second apocryphal addition to DanielBel and the Dragonas we find it in Theodotion. So far as the letters are concerned, it is not an impossible thing to fancy that Ko‘resh was read into Daravasb, the resh and the shin being present in both words in the same position, and in the Aramaic characters of b.c. 100 daleth and caph were like. There is hardly any reason to lead one to read more readily the one name than the other. Although Darius could not fail to be a well-known name among the Jews, since three of that name successively reigned over the Persian Empire, and still in the East, Dara (Darius) is a name synonymous with “magnificence:” yet to a Jew what monarch of Persia could compare with Cyrus, “the servant of the Lord,” his “shepherd,” his “anointed,” who allowed Judah to return and sacrifices once more to be offered? The fact that he is also called Artaxerxes in the LXX; and the further fact that in the LXX. Version of Bel and the Dragon the name is omitted, are significant. The name must be laid aside as being of no evidential value. If now we look at the menwhen we compare Darius, as presented to us by the narrative here, with Cyrus, the skilful, self-contained conqueror, who had broken the power of Asytages, had built up a monarchy from the small cantons of the region east of the Tigris, and increased that monarchy to an empirewe see a vast, irreconcilable difference. Cyrus must have been at the maturity of his power when he gained possession of Babylon. Darius, we are told, was sixty-two years of age. Yet once more, he “received“ his kingdom. Cyrus did not claim as inheriting from Nabunahid. We must, then, definitely decide against Cyrus being Darius.
The theory that has received the largest amount of support among those who maintain the ancient date of Daniel is that Darius the Mede is Cyaxares II. This is a personage introduced by Xenophon into his historical novel, the ‘Cyropaedia.’ If his existence could have been proved, the character suited the position admirably. The weaknesses and fussiness with which Xenophon endows him does not contradict anything we see of Darius here. Only Xenophon nowhere says that Cyrus made his uncle king in Babylon. We are in a very different position in regard to many of these events now, than we were forty years ago. We know now that Astyages was not the son of Cyaxares I; the King of the Medes. He Was King of the Manda or Umman-Manda, who overthrew the Median Empire. In Cyrus’s revolts against Astyages we have no word of any relationship subsisting between him and his opponent, still less that he was his grandson. There is, further, no reference to any son of Astyages being regarded as monarch under whom Cyrus fought. Yet this must be acknowledged that, though Xenophon is at sea as to the capture of Babylon, he knew that Gobryas took a principal share in it. He associates with him a certain Gadates, which seems to be a word made from “Guti,” the province from which Gobryas came. Herodotus, though he knows of a Gobryas who joined with Darius in conspiring against Smerdis, knows nothing of a Gobryas who took a principal part in the capture of Babylon. We are obliged, then, to dismiss Cyaxares II. as non-existent.
On the faith of a passage in Herodotus it has been supposed that Cyrus preserved Astyages, and may have set him as vice-king over Babylon. This, however, has nothing to support it. A much more plausible theory has been devised by Marcus yon Niebuhr, in his ‘Geschichte Assur. u. Babils.’ He maintained that Belshazzar was Evil-Merodach, and that he held the blasphemous feast narrated in Daniel, and that he was overthrown by a conspiracy assisted by the help of Astyages the Mede, and that Nergalsharezar (Neriglissar)reigned in Babylon as his subject-king. We know now that Astyages was not a Mede, but the King of the Mantis. We know further that there is no trace in the contract tables of the conquest of the city, so that there should be a foreign overlord. This, however, might not be notified in fixing the dates on the contracts. But if Astyages was for a year actual king in Babylon, then that fact would appear in the tables, and this is part of Baron yon Niebuhr’s hypothesis. Further, Astyages does not retain his over-lordship in Babylon so far as we can judge from the proclamation of Nabunahid. We must, therefore, abandon this supposition also.
The followers of the critical method, which assumes that there must be something outrageously wrong, take for granted that the Darius here is the well-known Darius Hy-staspis. The only point in him that suits Darius the Mede is that he is called Darius. It is true that Darius Hystaspis, after it had rebelled against him, took Babylon; there is nothing said of Darius the Mede doing anything of the sort, although it may be implied. Darius in Daniel is a Mede, Darius Hystaspis was a Persian; the Biblical Darius is the son of Ahashverosh (Ahasuerus), the other Darius is ‘the son of Hystaspes; the Biblical Darius is an old man when he ascends the throne, Darius Hystaspis is young. Further, if we assume the writer of the fifth and sixth chapters of Daniel wrote also the eleventh, then he knew of Darius Hystaspis and of his son Xerxes, as well as of Cyrus and his son Cambyses. If these critics maintain the author of Daniel to be under the erroneous idea that Darius preceded Cyrus, how do they explain his knowledge that Darius reigned after Cyrus? We need not appeal merely to the eleventh chapter of Daniel. We are told to remark the fact that the names Daniel, Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael all occur in Ezra and Nehemiah, as names of those who had returned from captivity, and we are expected to believe that from this source these came. If this writer studied Ezra so carefully as to pick out names to suit his purpose, how did he fail to see that Darius came not only after Cyrus, but after his two immediate successors, Cambyses and Smerdis? The critics are very ready to show us the sources of Daniel’s knowledge; they forget to harmonize these alleged sources of knowledge with the stupendous ignorance they attribute to him whenever this is required by the necessities of their argument. Whoever Darius the Mede is, he cannot be Darius Hystaspis.
Another hypothesis has been started by Mr. Pinches of the British Museumthat Darius the Mede is Gobryas. We have seen that there is an uncertainty about the name. We know that in early Aramaic script the two names are not so very unlike, but that the less-known Gobaru might be read into the better known Darius. The main points known about both personages are in singularly exact historical parallel Darius received the kingdom; Gobaru (Og-baru, Gobryas) was admitted into Esakkil by the Babylonian confederates of Cyrus, and was made by Cyrus governor of Babylon. He exercised a certain amount of authority; for we are told, as above mentioned, that he appointed governors. Darius appointed governors. Darius was a Mede. and Gobryas was governor of the province of Guti or Gutlum, which was adjacent to Media, and therefore was not, improbably, a Mede. In thinking of this period, we are to dismiss from our minds all thought of the “Medes” being conquered by Cyrus and the Persians. Both Medes and Persians were oppressed by the Mandaprobably a Scythian hordeand Cyrus commenced the rebellion against the common oppressors, and united as one nation the Medes and the Persians. As to the character of Gobryas as compared with that of Darius. we have no data to go upon either to affirm or deny a resemblance. His age is not at all improbable. Altogether the balance of probability in the mean time points to Darius the Mede being Gobryas the governor of Gutinm. That he is addressed always as “king” does not contradict this, for Media and Persia and all that region had monarchies of the most limited description, and these monarchs retained their titles even under Cyrus’s rule; hence, in his Behistun inscription, Darius claims his father to have been a king, and this while Cambyses reigned as king over the empire. After his son Darius had mounted the throne, Hystaspes was satrap in Persia. He would be addressed as “King Hystaspes,” since by his son he is called king. Hence, if, as was likely, Gobryas was king of some small town or canton when he became governor of Gutium, he would be always “King Gobryas,” or, as it has been written, “Darius.” On the whole, then, as we have said, the balance of probability at present indicates Gobryas as Darius the Mede.
HOMILETICS
Dan 6:1-28
The lions’ den.
The story of “the lions’ den” may be regarded as an instance of persecution frustrated.
I. HIGH STATION OFTEN OCCASIONS SEVERE TRIALS TO RELIGIOUS FIDELITY. If it had not been for his rank and office, Daniel would have been left unmolested. There is safety in obscurity.
1. The customs of high places are often inimical to religious fidelity. Daniel must have been tempted by fashion before he was attacked by persecution. His religious habits were singular and marked.
2. High office provokes envy. It was not anti-religious zeal which stirred the enemies of Daniel. They used a religious question simply as an instrument for their private jealousy. Blamelessness of conduct is no security against this kind of enmity.
3. Prominent positions are exposed to searching criticism. Daniel’s habits were keenly watched. Happily his integrity was unimpeachable, even in the eyes of his enemies. How many of us could stand such a test? His religious habits, however, were made public; and his fidelity to God, in opposition to the royal decree, was noted against him when the similar conduct of humbler men would have been disregarded.
II. OUR DUTY TO GOD MUST TAKE PRECEDENCE OVER ALL HUMAN OBLIGATIONS. Daniel was a servant of Darius, and the law of the king was absolute; yet he had no hesitation in setting this at defiance in obedience to the higher service of God (Act 4:19; Act 5:29)
1. All through life there are similar cases in which lower obligations are cancelled by higher ones. The duties of subjects to sovereigns, citizens to laws, children to parents, servants to masters, etc; must all be considered to have this limitation.
2. An unrighteous law is no excuse for unrighteous conduct. This should be remembered by people in commercial or legal situations, in which the state of the law is sometimes used as a cloak for ambiguous practices.
III. RELIGIOUS FIDELITY IS OFTEN ATTENDED WITH TEMPORAL DANGER. Though jealousy was the first cause of the attack on Daniel, his religious fidelity afforded the immediate occasion for it. In the long run right will triumph, but here and now wrong often triumphs.
1. It is desirable to “count the cost,” and not to expect all things to go smoothly, when we set out on the Christian warfare (Luk 14:25-33).
2. Strength and courage and independence of character are indispensable to a faithful Christian life (Jos 23:9; Eph 6:10).
IV. GOD CAN SAVE THOSE WHO TRUST IN HIM WHEN ALL HUMAN HELP IS USELESS. The weak king laboured till sunset to save Daniel, but in vain. When the worst was done by men, God interfered.
1. The most savage creatures are under the control of God. When they rage and destroy they are only obeying instincts planted in them by their Creator. When he turns these instincts aside they obey. Wild beasts do not disobey the will of God. Man alone rebels.
2. To the faithful ,man tide worst dangers are more alarming than harmful. Daniel’s lions looked terrific, but their mouths were shut. Bunyan’s lions were chained. Spiritual evils often vanish when they are boldly faced (Jas 4:7).
V. THEY WHO MAKE UNJUST ATTACKS ON THE INNOCENT OFTEN BRING ABOUT THEIR OWN RUIN. The enemies of Daniel are themselves devoured by the lions. Compare this with the cases of Haman (Est 7:10) and Judas (Act 1:18). Thus wicked men sometimes fall into the vengeance they have prepared for their victim (Psa 46:6). It is dangerous to show enmity to the weakest man who stands on the side of right. All the power of God is behind him.
Dan 6:10
Habitual prayer.
This glimpse into the daily habits of Daniel is enough to reveal to us the secret of his fidelity and integrity among the fearful temptations of the world in which he was called to serve. Here we see the oil which saved the fire from being quenched. Daniel was a man of prayer.
I. DANIEL WAS NOT FORGETFUL OF HIS GOD IN SPITE OF THE DISTRACTIONS OF COURT LIFE. It was a heathen court, yet he remained faithful to the true God. It was a dissolute court, yet he lived in devotion to the God of holiness. It is more easy to withstand the outbreak of violent persecution than to remain pure and true amongst the daily and insidious allurements of a world of sinful pleasures.
II. DANIEL FOUND TIME FOR PRAYER AMONG THE MANY CLAIMS OF A BUSY LIFE. He had the responsibilities attendant on the highest office in the kingdom, and he fulfilled them so well that his most jealous enemies could find no fault with him. Yet he did not regard these public duties as an excuse for the neglect of prayer.
1. As our duty to God is of primary obligation, no human duties can afford an excuse for neglecting it.
2. Prayer is a help to the performance of duty. Time spent in prayer is not lost time, even as regards the work of the world. Hours of prayer can no more be neglected with profit, than the time for meals and sleep. Christ spent much time in prayer in the most active part of his life, and the more he worked the more he prayed (Matthew 45:23).
III. DANIEL PRACTISED REGULAR HABITS OF PRAYER. The observance of regular hours of prayer as a thing meritorious in itself is simply superstitious. Moreover, a spiritually minded man will live in an atmosphere of prayer, and not confine his devotions to set seasons ([ Thessalonians Dan 5:17).
1. But on the other hand, there is great reason for observing regular habits of prayer. It is well that the mind should be at times entirely withdrawn from the world for spiritual exercises. The deeper and more far-reaching acts of prayer are only possible when we have leisure to collect our thoughts and meditate upon Divine things.
2. It is desirable, too, that these habits should be regular, because otherwise they may be neglected and crowded out by other concerns, and because the laws of habit will then help us to enter into them the more readily.
IV. DANIEL CONFESSED HIS PATRIOTISM IN HIS PRAYER, Praying towards Jerusalem was a touching proof of his true patriotism. Prayer brings out our deepest affections. We should remember our country in our prayers. It is well when high promotion does not lead a man to forget the associations of humbler days (Psa 137:6).
V. DANIEL SHOWED HIS SIMPLICITY AND HIS COURAGE BY THE PUBLICITY OF HIS PRAYER. He prayed with his windows open. Of course, prayer should never be ostentatious (Mat 6:5, Mat 6:6). But if there are times when we should pray in the closet, and with the door shut, there are also times when it may be our duty to let devotional habits be known. If the hiding of them suggests the abandonment of them in face of danger, it is our duty to let them be open and visible. We should thus avoid the appearance of evil. It is always wrong to be ashamed of our religion (Luk 9:26). it is our duty to make a simple unpretentious confession of religion in face of persecution or of ridicule.
Dan 6:12
The law of the Medes and Persians.
The unalterable character of” the law of the Medes and Persians” is evidently regarded with superstitious veneration, and considered to be a scrod principle of government. But in the present instance it leads to gross injustice, and, instead of honouring, it humiliates the royal authority from which the decree emanates.
I. OBLIGATIONS RASHLY CONTRACTED OFTEN LEAD TO DISASTROUS RESULTS. Darius had never contemplated the effect of his decree, or he would not have signed it.
1. It is wrong to decide on a course which will affect the future on the mere impulses of the present. If decision must be made, it should be after prayer for guidance from him who lives in the future. This applies more particularly when, as in the case of Darius, our decision affects the happiness of others.
2. It is foolish to contract any serious obligations for the future which are not necessary or plainly useful. There was no good to be gained by the king’s decree; at best it was useless. Such decrees are best unsigned. It is well to turn our vows into prayers, and, instead of promising to do any hard thing, to seek grace to do it if it is God’s will.
II. SO LONG AS LAW–MAKERS ARE WEAK, LAWS WILL BE DEFECTIVE. It was foolish for such a man as Darius to rashly decree unalterable laws. He was kindly disposed. But he was overcome:
1. By flattery. The king was to be the honoured exception, and prayer might still be offered to him.
2. By fear. The satraps crowded about the king until he was terrified into signing the decree.
3. Legal pedantry. The unalterable character of his law was more to Darius than right and justice. While such law-makers exist, it is not wise to enact changeless laws.
III. ALL HUMAN LAWS MUST GIVE PLACE TO HIGHER DIVINE LAWS. The law of the Medes and Persians presupposes that there is no power greater than the state. But God’s laws are prior to ours. The most solemn decrees of state should only have force as by-laws coming under God’s greater laws of right, and losing all obligation when they contradict these. The king should have broken his law, which violated the higher Divine law of justice.
IV. WITH FALLIBLE MEN CONSISTENCY OF CONDUCT IS NOT ALWAYS A DUTY. Some men worship consistency as a fetish. What they “have written, they have written,” and they stand to it. This conduct often arises:
1. From weakness and the fear of men.
2. From pride and the conceit of infallibility.
3. From obstinacy and self-will. Whenever repentance is a duty, consistency is a sin.
V. THE ONLY LAW WHICH IS NECESSARILY AND RIGHTEOUSLY CHANGELESS IS THE LAW OF GOD. This is founded on:
(1) his infallible wisdom (Psa 19:7, Psa 19:8);
(2) his irresistible power (Psa 66:3); and
(3) his changeless character (Psa 33:11).
The forgiveness of the gospel does not frustrate God’s Law, but honours it in the atonement (1Pe 3:18). The freedom of the new covenant does not abolish this Law, but substitutes the willing obedience of the spirit for the bondage of the letter (Rom 8:4).
HOMILIES BY H.T. ROBJOHNS
Dan 6:1-24
Strength of soul.
“Now when Daniel knew,” etc. (verse 10). Daniel stands here before us a magnificent instance of strength of soul (Psa 138:3). We have also the advantage of seeing him contrasted with a blameworthy and contemptible weakness, as well as with something worsewith weakness passing into wickedness.
I. STRENGTH. As exhibited by the saint, statesman, and prophet. See it:
1. Advancing to the throne in common life. The new organization included a hundred and twenty satrapies; over these three presidents in close relation to the king; of these Daniel was “one“ (not the “first”). But he stood out in bold relief against the other ministers of the crown. By intelligence, experience, industry, and piety, he moved at once to the front (verse 3). Religion king in every realm. Fidelity in common things (verse 5).
2. In the absence of egotism. Shallow scepticism charges Daniel with egotism, partly on the ground of verse.
3. The tables may here well be turned on the adversary. Considering the exalted power and position of Daniel, that we have here too autobiography, the absence of self-allusion and self-praise is wonderful, and that throughout the book. Besides, this seeming self-praise was necessary to account for the action of enemies. Moreover, moral greatness does not quite preclude all allusion to self (Num 12:3; 1Co 15:10; Nehemiah throughout).
3. In Daniel‘s continuance in the habit of saintly life. (Verse 10.) Note:
(1) The simplicity of action. “He kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed.”
(2) The absence of ostentation. No opening of the windows in order that all might see. To have so done would not have been to exhibit religious courage, but foolhardiness. Such conduct would have been bravado. Religious courage is a calm, wise, brave thing. Picture the palace-house of one so great; the parlour on the roof; the lattices closed (as in hot climates) towards the east and south, but open (at least in the early hours, perhaps always) on the west, and intentionally “toward Jerusalem.”
(3) The fearlessness of consequences.
(4) The reason of the act. “Because [Chaldee] he had done so aforetime.” The persistence of the strong. “What he was as a dear little child, when his mother taught him, and prepared him with prayers and tears for the perils of Babylonalbeit she did not know he was to live the hard life of an exilethat he is now, though his hair be grey and his body bent with years.” One holy, consistent life.
4. In the permanence of his patriotism. “Toward Jerusalem.”
5. In the grandeur of his faith. After all these years and vicissitudes, the home of his soul was still in the Hebrew traditionin the Hebrew history, literature, prophecies, liturgies, etc,
II. WEAKNESS. As illustrated in the character and conduct of the king. The moral weakness of the man appears:
1. In the evasion of responsibility. There is evident an indisposition to uttered to the affairs of government, which are left in the hands of officials. No surer mark of moral weakness than to leave what should be alike our duty and honour to otherspossibly to the incompetent.
2. Accessibility to flattery. Keil’s view of the proposal of verse 7 commends itself to us, that it referred only to “the religious sphere of prayer.“ On this assumption the king would be regarded as the living manifestation of all the gods, of the conquered nations as well as of Persia and Media; and the proposal was that all prayer to all divinities should for thirty days be stayed save to this divinitythe king. The inflated vanity which could accept so obsequious homage!
3. Pliability to the will of others. (Verse 9.) He had not the courage to live his own life, to think his own thoughts, and act them out.
4. Indifference to suffering. Weakness of soul means usually the weakness of every parta feeble, emotional nature, at least on its nobler side, as well as weakness of intellect, conscience, will. Note “the den of lions” (verses 7, 24). Deficiency of sympathy, leading on to frightful cruelty, is oft the result of feeble moral imagination. No child or man could torture insect or man who vividly realized the exquisite agony.
5. The violence of passion. (Verses 14, 18-20, 24.) Take the violence of his grief and indignation alike.
6. Moral helplessness. What an humiliating picture have we in verses 14, 15 1 (The speech of the conspirators is clearly prompted by what they had observed on the part of the kingan attempt to evade the law, verses 19, 20.)
III. The strength of Daniel, his magnanimity, is here set, not only against the weakness of the king, but also against the darker background of WICKEDNESS exhibited by those who conspired against the prophet. Moral weakness is not far off deep depravity; e.g. the depravity of Ahabperhaps the weakest character in the Old Testament. Observe:
1. The vision given to these men. Of a saintliness like that of Danielelevated in its devotional life, ripe with the maturity of years, clearly manifesting itself in common scenes, excellent beyond all praise by their own admission (verse 5). A beam, a ray from the holiness of God.
2. The Divine aim in the vision. Beneficent and moral we may be sure. To awaken admiration; to bring home the sense of defect; to lead to penitence; to arouse to efforts after likeness.
3. The human frustration of that aim, What was intended for salvation became the occasion of moral ruin, the cause being the deep depravity of these hearts. Note:
(1) The audacity of their aim. Men usually come to perpetrate great crimes step by step. These aimed at the ultimate of evil from the firstthe utter ruin and destruction of the prophet.
(2) The recklessness of their counsel. If there be no law sufficient to crush, they will make one.
(3) The pertinacity of their pursuit of their miserable object. Shown in their dealing with the king (verse 15).
(4) The meanness of their conduct. Over that parlour on the roof of Daniel’s palace-home a watch must have been meanly set.
(5) The mercilessness of their cruelty. (Verses 16, 17.)
4. The judgment that befell. (Verse 24.)R.
Dan 6:22
Angel-ministration.
“My God hath sent his angel” (Dan 6:22). “Are they not all ministering spirits?” (Heb 1:14). The text in Daniel suggests the whole doctrine of angel-ministration. That imperilled life guarded by a sentinel from heaven is no solitary spectacle. It has many parallels. There had been the ministration of angels before, as there has been a thousand times since. We cannot help looking upon the scene with memories charged with all that has been revealed of the relation of that higher world to the world of men. It was a remarkable instance of a universal fact in the experience of the Church of Goda fact not limited to particular ages, but existing from the beginning to the end of time. We suppose that the angel in this case may have been invisible to Daniel; Daniel having simply inferred his presence; and further, that the action of the angel may not have been strictly supernatural. The occasional supremacy of man over savage beasts may be an illustration of the dominance of the angel. The subject, then, isThe ministration of angels.
I. THEIR EXISTENCE. Say there are angels; and some would receive the statement with scepticism. But the evidence is:
1. The analogy of the case. The interdependence of material worlds points to a similar interdependence of moral worlds. The commerce of earth to a commerce between the varied worlds of God.
2. The craving of the human mind. There is a craving for the knowledge of creatures higher than ourselves. The craving universal. It points to an objective satisfaction.
3. The testimony of Scripture. Previous argument, only presumptive; this conclusive. Fulness of Scripture on the subject.
II. THEIR NATURE.
1. They are spiritual. “Are they not all spirits ()?”
2. But “clothed upon“ with some organization. Of a material kind, for it may become an object of sense; men may see the angel-form. Note:
(1) Angels appear in the human form. But:
(2) Glorified. (Dan 10:6.)
(3) Men after the resurrection are to become like the angels. (Luk 20:36.)
We may infer that the organism of angels is well adapted to second the life abiding in it. Incorruptible, for the angel never dies; fit servant of high intelligence; offers no obstruction to their mighty power; no impediment to their swiftness; beautiful with immortal youth. The angels, like ourselves, are capable of everlasting intellectual and moral progress.
III. THEIR PUBLIC LIFE. Its essential characteristic is given in the question, “Are they not all liturgic ()?” But what is the meaning? We must go to Athens, the home of the Greek tongue, for the answer. A few words, then, on:
1. The Greek liturgy. It was a public servicea ministration of the citizens to the commonwealth. Certain citizens were bound to contribute money, labour, time, towards making Athens splendid at home, triumphant abroad. Such a contribution was a “liturgy;” it stood for the public service of the Athenian people.
2. The Hebrew liturgy. The word was transferred from things Greek to designate the public ministration of the priests in the temple. As the liturgy of the Athenians was for the glory of the Athenian commonwealth, so the liturgy of Hebrew priests was for the glory of the Hebrew commonwealtha ministration to its awful King.
3. The heavenly liturgy. Here thought ascends to a higher state, to a grander temple, in which angels contribute to the public service. Their wealth, energy, time, are given for the glory of the Eternal, and for the majesty of his kingdom. “Are they not all liturgic? Do they not minister to God in the exalted service of the heavenly temple? Are they not employed in the administration of the celestial government? Do not ‘ thousand thousands minister to him, and ten thousand times ten stand before him ‘?” “The chariots of God are twenty thousand,”
IV. THEIR APOSTOLIC CHARACTER. “Are they not all sent forth?” Where he appoints, they go. Describe their coming and going as recorded in Scripture. But all this mysterious appearing and disappearing was not at all of their own self-moved will; they were “sent forth.” They came on embassage, and the love that sent them was the Lord of angels and ours.
V. THEIR MINISTRATION. They are “sent forth” to bring us help, to aid the otherwise helpess. Look at this:
1. Negatively. Their main object is not any of the following, though angels have been commissioned for them all.
(1) To glorify some great event; e.g. the incarnation.
(2) To answer prayer. (Dan 9:21.)
(3) To terrify enemies. (Mat 26:53.)
(4) To destroy the doomed; e.g. the Assyrian army.
(5) To advance their own knowledge. (1Pe 1:12; Eph 3:10.)
2. Positively. To bring help. The lesson for usnot to live in the light that shines from superiors, not to enjoy the company of equals, but to minister to those below. (Why not include in this lesson from the angels, our duty of ministration to races of life below man?)
VI. THEIR RELATION TO REDEMPTION AND THE REDEEMED.
1. Their general attitude.
(1) With reference to redemption generally. The attitude is one of anxious interest, which was typified in the aspect of the cherubim over the ark, “towards the mercy-seat shall the faces,” etc.; and declared in the New Testament (1Pe 1:12).
(2) With reference to the redeemed particularly. Interested are they in the beginnings and developments of regenerated life (Luk 15:7, Luk 15:10; 1Co 4:9).
2. Their critical services. Angels are prominent through all the great epochs of Divine revelationin the patriarchal, legal, and prophetical dispensations. Keep watch and ward about the Person of Christ. They were active at the founding of the Church; are now agents in providence; will add to the glory of the last assize.
3. Their combined action. Militant action, we may call it. Much in the Bible to imply that the angels are ever exerting, on behalf of the saved, a moral influence, equal in extent, though opposite in kind and greater in degree, to that exerted by evil spirits. They are not idle spectators of the long-drawn-out moral conflict of this earth.
4. Their individual ministration. (See Joh 1:51; Mat 18:10; Psa 34:7; Psa 91:12; 2Ki 6:17; Dan 6:22; Act 27:23.) (The “Angel-god” passages not referred to, because his appearances were those of the Lord Jesus.)
CONCLUSIONS.
1. The majesty of their King. Christ the Lord. Such a retinue.
2. The greatness of the object of angel solicitude. Salvation.
3. The brightness of the Christian prospect. “Equal unto the angels.”R.
HOMILIES BY J.D. DAVIES
Dan 6:1-9
The murderous plot of envy.
As every climate and every condition of soil are favourable to the propagation of particular weeds, so every state of society offers facility for the growth of some sins. Prosperity has its dangers as well as adversity. If the refinements of civilization make grosser vices intolerable, the greater encouragement is given for the secret sins of envy, deceit, and uncharitableness. It is never safe for the conscience to fall asleep.
I. ENVY CAN EXIST IN THE BEST–ORDERED COMMUNITY. Whatever may have been the faults of Darius, he had a remarkable faculty for wise government. The difficult task of ruling a large empire was distributed among suitable orders of men. He was not only successful in war, but also skilful in council. Unlike many Oriental monarchs, he was neither an autocrat nor a tyrant. He did not suppose that all wisdom resided in himself, nor did he imagine that intelligent beings could be ruled by sheer will. Therefore he laid the basis for constitutional government, and appointed a prince in every province of the empire, whose business it would be to maintain the royal authority, and to secure to all subjects rights of freedom and property. But no human government, however wise or good, can check the growth of immoral principles. Human authority, at the most, can deal with overt crimes; it cannot check or punish the iniquities in the human heart. There is need for higher authorityfor a heart-searching Godto control the tempers and passions of the soul.
II. ENVY IS EXCITED BY THE SIGHT OF SUPERIOR GOODNESS IN OTHERS, It is a strange phenomenon that virtue in one should be the occasion of vice in others. Yet virtue is not responsible for this result. Eminent goodness either allures or repels men. Virtue may be the innocent occasion of wickedness: it is not its originating cause. The warmer the sun shines on our gardens, the faster grow the weeds on the dunghill. Yet the sun is not to be blamed. The peerless purity of Jesus Christ exasperated men to commit the foulest offence that our earth has ever witnessed. As a rule, it is not the virtue itself that is envied, but the advantages and rewards which virtue secures. Men, for the most part, wish to gain the fruits of virtue rather than the virtue itself; and if they cannot, with facility, rise to the elevation of their rival, they seek to bring him down to their level or else destroy him altogether. Because Daniel was preferred by the king on account of his probity and prudence, the evil nature in his competitors developed in the direction of bitter envy.
III. ENVY IS LABORIOUS IN THE SEARCH AFTER OTHERS‘ SINS. The base and contemptible nature of envy is seen in its occupations. It is not conducive to the health of men’s minds to be perpetually engaged in the study of disease. There may be compensations and alleviations to be obtained from other sources. But the pursuit itself is injurious. Much more injurious to the soul is it to be on the search for diseases of the soul, and to find a satisfaction in the supposed faults of our fellow-men. In the case of Daniel, this search served only to bring more clearly into view Daniel’s exceptional virtue. Not even the sharp lynx-eye of ambitious envy could find a blemish on his reputation. His unworthy detractors were at length compelled to acknowledge his private and his public virtues; so they confessed to each other, “We shall find no occasion of blame against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the Law of his God.”
IV. ENVY SEEKS TO GAIN ITS END BY THE MOST DISCREDITABLE METHODS. It matters little to Envy whether she speaks the language of truth or of falsehood; whether she employs just or unjust measures. These jealous rivals of Daniel went to the king with a lie in their mouths when they said that “all the presidents” and princes had united in asking this decree. How sedulously busy is Envy in her intrigue! She counts no toil inordinate! She had paced up and down the land, whispered in the ear of every state official, and secured their adhesion to this deadly plot. Seeming success makes her bold. She will involve the king himself in her murderous scheme. A crafty use of flattery will win his powerful patronage. The intrigue shall be masked under the pretence of excessive loyalty. For thirty days the king shall be the sole dispenser of bounty to the people. His ear shall be open to every complaint. This will gain him wide popularity; this will bring pious Daniel within the meshes of contumacy. These professed believers in other gods will neglect their deities for a whole month in order to encompass the murder of the best and noblest man in the empire.
V. ENVY IS NOTHING BETTER THAN INCIPIENT MURDER. No tender or humane feeling can dwell in the same breast as Envy. She will gradually banish every virtuous occupant, and introduce instead the basest crew. Hide her final intention as she may, she must at length confess that murder is the final act in her programme. These jealous colleagues of Daniel would probably have been for the moment satisfied, if only they could have deposed Daniel from his just eminence, or if they could have seriously injured his reputation with the king. But since these ends were compassed with insuperable difficulty, they determine to aim higher still, and because this end seemed within easier reach, they make a thrust at his life. It is a perilous thing to harbour an evil principle in any corner of the heart. Like a tiny leak in a mill-dam, it will steadily increase: the trickling stream will carve for itself a larger and a larger channel, until every barrier at last gives way, and devastation on a large scale is the result. “Keep thine heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.” Envy, when developed to maturity, becomes red-handed murder.D.
Dan 6:10-13
Piety in perilous circumstances.
Daniel was at this time advanced in years. His principles, good at the first, had grown in strength and mutual support. At his age ha was not to be surprised by alarm nor driven into rashness. His character had been moulded into heavenly shape under the rough handling of oppression and persecution, and now every fibre of his moral nature had toughness and tenacity. He was manly because he was eminently devout.
I. TRUE PIETY FINDS ITS CHIEF EXPRESSION IN PRAYER. Piety shows itself in many acts, some of which, though useful, are accidental; one, however, is essential, viz. prayer. If there be no outgoing of desire from the soul Godwards, there is no real piety; if there be prayer, vocal or silent, there is piety. Pious men, when placed in perilous circumstances on account of their faith, may suspend (sometimes must suspend) overt acts of public worship; they may never relinquish prayer A beggar asking alms, a child thanking its parent, a subject honouring his monarch,these are earthly acts parallel to prayer. When first the gospel found its way into the hearts of the Malagasy, they did not style themselves Christiansthey simply styled themselves the praying people. Prayer is the distinctive mark and badge of piety. What colour is to the rainbow, what saltness is to the sea, what roundness is to the circle,such prayer is to piety. It is its essential element. It is the breath of spiritual life.
II. TRUE PIETY HAS RESPECT TO MINUTE PRECEPTS. For Daniel to pray was the first principle of his religion. To pray three times a day, to pray with his window open, to pray with his face toward Jerusalem,these things were non-essentials. Nevertheless, there was a fitness and a propriety in these minuter acts. If not positive commands from God, they were indications of God’s pleasure. Daniel had found them helpful to his spirit’s health. Such habits of piety had been sanctioned by the most eminent saints who had gone before him. David had ascribed his elevation and his prosperity to the favour of God, and David had been accustomed to pray three times a day. The temple in Jerusalem had contained the only visible symbol of the Divine Presence on earth. Thither the longing heart of every pious Jew turned. On what ground should these pious habits be abandoned? It would not conciliate the unreasonable hostility of Daniel’s detractors. The king’s decree was not directed against these minor forms, but against prayer itself. Amidst so many unfriendly influences, it is wise to secure every vantage-ground for piety.
III. TRUE PIETY IS SELF–CONSISTENT. When the ridiculous decree of the king was promulgated, Daniel wisely resolved not to alter his course by a single point. He will steer his bark straight for the port of heaven, come what may. To a self-willed man, the temptation would be strong to resist the imperious interference of the king, and to pray more frequently and more prominently than before. To a timid man the inducement would be to close his chamber-window, and clandestinely do that which the new law disallowed. But Daniel leant neither to temerity nor to timidity. He maintained an upright and straightforward demeanour. Every habit of his life had been formed under the guidance of wisdom and discretion, and terror shall not rob him of advantages which experience has given. His loyalty to God is an obligation earlier, stronger, deeper, than loyalty to an earthly king. As God bad been a true and trusty Friend for seventy years and more, it would be base ingratitude to neglect him now.
IV. TRUE PIETY ACTS WITHOUT REGARD TO MAN‘S JUDGMENT. In every circumstance of life, God’s honour being first secured, the pious man will find a delight in serving his fellow-men. But to attempt to appease malice by abandoning honest principle, would be, in very deed, to “cast pearls before swine,” Full well Daniel knew that his enemies were watching his every step, yet would he not submit to the slightest compromise or concealment. These princes and presidents degraded themselves into spies and informers. They watched, as with wolves’ eyes, the open lattice of this man of God. Their organs of bearing were made sensitively alive by keen suspicion. As the fowler watches for his prey in the net which he has spread, so these inhuman spies watched for the successful issue of their plot. In breathless haste they press into the council-chamber of the king, and divulge what they have heard and seen. They employ every stratagem that can arouse his anger and enflame his wrath. They meanly point to Daniel’s foreign origin. They knavely describe his deed as treason against the king. “This fellow,” urged they, “doth not regard thee, O king. He tramples on thy authority, and treats as a dead letter thy royal edict.” Not a stone was left unturned by which they might injure the innocent man. Nevertheless, Daniel maintained a dignified and peaceful demeanour. To be right was with him a higher honour than to be respected. He was no stoic. He had all the better feelings of a man. He entertained the good opinion of his fellows at its true value. He would be delighted to enjoy that good opinion if he could have, at the same time, the approbation of his God. But the latter was paramount, transcendent, priceless. And if, as the result of his loyalty to God, men maligned and hated him, much as he lamented the fact, he was content to face the consequence. It is, after all, comparatively a little thing to be approved or reprobated by man’s judgment. “He that judgeth us is the Lord.”D.
Dan 6:14-18
One thoughtless act brings much sorrow.
King Darius was free from many bad qualities which have stained the reputation of other monarchs. He had more gentleness and kindnesshad more regard for the interests of othersthan most Oriental kings. Yet he had grave faults also. He was too fond of ease. He was too ready to allow others to take the responsibility which of right belonged to him. To share the responsibilities of government with competent statesmen is an advantage to all; but his readiness to sign decrees without weighing their significance and design is a grave dereliction. The foibles which in a private person escape an adverse judgment may in a king be ruinous to the nation.
I. A THOUGHTLESS ACT REVEALS THE INTERNAL WEAKNESS OF CHARACTER. King Darius, having discovered the practical outcome of the rash edict, was “sore displeased with himself.” This feeling is commendable. He does not blame the cunning, the envy, the malice of others, so much as the easy thoughtlessness of himself. Others may be more blameworthy accomplices than ourselves in an evil transaction; but if any blame attach to ourselves, it is wiser first to discover and remove the mote in our own eye, before we touch the beam in another’s eye. An hour’s serious reflection, at the right time, would have prevented this Oriental king much anguish and remorse. It was an alleviation of his inward grief that he had not intended to do Daniel harm; yet, in effect, his thoughtlessness had produced as much suffering on others as if he had been instigated by feelings of bitterest malice. He ought to have given the edict mature consideration before he gave to it the authority of his great name. He ought to have inquired into its purpose, its meaning, its probable effects on society. The very haste of the councillors ought to have awakened his vigilance. Too easily his supple will yielded to others’ inclination. Too easily he swallowed the bait of human adulation. Truly saith our poet
“Evil is wrought by want of thought,
As well as want of heart.”
II. A THOUGHTLESS ACT GIVES SCOPE TO WICKED MEN TO EXECUTE THEIR PLOTS. Want of vigilance upon our part gives an advantage to our enemies, which they seize upon with avidity. We might often nip iniquity in the bud, if we were only on the alert against the secret machinations of the tempter. We encourage wicked men in their base intrigues, if only inadvertently we smooth the way for their success. We are counselled by a high authority to be “wise as serpents.” Intelligence has been given to us for this selfsame purpose, and it is a sin to allow any faculty of mind to be lulled into needless sleep. Darius had both admiration and personal regaled for Daniel; but this very esteem and preference of the king brought with it elements of danger to the prophet. Hence the affection of the king ought to have been thoughtful, inventive, watchful. The mean-souled officials had prepared the axe, and unwittingly the king gave them the handle by which the better to use it. For want of wariness, we may lend sheep’s clothing to human wolves.
III. A THOUGHTLESS ACT OFTEN LEADS TO SAD AND IRREPARABLE RESULTS. It was a settled principle in the Persian government that a law, having once received the sign-manual of the king, could in no way be altered or repealed. This principle in the main was beneficent and useful. In a period when communication between the palace and the remote provinces was difficult and tardy, it was a great advantage to the people to know that a law, once enacted, was fixed and irreversible. But the knowledge of this first principle ought to have made Darius all the more cautious and wary in affixing the seal of authority to any new decree. He was master of that simple act; but, having performed it, he was no longer master of its consequences. It would have imperilled his reputation, his influence, perhaps his government itself, if he should have ventured to rescind it. Yet no sooner was the effect of his rash deed discovered than remorse seized his mind. Conscience lashed him for his folly. His appetite departs. The desire for enjoyment ceases. Yea, the very capacity for enjoyment is suspended. Sleep forsakes his bed. His pillow is sown with sharpest thorns. No rest can the king find for body or for mind, because an innocent life, a noble life, is jeopardized through his rash deed. His mind roams over a variety of devices by which, if possible, he can yet protect Daniel from the ferocity of human wolves. But the king himself is powerlessas powerless as the meanest peasantin this matter. He had, not long since, the power to deft, rid any and every subject, but he has thoughtlessly allowed the power to depart. It is in other hands now, and cannot be recalled. Opportunity has fled. The king is a prisoner in the hands of evil workers, and is compelled by them to do a disgraceful deedto sign the death-warrant of his best friend. Nothing is left to him but his tears. Oh the hitter fruits of rashness!D.
Dan 6:19-28
The tables turned.
If human law and human authority are impotent to save an innocent man from death, the unseen but supreme Monarch will appear upon the scene, and will vindicate the cause of injured innocence. The calculations of human sagacity often prove false. Otto factor is omitted, which entirely vitiates the result. Just as the ruffian is about to seize his prize, a judicial hand is laid upon him, and completely defeats his project. The victor is vanquished; the biter bitten.
I. WE HAVE PRESENTED TO US HERE NOBLE ACTIVITY IN THE PLACE OF INDOLENT EASE. The craft of these base politicians was too short-sighted. Within reach of success, they were doomed to ignominious failure. Fortunately for the interests of justice, the king awoke to the deceit that was practised on him. At once he shook off his lethargy, applied such mental energy as he had to the business of the state, and searched in every direction for an expedient to save Daniel. Now that the king has discovered the treacherous design of his princes, all his wits are summoned to meet craft by craft. No effort shall be left untried by which his trusty and noble servant may be saved. He will no longer be a pliant tool in the hands of others, but a master of his own destinies. The hour was critical for Babylon, and Darius rose to the high demands of the occasion. King he will be yet.
II. THE GUILTY PUNISHED IN THE PLACE OF THE INNOCENT. Darius perceived that it would be perilous to abrogate, in unseemly haste, an edict so lately made. It would weaken the force of all imperial laws. It would loosen the bands of loyalty. It would arouse the sleepless hostility of his captains and princes. He had heard strange reports of the power of Daniel’s God to save in times of danger. He believes that the same God will rescue now. The penalty which Daniel had incurred was that he should be cast into the den of lions. The edict did not say that he should be, left there to die. The king’s decree would have been fulfilled if Daniel had spent an hour or less amid the caged beasts. All through that dismal night the king had taken counsel of himself. Desiring, on this occasion at least, to do for Daniel all that justice and good will could devise, we cannot doubt that his mind came under the influence of the Divine Spirit. The selfsame God who, through that long night, was giving Daniel courage to control and subdue the lions’ rage was also conveying wisdom to King Darius. At earliest dawn the king goes in person to the den, and finds faith in God honoured, human malice frustrated. The king’s edict had been observed to the letter. But there was an authority, appertaining to the king, beyond what was embodied in law. He held in his hand the lives of all his subjects. It is clear as noonday that these envious statesmen had basely deceived the king. Under cover of bringing him honour, they thought only of glutting their own malice, and robbing the state of its best servant. It was nothing less than a murderous conspiracy. They were as guilty of murder as if Daniel had died. Justice plainly demanded that summary retribution should follow; and at once these crafty lords were consigned to the death they had prepared for Daniel. Every man shall receive the due reward of his deeds.
III. GOD MAGNIFIED INSTEAD OF BEING DISCREDITED. Profane men thought to use God only as a tool in order to gain their nefarious end. If God was defrauded of his daily tribute of praise, what cared they? If humble souls were deprived of guidance and pardon and heaven, what heeded they, so long as they could lay murderous hands on Daniel? But will men rob God with impunity? Be well assured that God can defend his own! The opposition of vain men shall only advance his cause. The attempt to gag the mouth of prayer shall make even kings vocal in God’s praise. When pompous statesmen league themselves against him, “he that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh.” The proposal was that all prayer should cease for the space of thirty days. The effect was that Jehovah was proclaimed as the True and Mighty all through the Persian empire; and a wider effect has been that God has been more honoured and trusted all the world over. “His Name shall endure for ever;” “To him all flesh shall come.”
IV. THE ELEVATION OF THE MAN WHOM MALICE SOUGHT TO DEPRESS. These worldly wise statesmen felt that Daniel was a superior man to themselves. They could not expect promotion so long as they had to compete with him. Hence they resolved that what they could not gain by fair means they would gain by foul means. But they reckoned without their host. It came to pass that they were degraded, and that Daniel was advanced. True merit will, sooner or later, find its fitting level! Now that these grasping placemen are removed from the empire, there is all the more room for Danielthe more need for an able and trusty councillor. Step by step he rises in favour and in influence. His increasing power brings advantage to the captive tribes of Israel. The sunshine of his prosperity lends brightness to their fallen fortunes. They, too, begin to lift up the head. This event becomes another step in the way of Israel’s restoration. And Daniel rises to the enjoyment of a reputation which is world-wide and immortal. “Me shines as the brightness of the firmament, and as the stars for ever and ever.”D.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
Dan 6:1. It pleased Darius That is, Cyaxares, whose father is called Assuerus, in the book of Tobit, Tob 14:15 as he is also by Daniel, chap. Dan 9:1 meaning in both places Astyages, or the king of Media, who concurred with the Assyrian monarch in the destruction of Nineveh. Herodotus and Xenophon make mention of an ancient gold coin called or Daric, as is presumed by many writers, from this king; from the first Darius, according to Suidas, or one prior to Hystaspes. This coin seems to have been called by the like name after the captivity in Ezr 2:69 and 1Ch 29:7 in the original. Sir Isaac Newton says he had seen one of them, and that it was stamped on one side with the effigies of an archer crowned with a spiked crown, with a bow in his left, and an arrow in his right hand, and clothed with a long robe, that it weighed two attic drams, and was of the value of the attic stater. Chron. of Ant. Kingd. p. 319.
The war with the Chaldeans, which ended in the destruction of Babylon, seems to have commenced originally on the part of the Medes, over whom the Babylonian queen Nitocris, according to Herodotus, had kept a jealous and watchful eye. Jeremiah, Jer 51:11; Jer 51:28., mentions the kings of the Medes only as raised up against Babylon, and so Isa 13:17, but elsewhere he joins the Elamites with them; and Thucydides generally calls the Persians Medes only. However, when Babylon was taken and subdued by the united powers of Media and Persia, Cyrus was probably induced to set over it this king of the Medes, in order to make the union of the two nations more easy, and to prepare matters better for the full establishment of the Persian empire. Cyaxares, as is generally agreed, reigned not more than two years; and during that term being only a sort of viceroy, or at least dependent upon Cyrus, the whole period of nine years is ascribed by Ptolemy to Cyrus, and no notice taken of Darius at all.
An hundred and twenty princes According to the number of provinces which were subject to the Medo-Persian empire. These were afterwards enlarged to an hundred and twenty-seven, by the victories of Cambyses and Darius Hystaspis. See Est 1:1. Darius divides the kingdom, and orders that an account of the whole should be rendered to the three principal officers, to whom he gives the superintendance over the rest. Darius preserved to Daniel the rank and employment which Belshazzar gave him a little before his death. Several writers have thought, that after Darius had conquered Babylon he returned to Media, and took Daniel with him; and that it was there that the establishments here spoken of were made. But, if this was not done at Babylon, it is much more likely to have been done at Shushan than in Media. See chap. Dan 8:2 and Calmet.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
6. The deliverance of Daniel from the lions den
Dan 6:1-281 [English Bible, Dan 5:31 to Dan 6:28]
31Darius the Median took [received] the kingdom, being about three score and two years old [as a son of sixty and two years].
1It pleased [seemed good before] Darius to set over the kingdom a hundred and twenty princes [satraps], which should be over the whole [in all the] kingdom; 2and over2 these [them], three presidents, of whom Daniel was first [one]; that the [these] princes might give accounts [the reasons] unto them, and the king should have no damage [not be damaged].
3Then this Daniel was preferred [made eminent] above the presidents and princes, because an excellent spirit was in him; and the king thought to set him over the whole realm [all the kingdom]. 4Then the presidents and princes sought [were seeking] to find occasion against [cause as to] Daniel concerning [from the side of] the kingdom; but [and] they could find none occasion nor fault [corrupt thing]; forasmuch as he was faithful, neither was there any error [wrong] or fault [corrupt thing] found in him.
5Then said these men, [That] We shall not find any occasion against [cause as to] this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning [in] the law or his God. 6Then those presidents and princes assembled [crowded] together to [upon] the king, and said thus unto him, King Darius, live for ever. 7All the presidents of the kingdom, the governors, and the princes, the counsellors, and the captains [pashas], have consulted together to establish a royal [or, for the king to establish a] statute [an established act of the king], and to make a firm decree [confirm an interdict], that whosoever [any one that] shall ask a petition of [an asking from] any god or man for [till] thirty days, save of [except from] thee, O king, he shall be cast into the den of [the] lions. 8Now, O king, [mayest thou] establish the decree [interdict], and sign the writing, that it be not changed [change not], according to [like] the law of the Medes [Media] and Persians [Persia], 9which altereth not [will not pass away]. Wherefore [Therefore the] king Darius signed the writing and the decree [interdict].
10Now when Daniel [And Daniel, as soon as he] knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; and, his [its] windows being [were] open in his [its upper] chamber toward [in front of] Jerusalem, [and] he3 kneeled upon his knees three times a day [in the day], and prayed [was praying], and gave thanks [thanking] before his God, as he did aforetime [because he was doing so from before that time]. 11Then these men assembled [crowded in], and found Daniel praying [asking] and making supplication before his God.
12Then they came near, and spake before the king concerning [upon] the kings decree [interdict]; Hast thou not signed a decree [an interdict], that every [any] man that shall ask a petition of [from] any god or man within [till] thirty days, save of [except from] thee, O king, shall be cast into the den of [the] lions? The king answered and said, The thing is true [word is firm] according to [like] the law of the Medes [Media] and Persians [Persia], which altereth not [will not pass away]. 13Then answered they, and said before the king, That4 Daniel, which is of [from] the captivity of the children of Judah, regardeth not [has not put attention upon] thee, O king, nor [and] the decree [interdict] that thou hast signed, but [and] maketh his petition [is asking his asking] three times a day [in the day]. 14Then the king, when he heard these words [this word (thing)], was sore displeased with [it greatly offended upon] him-self, and [he] set his heart on Daniel to deliver him; and he laboured [was exerting himself] till the going down of the sun to deliver [rescue] him.
15Then these men assembled [crowded] unto [upon] the king, and said unto the king, Know, O king, that the law of the Medes and Persians is [it is a law to Media and Persia], that no decree nor statute [interdict and established act] which the king establisheth [shall establish] may be changed [change]. 16Then the king commanded [said], and they brought Daniel, and cast him into the den of [the] lions. Now the king spake and said unto Daniel, Thy God, whom thou3 servest continually [art serving in continuity], he3 will [may he] deliver thee. 17And a stone was brought, and laid upon the mouth of the den; and the king sealed it with his own signet, and with the signet of his lords, that the purpose [(will) matter] might not be changed [change] concerning [in respect to] Daniel.
18Then the king went to his palace, and passed [lodged] the night fasting: neither were instruments of music brought [and concubines he did not bring] before him, and his sleep went from [fled upon] him. 19Then the king arose very early in the morning [in the dawn would rise in the early light], and went in haste unto the den of [the] lions. 20And when he came [near] to the den, he cried with a lamentable [pained] voice unto Daniel: and the king spake and said to Daniel, O Daniel, servant of the living God, is thy God, whom thou3 servest continually [art serving in continuity], able5 to deliver thee from the 21lions? Then said [talked] Daniel unto [with] the king, O king, live for eDaniel 6:22My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions mouths, that [and] they have not hurt me: forasmuch as before him innocency was found in [to] me; and also before thee, O king, have I done no hurt.
23Then was the king exceeding glad [it greatly rejoiced] for him [upon himself], and commanded [said] that they should take Daniel up out of the den. So [And] Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no manner of hurt was found upon [in] him, because he believed in his God.
24And the king commanded [said], and they brought those men which [who] had accused6 Daniel, and they cast them into the den of [the] lions, them, their children, and their wives; and the lions had the mastery of them, and brake all their bones in pieces or ever [ere] they came at the bottom of the den.7
25Then [the] king Darius wrote unto all people, nations, and languages,8 that 26dwell in all the earth; Peace be multiplied unto you.9 I make10 a decree, That in every dominion of my kingdom men tremble and fear11 before the God of Daniel; for he is the living God, and steadfast for ever, and his kingdom that 27which shall not be destroyed, and his dominion shall be even unto the end. He delivereth [delivering] and rescueth [rescuing], and he worketh [working] signs and wonders in heaven [the heavens] and in [the] earth, who hath delivered Daniel from the power of the lions.
28So [And] this Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius, and in the reign of Cyrus the Persian.
EXEGETICAL REMARKS
Dan 6:1 [Dan 5:31]. Transitional introductory observations. And Darius the Median took the kingdom, etc. The copula before serves, indeed, to connect the present section closely with the preceding one, and indicates that its subject is more intimately related to the foregoing, than is the case in chapters 3, 4, and 5, which begin without any copulative particle whatever. The however, does not compel the assumption that chapters 5. and 6. were properly a unit in their plan and the time of their composition (Hitzig, Kranichfeld; for (1) chap. 2, although forming a decidedly independent whole, likewise begins with the copula, as do also numerous sections in the historical and prophetical portions of the Old Testament, whose subjects are independent of what precedes them. (2) Kranichfelds opinion (p. 210) that chap. 5. ought to conclude with a theocratic panegyrical closing sentence similar to Dan 6:27-28, if it were to rank as an independent and complete section in itself, is apparently confirmed, indeed, by the closing verses of chaps, 2, 3, and 4, but is decidedly opposed by chap. 1, which has no such doxology at the close. (3; Chapters 5 and 6 are distinguished from each other by several unmistakable differences in the mode of expression and representation, which indicate the composition of these sections at different times. Notice especially the character of the descriptions in chap. 6, which are more circumstantial and full of repetitions than those in chap 6. (cf. Dan 6:2-4 with Dan 6:23; Dan 6:7 with Dan 6:12; Dan 6:12 with Dan 6:16; Dan 6:16 with Daniel 6:7, 29, etc.). (4) The transactions recorded in the two sections are separated by an interval of at least twenty-two years (cf. supra, on Dan 5:30) since the events of chap. 5. transpired under the fourth reign before the close of the Chaldan dynasty, while chap. 6. falls in the reign of Darius the Mede,which covered about two years and a halfand probably not in its opening period (see Dan 6:15; Dan 6:17); and chap. 5. creates the impression that it was composed immediately after the events which it records transpired, and that, like all the narratives in the historical part of the book, it originated while they were still fresh in the recollection of the writer (cf. In-trod., 4, note 2). The connection of the two sections by means of a copulative , despite the difference in the time of their composition, is probably owing to the circumstance that at the close of chap v. only the beginning of the fulfilment of the oracle addressed to Belshazzar had been noticed, while the principal fact, which concludes the fulfilment, is reserved for the narrative in the present section; cf. on Dan 5:30.For the view that Darius the Mede can only designate Cyaxares, the son of Astyages and father-in-law of Cyrus, see In-trod., 8, note 4. Perhaps the Sept. also referred to this Cyaxares, when it translated this passage ; by they may have intended Astyages, the father of Darius Medus, and by the predicate ., which they applied to Darius, they may have attempted to repeat the of the second half of the verse (cf. Michaelis, Oriental. Bibl., iv. 20). Despite the marked ignorance of history which the Alexandrians occasionally reveal, they can hardly be presumed to have been guilty of the gross anachronism of confounding the Median Darius with Darius Nothus, the son of Artax-erxes 1. Longimanus (against Hvernick).Ebrard (Die Offenbarung Johannis [in Olshausens Bibl. Kommentar], p. 55 et seq., and in a review of Fullers Prophet Daniel in the Gters-lohe Allg. literar. Anzeiger, October, 1868, p. 267), attempts, in harmony with his assumption that Belshazzar was identical with Laborasoarchad, to identify Darius the Mede with Nabonidus, whom the conspirators who slew Labora-soarchad elevated to the throne (similarly Syncellus, Scaliger, Petavius and Buddeus). In this way he certainly succeeds in removing every difference between the time of chap. 5 30 and 6:1; but he neglects to notice (1) that Laborasoarchad was a grandson of Nebuchadnezzar, instead of being his son, as chap Dan 5:11 et seq. requires; (2) that Nabonidus, according to the express statement of Berosus, was not of Median, but of Babylonian descent, although not of royal blood; (3) that according to Dan 6:9; Dan 6:13; Dan 6:16 (the laws of the Medes and Persians) the administration of the king in question is characterized, in the plainest manner, as modelled and organized after the Medo-Persian code, rather than the Babylonian; (4) that the system of espionage and denunciation (Dan 6:12; Dan 6:14; Dan 6:16), the barbarous custom of executing the families of criminals (Dan 6:25) together with the culprit, and also the aristocratic constitutional procedure connected with the promulgation of the prohibition and with the sealing of the stone (Dan 6:8; Dan 6:18), all likewise refer to specifically Medo-Persian arrangements, such as could not yet have been introduced under Nabonidus. These arguments will also hold good against A. Scheuchzer, of Zurich, who, without reference to Ebrard, and to some extent basing his views on different grounds, has recently likewise attempted to identify Nabonidus with Darius the Mede (Assyrische Forschungen, in Heiden-heims Vierteljahrsschrift fr engl.-theolog. For-schung, vol. 4., No. 1, p. 17 et seq.).[The addition of (Kethib) forms on the one hand a contrast to the expression, the king of the Chaldans (Dan 5:30), and on the other hand it points forward to , Daniel 6:29 (Dan 6:28); it, however, furnishes no proof that Daniel distinguished the Median kingdom from the Persian; for the kingdom is not called a Median kingdom, but it is only said of Darius that he was of Median descent, and, Daniel 6:29 (Dan 6:28), that Cyrus the Persian succeeded him. In , he received the kingdom, it is indicated that Darius did not conquer it, but received it from the conqueror (Keil).]Being about threescore and two years old. This precise and concrete designation of his age was hardly designed to note that he had overthrown the Chaldn empire after attaining to old age and when he was no longer competent to the personal conduct of warlike operations (Kranichfeld); for such a purpose is not expressed with sufficient clearness, and moreover, the implied reference to the weakness and defenceless condition of the declining Babylonian empire would involve a historical inaccuracy Which cannot well be charged against the author. The real motive that led him to mention the age of Darius can only consist in the design to refer to the considerably later time of the taking of Babylon, in its relation to the events that had just been described (cf. supra, on Dan 5:30).12
Dan 6:2-3 [1, 2]. The new constitution of the empire under Darius, and the position assigned to Daniel. It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom a hundred and twenty princes. The Sept. increases this number to 127, probably with a reference to Est 1:1. Josephus Ant. x. 13 multiplies it by three ( perhaps because he believed each of the three chief prfects to have been placed over 120 satraps, or because he believed himself obliged to make the number of satrapies equal to that of the days in the year. The number 120 is to be retained, in opposition to both these uncritical attempts to enlarge it, although no other authorities mention so large a number of satrapies or provinces in the Medo-Persian empire at the time of its first organization under Darius-Cyaxares and Cyrus, and although according to both Herodotus and Xenophon their number seems to have been considerably smaller at that period. The former of these authors mentions no definite organization of satrapies by Cyrus whatever, and remarks of Darius Hystaspis that he founded in all only twenty of such provinces for the whole empire (iii. 89); the latter notices satraps under Cyrus as well, but mentions only nine, eight of whom were appointed for Asia Minor and one for Arabiafrom which it might be concluded that the aggregate number of such officials did not much exceed twenty, and perhaps, did not even reach that number (Cyrop. vii. 4, 2; viii. 6). The statements of these Greek historians do not, however, compel us to doubt the accuracy of Daniels report, or to reduce the number from 120 to 20; for various indications lead to the conclusion that the number and boundaries of the satrapies varied exceedingly in different periods of the Persian empire. The three lists of Persian provinces, for instance, which are found among the inscriptions of Darius (at Persepolis, at Behistun, and at Nakshi Rustam) enumerate on the whole thirty-three satrapies or provinces, without permitting us to regard the number as exhaustively complete. The opinion that such changes among the satrapies actually occurred is further supported by Ezr 8:36, where several satraps beyond the Euphrates are mentioned as holding office under Artaxerxes, while Herodotus, iii. 91, knew of but one; and also by Est 1:1, where the whole number of the Persian satrapies is fixed at 127, etc. Hence, it must probably be assumed that at different times the arrangement of provinces varied in the Persian empire, and that a subdivision of the realm into numerous smaller sections (whose number, 120, may have been symbolically significant, and relating to astronomical conditions) existed already under Darius-Medus and Cyrus, but in such a manner that in addition a reckoning by larger, and consequently less numerous provinces, was customary. The division into 120 smaller satrapies may have descended to the Medo-Persians from the Chaldo-Babylonian world-kingdom, in which, according to Dan 3:2; Dan 3:27, the title of satrap had long been known, and on account of its almost sacred astronomical importance, they may have gladly admitted it into the constitution of their realm. The enumeration by larger and less numerous (2030) satrapies may have been chiefly in use in the official language of the court and the arts in the kingdom of the Achmenid, as being a national Medo-Persian institution, and for that reason may have been principally or exclusively observed by the Greeks. The Biblical enumeration, having a Babylonian origin, may therefore be properly designated as the esoteric or hieratic, and the ancient Aryan division, supported by the classics, as the exoteric or demotic. Nor is it a questionable feature that on this explanation the title kshatrapa (shitrapaiti, achashdarpan) was applied interchangeably to the administrators of both larger and smaller divisions; since this harmonizes well with the fluctuations of later Hellenistic writers in rendering the word and especially with the indecision of the Sept. On this question, and in relation to the origin and significance of the title of satrap, cf. the exeg. Remarks on Dan 3:2
Dan 6:3 [21]. And over these three presidents, of whom Daniel was first; rather, was one. [The following verse, however, shows that he was the principal one]. The (in the Targ. equivalent to arrangers, overseers) were certainly chief -prfects, princes, ministers, whether the is regarded as related to , i.e., as derived, by means of the Pers. particle of derivation , from the Zend sara (Gr. kpa, Pers. ser), head, or as related to the Sanscr. arana, protector, or also to traka, steersman (the former according to Gesenius, the latter, to Hitzig). The dignity of these Sarekin was doubtless identical with that of the Taltan or triumvirs, who are mentioned in the preceding chapter (Daniel 6:7, 16, 29) as the superior princes of the realm, or heads of the government under Belshazzar. Accordingly, like the 120 satraps, they were a class of dignitaries in the Medo-Persian kingdom, whose office was modelled after the Babylonian precedent, but was discontinued at a later period, or perhaps, was developed into the institution of the seven counsellors of the Persian kings (corresponding to the seven Amshaspandscf. Est 1:14; Ezr 7:14; Herod. iii. 31). Daniel owed his elevation to this rank to the circumstance that he had already been raised to the dignity of a triumvir by Belshazzar, and had probably remained in that office until the overthrow of the Chaldan kingdom; as also Nebuchadnezzar, according to Dan 2:48-49, had already conferred on him a position of distinguished political and priestly power and eminence.That the princes (satraps) might give accounts- to them, and the king should have no damage, i.e., not suffer loss in his revenues (cf. Ezr 4:13; Ezr 4:15, and Est 7:4). The satraps are thus designated more particularly as officers of finance, which doubtless constituted one of their chief functions; cf. Herod. iii. 89 et seq.
Dan 6:4-5 [3, 4]. The ill-will of the other grand officials of the realm against Daniel. Then this Daniel was preferred above (showed himself superior to) the presidents, etc. , distinguished himself,-outshone them. The demonstrative , this, which is connected with the name of Daniel only here and in Dan 6:20, is conceived and spoken from the standpoint of his opponents, who look with envy on him (istum) whom God has hitherto so highly favored with His assistance. In this way the succeeding remark, because an excellent spirit-was in him (cf. chap. Dan 6:12), may likewise be explained without involving any suspicion of self-laudation on the part of the narrator.And the king I thought to set him over the whole realm, I hence, to promote him to the office of grand-vizier or prime ministerthe superior of the triumvirs or Sarekin. The Targums always employ the Ithpael for the intransitive , to be inclined, to purpose. [This intention of the king stirred up the envy of the other presidents (Keil)].
Dan 6:5 [4]. Then the presidents. sought to find occasion against Daniel concerning the kingdom, i.e., they sought to assail his official character; and only after frequent proofs that their efforts in this direction were futile, did they direct their attention to his religious standpoint (Dan 6:6 et seq.).13 But they could find none occasion nor fault. , as before, is an occasion, opportunity, pretext, upon which the accusation might be based [as atria, Joh 18:38; Mat 27:37, an occasion for impeachment(Keil)]. This more general term may be co-ordinated with , wickedness, because it is conceived concretely or objectively; and hence also with the following , fault, inadvertence (from , the probable primitive form for , cf. in the Gr. and ). Fidelity is the leading political virtue of the servant or officer of a government (cf. 1Co 4:2), in like manner as justice and mercy should be the ornament of rulers (Dan 4:24).
Dan 6:6-10 [59]. The procuring of a governmental edict pertaining to religion, directed against Daniel.14 We shall not. against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God. , the law of Daniels God, is the theocratic law, considered as the rule of his religious life, and especially of his devotional exercises. Cf. in Ezr 7:6; Ezr 7:12; Ezr 7:14; Ezr 7:21; Ezr 7:25-26; and supra, Dan 2:9.
Dan 6:7. Then these presidents (princes) and princes (satraps) assembled together to the king; rather (as marg), ran in stormy haste. These princes and satraps (cf. these men, Dan 6:6 [5]) were not, of course, all of them, without exception, but only those who envied and sought to calumniate Daniel, since only such are here concerned; cf. Dan 6:25 [24]. The idea that all the satraps participated is the more improbable, in view of the fact that the possible presnce of all in the metropolis is nowhere indicated (not even in Dan 6:8 [7]).On , to rush anywhere in stormy haste, to rush anywhere frequently [rather, tumultuously] (Luther, came often), cf. the German jemanden die Thre strmen (to storm somebodys door); see infra, Dan 6:12 [11] and 16 [15].
Dan 6:8. All the presidents (princes) of the kingdom, the governors, and the princes (satraps), the counsellors, and the captains (prefects) have consulted together; rather, have considered it advisable. seems here to be employed in a more extended sense than heretofore (Dan 6:3 [2], 5 [4], and 7 [6]), where it designates the chief-prfects who were placed over the satraps;15 for the four classes of officials which followthe same as in Dan 3:27, but in a different orderare evidently intended to specialize the prefixed general idea of princes or prfects (thus Chr. B. Michaelis correctly, against Hitzig and others, who in this place also regard the Sarekin as the chief prfects who were Daniels colleagues). In like manner the term Chaldans was found to be employed above, at one time to designate a special class of wise men, and at another to denote the whole order of magians (see on Dan 2:2).16 In relation to , to determine or agree among themselves, compare the term, , a counsellor, consiliarius, as designating one of the principal officers of the Persian king, Ezr 7:14-15.To establish a royal statute; rather, that the king should establish a statute. In view of the accentuation, is not to be construed with as a genitive (to establish a royal statute, etc.), but must be regarded as the subject of the Inf. so that the object is placed between the infinitive and its noun, as in Isa 5:24; Isa 19:8; Isa 20:1 (thus correctly Rosenmller, Hitzig, Kranichfeld, [Keil], etc., against Theodotion, Vulgate, Luther, Bertholdt, and a majority of moderns).17 And make a firm interdict (marg.). The which the king was to establish, is at the same time an . interdict; in the parallelism of the address it is at first designated generally as a statute, and afterwards more especially as an interdict. On , to bind, in the sense of to prohibit, see Num 30:10, and also the N.-T. as the opposite of Mat 16:19; Mat 18:18.That whosoever shall ask a petition. for thirty days; i.e., during the thirty days next ensuing, from that time until the expiration of thirty days. Literally, unto thirty days. This number, the triplicate of the ten days in Dan 1:12-15, is a round number, corresponding to the duration of a month, and employed otherwise also as a general period, during which an interdict was imposed on persons; e.g., by the vows of Nazarites, Act 21:26; cf. Tract. Nasir, i. 3; Joseph., de B. Jud., ii. 15,1.The command (or interdict) to pray18 during one month only to the king was in this instance specially aimed at Daniel, the pious worshipper of Jehovah, for the purpose of entrapping him; but it was suggested by a national religious custom of older date among the Medes, by which Divine honors were rendered to the king. Herodotus, i. 199, refers to this custom, when he remarks that Deioces had introduced the for himself and his successors, by removing his person from the observation of his subjects, in order to persuade them that he was (cf. also Xenophon, Cyrop., i. 3, 18). The existence of this custom among the Medes is further substantiated by the fact that the Persians, who were intimately related to the Medes, observed it, as did several others of the Oriental nations of antiquity (e.g., the Egyptians and Ethiopians, according to Diodor., Sicul., Dan 1:90; Dan 3:3; Dan 3:5)the former from the peculiar religious reason that they considered the king as the offspring of the gods ( ) and the image of Ormuzd, and even addressed him directly as ; cf. schylus, Pers.,157, 855; Plutarch, Themist, 27; Curtius, Dan 8:5; Dan 8:11; Isocrates, Panegyr., in Brissonius, de Persar. princ, p. 17, and generally, Hengstenberg, Authentie des Daniel, etc., p. 127 et seq.; Delitzsch, Art. Daniel in Herzogs Real-Encykl, p. 278 et seq. See the Ethico-fund. principles, etc., against the assumption of the modern pseudo-Daniel tendency-criticism, on which the edict of Darius in question is a cunningly invented prototype, and at the same time an exaggerated caricature of the course of Antiochus Epiphanes as described in 1Ma 1:41 et seq.; 2Ma 6:1 et seq.
Dan 6:9 [8]. Now, O king, establish the decree and sign the writing; rather, and record the writing, for always signifies to record, and not to sign; and moreover, the Persian edicts received their official stamp as laws from the royal seal, instead of the royal signature;19 cf. Est 3:10 et seq.; Dan 8:8.That it be not changed, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, i.e., according to that law of the united Medo-Persian realm, as is somewhat more fully described in Dan 6:16 [15], by which every official edict from the king, issued with certain formalities, should possess enduring force as law, hence, should not be changed ( , cf. Winer, Gramm., 46, 3); cf. Est 1:19; Est 8:8. Against the opinion of Von Lengerke, that the writer here was guilty of an anachronism, since the phrase the law of the Medes and Persians must have originated subsequently to the time of Cyrus, cf. supra. Hitzig also rejects this position of Von Lengerke, inasmuch as he denies, for telling reasons, the presumption on which it rests, that in that formula designates the whole body of laws of the kingdom.[Dan 6:10 (9). the king carried out the proposal. is explicative: the writing, namely, the prohibition (spoken of); for this was the chief matter, therefore alone is here mentioned, and not also (edict), Dan 6:8 (7).Keil]
Dan 6:11-12 [10, 11]. Daniels protest, by his conduct, against the royal decree.20 And, his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem; rather, but he [it21] had open windows, etc. The upper chamber, or attic, receives consideration as being more removed and less liable to be disturbed, hence as being particularly adapted to purposes of devotion; cf. 2Sa 19:1; 1Ki 17:20; Act 1:13; Act 10:9.Opened windows, , are the opposite of such as are covered with lattice-work ( , Eze 40:16) by which the view is obstructed. These open windows were required to be toward Jerusalem, because according to ancient custom the face of the worshipper must be turned towards the temple in that city; for as in Jerusalem the supplicant turned toward the sanctuary (Psa 5:8; Psa 28:2 etc.), so he turned when abroad towards the holy city (Mat 4:5) as the site of the(temple. This was the case long prior to the captivity; see 1Ki 8:33; 1Ki 8:35; 1Ki 8:38; 1Ki 8:44; 1Ki 8:48; 2Ch 6:29; 2Ch 6:34; 2Ch 6:38. The corresponding custom among the Mahommedans (Kibla) with reference to Mecca, appears thus to be the imitation of a custom developed on the primitive soil of Bible lands; and for the earliest followers of Islam Jerusalem itself was Kibla. On the other hand, the ancient Jewish and the most ancient Christian custom prohibited, on the ground of Eze 8:16-17, the turning of the face in prayer towards the east, i.e., towards the sun (cf. Clement, Strom. vii. 724; Origen, Homil. Daniel 5 : in Num.; Tertull. Apol. c. 16), while the later church, standing on the ground of Mal. 3:20; Luk 1:78 et seq., zealously recommended that supplicants and houses for prayer should face towards the east, and introduced it into general use. Cf. Bingham, Origines, 5:275 ss.He kneeled upon his knees three times a day. Kneeling is mentioned as the characteristic posture of supplicants in 1Ki 8:54; 2Ch 6:12; Ezr 9:5; Luk 22:41; Act 7:59; Act 9:40; Act 21:5; Eph 3:14; Clem. Rom. 1 Cor. 48; Hermas, Pas-tar, Vis. Dan 1:1, etc. Cf. O. A. Hubnerus, de genuflexione (Halle, 1741); Zckler, Krit. Geschichtc der Askese ( Frankf. and Erlangen, 1863), p. 350 et seq.[Daniel offered prayers not to make an outward show, for only secret spies could ob serve him when so engaged. does not mean altogether so as (Rosenmller, Von Leng., Maurer, Hitzig), but, as always, on this account that, because. Because he always did thus, so now he continues to do it(Keil).]22 The custom of praying three times in a day, which is attested for the first time in this passage, and which, according to the Talmudic tradition was first brought into general use among the Jews by the men of the great synagogue, appears to have taken shape during the Babylonian captivity as a usage observed by pious individuals among the Israelites. The fundamental general idea of this custom is already expressed in Psa 55:18; but the desire to find a regular substitute for the morning and evening sacrifices, which were now interrupted, doubtless contributed towards originating the custom, since the Jews were accustomed, from an early period, to regard prayer as in itself a sacrifice with which God is pleased (Hos 14:3; Psa 51:17; Psa 116:17, etc.), and especially since they associated it in their minds with the evening sacrifice (Psa 141:2; 1Ki 18:36 et seq.; Ezr 9:5; cf. Dan 9:21). The Parsee custom of rendering Divine honors to the three parts of the day themselves, has, of course, nothing in common with the habit of the Jews and primitive Christians (Act 3:1; Act 10:9; Act 10:30; cf. Pusey, Daniel, p. 554); nor has the custom of the Egyptian priests, who, according to Porphyry, de absnent. Dan 4:8, sang daily four hymns of praise to the sun; nor yet the three daily sacrifices and hymns of the Pythagoreans, as mentioned by Jamblichus, Vit. Pythag. c. 149 ss. Cf. generally, Zckler, 1. c. p. 329 et seq.
Dan 6:12 [11]. Then these men assembled (rushed together), and found Daniel praying and making supplication before his God. Here, as in Dan 6:7 [6], is not a single rushing together, but a frequent23 hasty gathering; the only difference is that in that passage the design was to obtain the decree from the king, while here it is to watch Daniel in order to denounce him. According to Dan 6:11, the open windows in Daniels upper chamber seem to have enabled them to execute their plan of espionage with success, either because they saw him while engaged in prayer (perhaps from a still more elevated room in the vicinity, cf. 2Sa 9:2), or because they heard him from the street. At any rate, a repeated [?] approach and observation in secret must be assumed, instead of a single surprise; hence the question, At which of his daily prayers was he surprised? is inappropriate.Concerning the thoroughly organized system of espionage and denunciation in the Medo-Persian kingdom, of which this passage affords a characteristic proof, see Max Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums, ii. 648.
Dan 6:13-15 [1214]. The denunciation. Then they came near and spake before(with) the king, etc., cf. Dan 3:8, and for what follows, Dan 3:24.The thing is true, according to the law of the Medes and Persians; rather, the word is firm, according, etc. does not affirm that the decree was published, but indicates the certain punishment of any who might transgress it.
Dan 6:14 [13]. Daniel, which is of the children of the captivity of Judah. Cf. chap. Dan 6:13, and observe that the accusers do not mention the high official station of Daniel and his intimate official relations with the king, but merely refer to his foreign birth, [in order that they may thereby bring his conduct under the suspicion of being a political act of rebellion against the royal authority. (Keil.)]
Dan 6:15 [14]. Then the king. was sore displeased. is impersonal in , like in Gen 21:12, and like below, in Dan 6:24 [23]. Literally, therefore, it reads, Then the king, when he heard the wordsorrow came on him (and similarly Dan 6:24 [23], Then joy came on him).24 And set his heart on Daniel to deliver him. , heart, is not found in the later Chaldee, but occurs in the Syriac and Arabic. Compare, however, the phrase , Targ. Pro 22:17.And he labored till the going down of the sun, etc. On the form (st. constr. plur. of , or also of the Inf. , cf- Hitzig and Kranichfeld on this passage. Instead of , he labored (cf. , Luk 13:24), the Targums have , which, however, has a different meaning from that of .
Dan 6:16-18 [1517]. The condemnation and execution. On Dan 6:16 cf. supra, on Dan 6:9 b.
Dan 6:17 [16]. Then the king commanded, and they brought Daniel, and cast him into the den of lions; rather, that they should bring Daniel and cast, etc. The construction is the same as in chap. Daniel 6:29 [but in neither this nor that passage is this rendering justified by the force of the text, . ]. According to Oriental custom, the execution in this case, as in that under Belshazzar, chap. Daniel 6:29, and in that under Nebuchadnezzar, Dan 3:19 et seq., was to follow immediately on the sentence. [This does not, however, imply that it was on the evening in which, at the ninth hour, he had prayed, as Hitzig affirms, in order that he may thereby make the whole matter improbable. (Keil). The season of prayer at which Daniel was discovered would seem to have been at noon. This will allow ample time for the preparation of the edict the same morning, and the execution the same evening. The accusers were evidently in hot haste].Thy God, whom thou servest continually, he will deliver thee rather, may thy God. deliver thee. Pilate may have solaced himself with a similar confession of his own weakness and cowardice, when he delivered the Saviour into the hands of his mortal enemies (Mat 27:24; Luk 23:25, etc.); or Herod, when he commanded to bring the head of the Baptist (Mat 14:9). Dan 6:19 [18] et seq. shows that the exclamation was by no means intended to be ironical or malicious, as those in Psa 22:9; Mat 27:43; but on the other hand, Josephus probably attributes too favorable a disposition to Darius, when he observes: , , (similarly also Jerome et al.).
Dan 6:18 [17]. And a stone was brought, and laid upon the mouth of the den. , a Hebraizing passive form of the Aphel; cf. on Dan 3:13. Hebraizing passive partic. Peal, instead of (cf. Dan 6:27 [26]).It is natural to suppose that the stone was of sufficient size to completely close the mouth of the den, and that it was at hand for that purpose, instead of assuming, with Hitzig, that it was necessary to bring it from a distance. The den itself, corresponding to the sense of (), which is thoroughly identical with that of the Heb. , must not be conceived of as a cistern or funnel-shaped pit (Hitzig); but rather as having a capacity sufficient to hold several lions and permit them to move freely about (which involves no greater difficulty than that the in the Targ Jer 41:7; Jer 41:9 should have contained the corpses of seventy slain persons; cf. also the Targ. Jer 37:16; Isa. 16:15). In brief, it may be supposed to have been an actual lions den, similar to those connected with the Roman amphitheatres, from which it probaby differed simply in having a horizontal opening in the flat or arched roof, through which the ad bestias damnati were thrown to the lions, in addition to the door at the side, by which the beasts were introduced into the den or removed from it. Its construction may therefore have been similar to that of the fiery furnace, upon the whole (see on Dan 3:6)an opinion which seems to derive additional support from the manner in which Darius was enabled to converse with Daniel while in the den, even before the stone was removed from its opening (Dan 6:21 et seq.). The two lions dens at Fez, belonging to the emperor of Morocco, which Hst describes in his Nachrichten von Fez und Marokko (pp. 77, 290) as being large rectangular and uncovered pits in the earth (whose wide opening was surrounded by a wall one and a half ells in height), were consequently constructed somewhat differently from that of the Medo-Babylonians under consideration, but are still interesting for comparison with the latter.And the king sealed it with his own signet, and with the signet of his lords. On the custom of sealing cf. Mat 27:26. The two-fold sealing, with the ring of the king and with that of his grand officers, may have been designed to secure Daniel, for whose deliverance the king still hoped (see Dan 6:17 [16], 21 [20], against any violent assault, and also against any attempt to liberate himhence, to insure a strict control of the prisoner. Cf. Jerome: Obsignavit annulo suo lapidem, quo os laci claudebatur, ne quid contra Danielem moliantur inimici. Obsignat autem et annulo optimatum suorum, ne quid suspicionis contra eos habere videretur. That the purpose might not be changed concerning Daniel; rather, that the matter, etc.; that his situation might not be unlawfully altered. here is not intention, purpose (v. Leng. etc.)25 but affair, matter; cf. the corresponding Syriac word.
Dan 6:19-23 [1822]. The king discovers the miraculous preservation of Daniel. Then the king went and passed the night fasting. is properly a substantive with adverbial significationwith fastingi.e., supperless. Luther renders it forcibly, and remained not eating.Neither were instruments of music brought before him; rather concubines. Instead of food, which is the interpretation assigned by Theodotion, the Peshito, the Vulgate, Luther, etc., the rendering of by concubines, women of the harem, is sufficiently supported by closely related terms in the Arabic; and the verb in connection with the prep. admits of no other interpretation. The bringing in of inanimate objects would have been expressed by cf. Dan 5:2 with Dan 2:24-25; Dan 4:3; Dan 5:13; Dan 5:15.And his sleep went from him; forsook him; cf. on Dan 2:1.
Dan 6:20 [19]. Then the king arose very early in the morning; with the dawn, when it became light. the dawn (= , Targ. Jon. on Isa 58:8). The hypothetical rendering of the imperf. , for which Kranichfeld contends, is unnecessary. [The future or imperfect is used instead of the perfect to place this clause in relation to the following, meaning: the king, as soon as he arose at morning dawn, went hastily by the early light (Keil).] The Septuagint is [substantially] correct: ; also Theodotion, the Peshito, etc., with the twilight, with the dawn or break of day [serves for a mere determination of the , at the morning dawn, namely, as soon as the first rays of the rising sun appeared (Keil)]; cf. , Job 24:14.And went in haste. , as in Dan 2:35, = ; cf. Luk 1:39.
Dan 6:21 [20]. And. cried with a lamentable voice unto Daniel. = ; cf. Isa 54:6 with Pro 31:6.O Daniel, servant of the living God. Darius was able to designate the God of Daniel as the living God (cf. v. 27) thus early, before his observation had convinced him of the prophets safety, for the simple reason that during the intercourse consequent on their intimate relation, Daniel had instructed him concerning the nature and power of his God as the God of all gods, and also because the pangs of conscience endured by him during the night that had just elapsed, had produced a profound conviction of the truth of the prophets testimony to Jehovah.26
Dan 6:23 [22]. My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions mouths. Cf. Dan 6:28 [27]; Act 12:7. The summary conciseness of the statement forbids any conclusion as to whether Daniel had seen the angel who wrought his miraculous deliverance, as an objective fact, or whether he merely argued from the effect to the underlying invisible cause (cf. Psa 34:8; Psa 91:11 et seq.; Mat 8:9, etc.). On the expression, to shut the lions mouths, cf. 2Ti 4:17; Heb 11:33.And also before thee, O king, have I done no hurt. Before thee, , i.e., in thine eyes, according to thy judgmenta loosely connected supplemental proof of what he has just asserted, viz., that he is innocent. In modern speech the connection might have been, even as I was likewise found innocent by thee (which was apparent to him from the kings anxious inquiries concerning his welfare).27
Dan 6:24-25 [23, 24]. The deliverance of Daniel and the punishment of his enemies. Then was the king exceeding glad (cf. on Dan 6:15) for him,28 and commanded that they should take Daniel up out of the den.29 the inf. Aphel of the root compensates for the doubling by , similarly to in Dan 6:19 [18] (cf. Dan 2:25). Cf. Dan 3:22.
Dan 6:25 [24]. And the king commanded, and they brought those men; rather, that those men should be brought. The same construction as in Dan 6:17 [16].30Those men are the same who are mentioned in Dan 6:6 [5] and 7 [6], viz.: the grand officers who were present in Babylon itself, and who had taken part in traducing Daniel. A number of them may have been in the kings train, when he commanded that the seals should be broken and the stone removed (Dan 6:24 [23]), without venturing to protest, in the presence of the angry monarch, against the violation of the seal which belonged in part to them. The others were brought from their houses by the kings command. There is consequently nothing in the passage that involves a difficulty or that contradicts Dan 6:18 [17] (against Hitzig).Which had accused Daniel. Literally, who had devoured Daniels flesh; cf. on Dan 3:8.And they cast into the den of lions, them, their children, and their wives. Upon this point even Hitzig is compelled to remark: To execute the familes of criminals together with themselves was eminently the Persian custom (Herod., III. 119; Ammian Marcel., xxiii. 6, 81); Justin, in such an instance, makes especial reference to the wives and children (x. 2); cf. further, Justin, 21:4; Jos 7:24-25. On the authority of the statements quoted from Herodotus and Justin (and also influenced by what Curtius, vi. 11, states with reference to the custom among the Macedonians), Hitzig contends that such fearfully bloody justicewhose barbarous severity our prophet seems to allude to when he mentions the children before the wiveswas only inflicted on conspirators against the king. But Ammian. (1. c.) states no such limitation; and the malicious plot of these magnates against one of the chief officials of the kingdom, as well as intimate counsellor of the king, was almost equivalent to a conspiracy directed against the royal person.And the lions had the mastery of them (or fell upon them) or ever they came at the bottom of the den. Literally, and not came they.until that, i.e., when the lions already seized them. On the incident, cf. Dan 3:22; concerning the form see Dan 2:29.
Dan 6:26-28 [2527]. The royal proclamation consequent on the miraculous deliverance of Daniel. Then king Darius wrote (commanded to write) unto all people, nations, and languages, etc.; i.e., to all the subjects of his realm, which was a world-kingdom like that of Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel 3:31.
Dan 6:27 [26]. I make a decree. Cf. Dan 3:29; Dan 4:3, where the shorter occurs instead of which is found in this place.That men tremble and fear before the God of Daniel. Cf. chap. Dan 6:19.The theocratic phraseology of the royal edict admits of the same explanation as do the similar proclamations of Nebuchadnezzar, Dan 2:47; Dan 3:28 et seq.; Dan 3:31 et seq.; Dan 4:31 et seq. It results in part from the extended intercourse of the king with Daniel, the representative of the theocratic faith of revelation; and in part from the profound influence of the experience of theim-mediate past.And his kingdom (is one) which shall not be destroyed; a forcible ellipsis, similar, for instance, to that in Dan 7:14; cf. also Dan 2:44; and on the thought, Dan 3:33; Dan 4:31.And his dominion (shall be even) unto the end; i.e., to the end of all earthly kingdoms, to the end of the world (the ), which coincides with the erection of the completed kingdom of Messiah or God; cf. Dan 7:14; Dan 7:26 et seq.
Dan 6:28 [27]. He delivereth and rescueth; rather, He is a saviour and deliverer. Cf. Dan 3:29 b., and for what follows cf. Dan 3:32; Dan 4:32.From the power of the lions: literally, out of the hand of the lions; cf. Psa 22:21, out of the hand of the dogs.
Daniel 6:29 [28]. The epilogue. So this Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius. This Daniel, as in Dan 6:4 [3]. found prosperity, prospered; similar to cnap. Dan 3:30. Ewalds reading, , which is designed to be equivalent to, he was reinstated in his office(?), is unnecessary.On the subject cf. Dan 2:48.And (also) in the reign of Cyrus the Persian. This complementary closing sentence, like that in Dan 1:21, appears to have been added a considerable time after the preceding facts were recorded, for the purpose of closing the historical part of the book as a whole. But the objection that it is clearly a bald and labored gloss in its appearance (Kranichf.), is not therefore justified. The reign of Cyrus is merely mentioned, as having been reached by Daniel, for the same reason that dictated Dan 1:21.
ethico-fundamental principles related to the history of salvation, apolo getical remarks, and homiletical suggestions
1. The similarity of the facts recorded in this section to those of the third chapter is certainly evident and undeniable; but these analogies do not warrent the disregarding of the important differences between the incidents of the two sections. These differences, on the one hand, affect the disposition and the modes of action of the persons engaged in the various transactions, in which respect the king Darius especially observes from the beginning a more cordial bearing toward the worshipper of Jehovah than does Nebuchadnezzar; and, on the other, they relate to the miracle which forms the end and climax of the entire event. The deliverance of Daniel from the lions den was a miracle differing materially in character from that of the deliverance of the three Hebrews from the fiery furnace; while the latter, as was intimated on Dan 3:22, would admit of a natural explanation. To some extent at least, this is absolutely impossible with the event recorded in this chapter, as may be seen more particularly from the fact, noticed in Dan 6:25 [24] b, that the same lions who spared Daniel during an entire night immediately seized on his accusers with a ravenous voracity in order to rend them. By this contrast between the subjection of the beasts to the prophet, and the outburst of their savage nature towards the guilty princesa contrast which evidently constitutes the fundamental characteristic of the incident before usthis miracle takes its position among that series of marvellous events in Old and New Testament history in which the life and work of isolated distinguished messengers of revelation appear, by virtue of Divine grace, to have restored the paradisaical dominion of man over nature, so that the beasts of the desert yield him a ready obedience as their rightful lord. We class here, prior to the time of Daniel, the ravens of Elijah (1Ki 17:4) and the bears of Elisha (2Ki 2:24); and in N. T. times, the sojourning of the Saviour with the beasts of the desert, immediately subsequent to his temptation (Mar 1:13), Pauls escape from injury by the viper on the island of Malta (Act 28:5; of. Mar 16:18), and perhaps several incidents of a similar character in the history of the earliest monkish saints and missionaries of the Church down to the times of Columban and Gallus, so far as any faith may be placed on the statements in the generally fancifully distorted biographies of these saints which relate to their friendly intercourse with wild beasts (cf. Montalembert, Les Moines d Occident depuis St. Benoit jusqud St. Bernard, vol. 2 and for a criticism of the often excessively credulous judgment of this author with reference to such miracles, see the review of his work in the Jahrbcher fr deutsche Theologie, 1862, No. 2).It is, however, precisely because the miraculous incident of this section belongs to the category of such facts, that it must rank as the greatest wonder recorded in the historical part of the book, as the climax in the series of mighty works by which God glorified Himself in His servants in the metropolis of the Chaldan empire, and which, forming a gradation of miracles in certain aspects, and presenting a constantly-increasing manifestation of the supernatural element in them, from Dan 1:15 to the close of this chapter, excludes, with steadily-increasing emphasis, the possibility of tracing back the events to natural causes (cf. especially on Dan 5:5).
2. So far as the general situation is similar to that described in Daniel 3 : it accords well with the conditions of the captivity, in which the aim was not, as afterwards under Antiochus Epiphanes, to extirpate the Jewish worship, but where we find merely certain very natural and intelligible displays of grudging selfishness and envy on the part of individual native officials, as against a captive foreigner who was preferred above them in official stations; while the general condition of the captives was very tolerable, as a natural result of the lax administration of government which was usual among Oriental conquerors (Kranichfeld). The assertion of the modern tendency-critics (Hitzig, p. 89 et seq.; Bleek, p. 604, etc.), that the edict of Darius which prohibited the rendering of Divine honors during one month to any but the king (Dan 6:8 [7]) was invented for the purpose of exaggerating or caricaturing the proclamation of Antiochus Epiphanes, which prohibited the Jews from observing the Divine law and their worship of Jehovah (1Ma 1:41; 2Ma 6:1-9), in order to incite them to steadfast endurance and to patient trust in God,this assertion is decidedly nugatory, since the raging fanaticism of the Syrian king, which aimed at the total destruction of the Jewish worship and nationality, had nothing in common with the far milder disposition of Darius, and since the latter was merely concerned to bring about a temporary suspension of the religious observances in vogue, rather than to definitely extirpate the current systems of religion. Nor would it have been possible for the pious Jews of the Maccaban period to recognize an edict, which amounted directly to the deifying of the king, as a proto-type of the manifesto of the Syrian king, which differed materially from it, in respect both to its language and its character. For this reason Von Lengerke, more cautious than his compeers, rejects the assumption that the edict of Dan 6:8 [7] was a conventional fiction framed on the model of that mentioned in the Maccaban books, as being too artificial and unsupported a hypothesis, and contents himself with observing that the proclamation of Darius on the religious question corresponds in general to that persecuting spirit which produced the measures of Antiochus. But it will be seen that even this is not correct, since the deportment of Darius towards Daniel, manifesting in every respect a mild, friendly, and benevolent spirit (Dan 6:14-15 et seq.; 21 et seq.), presents the sharpest contrast to the senseless rage and blood-thirsty spirit of persecution displayed by the intolerant Syrian tyrant; and, moreover, since no reason whatever can be discovered that could induce the alleged Maccaban-tendency writer to invent so weak, and in all respects so inappropriate, a counterfeit of Antiochus at the last, after having furnished in Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar far more suitable and tangible types of that despot. Nor does it appear why he should desire to conceal the person of Antiochus behind that of a jealous and scheming official under the Median king (Dan 6:4-5 et seq.).How much more simple and intelligible, in comparison with such hypercritical assumptions, does the narrative appear when its characteristic peculiarities are regarded as historical facts, such as were naturally to be expected in the scenes of a politico-religious drama that transpired on the soil of the newly-founded Medo-Persian world-kingdom! The 120 satrapies instead of the former division of the kingdom into differently constituted provinces (cf. Dan 6:2 with Dan 3:2); the exceedingly independent course of the royal counsellors and officers, without whose consent no edict could be promulgated nor the royal seal affixed (Dan 6:8 [7], 18 [17]); the temporary deifying of the king as the son and image of the supreme God (Dan 6:8 et seq.), so surprisingly in harmony with the fundamental principles of the Old-Persian state religion; the cruel procedure connected with the punishment of the offenders (Dan 6:25 [24]) which bears, in an equal degree, the stamp of specifically Persian legal usage; and finally, the repeated reference to the law of the Medes and Persians, as the original source and inviolable authority for the measures proposed and put in forceall these point, with all possible force and internal congruity, to a well-defined historical condition with which the writer was familiarly acquainted, an actual condition which was distinguished from the state existing in the Chaldo-Babylonian kingdom in a manner that corresponds fully with numerous extra-biblical testimonies, and which indicates that the experience and personal observation of the author formed the only source of his descriptions. Cf. the observations made above on the several passages.
3. The homiletical treatment of this section will vary, according as the conduct and fate of Daniel, the man of God, receive attention, or as those of the other agents, viz.: of the good-natured but weak king and of the jealous accusers, are prominently considered. In the former case, the theme for the treatment of the subject as a whole might be: We should obey God, rather than men(cf. Dan 6:5 with Dan 6:11 et seq.); or, Fidelity to God is a more precious virtue, and secures a more certain and precious reward, than fidelity to human authority; or, It is better to be the friend of God, even if the foe of the whole world. In the latter case: Who so digs a pit for others, shall fall into it himself; or, God knows how to use the plans by which men seek to destroy his faithful servants, for their deliverance and honor; or God has converted many a ruler, from being a persecutor of His church into its forwarder and zealous protector!
In connection with the former class of meditations, cf. the following extracts from older practical expositors: Jerome, (on Dan 6:11-12): Daniel, regis jussa contemnens et in Deo habens fiduciam, non orat in humili loco, sed in excelso, et fenestras aperit contra Jerusalem, ubi erat visio pacis. Orat autem secundum prceptum Dei dictaque Salomonis, qui contra templum oran-dum esse admonuit. Melancthon (on Dan 6:19 et seq.): Periculum Danielis pingit robur et violentiam hostium Christi. Sicut Daniel imbecillis objicitur leonibus, sic tota Ecclesia habet hostes validissimos, diabolum, reges, potentes, superbos, prstantes auctoritate et opibus in mundo. Liberatio Danielis est testimonium, quod Deus adsit Sanctis et servet eos suo judicio, alias corpore, alias spiritu. Starke (on Daniel 6:29 [28]): Whosoever does not permit himself to be driven by persecution and danger, either from the upright fear of God, nor, on the other hand, from his lawful obedience to earthly authorities, shall find at last that honor and glory follow upon fidelity (1Sa 24:11; 1Sa 24:21).
With the second class of themes, cf.: Melancthon (on Dan 6:5 [4]): Tales habet diabolus ministros, qui captatis occasionibus regum animos astute a tieritate avertunt, ubi summa officii et virtutis specie insidi struuntur. Ita hic bonus senex non videt quantum admittat sceleris, quod in edicto etiam Dei invocatio prohibetur. Monet igitur hoc exemplum, ut cauti sint principes in observandis talibus insidiis, ac prsertim in legibus et edictis condendis. Id. (on Dan 6:15 et seq.): Quamquam igitur peccavit Darius, tamen infirmitate lapsus est et contra furorem accusa-torum sustentat se quadam scintilla fidei, qu ostendit non ipsum, sed principes esse supplicii auctores, etiamsi ipsi non satis fortiter eos represserat. Tales infirmos sublevat Deus, ut hic apparet. Sequitur enim statim acerbissima pni-tentia regis, ac deinde tantum fidei robur, tanta animi magnitudo, ut puniat etiam accusatores. Geier (on Dan 6:21 [20]): Hoc sensu Darium ex animi sui sententia adeoque ex vera fide compel-lasse Danielis Deum, verosimile non est; sic namque omnia Persarum Medorumque improbasset et abnegasset numina. immo non vocat Deum suum, sed Danielis, neque ait se ipsum colere, sed: quem tu colis. Joh. Gerhard (Weim. Bib., on Dan 6:24 et seq.): God is able to promote and extend the true faith by means of the very persecutions and other methods by which its enemies seek to destroy it.
Footnotes:
[1]As Chap. 6 in the original begins with Dan 5:31 of the A. V., there is a difference of one in numbering the verses of this section.
[2]The form , followed by , seems like a noun in the emphatic state, and may not inaptly be rendered, as the chief above.
[3]The pronoun, being expressed, is emphatic.
[4] here= on expletive.
[5]The order of words is emphatic: Thy God. has He been able.
[6]Literally, that ate his pieces of, i. e., backbit, as in Dan 3:8
[7]The order and style of the original are very emphatic: and they did not reach to the earth of the den till that (before) the lions ruled over them, etc.
[8]The terms in the original are the same as in Dan 3:4 the nations, the peoples, and the tongues.
[9]Literally, May your peace be great.
[10]From me is made.
[11]They shall be trembling and fearing from.]
[12][Rather it may have been as a premonition of the short Interval during Dariuss rule before the full assumption of dominion by Cyrus in person at Babylon.]
[13][Such a model of excellence, so far surpassing and so uncomfortably eclipsing themselves, was keenly cutting to these corrupt officers, and aroused their bitterest hostility.Cowles.]
[14][With Satanic cunning the princes shaped this proposed law to take with the king by a bait for his low vanity, and to entrap Daniel through his known decision and firmness in the worship of his God. It was the best compliment they could pay to Daniel that they assumed so confidently that he would pray to God none the less for this monstrous law. It was the keenest reproach to their king that they should anticipate his ready assent to such a law under the impulses of his excessive vanity. Darius was a weak and vain king, else he would have asked. What can be the motive of these men in proposing such a law? Plainly the appended exception, Save of thee, O king, was so grateful to his vanity that it blinded his dull eye to the monstrous nature and possible bearings of this law.Cowles.]
[15][If we compare the list of the four official classes here mentioned with that of the great officers of state under Nebuchadnezzar, Dan 3:2, the naming of the before the (satraps, while in Dan 3:2 they are named after them) shows that the are here great officers to whom the satraps were subordinate, and that only the three could be meant to whom the satraps had to render an account. Moreover, the list of four names is divided by the copula into two classes. To the first class belong the and the satraps; to the second the , state councillors, and the , civil prfects of the provinces. Accordingly, we will scarcely err if by we understand the members of the highest council of state, by the ministers or members of the (lower) state council, and by the satraps and pechas the military and civil rulers of the provinces. This grouping of the names confirms, consequently, the general interpretation of the , for the four classes named constitute the entire chief prfecture of the kingdom. This interpretation is not made questionable by the fact that the had in the kingdom of Darius a different position from that they held in the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar; for in this respect each kingdom had its own particular arrangement, which underwent manifold changes according to the times.Keil.]
[16][The whole connection of the narrative plainly shows that the authors of the accusation deceived the king. The council of state, or chief court, to which all the satraps had to render an account, consisted of three men, of whom Daniel was one. But Daniel certainly was not called to this consultation; therefore their pretence that all presidents of the kingdom had consulted on the matter, was false. Besides, they deceived the king in this, that they concealed from him the intention of the decree, or misled him regarding it.Keil.]
[17][But this construction is extremely harsh, and, as Len -gerke remarks, opposed to the usage of in Dan 6:13. Even Rosenmller renders (apparently by inadvertence, however) decreto regio. The passages adduced by the author from Isaiah (Isa 19:8 is not correct) are not altogether in point, as the preposition there is not , but or . Had the writer intended such a construction he would naturally have used with the fut. The Masoretic interpunction, however, undeniably favors it.]
[18][The term is here not any kind of request or supplication, but prayer, as the phrase, Dan 6:14 (13), ,. directing his prayer, shows. The word does not prove the contrary, for the heathen prayed also to men (cf. Dan 2:46), and here the clause, except to the king, places together god and man, so that the king might not observe that the prohibition was specially directed against Daniel.Keil.
[19]This distinction is rather over-nice; for it was not the engrossing of the edict, surely, that the magnates desired, and this of course would not have been done by the royal hand, but his official approval and sanction, such as a signaturewhether by writing or stamping the nameonly could confer.]
[20][The satraps did not wait long for Daniels expected disregard of the kings prohibition. He continued this custom (of prayer) even after the issuing of the edict; for a discontinuance of it on account of that law would have been a denying of the faith and a sinning against God. On this his enemies had reckoned. They secretly watched him, and immediately reported his disregard of the kings command. In Dan 6:11 (10), the place where he was wont to pray is more particularly described in order that it might be shown how they could observe him.Keil
[21][ does not refer to Daniel (he had opened windows), but to , his house had open windows. If referred to Daniel, then the following would be superfluous.Keil. The same remark of course will apply to following.]
[22][Blessed man! How quietly, how calmly, how peacefully did thy heart repose on the enduring love and faith fulness of the never-failing power of thy fathers GodCowles.]
[23][The idea of frequency insisted upon by the author as residing in seems to have no good support. The sense is rather rushed forward, made their way in a body and eagerly.]
[24][The king is chagrined and ashamed of himself that he allowed himself to be caught in this snare. Now for the first time he sees the enmity and mean spirit of his officers in obtaining from him that decree, and bites his lips in shame that he could have been so beguiled and entrapped. No doubt he heartily esteemed Daniel, and probably loved him, and felt therefore the bitterest grief and shame that be should be made unwillingly the author of his destruction.Cowles. He also felt intensely anxious for his fate, and doubtless cast about in his mind some method of extricating him, and at the same time of exposing and punishing his accusers.]
[25][This thought (would have) required the Stat, emphat. , and also does not correspond with the application of a double seal.Keil.]
[26][The predicate the living God is occasioned by the preservation of life which the king regarded as possible, and probably was made known to the king in previous conversations with Daniel; cf. Psa 42:3; Psa 84:3; 1Sa 17:36, etc.Keil.]
[27][Daniel casts no severe reproach upon the king. Indeed the original rather expresses a genial and kindly feeling: Daniel talked with the king. With beautiful modesty he ascribes his deliverance to Gods own hand alone through his angel, and very properly asserts his innocence of any wrong in this matter.We may suppose Daniel to have had a sweet sense of the presence of God by his angel while spending the night in the den with these hungry lions.Cowles.]
[28][ does not refer to Daniel, but to the king himself. It denotes the reflexive sense of which is here used impersonally: gladness came over him.]
[29][By this, however, we are not to understand a being drawn up by ropes through the opening of the den from above. The bringing out was by the opened passage in the side of the den, for which purpose the stone with the seals was removed.Keil.]
[30][But the rendering proposed by the author is equally inadmissible here.]
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
Daniel is raised to preferment under the new government. He is cast into the den of lions. He is saved from danger, and his accusers destroyed.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Though there is no date as to the time when this event took place, yet from common calculation, Daniel must have become an old man; for the seventy years were nearly run out of Israel’s captivity. And therefore if Daniel had been but a mere youth at the commencement of it, he could not now have been much less, if not more, than fourscore at this time. Reader! recollect that sweet passage, Isa 46:3-4 . How often is it found in the Lord’s people!
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Dan 6:3-4
Whatever the world thinks, he who hath not much meditated upon God, the human soul, and the sum-mum bonum , may possibly make a thriving earthworm, but will most indubitably make a sorry patriot and a sorry statesman.
Berkeley.
Dan 6:4
That we have little faith is not sad, but that we have but little faithfulness. By faithfulness faith is earned. When, in the progress of a life, a man swerves, though only by an angle infinitely small, from his proper and allotted path (and this is never done quite unconsciously even at first; in fact that was his broad and scarlet sin oh, he knew of it more than he can tell), then the drama of his life turns to tragedy, and makes haste to its fifth act.
Thoreau’s Letters.
‘We have more sneakers after Ministerial favour,’ wrote Sir Walter Scott in 1826, ‘than men who love their country and who upon a liberal scale would serve their party.’
Daniel
Dan 6:5
The two points only in this history are the character of Daniel, which here came out like gold from the fire, and the mysterious dealings of God with him.
I. First then, with respect to Daniel’s character. There are three points to be especially noticed: ( a ) There is his steady walk with God. He had riches and honours and everything to make this world enjoyable; but he never turned aside from the narrow way either to the right or to the left. The eyes of all were fixed upon him; many envied and hated him. They examined his public conduct; they inquired into his private character; they sifted his words and actions; but they sought in vain for any ground of accusation. He was so steady, so upright, so conscientious, that they could find no occasion of fault in him they could not touch him except as concerning the law of his God. ( b ) Another point is Daniel’s habit of private prayer. He was in the habit of kneeling upon his knees and praying three times a day; this was the practice of holy David, as we read in the Psalms, and this was the spirit of the centurion in the Acts, who prayed to God alway. ( c ) The last point to be observed in Daniel’s character is his faith, his confidence in God. The decree appeared, forbidding all sorts of worship for thirty days on pain of death; and oh, how many professors of our generation would have held their peace; Daniel knew that the writing was signed he knew that he was watched, he knew that his life was at stake and yet he went to his home and kneeled on his knees and prayed as he did aforetime. Mark here the fruits of daily communion with God; see how a habit of prayer will produce quietness and assurance in the hour of trial and difficulty.
II. The mysterious dealings of God with His faithful and holy servant ( a ) There was first a season of darkness. Who would have supposed that God would have allowed iniquity so far to triumph as to leave Daniel in the hands of enemies? Who would have thought that this pious old man would be cast into the den of lions? This hour of darkness seems a mystery. But is it not agreeable to all the dealings of God with man? ( b ) How the darkness was scattered and the light returned. Daniel was brought forth and honoured and exalted; while his enemies, in their turn, were cast into the den and the lions destroyed them all. So true it is that light is sown for the righteous, that God will keep them in perfect peace whose minds are stayed in Him. ( c ) Consider what showers of good descended from this dark cloud which at one time seemed so threatening. Think what a blessed effect this deliverance would have on Dan 1 What deep views of God’s love and power and goodness and wisdom he would obtain, ( d ) Think, lastly, What mighty good would come to the people and cause of God, how much they would be comforted by such a miracle, how much they would be encouraged to go forward; the very thing which once appeared so untoward, which threatened the destruction of Israel and the dishonour of God, would bring glory to the Lord and set forward the Kingdom of Heaven.
J. C. Ryle, The Christian Race, p. 258.
Reference. VI. 5. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Daniel, p. 68.
Prayer and Conduct
Dan 6:10
I. The Value and Importance of Prayer. It is natural to all men to pray. But here steps in philosophy, falsely so called, and tells us not to pray. This philosophic teacher brings all the learned and profound arguments to show that this natural instinct is mere folly and delusion, and it will end by persuading us that we may adore in praise if we will, but that to ask aught of God is absurd and even profane. Now this is a criminal, unnatural philosophy, which would condemn us to live in a fatherless world, with none to pity, none to comfort, none to help. If any one is led by his sins and worldliness to neglect prayer, let him not think that he is showing superior sagacity and penetration by so doing. Let him rather be ashamed of this, that he neglects prayer, not because he is wise, but because he has corrupted his heart, and has done violence to his own moral and even intellectual nature. How opposed to all this self-conceited, self-corrupted, prayerless character is the example of that aged and wise saint who is portrayed for us by the Holy Spirit in Today’s lesson!
II. We are to Follow this Aged Saint’s Example, and be bold, honest, outspoken in our allegiance to God. It is true that none of us is likely ever to be called upon to hazard our lives as Daniel did, but yet how often have we in everyday life to take our stand openly and boldly, either on the side of Christ or of His enemies! Christ requires this of all of us. He requires it in every workshop. He requires it in every office He requires it in every place of business. He requires of us that we should on all fit occasions declare what we think of Him; that we never from fear of man, never from shame, never from regard to worldly interest, never from fear of ridicule, shun to bear witness for Him, or shrink from avowing ourselves His disciples. It may be, or it may not be, wise or proper for us to enter into argument, or directly to rebuke. Whether it be wise or our duty to do so must always depend upon circumstances. It sometimes happens that a discreet and modest silence is the best way to meet the occasion. No certain and plain rule can be laid down as to how our Lord would have us act. Our action must be guided by our own feeling of what we ought to do. But of one thing we may be certain. On every such occasion Christ is there present. He is there noting how we act, pleased if we maintain the cause of truth and holiness, quick to see if we are in any way ashamed of Him or His words, vexed, frowning, if from cowardice or self-interest we betray His cause or allow His gainsayers to think we agree with them and feel as they do. Even in social intercourse, at times in their own families, men and women have to determine whether they will confess Christ or deny Him, whether they will be faithful to their Lord and Master or flinch from His service and disown it.
III. Not by Words only can we Confess or Deny Christ; We may do it even more decisively by our deeds. It is very possible for men in word to confess Christ, and yet in heart and life to renounce Him. No confession of the lips can be accepted which has the lie given to it by the life. Vain is our orthodox profession of faith if we are heterodox in the feeling of our hearts. The best, the truest confession of Christ is that which is afforded by the life, by the life in which purity and holiness and charity testify, that we have been with Jesus and have learned of Him. No confession so eloquent as this because it is manifestly sincere, none which so honours our Lord or so much advances His kingdom.
The Spirit of Prayer
Dan 6:10
It is interesting to compare the character of Daniel, ‘the man greatly beloved,’ with that of St. John, ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’. The likeness can be followed out also through the history of the two men. But that is not my purpose this morning; my desire is to emphasize the value of prayer. So highly was it esteemed by Daniel that he braved death to engage in it. He knew God; and, knowing Him, loved Him. He was ever communing with God. To God he turned in every hour of difficulty. The ‘three times a day’ were not isolated moments, but rather an integral part of what was a life of prayer. If prayer had been to Daniel what it is to too many of us he would not have risked his life in the way he did; he would have forgone the privilege or he would have prayed in secret.
I. What was it that Caused Daniel to Treat the Decree of Darius as if it were not? Surely it was his desire after God. Prayer can be regarded in two aspects:
a. As an act of honour done to God, and
b. As the means of supplying our own wants.
These two ideas take in prayer from two different sides, but they both proceed from the same motive, the desire to know and to love God. Let us never lower the dignity of prayer by regarding it as the mere putting forth of a request; if it be true prayer it will be actuated by a desire after God.
II. Why Did Daniel Pray towards Jerusalem? Daniel, though favoured by Darius and raised to high position, could never forget that he was an exile where he was. He had wicked Babylon all round him; there were men ready to kill him; yet none of these things moved him. He looked towards Jerusalem; he saw the King in His beauty; his eyes beheld the land which was very far off.
III. The True Basis of Prayer is the Soul’s Desire after God. Put the privilege of prayer out of human life, and what will human life be without it? What will it be when friends disappoint, when temptations assail, when some one very near has gone into the unseen world not to have access to God?
IV. Daniel’s Prayer was Largely Intercessory for Others. We are not told what was its subject on the occasion mentioned in the text, but we cannot doubt from Daniel’s subsequent history that it was wide-embracing in its scope; and so it is with us that he who loves God best has the widest sympathy and the highest faith. Prayer is the one great service we can render to others.
A Good Man
Dan 6:10
Daniel was of noble birth, perhaps a member of the royal family of Judah. Born at Jerusalem; carried into captivity in his youth; became a member of the royal court; received a thorough education; acquired a high position through his power of interpreting dreams and mysteries; and, when Babylon was conquered by the united powers of Media and Persia, became premier. Distinguished above all for his piety. He was now eighty years of age. His position exposed him to the envy of his colleagues, who sought to depose him. In this chapter we have an account of their plot and its result. Several characteristics of a good man are mentioned.
I. Moral Integrity which None Could Dispute.
They ‘sought to find occasion against Daniel concerning the kingdom,’ etc., vv. 4, 5.
Few can stand the close scrutiny of an enemy, or even of a friend.
II. Unflinching Fidelity, which Persecution could not Destroy.
The true value of friendship is not discovered until the hour of trial.
III. A Firm Avowal of Religious Principles.
‘He went into his house; and his windows being opened,’ etc.
No ostentation, but no concealment.
IV. Habitual Devotion Unhindered by Business. ‘As he did aforetime.’ ‘Three times a day.’ Prayer is one of the chief sources of support and comfort in difficulty and trouble.
V. A Recognition of Mercies in the Midst of Trial.
‘And gave thanks before his God.’ ‘The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.’
VI. Childlike Trust in God Amid the Vicissitudes of Life.
It is hard to stand alone; but God never deserts His people. ‘I will never leave thee,’ etc.
F. J. Austin, Seeds and Saplings, p. 59.
The Open Window
Dan 6:10
It is not easy to know where to begin the story of this man whose windows were open toward Jerusalem. Those open windows are so eloquent. They have such a tale to tell. It is a beautiful, brave, pathetic story, worthy its place in this book that records the purest heroisms, and the most lustrous fidelities, and the holiest patiences of history.
I. Those are not vain hours that a man spends at the open lattice of his heavenly hope. See what the open window did for Daniel. In the city of a thousand spurious divinities, it reminded him of a temple erected for the worship of the One God. In the city full of fascinating lures and shameless enticements, it brought home to his heart every day the sweet, stern morality of the Hebrew ethical ideal.
The breath from that open window kept his life clean. But for it he might have been drawn into the dark current of Babylonian sensuality and sinfulness. He might have become unwilling, unworthy, unable to utter in the ears of Babylon the words of his God. But the open window taught him that Babylon was a terrible place. He saw a sinister shadow in its smiles, he heard the whisper of danger in its plaudits; and three times a day he knelt with his face toward the holy city, and his heart going out unto his God: never too busy or tired for that.
II. We who live in Babylon cannot afford to spend all our time in its streets amid the traffic and the merchandise, the gains and the greetings, the weariness and the sin. If life’s western window is never opened; if the breath from the hills of God plays in vain around its closed and dust-laden lattice; if morning, noon, and night the vision is the vision of Babylon and the voice is the voice of Babylon, than is the seal of the city set ever more broadly upon a man’s forehead and its delusions and its passions make their home in his heart.
God is near us in the babel of buying and selling, in the toil for bread, in the rush of life. But they who find Him thus in the thick of the world are they who have first found Him waiting for them, as He waited for one of old, at the window that looks toward Jerusalem, to send them forth into the day’s life with the temple reverence and the temple ideal impressed afresh upon their spirit. And when the day is over, and Babylon has done its worst, they find Him there again waiting to sweep the last jangling echoes of the city right out of their hearts that as they lie down to rest their last thought shall be laden with the peace of that other city Jerusalem beyond the hills.
III. The men who conquer the world are the men who see beyond the world. Babylon published an interdict, and it meant for Daniel no communion at his western lattice for thirty days: thirty prayerless days! That was what the interdict said; and after it had been signed and sealed by Darius, it was unalterable. The Medes and Persians prided themselves on never going back on anything they had decreed. Babylon had challenged Jerusalem. It had pitted its powers against the powers of the God of Daniel. ‘And when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house (now his windows were open in his chamber toward Jerusalem) and he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and gave thanks before his God as he did aforetime.’ Babylon had a law that altered not. So had Daniel. He was not a Babylonian. He lived under the law of another city, and he obeyed that law, and it cast him into a den of lions, and it brought him out again and made him a splendid witness for God. History tells us that, whenever the heavenly unalterable and the earthly unalterable have met, one has always had to alter, and it has not been the heavenly one.
P. Ainsworth, The Pilgrim Church, p. 107.
The Opened Windows
Dan 6:10
It was in an hour of very sore distress that Daniel acted in the manner of which our text speaks. The crisis had come which he had long expected, and the crisis drove him to the feet of God. There was widespread irritation, rising at times into very bitter envy, among the aristocratic patrons of Babylon at the powerful eminence of foreigners like Daniel. And it was then, when Daniel fully recognized his peril, that he went into his house to pray, his windows being open to Jerusalem.
I. The Moral Significance of Indifferent Actions. There was nothing remarkable in opening a window, yet every time that Daniel opened that lattice it spoke of a heart that was travelling to Jerusalem. It revealed a heroism which no impending doom could shake. There are actions which are quite indifferent in themselves, yet if they reveal the trend of character and the direction that our thoughts are setting in no man dare say they are immaterial.
II. The True Relationship of the Unseen and the Seen. When Daniel opened his window an instinct moved him to open the window towards Jerusalem. He could brook no barrier betwixt him and the unseen. Now that is like a little parable of something that happens to the truly religious man. Let him open the window of his heart on the unseen, and the life at his door grows doubly real to him. There is no such instance in history of this as the life of Jesus Christ Himself. His heart was in heaven as truly as the heart of Daniel was in Jerusalem. Yet though all the windows of His soul were opened heavenward the life round Him was infinitely precious. The meanest villager ceased to be insignificant to a heart whose lattice was thrown wide on God.
III. The Right Attitude Towards the Unattainable. Daniel was a prisoner in Babylon. Yet though all hope of seeing Jerusalem was banished, he opened his windows toward Jerusalem. Every man who is striving to live nobly is struggling after things he cannot reach. Have the casement open toward the unattainable, and by the open casement be in prayer.
G. H. Morrison, Sun-Rise, p. 207.
References. VI. 10. Canon Duckworth, Christian World Pulpit, 1891. R. J. Campbell, Sermons Addressed to Individuals, p. 37. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iii. p. 175. G. W. Brameld, Practical Sermons, p. 386. J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons (2nd Series), p. 90. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xx. No. 1154. Ibid. vol. 14, No. 815. J. J. S. Perowne, Sermons, p. 17. VI. 13. F. W. Farrar, Everyday Christian Life, p. 93. H. P. Hughes, Essential Christianity, p. 57. VI. 14. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Lessons, vol. i. p. 393. VI. 16-28. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Daniel, p. 75. VI. 20. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Lessons for Daily Life, p. 284. J. E. Vaux, Sermon Notes (2nd Series), p. 44. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlix. No. 2859. VI. 22. J. H. Horton, Every Sunday, p. 467. C. Stamford, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxi. p. 328.
The Calamity That Hurts Not
Dan 6:23
It is not enough for a man to be taken out of his den. When he has been raised from his calamity the question remains, Has it hurt him? It seems a small thing to record of Daniel that after his life had been preserved from the lions ‘no manner of hurt was found upon him’. But in truth the great fear in such cases is just their after-effects.
I. Calamity has not always a good influence upon a man. It changes many a soul for the worse. There are hundreds who after their liberation from the den of lions live as if they were still in the den. There are men who have risen to opulence after a hard fight with poverty and who never forget their early scars. They resent the years that the locusts have eaten.
They preserve a demeanour of frigidness, of sourness, of cynicism towards all the events of life; they damp the enthusiasm of those who are entering in.
II. It is a great thing if a man can emerge from the den not only sound in body but unharmed in mind. What enabled Daniel to come forth mentally whole? The passage states the reason explicitly ‘He believed in his God’. The mental effects of calamity can only be conquered by a mental attitude. It is a great mistake to suppose that we require trust in God merely for the future; we need it as much for the past. We think of Daniel as trusting in God before he was thrown in; he required an equal faith after he had come out.
III. We doubt, not only in the hour of danger, but in the hour of retrospect. Faith may waver over the question, What if this befall me? But it can also waver over the question, Why has this befallen? If I am to be free from mental gloom, I must see a bow in the cloud of yesterday as well as in the cloud of tomorrow. God must justify to my soul the shadows of last night. Nothing else will obliterate my inward scars; nothing else will enable me to come forth from the den unhurt.
G. Matheson, Messages of Hope, p. 284.
References. VI. 23. A. Ainger, Sermons Preached in the Temple Church, p. 1. VI. 27. D. Swing, American Pulpit of Today, vol. i. p. 90. VI. 28. F. Bourdillon, Plain Sermons for Family Reading, pp. 43, 55. VI. J. G. Murphy, The Book of Daniel, p. 119. VII. Ibid. p. 124.
Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson
The Promotion of Daniel
Dan 6:1-14
“Of whom Daniel was first.” That is the explanation of all that follows. Do not let us lose ourselves in the details of a story which has entranced us since our childhood. When we began to hear the story we did not listen to such words as these “Of whom Daniel was first”; we were then taken up with the lions, the den, the night spent in great trouble and danger: now we have had time to look away to reasons, to first thoughts, to beginnings and causes. Here we find the story in one sentence “Of whom Daniel was first.” Not only first in some chronological sense, or in some mechanical sense, but first altogether, obviously, dominantly first; everybody knowing it, although some owned it with bated breath. “This Daniel was preferred above the presidents and princes.” The word “preferred” scarcely brings out all the meaning: substitute for it the better term “outshone”; then we read, “This Daniel outshone the presidents and princes.” There was more light in him than in any of them; he was a man of divine genius; he was characterised by what we commonly express by the term “inspiration”; when he spoke there was wisdom in his speech; there was no hesitation, no spirit of doubt or controversy underlying what he said; all his words seemed to come from an infinite height, and to belong to the eternal reality and fitness of things. If other men spoke first they were sorry they ever opened their lips upon the subject when Daniel declared his judgment; he simply eclipsed them all, put them into comparative darkness; his words were light: his syllables were flashes of glory. He will have to pay for this.
All primacy has to be paid for. Do not understand that men go forward to any possessions they please up banks of glory, slopes of flowers, fancy work written in imaginary paradises. A Burmese student has lately been contesting with European claimants and candidates, and he has taken everything before him. He said the other day, “Everything is possible here to a man who works.” That is an old English word. What a rebuke to those who do not toil! If the Burmese student so successful had used a long word, how many thousands of English youths would have found that long word a grand opening for a thousand excuses! But he explained his position by a very simple term, that term being none other than the good old English term “works.” His primacy was paid for. Some men pay for it by work, and others pay for it by work and suffering too. There is no spirit so cruel as the spirit of jealousy; and yet men ought to compel themselves to fight that spirit every day in the week. That is a fine theological training; that is a noble spiritual education. A brother has been applauded; do not put your fingers in your ears, but listen to the applause: how it rises, swells, multiplies; and not one cheer of all the tumultuous acclamation is for you, but for him: hear it; pray yourself out of the unworthy feeling that dislikes it. That will do you good all the days of your life. If you can pray yourself into an answering Amen, mayhap you may come to join the gracious tumult, and do so not to be seen of men, but to express the emotion and the appreciation of a healthy heart. Go where your rivals are praised; read the criticisms that lift them up into larger public light and notoriety: do not scan the criticisms, and say reluctantly and half-whisperingly that you did see something of them; get them by heart: they will be bitter in the mouth, but they will sweeten as they descend; get them well into you; fight the devil on his own ground; be glad that you are not first. These are the lessons that come to us from the history of jealousy; we recognise them, we repeat them word for word: but do we repeat them as a recitation, or pronounce them as a testimony and a faith? Sometimes we think how good a thing it must be to be the outshining Daniel. It is, and it is not; everything depends upon other circumstances and elements than the mere outshining.
Men have to pay for all exaltation; a sense of responsibility comes with it where it is honest and worthy, and men do not ascend to the primary positions instantly, but gradually, and as they ascend they become accustomed to the air, so that when they do reach the throne it seems as if they had but a step to take from the common earth to the great altitude. Thus we are trained, graduated, perfected, not by suddenness, abruptness, not by any vulgarity of government, but by that fine shading and graduation which is all but imperceptible, and which only makes itself known in all the fulness of its reality and value when we are prepared to accept the throne, the crown, the sceptre, humbly, modestly. How could Daniel bear all this exaltation? Because it was nothing to him. He had been in prayer. The man who prays three times a day, really prays, whose window opens upon heaven, cannot receive any honour; he cannot be flattered. If Darius had asked him to take the throne it would have been but a trifle to Daniel. A man who has been closeted with God cannot be befooled by earthly baubles and temporal vanities. It is with these things as with miracles. We have often had occasion to say that miracles may be approached from one of two points. Everything depends upon the point of origin chosen by the mind for the purpose of travelling towards the miracles. A man travels towards them from the earth, from limitations that are patent and oppressive, from observations that are narrow and cloudy and few in number; and he says when he struggles up the hill of difficulty, It is impossible that miracles, that these miracles, can ever have occurred. Another man descends upon them, comes out of the sanctuary of the invisible where he has been long with God, and when he comes upon what are termed the miracles he reads them as commonplaces, wonders at their smallness, takes God’s own estimate of them, and sees in a penitent heart, a praying soul, a mightier miracle than can be seen in any department of nature, controlled, regulated, by a higher law, and directed to unsuspected and unimagined uses. So with this greatness of such men as Daniel; it is not greatness to them: it is but a new responsibility, another opportunity for doing good, a larger opening for higher usefulness. The man should always be greater than his office; the author should always be greater than his book; the picture should be nothing compared with the picture the artist wanted to paint. The musician does well to set aside his thousand-voiced organ because it is useless when he wants to express the ineffable. If we prayed aright, if we loved God truly, then all honours would be accepted with an easy condescension, and every gift and recognition and promotion would be used with modesty, and every honour given by men would not be despised, but would be used to the promotion of the highest ends of being. It is thus the Daniels of the world sit upon their thrones; verily, they sit upon them; they use them, they are mere temporary conveniences and symbols to them; the real king is intellectual, spiritual, moral, sympathetic, invisible, divine. It is useless for us to wish to be what Daniel was; we shall be what Daniel was, and where he was, when we have the same qualifications. The universe is not being built by an unskilled carpenter; it is being constructed I mean that inward and spiritual universe of which all other universes are but the scaffolding by a divine Builder; and he will not put the top stone in the foundation, or the foundation stone in the pinnacle; he will put us just where we ought to be. Daniel and Paul, Peter and John, the seraph all flame, the cherub all contemplation, each will have his place. O foolish soul, do not build thyself into God’s wall; let the Builder handle thee, and be glad that thou hast any place in the spiritual masonry.
What was it that accounted for Daniel’s primacy, Daniel’s influence? The explanation is given in some words that should be remembered “because an excellent spirit was in him.” Define the word “excellent” by all its possible meanings; for the occasion will take upon itself all that is dignified in intellect, all that is tender in moral feeling, all that is noble in spiritual and moral judgment. The spirit that was in Daniel was “excellent” genial, tender, sympathetic, quite large in its capacity, holding within its magnanimity all sorts and conditions of men, seeing something good in the worst of them. Anybody can see infirmities; the dullest eye may detect a cripple: it requires an eye quickened and strengthened by divinest ministries to see good or the soul of good in things evil. Sometimes men require but the warmth of fraternal recognition to blossom into quite other men. What flower can grow under frowning clouds, and what flower does not struggle to grow when the sun is doing all he can with the little root? So Daniel made an empire within an empire; he developed men who before were unrecognised; to come near him was to come into the sunshine; to hear him was to hear music; men did not grow less in his presence, but greater, not weaker, but stronger; and they felt that all his primacy was held in trusteeship, and that whatever good he could do to others he would do, and thus multiply himself not by selfishness, but by beneficence the true multiplication, the right royal road to ultimate and permanent coronation.
What will an excellent spirit do for a man? Read the history of Daniel, and find the answer. Daniel was a captive; when does he complain of his captivity? His spirit is free, his soul is not in bonds, and therefore it becomes of little consequence where his body is. Does he whine and moan about his captivity? Is the groan always in his throat? Is the frown upon his dejected countenance? If you would find real joy, healthy gladness, look at Daniel. He lives in the unseen: he endures as seeing the invisible; he goes right up to heaven to find answers to the enigmas of dream and vision, and he comes back from heaven’s throne with replies to human necessity. He who is spiritually minded thinks nothing of little local bodily captivity. Some people are all complaints; you never hear one cheerful word from them. They would die if they were cheerful; they would die of amazement, they would be so frightened at themselves if ever they were caught singing anything gladsome that they would expire on the spot Their only hope is in the indulgence of their infirmity. An excellent spirit is not in them, the spirit of youthfulness, the spirit of hopefulness, the Christian spirit. One man who had this spirit in abundance said, “Yea, and we glory exceedingly in tribulations also.” That was triumph; that was the power of Christ. An excellent spirit raises men to supremacy, and other men are glad when they are so raised, for they know the more wealth they have, the more the poor will have; the wiser they are, the better directed will be the whole nation.
Yet here we come upon words we gladly would have omitted from the history “Then the presidents and princes sought to find occasion against Daniel concerning the kingdom.” They tested his policy at every point; they pressed all their weight down upon the policy and purpose of Daniel in things imperial; but that policy bare all the burden “They could find none occasion nor fault, forasmuch as he was faithful, neither was there any error or fault found in him.” Then what should they have said? They ought to have said thus: Any religion that will make a man so faithful, so trusty, so real, and so beneficent, is a good religion, though we cannot explain it, and though we never heard of it before. Christianity would not hesitate to say that of heathenism. If heathenism can make men not only honourable, true, faithful, industrious which it may have done but if it can make them spiritual, holy, if it can give them such a sense of triumph over death as not to accept it as a fate or as an annihilation or an absorption into the sum total, if it can make them look upon death with the eyes of victors, saying to death, Where is thy sting? to the grave, Where is thy victory? if it can translate men from time into eternity, not to be forgotten, but to be developed in endless progress, Christianity would say so, it would recognise the miracle; it might even say, There is no further occasion for me to be here, for all my work has been anticipated and accomplished by an enlightened paganism. But Christianity has not found that to be the case. Christianity acknowledges all your Platos and all your moralists, but it says, This is not vital; it is not sufficient; it does not go to the root and core of things; the attitude is artistic, the manner is excellent, the calculation is admirable, but there is no regeneration of the soul in all the process; and that is what Christianity has come to do: to create men anew in Christ Jesus. The pagans therefore should have said, A religion that keeps Daniel so right in his action and policy must be a good religion, although we cannot understand its metaphysics, and although it is opposed in deadly hostility to all our Babylonian and Chaldean conceptions and imaginings. Why not reason so in modern civilisation? Here the Christian has great opportunity for doing good; he may not be able to explain the metaphysics of his Christianity, but what a chance he has for verifying its morality! And to morality the whole thing must come at some point or other. A man can never be so transcendently pious as to take out a licence to be wicked. If you are not correct in your accounts you cannot be correct in your prayers. Your piety is a mistake and a farce if it be not upheld and elucidated with dazzling illustration by your behaviour. Men then in some instances will be constrained to say that a piety which expresses itself in such conduct must be good. Through your morality men may come into God’s own sanctuary; through your noble behaviour men may begin to inquire about the Cross which accounts for it: that is your chance. The penetration which belongs to metaphysical reasoning you may not possess; the power which inheres in expository and hortatory eloquence may not be your gift; but the humblest, youngest, simplest man may show what his Christianity has done for him by his industry, his punctuality, his faithfulness, his obedience, his reliableness in all circumstances, his ability to bear the test of every analysis and every pressure. So thus we may form ourselves, by the grace of God, into a great body of witnesses, each in his own way explaining the divine kingdom, and accounting for the holiest conduct in human life.
What was to be done? Daniel must be killed. Paganism has no other way of treating its enemies; heathenism must get its enemies out of the way: they must be poisoned, they must be imprisoned, they must be dashed from great heights, they must be thrown to lions, they must be burned with fire. That is the vulgar process of paganism. We know the story: the poor king Pilate before the time, the Old Testament Pilate was inveigled into signing something that appealed to his vanity. He was quite willing to be God for a month; it lay within the scope of Oriental vanity to be God for thirty days; a lunar month or a calendar month either would do for a man who was asked to be vice-president of the universe, and do what he liked. “Wherefore King Darius signed the writing and the decree.” Daniel knew all about it, and when the writing was signed he went into his house and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime. Some men you cannot write down. Kings cannot put them down; decrees cannot kill their patriotism; and even votes of Parliament cannot turn aside the noble enthusiasm of a pure purpose. Parliament has locked up all kinds of Daniels; kings have signed all sorts of decrees against praying people; persons who were eccentric, erratic, insane, have been sent to prison, have had all their goods sold in the market-place, have been branded, have been disabled by the cutting off of limbs, have had their ears wrung, their eyes gouged out, their tongues cut out of their mouths, and still they have given thanks before God as they did aforetime. Nothing was injured but the apparatus; it was only the mechanical part that was at all brought into infirmity and suffering: “Fear not them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do”; they cannot kill the soul: while the soul is alive the man is alive. Men have prayed in prison; men have turned dungeons into churches; ay, fissured rocks, caverns given over to the sovereignty of night, have heard music that has been denied to loftiest cathedral arch, music that only martyrs, hunted men, could utter. A happy, healthy man who has all he wants cannot sing like a soul that is in trouble; in its muffled music there is a pathos that pleases God.
Daniel’s answer was what our answer ought always to be he went on praying. That is the only answer that God asks from us. When the Bible is attacked, publish another edition of two million copies. Oh, spare the Cross the patronage of another “defence” in the form of an elaborate and unintelligible book. When men question the reality, utility, practicability, of prayer, pray on; do not rise from your knees to conduct a debate, nothing comes from such a process. When men ask if the Cross is true in all its highest suggestions, answer by uncomplaining endurance, by patience, by forgiveness, by magnanimity. When people ask if it is possible for sin to be pardoned, because they have got some idea of all things abiding as they were under a severe reign of continuity, prove it by your spirit, by releasing the enemy who has done you most injury, by praying on the very Cross itself. It may be when they hear, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” that that prayer may do more for their conversion than all the abstract and metaphysical theology that is symbolised by the Cross itself. It is on the Cross men pray their mightiest prayers; it is on the Cross we learn what God is by feeling first the hunger created by his absence; it is on the Cross that men see the finishing of divine purpose on one side and the beginning of divine purpose on the other.
When men ask if the history of Daniel is literally true, what is their reason for asking it? It must be a frivolous one. That the history of Daniel is true has been proved every day since Daniel lived. There is nothing in the mere thing itself if it be not repeated in all history, repronounced and confirmed by all succeeding ages. To-day primacy brings jealousy; today “an excellent spirit” wins its way in society at great expense and by incurring great penalty; today men are seeking to put down praying souls and to break down all spiritual religion: it is so ghostly, so interior, so subjective in its operations, and then expresses itself in such broad and graphic moralities; and today the true Daniel-spirit regards the king’s decree when it interferes with matters religious as a dead letter. Let the king say, “Pray,” heed him not; he has no right so to command: if he exhort, listen to him; if he command, despise him, and pray on; if he say, “Do not pray,” open all your windows Jerusalemward, and cry unto the Lord with a mighty heart-cry, and let the king’s decree be burned. This spiritual religion is a divine gift; it is not under human decrees or royal patronage or imperial direction; it is a question of the soul, of the conscience, the judgment, the moral imagination; it belongs to the internal man: let every man be persuaded in his own mind. We owe our security, as we owe our tranquillity, to the Daniels of preceding ages; other men laboured, and we are entering into their labours. Let us not forget “the dead but sceptred monarchs, who still rule our spirits from their urns.” Civilisation was never wrought out by delicate, sensitive, self-preserving persons, who never gave any offence; the highest civilisation has been wrought out and secured again and again by men who have turned the world upside down revolutionary souls, children of flame, enthusiasts, persons who were accounted by a cold world as beside themselves. Thus was Paul characterised; thus was Christ characterised: “He hath a devil,” said the people; “why hear ye him? he worketh by Beelzebub; he is the prince of the evil powers.” If they have done these things to the Lord they will not spare the servant. What we need now for one little space is persecution. We have things too much our own way. We open the church in the middle of the day now. Thirty days’ wandering in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented, might take some of the polish off our piety; but it would add inexpressibly to its energy.
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
V
THE HISTORY OF DARIUS THE MEDE
Dan 5:31
The testimony of Daniel concerning Darius the Mede is found in Dan 5:31 ; Dan 6:1-28 ; Dan 9:1 . The Jewish Bible properly places the last verse of Dan 5 at the beginning of Dan 6 . From these passages we gather the following facts:
1. Darius is here said to be the son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Modes.
2. Darius, like Pharaoh and Caesar, is a title rather than a name.
3. He “received the kingdom,” i.e., from another. He “was made king,” i.e., by another.
4. He was an old man, “about three score and two.”
5. Only one year of his reign is mentioned (Dan 9:1 ).
6. As elsewhere throughout the book, the Medes and Persians are considered jointly as one government (Dan 6:8 ; Dan 6:12 ; Dan 6:15 ).
7. The reigns of Cyrus and of Darius were contemporaneous (Dan 6:28 ).
On this testimony the following observations are submitted:
1. It is difficult from outside history, whether sacred or profane, to determine definitely the real name and place of this Darius. If we adopt the Jewish method of dividing the chapters so as to make the last verse of Dan 5 the first verse of Dan 6 then there is nothing in Daniel’s account to connect closely in time the death of Belshazzar with the accession of Darius, king of Persia, so often named in the book of Ezra. But while we may accept the chapter division, the conclusion deduced, identifying this Darius with the Darius of Ezra, is every way improbable, not to say impossible. The deduction creates far greater difficulties than it removes difficulties in this book as well as in Ezra, and even greater difficulties in Persian history. So our conclusion is that Darius the Mede, the son of Ahasuerus, in this book, is not the Darius, the Persian, the son of Hystaspes, so prominent in the book of Ezra. The testimony of Daniel, even if wholly unsupported from the outside, should be accepted as trustworthy unless better testimony should show it to be impossible. A probable explanation of this history when compared with others is all that we need to show.
The famous Annalistic Tablet of Cyrus, upon which the radical critics so confidently rely, itself alone furnishes the probable explanation. That tablet shows that a certain general of Cyrus, Gobryas by name, led the night assault in which Belshazzar was slain, and was made governor of the province of Babylon by Cyrus, and then as governor appointed all the subordinate rulers in the realm, which harmonizes perfectly with Daniel’s account that (1) Darius “received the kingdom,” “was made king,” and (2) that “it pleased Darius to set over the kingdom a hundred and twenty satraps.” Professor Sayce, though so adverse to the historicity of Daniel, thus reads a part of the Annalistic Tablet of Cyrus: “Cyrus entered Babylon. Dissensions were allayed before him. Peace to the city did Cyrus establish, peace to all the province of Babylon did Gobryas, his governor, proclaim. Governors in Babylon he (i.e., Gobryas) appointed.” Professor Driver thus renders another part of the tablet: “Gubaru (same as Gobryas) made an assault, and slew the king’s son.” The king’s son was Belshazzar. Then the tablet goes on to show the national mourning for the king’s son.
Defenders of the historical trustworthiness of the book of Daniel need not commit themselves irrevocably to this identification of Daniel’s Darius with the tablet’s Gobryas. It suggests all that is necessary, a probable explanation. Mr. Pinches, who brought the Annalistic Tablet to light, and many others are quite confident of this identity. Mr. Thomson (“Pulpit Bible,” Daniel) adopts this theory in his exposition. There are several other theories concerning the identity of Daniel’s Darius most plausibly argued by learned men who fully accept the trustworthiness of the history in the book of Daniel. It is not at all necessary to recite them here.
2. It is quite in line with all the probabilities in the case that Cyrus, ruler over two united nations, Medes and Persians, should appoint a Mede as subking over the conquered province of Babylon, while he attended to the general affairs of the whole empire. The reference to both Cyrus and Darius in Dan 6:28 indicates a contemporaneous reign, Darius as subking at Babylon, Cyrus as supreme king over the whole empire.
3. Darius, being an old man when he “received the kingdom,” or “was made king,” did not probably reign long, Daniel specifying only his first year (Dan 9:1 ).
4. The contention of the radical critics that, in Daniel’s mind, the empire of the Medes precedes and is distinct from the empire of the Persians is contradicted flatly by the whole tenor of the book. While everywhere recognizing them as distinct peoples, the book throughout knows them only as a conjoined nation, one government. The laws of the one government are the laws of the Medes and Persians (Dan 6:8 ; Dan 6:12 ; Dan 6:15 ). This unity in duality is manifested in the symbolic features: the silver beast and two arms of Nebuchadnezzar’s image (Dan 2:32 ); the bear with one side higher than the other (Dan 7:5 ); the ram with the two horns, one higher than the other (Dan 8:20 ). This last symbol is expressly interpreted as a unity in duality and named “Medes and Persians.”
This absurd contention of the radical critics is evidently intended to hedge against any possible prophecy in the book concerning Rome, as the fourth world empire, and so to make the prophetic forecast of history culminate in Antiochus Epiphanes, and then by arbitrarily dating the book after his reign, to deny all prophetic element in it. In no other radical criticism do they so utterly betray their atheistic presuppositions, and so clearly manifest their utter untrustworthiness as biblical expositors. The very exploit which they regard as their greatest achievement most overwhelmingly exposes their disqualifications and advertises their shame.
THE CONTENTS OF Dan 6 1. On the fall of Babylon and the death of Belshazzar, Cyrus appoints Darius the Mede, subking over the province of Babylon.
2. Darius districts the kingdom under his jurisdiction and appoints 120 satraps over the several districts. Over these satraps he appoints three presidents, Daniel, one of the three, to whom all the satraps must give account of the king’s matters in their several satrapies. This division of authority and responsibility was common then and is yet common in Oriental countries. The three presidents would constitute the king’s cabinet. From this place Farrar gets his “board of three,” but his arbitrary attempt to transfer it back to a preceding regime in order to break the force of “third ruler in the kingdom” (Dan 6:8 ; Dan 6:12 ; Dan 6:15 ) is merely puerile and amusing. Daniel’s age, wisdom, experience, administrative capacity and character so easily make him the dominant spirit over the two other presidents and over all the satraps that Darius purposes to set over the whole realm a grand vizier.
3. And now comes a development so true to the life and character of Oriental despotism, with their large delegation of powers to subordinates, that its absence from the story would have discounted its credibility. Envy, jealousy, and disappointed greed on the part of the two other presidents and all the satraps, lead them to conspire against Daniel. It was bad enough, in their minds, to have him one of three presidents, but if he be made grand vizier, then there would be no hope of successful fraud and loot. Daniel here brings to mind that great commoner, the elder William Pitt, who, as secretary, stood alone in a corrupt age, whose spotless character and imperious will dominated an unwilling king and a venal ministry, before whom all fraud in politics and peculation in office fled affrighted. One such man in a thousand years is about all the world can produce. And when he appears he is like a solitary, huge, cloud-piercing granite mountain in an almost boundless plain.
What a tribute to Daniel’s purity of life, official integrity and sublimity of character, is their confession that nothing could be found against him except his alien religion! But just here these jackals were most sure of their lion. His record was unequivocal and univocal. Not even the mighty Nebuchadnezzar could shake him in a matter of conscience and religion, but rather bowed before him. On this point he was as God himself before the white-faced, pale-lipped, knee-shaking Belshazzar. Hence the low scheme of cunning, the short-sighted trick of engineering on the unsuspecting Darius the signing of a blasphemous law that for thirty days no man should offer prayer or petition to any god, but to the king alone. To polytheistic Orientals, or even to a Roman Caesar, who was ex officio not only pontifex maximus, but was himself divine, such temporary suspension of empty religious services except through the ruler himself, was a light matter enough. But to a pious Jew recognizing one only true God it was every way blasphemous and horrible.
In all the world history of legislative folly this statue stands unique “without a model and without a shadow.” The suspension of the law of gravitation, the suspension of either the centripetal or the centrifugal force, whose joint powers produce the circling orbits of heavenly bodies, would not introduce more confusion in the material universe than such a law, if capable of execution, would produce in the moral and spiritual realm.
NO PRAYER TO GOD FOB THIRTY DAYS
All connection between the throne of mercy and grace and helpless, hungering, thirsting, dying men, severed for thirty days! For a whole month travailing mothers may not cry to God; cradles must remain unblessed; youth helpless before temptation; widows and orphans at the mercy of oppressions and without appeal; human life unguarded in the presence of assassins; property at the mercy of the thief, the burglar and the incendiary; sinners dying unabsolved and unforgiven, an earthly embargo against angel ministrations or heavenly mercies such a law, if enforceable, would be the climax of insanity. What an ocean-sweeping dragnet to catch one fish!
How clearly the record brings out the weakness of Darius I The mind instantly calls up, in association, Herod’s vain regret for his oath when called upon to surrender John the Baptist to the murderous woman, and Pilate vainly washing his hands as he surrenders Jesus to crucifixion, as if consistency were more than righteousness.
Daniel’s attitude was calm, inflexible. Though he knew that the law was signed, and could not have been ignorant of either its malicious purpose or its result to himself, he kept right on praying to God at the three regular Temple hours of prayer, morning, noon, and evening.
He kept his window open toward Jerusalem. How well he bears in mind the words of Solomon’s great intercession at the dedication of the Temple, preserved in the sacred history of his people: If thy people go out to battle against their enemy, whithersoever thou shalt send them, and shall pray unto the Lord toward the city which thou hast chosen, and toward the house that I have built for thy name: then hear thou in heaven their prayer and their supplication, and maintain their cause. If they sin against thee (for there is no man that sinneth not), and thou be angry with them, and deliver them to the enemy, so that they carry them away captives unto the land of the enemy, far or near; yet if they shall bethink themselves in the land whither they were carried captives, and repent, and make supplication in the land of them that carried them captive, saying, We have sinned, and have done perversely, we have committed wickedness; and so return unto thee with all their heart, and with all their soul, in the land of their enemies, which led them away captive, and pray unto thee toward their land, which thou gavest unto their fathers, toward the city which thou hast chosen, and the house which I have built for thy name: then hear thou their prayer and their supplication in heaven thy dwelling place, and maintain their cause, and forgive thy people that have sinned against thee, and all their transgressions wherein they have transgressed against thee, and give them compassion before them who carried them captive, that they may have compassion on them. 1Ki 8:44-50 .
But by espionage on his private devotions in his own domicile the most accursed method of tyranny his infraction of human law is clearly established. Peter and John when charged by human authority “not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus” boldly replied: “Whether it is right in the sight of God to hearken unto you rather than unto God, judge ye: for we cannot but speak the things we saw and heard” (Act 4:19-20 ). So Daniel here.
DANIEL IN THE LION’S DEN This miraculous preservation of Daniel, though its miracle sorely grieves the radical critics, is, like the preservation of his three friends in the fiery furnace, certified in the New Testament book of Hebrews, which records among the achievements wrought by Israel’s ancient worthies: “By faith they quenched the violence of fire by faith they stopped the mouths of lions.” The fate of Daniel’s accusers when he was vindicated is fully in line with the history of Oriental nations as well as the law of Moses. The consequent proclamation of Darius is not incredible per se, because in keeping with his character, his times, and his people. It is in line with other proclamations in this book, in Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther.
I must again call attention to this fact concerning the text: The accepted Hebrew text, Theodotion’s Greek version in the second century A.D., and the Peshito Syriac version of the same century are generally agreed. The important variant readings are in the Septuagint Greek version. That version, for example, makes only the two other presidents (not the satraps) accuse Daniel, and they alone, with their families (not the satraps) are cast in the lions’ den when Daniel is vindicated. I have not thought it necessary to give all the Septuagint variations.
QUESTIONS
1. What are the affirmations in Dan 5:31 ; Daninel 6; Dan 9:1 concerning Darius?
2. Is he the same as the Darius of the book of Ezra? What the proof?
3. State the archaeological proof that he was probably Gobryas.
4. Give the reply to the radical critic contention that, in Daniels mind the kingdom of the Medea was distinct from the Persian kingdom and preceded it. .
5. By whom and why a conspiracy against Daniel, and what their method of destroying him?
6. State the comparison of Daniel with William Pitt.
7. Show the folly of the statute Darius was induced to sign.
8. What the weakness of Darius and with whom compared?
9. From what texts and versions must we get a true text of Daniel, and which of these are in agreement and which one variant?
10. State the most important variations in the Septuagint.
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Dan 6:1 It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom an hundred and twenty princes, which should be over the whole kingdom;
Ver. 1. It pleased Darius. ] Chald., Pulchrum fuit coram Dario. Order, he knew, must be observed, or the kingdom could not continue; himself also was old, and needed assistants. It was honour and work enough for him illos iudicare quos constituit iudices aliorum to appoint others to judge also – as Petr. Blesensis saith that our Henry II did – to judge those whom he had made judges of others. The great Turk doth so to this day, whence few of his grandees, his viziers especially, or chief officers, die in their beds.
An hundred and twenty princes.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Daniel Chapter 6
We have now another and final type of the Gentile powers brought upon the scene. But in looking at types we must always bear in mind that the question is not about the personal character of him that affords the type. Thus, Aaron officially was a type of Christ, but we are not therefore to suppose that his ways were like His. In some respects he was a very guilty man. It was he who made the calf of gold and who even sought to deceive about it. But this does not disqualify him from being a type of Christ. He was a type of Christ in spite of all that, not in that. David typified Christ, not as a priest but as a king – as a suffering and rejected king first, and then as one reigning and exalted. There are two parts in the life of David. First, the time when he was anointed king but when the power of evil was still allowed and he was hunted about and persecuted; and secondly, when Saul died, he takes the throne and puts down his enemies. In both respects, David was a type of Christ. But there was manifestly also the contrast of Christ in the failure of king David, and the dreadful sin into which he fell.
But if on the other hand, we find a type here, as I believe there is, of an awful scene, that closes the present dispensation, we are not to suppose that it cannot be its type, because there were good qualities in the king. King Darius, rather than Belshazzar, foreshadows the way in which man will take the place of being God. It was what Darius did, or suffered to be done, that sets this forth in principle. While Belshazzar was one of the most degraded of the human race, Darius was a person who, in his own character and ways, had much that was exceedingly amiable, if not something better. But I am not now raising a question of Darius personally. We have had the type of Babylon’s fall, and the judgment of God that will come down upon it, because of its wickedness in insulting and profaning what belongs to the true God, and in mixing up its own idols, and giving its praise and worship to them, in indifference to the sorrows of God’s people. This will be verified a great deal more in future history. There is that upon the earth which takes the highest place as being the church of God. There is that, which boasts of its unity, of its strength, and antiquity; which boasts of its uninterrupted lineage; which takes credit to itself for sanctity and the blood of martyrs. But God is not indifferent to its sins, which have been going on increasing and deepening from generation to generation; and they are only awaiting the day of the Lord to come, for judgment to be executed and to receive the sentence that is due to them. In the Revelation there are two great objects of judgment – Babylon and the beast. The one represents religious corruption, and the other violence; two different forms of human wickedness. In the latter form of it, we see a man, urged on by Satan, presuming to take the place of God upon the earth. Now this is what Darius permits to be done. He might not know it himself, but there were others around him that led him to the dreadful deed.
The historical circumstances that led to it were these: – They wanted an occasion against Daniel, and they well knew that it was impossible to find one except they found it against him “concerning the law of his God.” So they put their heads together, and taking advantage of the usage of the Medes and Persians for the nobles to form the law and for the king to establish and sign it, they devise a decree that it should be lawful for none to ask a petition of any god or man for thirty days save of the king. What was this but for a man to take the place of God? That no prayer was to be offered to the true God, and that every prayer that was offered at all was to be offered to the king: if that was not giving the rights of God to man, I know not what is. The king fell into the trap, and signed the decree.
But now we have to mark the beautiful conduct of Daniel. There is no intimation that the decree was a secret to Daniel. On the contrary, he was perfectly aware (v. 10) of what had passed into law. But, on the other hand, he could not compromise his God. His course, therefore, was taken. He was an old man, and the faith that had burned within him from early days was at least as bright as ever. So when he knew that all was signed, and sealed, and settled, as far as man could, and that the unchangeable law of the Medes and Persians demanded that no knee of man should bow down to God for thirty days, – knowing it all, he goes to his chamber. There is no ostentation, but he does not hide it. With his windows open, as usual, toward Jerusalem, he bows down before his God three times a day, and prays and gives thanks as he had done aforetime. He gives his enemies the occasion that they sought. They at once remind the king of the decree that he had made, and proceed to arraign Daniel before him. “That Daniel,” they say, “which is of the captivity of the children of Judah, regardeth not thee, O king, nor the decree that thou hast signed, but maketh his petition three times a day.” Then the king “was sore displeased with himself,” and labours in vain till the going down of the sun, to deliver the one whom he respected at least. Miserable though he was, yet, on the appeal of the nobles to him on the ground of the immutability of the laws of the Medes and Persians, he sins again. He gives up the prophet to the rage of his enemies, to be cast into the lions’ den, with the hope, which perhaps he scarcely allowed himself, that his God would deliver him. And God appears for His servant. God does deliver: and the dreadful fate, that was intended for the prophet, fell upon those who had accused him to the king. “The heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made: in the net which they hid is their own foot taken. The Lord is known by the judgment which He executeth: the wicked is snared in the work of his own hands.” (Psa 9:15 , Psa 9:16 ) Nothing can be plainer than the bearing of this on the deliverance of the godly remnant at the close by the outpouring of wrath and destruction upon the traitors within and the oppressors without of the last days. The end will be as here – the acknowledgment on the part of the Gentiles, that the living God is the God of delivered Israel, and that His kingdom shall not be destroyed.
Here we have then, in Dan 5 and 6, the combined types of that which will close the present dispensation. For if you look later on in this Book of Daniel, you have a person introduced called “the king.” (Dan 11:36 , etc.) You have there a direct prophecy of similar deeds. “The king shall do according to his own will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvellous things against the God of gods,” etc. Not that Darius personally did these things. I am speaking of what his act or decree meant in the eye of God. The question is, what God thought of the sin Darius had been drawn into, and this, as a type of the future.
It is said, further, of “the king,” in Dan 11 , “Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers . . . for he shall magnify himself above all.” In the New Testament we have this alluded to in more than one place. A person might say to me, That is about the Jews, and does not concern the present dispensation. Well, then, taking up what does refer to it, I would cite in proof 2Th 2:3 , 2Th 2:4 : “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day [that is, the day of the Lord’s judgment upon this world] shall not come except there come a falling away first, [strictly, it means ‘the apostasy first,’] and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God, sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” Now, it is plain, that what Darius did was in effect to exalt himself above all that is called God or is worshipped. Because, to forbid prayer to God, and to demand that the prayer that was offered to God usually should be offered to himself, only for a certain space of time, was nothing more nor less than the type of him who would take this place in a far more dreadful and gross and literal way. We have clearly a New Testament proof that these days spoken of in Daniel, and typified then, are yet to come; that this person, who is looked forward to by prophecy, is one who is to set himself up as God, not as the vicar of Christ merely, having persons ready to bow before him and kiss his foot. All this is wicked and superstitious; but it is not a man saying that he is God, setting himself up in the temple of God, and saying, There is no prayer to be offered except to myself. Whatever be the evil of Popery and the presumption of the pope, there is a great deal worse to come. And the solemn thing to remember is this, that it will not be merely the issue of Popery, but of Popery AND Protestantism, etc., without God. Not even the spread of truth will be an infallible preservative against it. Most guilty and foolish were those who once fancied, that because Israel had the ark of the covenant of the Lord, they were necessarily safe in the conflict with the Philistines! The ark returned in triumph, but where were they?
Beware of the fond conceit that, because of religious zeal, no harm can befall this country. Rather be sure of this: the more light, the more Bibles, the more preaching, the more of everything that is good there is, if men are not conformed to it, and not walking in it, the greater the danger. If they treat it as a light thing, and despise it; if they have no conscience about practical bowing to the light of Scripture, they are most sure to fall under one delusion or another. For who is to say what is not of importance in Scripture, or by what means the devil gains power over the soul? Wherever the soul commits itself to a refusal to listen to God, gives itself up to disobedience to God in anything, who is to say where it is to end? There is no security except in the path of holy dependence upon God and obedience to His word. We are not to be choosing one part of Scripture above another because we get more comfort from it. There is no security save as we take all Scripture. It is very sweet to be enjoying the presence of the Lord, but; more than that, it is a fearful thing to be found in disobedience to the Lord. Disobedience is as the sin of witchcraft. There is nothing more terrible. To disobey God is virtually to destroy His honour. It was so in Israel, and yet there is much worse to come, arising out of the lax and evil state of Christendom.
We have first, then, the apostasy. Christianity will be given up, and the more light, the more certainly it will come for the mass who refuse that light. There never was a time in Israel that appeared so promising as the day when our Lord was upon earth, never such a time of religious activity, the scribes and Pharisees compassing sea and land to make one proselyte. They showed zeal, apparently, in the reading of the Scriptures. They had the priests and Levites; there was no idolatry, nothing gross. They were a Bible-reading people, and a Sabbath-keeping people; they called our Lord Himself a Sabbath-breaker, so rigid did they appear outwardly to observe the day. All this was going on, but what did it end in? What did they do? They crucified the Lord of glory, and they rejected the testimony and the gracious working of the Holy Ghost, so that the end was that the King sent forth His armies, destroyed those murderers and burned up their city. Nor was it that there was no conversion going on. God put forth His power and they were converted by thousands. James says, “Thou seest, brother, how many thousands [rather myriads] of Jews, there are, which believe.” There were, then, thousands and tens of thousands converted after the cross of Jesus, and people might think that all Israel and the world were going to be converted. But what was the fact?, God was merely gathering out these thousands in His grace to leave the rest to be destroyed in the judgment that fell upon Jerusalem. That is a little foreshadowing of the judgment which is to fall upon the world by-and-bye. And if God is now putting forth His power and gathering out souls everywhere from the world, it is a solemn question for every one whether they are converted or not. And if they are converted, it is a call to them to be walking in the path of obedience, submitting in all things to the word of God, and looking for Christ. The idea that some have of universal conversion is a delusion. Babylon or the beast: these will be the two great snares of the latter day. The one will be the source of corruption coupled with religion and a profaning of all things holy. The other will be characterized by the last degree of pride and violence. It will appear that Christianity has been a complete failure, and men will think they have a new panacea for all the ills and miseries of man better than the Gospel. And they will praise up their idols of gold, and silver, and brass, glorying in the fact that Christianity, save the outward form, has disappeared from the face of the earth. Then will come the judgment.
Rev 17 shows us that as with Babylon in Daniel, so it will be with the New Testament Babylon, the corrupted form of religious apostasy. Man will be used as the instrument of the downfall of Babylon, the woman drunken with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. We have men wreaking their vengeance upon her. She is no longer seen riding upon the scarlet-coloured beast, but trampled upon, hated, and desolate. And then what do we have? Not Christianity everywhere overspreading the world. On the contrary, the beast fills the scene, and assumes the place of God. Instead of merely having an intoxicating, debased Christianity, it will then be man that sets himself up in proud defiance of God. He takes God’s place upon the earth. I do not pretend to say what space of time will elapse between the destruction of Babylon and the fall of the beast. Rev 17 proves that so far from the destruction of Babylon making the world to be an improved scene, we have only bold evil in place of hypocritical evil; and instead of religious corruption, you have irreligious pride and defiance of God. “The ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings for one and the same time with the beast. These have one mind and shall give their power and strength unto the beast” – not to God. All is given to the beast for the purpose of exalting man. The hour will have come for man to have the supreme place in the world. But, contrary to the ambition of man generally, there will be the giving up of their own will to the will of another – the desire to have some one very high and exalted, to whom all must bow When this is achieved, “These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them.” That this follows the destruction of Babylon is plain. For it says afterwards, “The ten horns which thou sawest, and the beast [so it ought to be read], these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked.” This is exactly what answers to the type of Darius. Darius comes in and destroys Babylon and takes the kingdom immediately; and the next thing is, he is led on by his courtiers to take the place of God Himself. He passes a law, or confirms one, that no prayer shall be offered to any save to himself, for thirty days. That is, he assumes, in effect, to be the object of all worship; he arrogates that which is exclusively due to the true God.
These two types are highly instructive, as closing the general history of the Gentiles. They show, not what had characterized them from the beginning and during their progress, but the main features of evil at the close. There will be destruction falling upon Babylon, because of its profaneness in the religious things of God; and then the height of blasphemous pride to which the head of empire will rise by assuming the honour and glory due only to God Himself. I was anxious to connect the two things together, because we cannot otherwise get the true force of them so well.
We have now concluded what I may call the first volume of Daniel, because it divides exactly into two portions at the close of this chapter; and that is one reason why it is mentioned that Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius, and in the reign of Cyrus the Persian. In the next chapter we shall find that we come back to the reign of Belshazzar, when Daniel is again brought before us. But this I must leave, only praying that this sample of the great importance of reading Scripture typically, where it is so intended to be read, may stir up the children of God to see that there is much more to be learnt from Scripture than what appears on the surface at a first glance. What God says has got a character about it that is infinite. Instead of being exhausted by a draught taken from it here and there, it is the well itself; the constantly flowing spring of truth. The more we grow in the truth, the less we are satisfied with what we have got, and the more we feel what we have yet to learn. It is not to affect words of humility, but the real, deep feeling of our own total insufficiency, in presence of the greatness and goodness of our God, that has taken such poor worms as we are to set us in His own glory – for such indeed are the mighty ways of His grace.
Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Dan 6:1-5
1It seemed good to Darius to appoint 120 satraps over the kingdom, that they would be in charge of the whole kingdom, 2and over them three commissioners (of whom Daniel was one), that these satraps might be accountable to them, and that the king might not suffer loss. 3Then this Daniel began distinguishing himself among the commissioners and satraps because he possessed an extraordinary spirit, and the king planned to appoint him over the entire kingdom. 4Then the commissioners and satraps began trying to find a ground of accusation against Daniel in regard to government affairs; but they could find no ground of accusation or evidence of corruption, inasmuch as he was faithful, and no negligence or corruption was to be found in him. 5Then these men said, We will not find any ground of accusation against this Daniel unless we find it against him with regard to the law of his God.
Dan 6:1 Darius See note at Dan 5:31.
one hundred and twenty satraps over the kingdom When compared with later Persian documents the number of these satraps is inappropriately large. In Persia there were usually only 20 to 30, but in the book of Esther there is also a large number (compare Dan 1:1 with Dan 8:9) of governmental officials.
We know so little about the different types or levels of governmental officials at this time that any kind of dogmatism is unwise and inappropriate.
satraps This word (BDB 1080) is used often in later Persian documents and many commentaries have used it to support a later date for the writing of Daniel (i.e. the Maccabean period). However, the word is an old Persian term, kshathrapan, which becomes satarpanu in some cuneiform texts (cf. The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, vol. 2, p. 18). Therefore, its usage cannot be used as evidence for a late date.
of the whole kingdom If Darius (cf. Dan 5:31) refers to Cyrus, then the whole kingdom refers to the entire Medo-Persian Empire and 120 satraps is not unusual. But if it refers to Gubaru (a Median general in Cyrus’ army which captured the city of Babylon), then the kingdom would refer to the province of Babylon; also, satrap would refer to lesser governmental officials, not the word’s later usage in Persian documents.
Dan 6:2
NASBthree commissioners
NKJVthree governors
NRSV, NJBthree presidents
TEV——
Brown, Driver, and Briggs Lexicon (BDB 1104) says the origin of the term is dubious, but that it refers to overseer or chief (from a Persian word for head).
The term three may be related contextually to Dan 5:7; Dan 5:16; Dan 5:29. At this point these three chief overseers are unknown to secular history.
and that the king This could refer to (1) Cyrus or (2) Gubaru whom Cyrus appointed governor of Babylon. However, the title king fits Cyrus much better (cf. Joyce G. Baldwin, Daniel IVP, p. 127, note #5). The main problem of this identification is that Cyrus was not son of Astyages, but of Cambyses, king of Anshan. On this issue scholars must await more archaeological evidence.
might not suffer loss This is the use of the Aramaic word for injury, used metaphorically for political interest (cf. Ezr 4:22; Est 7:4).
Dan 6:3 this Daniel began distinguishing himself This phrase begins with the DEMONSTRATIVE PRONOUN this (cf. Dan 6:5; Dan 6:28), which is typical of Persian style, but also is a way to accentuate Daniel’s giftedness (cf. Dan 1:17; Dan 1:20; Dan 2:21; Dan 2:23). He was probably between eighty and ninety years of age at this point.
the king planned to appoint him over the entire kingdom This parallels what Pharaoh did to Joseph in Gen 41:40. There are many similarities between Joseph and Daniel.
This imminent promotion of a Hebrew exile over Median and Persian administrators will cause the actions of Dan 6:4.
Dan 6:4 trying to find grounds of accusation against Daniel in regard to government affairs The same motives that led the Chaldean officials to accuse the three Hebrew youths in Daniel 3 are apparently the same motives that caused these officials to try and find accusations against Daniel (cf. Dan 6:13).
Dan 6:5 unless we find it against him in regard to the law of his God These administrators were wise enough to realize that the only area in which Daniel could be accused was in his loyalty to the Hebrew faith. See Special Topic: Terms for God’s Revelation .
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
Darius. A careful study of App-57 will show that this “Darius the Median” of Dan 5:31 is the Artaxerxes (the great king) of Neh 2:1 and Ezr 6:14, and the Ahasuerus of Est 1:1. These names are all used of one and the same person; and by comparison of the Median kings, according to Herodotus, compared with the genealogy of Cyrus in his Cuneiform Cylinder, the important fact becomes clear that this man was ASTYAGES; and the names ARSAMES = CAMBYSES, common to Herodotus, the Behistun Rock, and the Cylinder of Cyrus, all refer to one and the same person. If this be so, and ASTYAGES is to be identified with “DARIUS the Median”, then all difficulty vanishes. The Scripture record harmonizes exactly with the accounts given in the three sources named above; and we have the real clue to the parentage of Cyrus the Great (App-57). If this be not so, then “Darius the Median” remains an insoluble riddle to history and chronology alike, for there can be found no place for him on the page of history.
an hundred and twenty. Darius Hystaspis, in his inscription on the Behistun Rock (App-57), enumerates twenty-three names. This number was continually altered according to historical changes and conquests. In Est 1:10, Est 1:13, Est 1:14, there were seven when Astyages took the kingdom; but he added 120 more (Dan 6:1), and made 127 (Est 1:1; Est 8:9; Est 9:30).
princes = satraps. As in Dan 3:2.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Chapter 6
Now it pleased Darius to set over the kingdom one hundred and twenty princes, which should be over the whole kingdom ( Dan 6:1 );
Now that the Persian, Medo-Persian Empire, has conquered over the Babylonian Empire, Darius who was co-reigning with Cyrus set over the kingdom one hundred and twenty princes.
And there were three presidents; of whom Daniel was the first: that the princes might give accounts unto them, and the king should have no damage ( Dan 6:2 ).
So Daniel immediately moved into a position of extremely high authority within this Medo-Persian Empire, being made one of the three presidents and the head over them.
Then this Daniel was preferred above the presidents and princes, because an excellent spirit was in him; and the king thought to set him over the entire realm. But then the other presidents, the princes sought to find an occasion against Daniel concerning the kingdom; but they could find no occasions nor faults; forasmuch as he was faithful, neither was there any error or fault found in him. Then said these men, We will not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God ( Dan 6:3-5 ).
This guy is just too good. We’re never going to be able to trip him up unless it be with the law of his God.
Then these presidents and princes assembled together to the king, and said unto him, King Darius, live for ever. All of the presidents of the kingdom, and the governors, and the princes, and the counselors, and the captains, have consulted together to establish a royal statute, and to make a firm decree, that whosoever shall ask a petition of any God or man for thirty days, except from you, O king, he shall be cast in the den of lions ( Dan 6:6-7 ).
This, of course, would be… a guy would have to be stupid to make this kind of a proclamation. No one can ask anybody for anything for thirty days except me. Now they were, of course, playing up to his pride, and flattery, you know, “You’re so great and all. The people need to know how great you are. So to demonstrate this let’s make this proclamation. That throughout the entire kingdom, no one can pray to any god or ask anybody for anything except you so that they’ll know how great you are and all.”
Now, O king, establish the decree, sign the writing ( Dan 6:8 ),
They have made this proclamation, brought it in to him, now sign it, seal it.
that it cannot be changed, according to the law of the Medes and the Persians, which alters not. Wherefore king Darius sign the writing and the decree ( Dan 6:8-9 ).
Now notice that the decree once signed cannot be changed, even by Darius the king. It shows that his rule was not as strong as was Nebuchadnezzar’s. Nebuchadnezzar could make any decree and change any decree. He could do anything; he had the complete control. Whom he would he, you know, saved alive; whom he would he killed. I mean, he just had absolute control. With this he was controlled by the decrees.
Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed ( Dan 6:10 ),
I like this. Daniel knew that the king had signed the thing.
he went into his house; and, his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he was accustomed to do. And these men being assembled, found Daniel praying and making supplication before his God ( Dan 6:10-11 ).
Now in the book of Second Chronicles, when Solomon had dedicated the temple that he had built unto the Lord, Solomon prayed a beautiful prayer at the dedication. And in a part of the prayer of Solomon, he said, “Oh Lord, if these people turn their back against Thee, and they begin to worship and serve other gods, and they be taken captive by their enemies, if they shall turn toward this place and pray unto Thee, then hear Thou from Thy holy place in heaven and answer their prayer and deliver them from their captivity.” And we remember God responded to this prayer of Solomon by saying, “If My people which are called by My name will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways then will I hear from heaven and heal their nation” ( 2Ch 7:14 ), and so forth. So that Daniel was taken captive. But even as Solomon prayed, “Lord, if they turn toward this place and pray,” and so he was turning toward the holy place in the temple.
Now that is why the Jews today go to the Western Wall and pray facing the Western Wall. Because on the other side of the Western Wall somewhere the Holy of Holies once stood in Solomon’s temple. And so they are praying toward that place. Solomon said, “This place that I built unto Thee, you know, the heavens of heavens can’t contain You, much less this house that I have built. But O God, we pray that this will be the place where the people can meet You. And if they turn toward this place and pray and call upon Thee.” And so Daniel was turning towards Jerusalem. And three times a day during this seventy years that Daniel was in a captive in Babylon, it was his custom to just turn towards this place and pray unto God for the people, for the nation. What a beautiful man Daniel must be. What a privilege it would be to go up and shake his hand. Get acquainted with this fellow. He’s one of the top on my list of fellows that I want to meet when I get to heaven. I really admired Daniel. Courage of this man, knowing the king had signed it, he went, as was his custom, left his windows open. He didn’t bother, you know, hide anything, prayed unto God.
And then they came near, and they spake to the king concerning the king’s decree; Have you not signed the decree, that every man that asked a petition of any God or man within thirty days, except from you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions? The king answered and said, The thing is true, according to the law of the Medes and the Persians, which thus cannot be altered. Then answered they and said before the king, Daniel, which is of the children of captivity of Judah, does not regard you, O king, nor the decree that you have signed, but he makes his petition three times a day. Then the king, when he heard these words, was very displeased with himself, and he set his heart on Daniel to deliver him: and he labored until the going down of the sun. And then these men assembled unto the king, and said unto the king, Know, O king, that the law of the Medes and the Persians is, That no decree or statute which the king established may be changed. Then the king commanded, and they brought Daniel, and cast him into the den of lions. And now the king spake unto him and said unto Daniel, Thy God whom you serve continually, he will deliver you ( Dan 6:12-16 ).
Imagine this Darius, the king of the Medes, comforting Daniel. “Now don’t worry, Daniel. I’ve got to do this, you know. I was a fool. But the God that you serve, He will deliver you.” He sounds like the three Hebrew children. “The God that we serve, He is able to deliver us from your burning fiery furnace. And He will deliver us from your hand, and if He doesn’t we’re still not going to bow.”
So a stone was brought, and laid upon the mouth of the den; and the king sealed it with his own signet, and the signet of his lords; the purpose it might not be changed concerning Daniel. And then the king went to his palace, and he passed the night in fasting: neither did they bring the instruments of music before him: and his sleep had gone from him. And then the king arose very early in the morning, and he went in haste to the den of lions. And he came to the den, and he cried with a lamentable voice ( Dan 6:17-20 )
I like that; half hoping, wondering.
a lamentable voice unto Daniel: and the king spake and said to Daniel, O Daniel, servant of the living God, is thy God, whom you serve continually, able to deliver you from the lions? ( Dan 6:20 )
Now the king had some faith or he’d had never gone out there. Crying unto Daniel, the question. He said to him the night before, “Don’t worry, Daniel. Your God is able to deliver you.” But he had a question in his mind. So he asked the question, “Is your God able?”
Then said Daniel unto the king, O king, live forever. My God hath sent his angel, and he has shut the lions’ mouths, and they have not hurt me: forasmuch as before him innocency was found in me; and also before thee, O king, I have done no hurt. Then was the king exceedingly glad for him, and he commanded that they should take Daniel up out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no manner of hurt was found upon him, because he believed in his God. And the king commanded, and they brought those men which had accused Daniel, and they cast them into the den of lions, them, their children, their wives; the lions had mastery over them, and broke all their bones in pieces before they ever hit the bottom of the den. Then king Darius wrote unto all the people, nations, and languages, that dwell in the earth; Peace be multiplied unto you. I make a decree, That in every dominion of my kingdom men tremble and fear before the God of Daniel: for he is the living God, and steadfast for ever, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed, and his dominion shall be even unto the end ( Dan 6:21-26 ).
What a proclamation for a pagan king.
He delivers and rescues, and he works signs and wonders in heaven and in the earth, and who has delivered Daniel from the power of the lions. So this Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius, and in the reign of Cyrus the Persian ( Dan 6:27-28 ).
Darius was the king over the Medes, and Cyrus over the Persians. “
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
Dan 6:1-3. It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom an hundred and twenty princes, which should be over the whole kingdom; And over these three presidents; of whom Daniel was first: that the princes might give accounts unto them, and the king should have no damage Then this Daniel was preferred above the presidents and princes, because an excellent spirit was in him; and the king thought to set him over the whole realm.
Kings are never satisfied. The empire of Darius was always growing, and a chapter or two farther on we find that he had a hundred and twenty-seven provinces. There is no end to the greediness of man, and what does he get by it after all? One pair of hands can only do one mans work; he only gains more toils, and he has now to distribute the cares of his State among others. Then how good it is for any man when he is guided to a right, honest, and hearty helper! Such was the lot of Darius. How advantageous, too, it may be for the people of God when a man like Daniel is put in the high places of the land! Doubtless he was exalted, not only for his own sake, but that he might be as a brazen shield and bulwark for the people of God in that foreign land. No extortions would now be committed on the Jewish race, for they had a friend at court. Blessed be God, we have a friend at court too, one who will take up our cause, and speak for us to the King of Kings
Dan 6:4. Then the presidents and princes sought to find occasion against Daniel concerning the kingdom; but they could find none occasion nor fault;
Who can stand before envy? High places furnish very uncomfortable seats, for even if God exalt a man, men will try to pull him down; but he is an honourable man indeed who puts his enemies to their shifts before they can find anything against him.
Dan 6:4-7. Forasmuch as he was faithful, neither was there any error or fault found in him. Then said these men, We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God.
Then these presidents and princes assembled together to the king, and said thus unto him, King Darius live for ever. All the presidents of the kingdom, the governors, and the princes, the councelors, and the captains, have consulted together to establish a royal statute, and to make a firm decree, that whosoever shall ask a petition of any God or man for thirty days, save of thee, O king, he shall be cast into the den of lions. We do not know with what ingenious arguments they moved the kings mind to pass this, but we think we can conceive them. He had just conquered Chaldea; they would, therefore, say, It will be an excellent test of the obedience of your new subjects if you touch them upon the point of their religion; try whether they will for thirty days abstain from addressing their deities. Perhaps, too, since Darius had a colleague on the throne, the younger Cyrus, who was much more popular than he. They may have egged him on by hinting that Cyrus was much too vain, and that, therefore, if he would not allow anyone to address a petition, even to Cyrus, for thirty days, it would tend to show who was really loyal to Darius, and it would also test the temper of Cyrus. I cannot tell how they did it, but somehow or other they managed to lead the foolish old man to carry out their designs.
Dan 6:8. Now, O king, establish the decree, and sign the writing, that it be not changed, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not
The Babylonians entrusted their king with absolute power; hence he could will this or that as he chose. The Persians believed their kings to be possessed of perfect wisdom; and hence they never allowed a law to be changed, for that would be to suppose that the king who made it had made a mistake, a thing which could by no possibility ever occur. There is an amusing instance given by a modern traveler, who tells us that a few years ago one of the later Persian kings said he would never remove from the tent in the plain until the snow had gone from some mountains to which he pointed. It happened to be a very late summer, and the snow was long in melting, and his gracious majesty had to keep his place in his tent, while his troops were perishing with fever in a low marsh-district, until they procured men to sweep the snow from the tops of the mountains in order that he might be able to move. It is inconvenient for men to play the God; they cannot do it without bringing serious difficulty and danger upon themselves. So did Darius on this occasion. I never like men who, when they speak a hasty word, say they cannot alter it. Rash vows are better broken than kept; you had no right to say you would do the thing; much less have you any right to do it when you have said you would do it. However, the law of the Medes and Persians could not be altered.
Dan 6:9-10. Wherefore king Darius signed the writing and the decree. Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into the house;
That is right; the less we have to do with man, and the more we have to do with God the better. He did not go to the king to complain, but he went into his house to tell his God about it.
Dan 6:10. And his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem,
That much-loved city, though now in ruins.
Dan 6:10. He kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime.
Twas bravely done. A man in a meaner position might have carried out his devotions in private without sin, but not so Daniel. He is a representative man: he must not play the coward; it is incumbent upon him to be more especially and deliberately public in all that he does, for if he be seen to slink in never so small a degree, then all the saints will lose heart.
Dan 6:11-13. Then these men assembled, and found Daniel praying and making supplication before his God Then they came near, and spake before the king concerning the kings decree; Hast thou not signed a decree, that every man that shall ask a petition of any God or man within thirty days, save of thee, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions? The king answered and said, The thing is true, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not. Then answered they and said before the king, That Daniel,
Here is impudence! But they called Jesus Christ this fellow. Why? Daniel was the chief of the presidents, the prime minister of the king, and yet they say, That Daniel. Ill-hearts generally have ill-mouths, and what can you expect but ill-words out of ill-mouths?
Dan 6:13. That Daniel, which is of the children of the captivity of Judah,
That captive, that slave, that serf so they seemed to put it, forgetting that he was their master by virtue of his high office.
Dan 6:13-14. Regardeth not thee, O king, nor the decree that thou hast signed, but maketh his petition three times a day. Then the king, when he heard these words, was sore displeased with himself,
There was a little conscience left. Calvin does not like the man at all. He says, What right had he to sign a decree hastily, which might take away the lives of the best men in his dominion? And his repentance does not seem to be a repentance of the act, but only of the consequences.
Dan 6:14. And set his heart on Daniel to deliver him: and he laboured till the going down of the sun to deliver him.
Here was a great king, made himself out to be a god, and yet he cannot have his own way. When that famous potter, who was a true Christian, was brought before the king, the king said to him, Unless you change your views, I shall be compelled to have you burned. Ah! said Bernard de Palissy, you are a king, and yet say, I shall-be compelled, and I am a poor potter, but no man can make me use those words; I will be compelled to do nothing against my conscience. Oh! the holy bravery of men who are saved! When Bonner had one of the martyrs before him, he said, I will convince you; a blazing faggot will convince you. A fig for your faggot, said the man, or a wagon-load of them; I can stand and burn better than you can wear your miter. So the saints of God are strong, and can bid defiance to the adversary through divine grace.
Dan 6:15. Then these men assembled unto the king, and said unto the king, Know, O king, that the law of the Medes and Persians is, That no decree nor statute which the king establisheth may be changed.
This is the reason of his deliverance, not his innocency, but his faith; we are told by Paul that it was faith that shut the mouths of lions.
Dan 6:16-24. Then the king commanded, and they brought Daniel, and cast him into the den of lions. Now the king spake and said unto Daniel, Thy God, whom thou servest continually, he will deliver thee. And a stone was brought, and laid upon the mouth of the den; and the king sealed it with his own signet, and with the signet of his lords; that the purpose might not be changed concerning Daniel. Then the king went to his palace, and passed the night fasting: neither were instruments of music brought before him: and his sleep went from him. Then the king arose very early in the morning, and went in haste unto the den of lions. And when he came to the den, he cried with a lamentable voice unto Daniel: and the king spake and said to Daniel, O Daniel, servant of the living God, is thy God, whom thou servest continually, able to deliver thee from the lions? Then said Daniel unto the king, O king, live for ever. My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions months, that they have not hurt me: forasmuch as before him innocency was found in me; and also before thee, O king, have I done no hurt. Then was the king exceeding glad for him, and commanded that they should take Daniel up out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no manner of hurt was found upon him, because he believed in his God. And the king commanded, and they brought those men which had accused Daniel, and they cast them into the den of lions, them, their children, and their wives;
Which was a piece of injustice, the throwing in of their wives and children, though we cannot say as much of the throwing of them in.
Dan 6:24. And the lions had the mastery of them, and brake all their bones in pieces or ever they came at the bottom of the den.
Fuente: Spurgeon’s Verse Expositions of the Bible
Dan 6:1
Dan 6:1 It pleasedH8232 H6925 DariusH1868 to setH6966 overH5922 the kingdomH4437 an hundredH3969 and twentyH6243 princes,H324 whichH1768 should beH1934 over the wholeH3606 kingdom;H4437
Dan 6:1
Daniel and Lions Den (Daniel Chapter 6)
There was more than one man known as Darius during this time of upheaval as the conquered Babylonian empire was divided and came under a new government. This student of the Bible has considered several historical accounts and numerous commentaries on this subject and the only conclusion that can be drawn with certainty on who this man was, is to focus less on trying to untangle the conflicting historical accounts and forcing them to agree with the inspired account. Rather, we will consider the inspired text as being the final authority and will harmonize what we do know of history to conform with what thus saith the Lord in scripture.
Daniel is a composite book, organized out of chronological order. However, chapter six does follow as a sequel of recorded events after the fall of the Babylonian empire so it is correctly placed in sequence after chapter five. One commentator states that the Darius of chapter 5:31 is a different man than the Darius of Chapter 6. There were two men named Darius at this time in Babylonian history. One was Gobryas, also known as Ugbaru, the governor of Gutium. Darius (Gobryas), was slain less than a month after the fall of Babylon and replaced by another man who was known as Darius who’s name was Gubaru.
The Nabonidus Chronicle list a series of events after the peaceful conquest of Babylon by Cyrus the Great. However, the two names generally translated together as Gobryas are actually two separate names in the Chronicle.
(Line 15 of the Nabonidus Chronicle) – “The 16th day, Gobryas (Ugbaru), the governor of Gutium and the army of Cyrus entered Babylon without battle.”
(Line 19 & 20) – “Cyrus sent greetings to all Babylon. Gobryas (Gubaru), his governor, installed (sub)-governors in Babylon.”
(Line 22) – “In the month of Arahshamnu, on the night of the 11th day, Gobryas (Ugbaru) died.”
Cuneiform materials from 535-525 B.C. all show a Gubaru as governor of Babylon (with no cuneiform material available from the period of Ugbaru’s death to 525 B.C.). This either means that Gubaru and Ugbaru are really separate people, as the Nabonidus Chronicle states quite clearly, or Gobryas died in line 22 and was then replaced by someone else with the exact same name, under the same ruler, in the same office within four years. It is more likely that Gubaru and Ugbaru were separate people, and that Gubaru reigned from 539-525 B.C. while Ugbaru died few weeks after the Babylon conquest. This historical account of the Nabonidus Chronicle aligns with the inspired text perfectly if we assume that Darius (Gobryas) was never mentioned by Daniel. It is my belief that Darius (Gubaru) is the Darius of chapter 6. Darius (Gobryas) was not in power long enough to do anything, let alone organize an empire. His death was so close on the heels of the overthrow of Babylon that Daniel probably didn’t bother to mention him.
We don’t know for certain, as the historical accounts get quite confusing when men of the same name are present at the same time in history. One thing however is certain. The text of Daniel is inspired scripture, therefore we know it is accurate beyond question. with that said, we will go to the text.
We are going to start with verse 31 of chapter 5 since it preambles chapter 6 and is obviously speaking of the same man.
Dan 5:31 to Dan 6:1
And Darius the Median took the kingdom, being about threescore and two years old. It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom an hundred and twenty princes, which should be over the whole kingdom.
Chapter 6 is the continuation of the historical account after the death of Belshazzar, who was co-regent of Babylon under his father, Nabonidus, who was the son of Evil-Merodach (Amal-Marduk) who was the son of Nebuchadnezzar. Cyrus, the conquering Persian, appointed Darius as a king, or governor, over Babylon. Cyrus was the first in command with Darius being second beneath him. Dan 6:28 of this chapter seems to place the reigns of both Darius and Cyrus at the same time. Darius was sixty two years old when this happened and he promptly started organizing the empire by appointing a hundred and twenty leaders under him to administrate the affairs of Babylon.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
The last section in the historic portion of the Book is in the reign of Darius. He reorganized the government and distributed the administration among twenty satraps, who, in turn, were responsible to three presidents. Of these Daniel was one, and he was so distinguished by an excellent spirit that Darius proposed to set him over the whole realm. This naturally stirred up jealousy among the other presidents and satraps, who cunningly planned Daniel’s downfall.
Knowing that they would be unable to find anything against him save his relationship to his God, they induced the king to sign a decree that for a period of thirty days no one should ask a petition of God or man, save of the king. This was intended to flatter the king, and to bring Daniel into discredit with him, for his habit of prayer was evidently well known. Daniel’s loyalty never swerved. He continued to observe the seasons and acts of worship as had been his custom.
Unable to escape from his own decree, the king was reluctantly compelled to commit Daniel to the den of lions. How high his esteem for Daniel was is evidenced by his spending a night of mourning and fasting. The supremacy of God over all the kings and councils of earth was manifest in the supernatural deliverance of His servant, which issued in a proclamation by Darius.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
Fidelity in Worship
Dan 6:1-15
Though he was the most distinguished man of his day, and full of public business, Daniel managed to find time for prayer, in the evening, morning, and at noon, according to the Hebrew custom, Psa 55:17. He was outwardly a great magnate of the Persian court, but inwardly he was as true as ever to the city of his fathers and to the Temple now in ruins, Dan 6:10. What a marvelous tribute was afforded to his saintly character by his foes, when they could find no fault in him except as concerned his religious life! Time spent in prayer is not lost time to the suppliant. Luther used to say: I have so much to do today that I cannot get through with less than three hours of prayer. It was customary for the Jews to turn the face toward the Holy City, which for so long had been the center of their great religious system, 1Ki 8:44; Jon 2:4. With us, the upturned face and the references we make to the great High Priest, are significant of a posture of soul analogous and yet superior to the open window. See to it that your windows are always open towards the New Jerusalem, of which you are a citizen, but from which for a little while you are exiled.
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
Chapter Six The Faithful Remnant
The interesting historical incident in Daniel 6 portrays what should be comforting for every trusting soul: Gods tender care over all who walk uprightly before Him and confide in His love and power. Like the previous events it also has a typical character; it illustrates the peculiarly trying position in which the faithful remnant of Judah will find themselves in the days of the antichrist.
Darius, the satrap of Babylon, was pleased to set a hundred and twenty princes over the kingdom; over these he set three presidents, of whom Daniel was first. The prophet was thus appointed to a position very similar to that of a present day prime minister or secretary of state. Because of his excellent spirit and his faithfulness in administering the affairs of the kingdom, he was preferred above all the other dignitaries. In this exalted office he became, as many in similar circumstances have been, the object of hatred by unprincipled political plotters who sought their own advancement at the expense of his downfall. They tried to find occasion against him, taking it for granted that he was actuated by the same selfish motives as they were. They endeavored in every way to obtain proof of some dereliction of duty on his part, concerning which they might accuse him to the king. But at last they were forced to confess, We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God (5:5).
The cunning plotters, knowing the intensity of Daniels religious convictions, put their heads together and drew up a statute. They felt sure that if they could prevail on the king to sign it, this edict would ensure the downfall of his favorite. With this in mind, they came into the presence of the king, pretending great loyalty and zeal for the dignity of his office. They said:
King Darius, live for ever. All the presidents of the kingdom, the governors, and the princes, the counsellors, and the captains, have consulted together to establish a royal statute, and to make a firm decree, that whosoever shall ask a petition of any God or man for thirty days, save of thee, O king, he shall be cast into the den of lions. Now, O king, establish the decree, and sign the writing, that it be not changed, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not (6:6-8).
Their statement was false, for at least one of the presidents, and he the most preferred by the king, had not been consulted in the matter; but it was he whose destruction they desired. Darius, though perhaps generally a good man, like many others, was easily persuaded by the tongue of flattery. Without consulting with his chief minister he signed the decree; this established it as a law unalterable even by royal veto. By the signing of this statute Darius practically put himself into the place that the man of sin will occupy in the last days. He became a type of the antichrist, who sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God (2Th 2:4).
It is important to realize that there may be a vast difference between what a man is in himself and the place he occupies in Scripture typology. Darius, as a man, was doubtless very different in character from the coming false Messiah. He was kindly and amiable, and as we know, was afterwards deeply repentant for having permitted himself to act so foolishly. But as the king, making himself an object of worship and denying the liberty of any to offer prayers or adoration to any other god except himself, he fittingly pictures the antichrist.
We see the same principle brought out, for instance, in the case of David. Officially he was one of the most nearly perfect types of Christ that we have in the Old Testament, but as a man he possessed the same faults and committed as serious sins as many others.
After Darius had allowed himself to be flattered into appending the royal seal to the infamous interdict, the plotters doubtless congratulated themselves that Daniels doom was sealed. His holiness of life was a continual rebuke to their impiety, and his integrity only accentuated their crookedness. As we read of their inability to find anything to accuse him of except in the matter of the Lord his God, we are reminded of Pro 16:7 which tells us that when a mans ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him (or, silent to him); that is, they cannot truthfully allege anything against the man who walks with God.
When Daniel knew that the writing was signed, there was no evidence of either fear or ostentation. He simply pursued his godly course as though the decree were not in existence. Verse 10 tells us, He went into his house; and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime (italics added). Notice, it does not say that he opened his windows; on the contrary, it says, his windows being open. To shut them now would have been cowardice; to open them, if he had previously been in the habit of keeping them closed, would have been courting persecution- a foolhardy thing, which the child of God is never called on to do.
Daniel remembered the words of Solomon, which he prayed concerning the people of Israel:
If they sin against thee, (for there is no man which sinneth not,) and thou be angry with them, and deliver them over before their enemies, and they carry them away captives unto a land far off or near; Yet if they bethink themselves in the land whither they are carried captive, and turn and pray unto thee in the land of their captivity, saying, We have sinned, we have done amiss, and have dealt wickedly; If they return to thee with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their captivity, whither they have carried them captives, and pray toward their land, which thou gavest unto their fathers, and toward the city which thou hast chosen, and toward the house which I have built for thy name: Then hear thou from the heavens, even from thy dwelling place, their prayer and their supplications, and maintain their cause, and forgive thy people which have sinned against thee (2Ch 6:36-39).
In full accord with Solomons prayer, Daniel went up into his house three times daily. Kneeling before his windows, opened toward Jerusalem, he offered his prayers and thanksgivings and made his confession to his God. Now he knows that he takes his life in his hand each time he carries out his pious custom, yet he does not shrink for a moment or seek in any way to hide from his enemies the fact that he is a follower of the God of Israel. He kneeled with bowed head facing the direction of the desolated city of Jehovah, Jerusalem, the place where the Lord had set His name. We may be assured that his prayer was no less fervent and his thanksgiving no less real because he knew that malicious spies were waiting to report his conduct to the king; and, according to the unalterable laws of the Medes and Persians, Darius was bound to carry out its provisions and to enforce on each offender the penalty prescribed.
Having secured the evidence they desired, the conspirators went to the king and made accusation against Daniel. Darius at once realized the mistake he had made, and we are told he laboured till the going down of the sun to deliver him (14). But the unhappy ruler found himself helpless in the hands of his crafty advisers. He had to admit the authenticity of the decree and of his signature. He could do nothing except enforce the law. In this we see one great point of difference between the head of gold and the silver breast. Nebuchadnezzars word was absolute. No law held him in check: Whom he would he slew; and whom he would he kept alive (5:19). But it was otherwise with the Persian rulers. The law of the state had authority even over kings. And in each empire that followed we find imperial power more and more curtailed; the voice of the people made itself heard with ever greater force and intensity until the days of the feet of the image, part of iron and part of brittle pottery-a union of social democracy and imperialism.
Darius found it impossible to evade the statute in the face of his insistent ministers; they demanded that the decree be carried out, and the chief of the presidents be cast into the den of lions. The king seems to have had some sense in his soul of the power of the God of Daniel, for after giving the command, he said to him confidently, Thy God whom thou servest continually, he will deliver thee (6:16).
So Daniel was cast in, and Darius had a bad night, tossed between conflicting emotions of hope and fear as to his servants fate. Early in the morning he rushed to the mouth of the den, and called in great distress to find out whether Daniel had been destroyed or delivered. O Daniel, servant of the living God, is thy God, whom thou servest continually, able to deliver thee from the lions? (20) His anxious query shows both a measure of confidence in what he must have learned from Daniel as to the omnipotent power of God and his own lack of acquaintance with Him. But, to his joy, he found that Daniels God was as good as His word; He had preserved the prophet unharmed in the midst of the ravenous beasts. Daniels reply is noble in its very simplicity: O king, live for ever, he said. My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions mouths, that they have not hurt me: forasmuch as before him innocency was found in me; and also before thee, O king, have I done no hurt (21-22).
The misguided king is delighted to find that his own wretched blunder had brought no real damage to his minister; at once he commanded him to be taken up out of the den. The law had been complied with fully, and the prophet suffered no harm. Thus was Daniel delivered, because he believed in his God (23). What a lesson to tried saints everywhere! Who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good? (1Pe 3:13) It may not always please God to deliver from the trial, but He will always preserve in it and eventually bring His own in peace out of it.
The king now commands that Daniels accusers with all their households be cast into the den. It was a heathenish way of visiting retribution on them, inasmuch as the wives and children were not offenders; however it was quite in keeping with ancient eastern conceptions of justice. The lions broke all their bones in pieces the moment they came to the bottom of the den. Thus was the righteous one delivered out of trouble, while the wicked suffered in his place.
Darius then made a new decree, which was sent to all people, nations, and languages in the Medo-Persian dominions. In the edict he bade men everywhere to tremble and fear before the God of Daniel: For he is the living God, and stedfast for ever, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed, and his dominion shall be even unto the end. He delivereth and rescueth, and he worketh signs and wonders in heaven and in earth, who hath delivered Daniel from the power of the lions (26-27). We may hope that Darius had learned the same lesson that had been taught to Nebuchadnezzar in a very different school, long before. As for Daniel, the record says he prospered in the reign of Darius and in the reign of Cyrus the Persian. How much his influence had to do with the issuing of the decree later on permitting the Jews to return to Jerusalem, we do not know. But there can be little doubt that his voice would be heard by Cyrus regarding the return of the exiles.
To fully understand this portion it is necessary to consider the symbolic character of Daniels experience. The whole scene points to a time when Daniels people will once more be restored to their land. There will rise up among them one who will magnify himself above all that is called God and will be worshiped; he will sit in the temple of God, displaying himself as god. He will make a decree that prayer and worship will be addressed to him alone and every other god ignored. All this will be considered in its place, when we come to take up the latter part of chapter 11 where we have a vivid description of the antichrist and his times. The common notion that the papacy is the antichrist also will be addressed then. What I especially wish to make clear now is that Gods word has distinctly foretold the regathering of the Jews to Palestine, though at first in unbelief, and that out of the whole company a remnant will be taken up in grace and turned to the Lord. The mass will accept the claims of the willful one, who will pose as their messiah. The remnant however will be distinguished by their unyielding opposition to his decrees, and therefore, as in the case of Daniel in this chapter, will be called upon to pass through a period of severe testing, designated in both Testaments as the tribulation. But through the power of God they will eventually emerge from their trials in triumph, and they will see their enemies suffer the desolation and destruction that they had thought to inflict upon the faithful remnant.
First, in order that it may be made plain that the restoration of Israel, so frequently referred to by the prophets, is yet in the future, I would direct your attention to Isaiah 11. You will do well to read the entire chapter at your leisure, though I will here quote but a few verses.
And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea. And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth And there shall be an highway for the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria; like as it was to Israel in the day that he came up out of the land of Egypt (Isa 11:11-12,16).
That this passage has no reference to the return from Babylon in the past is evident, for it distinctly tells us that the Lord shall set His hand the second time to recover the remnant of His people. The first time was when they came up from the dominions of Cyrus and Artaxerxes, in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. The second recovery will be when they are brought back, not only from those lands, but from Egypt and all the islands of the sea. How they will return is described in Isaiah 18. There we learn that some great maritime nation will further the work of restoration by bringing them in many ships from the most distant places to their ancient homeland. In that time shall the present be brought unto the Lord of hosts of a people scattered and peeled, and from a people terrible from their beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden under foot, whose land the rivers have spoiled, to the place of the name of the Lord of hosts, the mount Zion (18:7).
That this return must be carried out in order to fulfill the promises made by God to the fathers should be self-evident. In the book of Jeremiah the Lord corroborates the prophecy of Isaiah by saying, For, lo, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel and Judah, saith the Lord: and I will cause them to return to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall possess it (Jer 30:3, italics added). And this return is still in the future, for in connection with it the pledge is given that when Jacob shall return he shall be in rest, and be quiet, and none shall make him afraid. This could hardly be said of the previous return from Babylon; for at no time did they dwell in rest and quietness undisturbed by their enemies, and possess the land. But they are Jehovahs people, in spite of all their sins; and in His own time He will fulfill to the letter every pledge He has made.
That they will have to pass through a season of severe testing before entering into the promised rest is equally clear, as the same chapter and many other portions of Scripture witness.
For thus saith the Lord: We have heard a voice of trembling, of fear, and not of peace. Ask ye now, and see whether a man doth travail with child? wherefore do I see every man with his hands on his loins, as a woman in travail, and all faces are turned into paleness? Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacobs trouble; but he shall be saved out of it (Jer 30:5-7).
In Isaiah 24 we read a fuller description of this time of trouble called the great tribulation. As you read this chapter change the word earth to land. The first twelve verses picture the land of Palestine as it will be in those days of distress. Now, notice verses 13-14:
When thus it shall be in the midst of the land among the people, there shall be as the shaking of an olive tree, and as the gleaning grapes when the vintage is done. They shall lift up their voice, they shall sing for the majesty of the Lord, they shall cry aloud from the sea.
Here the remnant is distinguished from the mass. Instead of being overwhelmed with despair because of their sorrows when cast, as it were, into this den of lions, they lift up their voices in song, like Daniel glorifying the God of Heaven. To them will be fulfilled the precious promises of Isaiah 43: I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back: bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth; Even every one that is called by my name: for I have created him for my glory, I have formed him; yea, I have made him (6-7). These shall be Jehovahs witnesses, testifying to the power and glory of the one true God, when apostate Christendom shall have been given up to the strong delusion to believe the lie of the antichrist.
The prophet Ezekiel, in chapter 36, foretold both their scattering and their regathering. Verse 24 says, For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land. The verses that follow show us that at that time they will be cleansed from their filthiness; a new heart and a new spirit will be given them. The Spirit of God within them will cause them to walk in His statutes and keep His judgments. Now I ask any unprejudiced person, Has this ever been fulfilled in the past? When the remnant of Judah returned from Babylon, did they give any evidence of having been as a company regenerated, so that they found delight in the law of the Lord? Was not the opposite true as evidenced by their turning away from His statutes even in the lifetime of Ezra and his colaborers, and later their crucifixion of the Lord of glory?
The New Testament revelations on this subject show us plainly that their recovery awaits the close of the present dispensation. In our Lords prophecy concerning the destruction of Jerusalem He said
When ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all the nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled (Luk 21:20, 24, italics added).
Jerusalems rehabilitation awaits, then, the falling of the Stone upon the feet of the Gentile image; for as we have already seen, that will conclude the Gentile times. But now a connected passage in Romans 11 will show us just where and when to place the turning of the remnant to God. In the 25th verse of that chapter the apostle wrote: For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits, that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. Now we are not to confuse the fullness of the Gentiles with the times of the Gentiles. The latter expression takes in the entire course of Gentile domination in the Holy Land. As long as the Jew is not master in Palestine the times of the Gentiles are running on. But the fullness of the Gentiles, as the context in this chapter makes clear, is an expression referring to spiritual blessing, not national nor temporal. This fullness will have come in when the message of the gospel has accomplished its purpose, and God has completed His present work of taking out from among the Gentiles a people for His name. In other words, the fullness of the Gentiles and the rapture of the church are coincident. Therefore between the fullness of the Gentiles and the close of the times of the Gentiles there will be a time-period in which the great bulk of prophecy will have its fulfillment. This is the period designated in Daniel the time of the end. A reference to the chart will help to make clear its proper position. The line running across the chart beneath the parenthetic portion that represents the present age, depicts the fullness of the Gentiles. The line below, immediately above the inscription concerning the kingdom, represents the close of the times of the Gentiles. Between these two lines we have the time of the end; and it is then that the conversion and testing of the remnant will take place.
The later chapters of Zechariah have much to tell us of that time of trouble, and the testimony that will be maintained in it.
And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the Lord, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein. And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The Lord is my God (Zec 13:8-9).
The greater part of the book of Revelation, from chapter four to the end of chapter nineteen, is concerned with the events of this time of the end. The saints seen on earth at that time are not Christians, but Jews who will then be called upon to suffer for the sake of their once-rejected Messiah. I agree that in chapter seven, after the account of the sealed 144,000 out of all the tribes of Israel, we have pictured a great multitude, whom no man can number, of saved Gentiles; but they do not form part of the church, nor do they appear throughout the book as in the place of testimony on earth. They come out of the great tribulation, emerging at last to take their place in the world-kingdom of our God and His Christ. But it is to the Israelite remnant alone that a place of testimony is given. This remnant will then heed the word of the Lord, search the Scriptures, and learn of their place in the course of time. They will understand that the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, and that God is again taking up His earthly people. I have no doubt that the book of Daniel will show the Israelite remnant where they are, and will lead them to seek the face of God. They will stand for Him when all Christendom and the bulk of their own nation shall have gone into the last great apostasy. Through them a final call will go out to the heathen who have never yet heard the gospel, nor rejected its precious message. The result of that ministry will be the ingathering of the great multitude shown to us in the seventh chapter of Revelation.
I urge each one to search the Scriptures for himself to see whether these things be so.
Fuente: Commentaries on the New Testament and Prophets
Dan 6:3
I. This excellent spirit to which Daniel owed his preferment was a spirit of self-control. He kept his body under. He held the mastery of his animal nature. He laid the iron hand upon his appetites and passions. He crucified the flesh. “He purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s meat, nor with the wine that he drank.”
II. This excellent spirit was a spirit of genuine piety. Much as we admire the temperance, the lofty courage, the sublime moral heroism of Daniel, we must go deeper than this to find the secret of his strength. He was, above all, a man of God. He endured, as seeing Him who is invisible. He had constant intercourse with heaven. To him God was a reality, a living and reliable Friend, to whom he could take every difficulty, and on whom he could trust in every danger. Yet all this tenacity to religious principle was united with a courtesy and urbanity that secured the admiration of all, and bespoke the true gentleman. He knew how to be firm and yet polite; conscientious, yet forbearing.
III. The excellent spirit to which Daniel owed his preferment was a spirit of unshaken faith in God. All through his troubles-and they were many and great-he never lost confidence in God, never failed to betake himself to Him in prayer. Beautiful as Daniel’s character was, he felt himself a sinner before God. No penitent ever was more humble in his confessions than he. No saint ever expressed himself more clearly as altogether dependent on Divine and covenant mercy. Of all the prophets of the Old Testament none more distinctly predicted the coming of Jesus; none indicated more plainly the object of His coming as a substitute to atone for the guilty. All Daniel’s hope for salvation was founded on the Messiah’s work, who should “finish transgression and make an end of sins, and make reconciliation for iniquity and bring in everlasting righteousness.”
J. Thain Davidson, Forewarned-Forearmed, p. 233.
References: Dan 6:3.-S. Macnaughton, Real Religion and Real Life, p. 292. Dan 6:4-10.-R. Payne-Smith, Homiletic Magazine, vol. xii., p. 351. Dan 6:5.-Christian World Pulpit, vol. xviii., p. 149.
Dan 6:10
I. Daniel knew that the writing was signed which threatened him with death if he did his duty. It is well that we should all know it. There is no wisdom in telling even the youngest amongst us that his path will be a smooth one. It is a law that altereth not, which declares the contrary; a law more sure than any ordinance of Medes and Persians, for it rests on the unchanging qualities of human nature. As long as men are what they are, so long will they find it hard to be righteous, both from the fault of others and from their own.
II. “Daniel prayed and give thanks to his God as he did aforetime.” It was not any unusual show of devotion; he did neither more nor less than he was used to do; three times in every day did he open his house towards Jerusalem and call upon God. The two things together are the secret of a holy life. Spiritual prayer, lest what we say be no better than the vain repetitions of the heathen; and frequent prayer, lest the spirit, being exercised too seldom, should leave us during the greater part of our lives the servants of sin.
III. It is the great art of the enemy of our souls to hinder us from thinking of God; to keep the question of obeying Him or not as much as possible out of our minds. Let us steadily bear in mind that the writing is signed against us; that if we will serve Christ we must be partakers of His suffering; we must take up our cross and follow Him. Yet, though we know this, not the less for this knowledge let us resolve to serve Him steadily; and that we may serve Him let us kneel down on our knees before Him, not once a day, much less once a week only, but often, but perpetually. And in the intervals of our work or our amusement let us link together, as it were, our more special and solemn devotions by a golden chain of heavenward thoughts and humble prayers; not trusting to our general good intentions but refreshing our continued decays and failings with as continued a recourse to the ever-open fountain of the grace of God.
T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iii., p. 175.
I. It was no new thing for Daniel to pray; he did not do it out of bravado, he did not do it from ostentation; it was his habit thus to pray; he prayed “as he did aforetime.” Those words give us the secret of his life. It was a consistent life. It was a life built throughout on the fear of God. It was a life every stone of which was a prayer. His worst enemies could find no fault in him, they acknowledged, except as touching the law of his God. They might taunt him for his religion; they might mock his faith; they could not deny the nobleness of his character, his uncorrupt integrity, his sterling worth, the wisdom as well as the uprightness which marked his conduct. The purity of his life they could not assail; it was a consistent life, a life based and built upon the fear of God.
II. But if the secret of Daniel’s success and courage was his consistency, what was the secret of his consistency? It was this: that he was a man of prayer. He kneeled three times a day in his chamber, and prayed and gave thanks to his God, as he did aforetime. (1) These words remind us beautifully and touchingly how, through all that long life, and though he had left Jerusalem only as a boy, the heart of the captive still turned towards the home of his fathers and the city of his God. (2) Notice how, anticipating by centuries the injunction of the Apostle-in everything by prayer and thanksgiving to make known our requests unto God-he who had just heard what he knew to be his own sentence of death, not only prayed, but gave thanks before his God as he did aforetime. There was no fear in that heart, there was no doubt of God’s mercy, there was no questioning of God’s providence, because he knew that the den of lions awaited him. He gave thanks now as he had done aforetime. (3) The man of prayer may not always be the successful man, judged by the world’s rules, but he is the strong man, the calm man, the brave man, the man against whom his worst enemies can find nothing to accuse him, except it be as touching the law of his God.
J. J. S. Perowne, Sermons, p. 17.
We are not told what went to make the “excellent spirit” (which was, in other words, Daniel’s religion) which made him so illustrious in his day and generation. But though it is not declared, we have no difficulty in saying what were some of the features of that excellent spirit. (1) Part of the “excellent spirit” was a deep humility. The strength of every man is his humility. (2) In that “excellent spirit” there was very great sympathy for the feelings of those around him. (3) In that “excellent spirit” there was a very great amount of common-sense, because religion is common-sense, and the man who has been dealing most with the realities of the unseen world, will be the man growing most in those intelligences which connect themselves with the common things of life. The excellent spirit in Daniel was acknowledged, and all his enemies could bring against him was “he prayed too much.” Consider the subject of private prayer.
I. All distinct acts of prayer are chiefly valuable as promoting the general habit of prayerfulness in the mind. There is a danger when we speak of the importance of prayer so many times a day of persons running away with the thought that that is enough. But to very little profit will be prayer three times a day in the closet, if it does not minister to an habitual uplifting of the heart in dependence and praise all the day long.
II. Though it is very desirable in our private communion with God, not to be mechanical, or tied down to certain laws too much,-yet some method is very valuable, even in private prayer. Every prayer ought to have these outlines;-invocation, confession of sin, praise, requests for future blessings temporal and spiritual, intercession.
III. Remember that all your greatness depends on your nearness to God. Always look to that first, for as with Daniel, so with you, the success of all the outer life will depend on that which is going on behind the scenes. A man depends on that which is going on alone between him and his God.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 2nd series, p. 90.
References: Dan 6:10.-Bishop Walsham How, Plain Words, 2nd series, p. 262; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiv., No. 815; vol. xx., No. 1154; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. xiii., p. 213; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. ii., p. 422; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iv., p. 279. Dan 6:11-14.-R. Payne-Smith, Homiletic Magazine, vol. xiii., p. 221. Dan 6:15-22.-Ibid., vol. xiv., p. 272. Dan 6:16.-Preacher’s Monthly, vol. vi., p. 248. Dan 6:20.-J. E. Vaux, Sermon Notes, 2nd series, p. 44; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iv., p. 282.
Dan 6:21-23
I. This story illustrates the fact that God often seems to crown the machinations of the wicked against the good with success.
II. The story illustrates the insidiousness of sin in drawing men into extremes of guilt which they never planned for.
III. The story illustrates the supremacy of duty over intrigue in the defence of the right.
IV. The story of Daniel illustrates the need which human governments often experience, of something like an atonement for the violation of law.
V. The story suggests that God’s deliverance of the good is often by methods in which the marvellous borders upon the miraculous.
VI. The story illustrates, finally, the fact that the rescue of the good often involves the destruction of the wicked, by a very subtle law which may be called the law of retributive reaction. The enemies of the prophet-statesman fell when he was restored.
A. Phelps, The Old Testament a Living Book, p. 277.
Dan 6:22
I. Notice the workings of a strange conspiracy. An influential deputation asks the king to make a law to this effect: that no man shall, within thirty days, make a request to God or men, save of the king; that if he should do so he be cast into the den of lions.
II. Notice the object of the conspiracy-Daniel. They hated this man on account of his faith. Amidst the rabble of deities, gods, and goddesses, with all their splendour and all their circumstantial authority, in Babylon, he was true to his worship of the one living God; true to Jehovah and true to the covenant. Daniel was hated for his strange, holy, eccentric faith; he was hated for the life that sprang out of faith. They hated him also because he was a man of rare gifts; they sickened with envy at the sight of those rare gifts. He belonged by presidency to the Magi-not to the sacerdotal, but to the scientific, order. They hated him for his supremacy in office.
III. Notice the effect of this conspiracy. (1) The effect was first, to bring out Daniel’s confession. (2) God sent His angel to stop the lions’ mouths, and we may imagine their bland, caressing movements, as John Foster has it, round Daniel just as they used to be round Adam in Paradise. We are not placed in similar circumstances, but every one of us is tried sometimes to the fullest extent of our powers. You have lions of some kind to face; open your windows towards Calvary; open your windows towards the Great Sacrifice.
C. Stanford, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxi., p. 328; see also Expository Sermons and Outlines on the Old Testament, p. 297.
Dan 6:23
I. It is good-and they who have proved it in their own persons will be the foremost to confirm the words-to have had at times to bear witness alone and with none to sympathise, for the truth as God has taught them. It is only so that they can learn what is the strength of their faith; what it can bear; what it is worth. The faith that can bear to be alone with God in this world; that faith will pass unshaken through the gates of death, and meet God with no ignoble fear in the world to come. It is easy to believe, or think we believe, in a crowd. We feel, then, that the responsibility is divided; there is a sense of safety in the mere fact that many are trusting to the same hope as ourselves. But we may mistake trust in our clique for trust in our belief; and trust in our belief for trust in God. And it is good for such props to be at times rudely knocked away, if only that we may see whether we can stand alone; alone, as far as men are concerned; but not alone, “because the Father is with us.”
II. It is not strange, therefore, that the Bible should be full of the histories of men who are distinguished by the quality of boldness. Abraham leaving his country and people to form a nation in a distant land; David going forth alone to meet the giant; Elijah before his enemy Ahab; the three children in the furnace of Nebuchadnezzar; Daniel in the wild beasts’ den; to say nothing of the faithful rank and file of the earth; the “seven thousand” whose stories are not written in the chronicles of human penmen, but whose names are in the Book of Life; the seven thousand, the glorious minority, who in all times remain as God’s witnesses, and will not bow the knee to Baal. It is not strange that characters like these should form the staple of the Scripture biography; for they are the men by whom the great fight has been fought and the victory won. The history of the cause of God in the world is, and must be, the history of brave men-of those who are not ashamed of Him, or afraid of their fellow-men.
III. Times change; standards of orthodoxy vary; forms of persecution have their day and cease to be; but two things remain the same, the will and nature of God, and the heart of mankind. Now, for ever in this world, the fight against the devil is to be waged by the brave. If our first needful prayer is “Lord, increase our faith,” the next is “Lord, increase in us boldness,” that we may not fear what men can do to us, nor what men can say of us.
IV. Though a brave man must needs be alone in the world, it does not follow that he who chooses to walk alone is therefore brave. There is a solitude in which we may be, not alone with God, but alone with self-alone with pride and uncharity and a rebellious heart.
A. Ainger, Sermons in the Temple Church, p. 1.
References: Dan 6:23-Homiletic Magazine, vol. xiii., p. 271. Dan 6:28.-J. Foster, Lectures, 2nd series, p. 174. 6-J. G. Murphy, The Book of Daniel, p. 119; W. M. Taylor, Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 348; Ibid., vol. iv., p. 55.
Fuente: The Sermon Bible
CHAPTER 6 Under Darius the Mede and Daniel in the Lions Den
1. The decree of Darius (Dan 6:1-9)
2. Daniels faith and steadfastness (Dan 6:10-15)
3. Daniel cast into the lions den and the deliverance (Dan 6:16-24)
4. The Decree of Darius (Dan 6:25-28)
Dan 6:1-9. From the opening of this chapter we learn that Daniel also held a very high position in the beginning of the second monarchy, which had conquered Babylonia. He was preferred above all the other presidents and princes. This created jealousy. They devised a very cunning plan and made the king sign a decree, which they were sure Daniel would break. Inasmuch as the law of the Persians and Medes was irrevocable they were sure that the hated old man would be cast into the lions den.
Dan 6:10-15. It is a beautiful scene. When Daniel knew the decree had been signed, he went calmly back into his house and with his windows open towards Jerusalem he prayed and gave thanks to the Lord. He looked away from earthly circumstances and looked to the Omnipotent One. The accusation followed. The king now discovers that he is in a desperate condition. His law demands that Daniel be cast to the lions, but his heart filled with love for Daniel would have liked to save him, but he found no way of delivering him.
Well may we think here of another law and another love. God, a holy and righteous God and a God of love, found a way to save man. Gods holy law condemns man, who is a sinner and the curse of the law rests upon him. Gods love is set upon the world, and He so loved the world that He gave His only Begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. The curse of the law came upon Him who knew no sin and who was made sin for us, and therein is love manifested. Daniel is cast into the lions den as our blessed Lord was given to the lion Psa 22:21, and a stone is laid upon the mouth of the den and it is sealed with the kings signet. He is so to speak in a grave, as good as dead in the eyes of the world, for who has ever heard of hungry lions not devouring a man. And all this brings before us that other place, the tomb in the garden, where He was laid and the stone before it, which bore the seal of the Roman world power. But as Daniel could not be hurt by the lions, so He who went into the jaws of death could not be holden by death. The tomb is empty and He is victor over death and the grave. All this is blessedly foreshadowed in this experience of Gods prophet.
The Lord in whom Daniel trusted and whom he served delivered him from the lions. His accusers and their families were given to the ferocious beasts, which devoured them at once.
Dan 6:25-28. King Darius also acknowledged the God of Daniel.
The final characteristic of the times of the Gentiles is man worship. The heads of these empires including the Roman Caesars claimed divine honors. Papal Rome also puts up man as the viceregent of the Lord. And all about us we find the deification of man. Finally there comes the head of all this apostasy, the son of perdition, the man of sin, who demands worship for himself 2Th 2:1-17.
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
Darius the Median
The biblical order of the monarchs of Daniel’s time, and of the period of the captivity and restoration of Judah, is as follows:
(1) Nebuchadnezzar (B.C. 604-561) with whom the captivity of Judah and the “times of the Gentiles” (See Scofield “Luk 21:24”), See Scofield “Rev 16:19”, began, and who established the first of the four world monarchies.; Dan 2:37; Dan 2:38; Dan 7:4.
(2) Belshazzar (prob B.C. 556), the Bel-shar-uzzar of the inscriptions, grandson of Nebuchadnezzar, and son of the victorious general Nabonidus. Belshazzar seems to have reigned as viceroy.
(3) Darius the Mede Dan 5:31; Dan 6:1-27; Dan 9:1. Concerning this Darius secular history awaits further discoveries, as formerly in the case of Belshazzar. He has been conjectured to be identical with Gobryas, a Persian general. This Darius was “the son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Medes, which was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans” Dan 9:1 “Ahasuerus,” more a title than a name, the equivalent of the modern “Majesty,” is used in Scripture of at least four personages, and is Persian rather than Median. That Darius the Mede was the “son” (or grandson) of an Ahasuerus proves no more than that he was, probably, through the seed of his mother, of the seed royal not only of Media, but also of Persia. There is but one Darius in Daniel. (See Dan 9:1.)
(4) Cyrus, with whose rise to power came fully into existence the Medo-Persian, second of the world-empires Dan 2:39; Dan 7:5
In Daniel’s vision of this empire in “the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar” Dan 8:1-4 the Median power of Darius is seen as the lesser of the two horns of the ram; the Persian power of Cyrus, under whom the Medo-Persian power was consolidated, as the “higher” horn which “came up last.” Under Cyrus, who was prophetically named more than a century before his birth. Isa 44:28 to Isa 45:4, the return to Palestine of the Jewish remnant began. Ezr 1:1-4. See Dan 11:2, marg. ref. (See Scofield “Dan 11:2”).
Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes
Darius: Dan 5:31, 1Pe 2:14
an: Exo 18:21, Exo 18:22, Est 1:1
Reciprocal: Est 1:3 – the nobles Est 8:9 – and to the lieutenants Est 9:3 – the rulers Isa 22:24 – hang Dan 2:48 – ruler Dan 9:1 – Darius Act 23:34 – he asked
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
THE MEDO-PERSIAN EMPIRE now became the dominant world power, and Darius became king in Babylon. It appears that historians have difficulty in identifying this man. It may be that he was only a vassal king, under the suzerainty of Cyrus king of Persia; but this is a matter that need not detain us. In the Babylonian section of the new empire he arranged things as he saw fit, and again we find Daniel promoted to a place of great power. The hand of God was in it, though on the human side two things may have been in his favour. First, he was not a native of Babylon. Second, Darius almost certainly would have heard of the dramatic scene in the palace, just before he captured the city that seemed so impregnable, and thus of Daniel’s superhuman understanding.
The scene brought before us in chapter 6 is very true to human life and nature. Daniel’s exalted position filled the hearts of lesser men with envy and hatred. If possible, they would destroy him. This purpose of theirs brings to light a remarkable testimony as to his character – ‘he was faithful, neither was there any error or fault found in him.’ As a result they concluded that no attack on him would succeed unless it were made, concerning the law of God.
Here we must pause, and consider our own ways. What point of attack does each one of us present to those who in an antagonistic spirit survey us critically? Very frequently, we fear, we present more points than one. Hence the constant exhortations to a life of godliness, that we find in the Pauline epistles. To the Philippians, for instance, he urged, ‘that ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world; holding forth the word of life’ (Php 2:15, Php 2:16). If we today, as well as the Philippians nineteen centuries ago, can be thus described, crooked and perverse folk who wish to accuse us, will have to base their attack on the word of life, or the way in which we hold it forth, rather than on our personal ways. Let us each be very much exercised as to this matter.
The presidents and princes were shrewd men. They knew the power of flattery and how men love to exalt themselves. Hence they suggested to Darius a decree of self-exaltation; practically deifying himself for the period of a month. Into this trap Darius fell, and we learn in connection with it that in this kingdom of ‘silver’ the power of the monarch was not so absolute as in the kingdom of ‘gold’. Nebuchadnezzar did just what he liked without curb laid upon him. The Medo-Persian kings had to consider their captains’ and counsellors’ advice, and a law. when once promulgated, could not be altered. The law was signed, by which under pain of a terrible death, any who feared the God of heaven, should be cut off from Him for thirty days. In principle he was doing again the great sin, attempted in chapter 3. Nebuchadnezzar demanded worship through his golden image. The method of Darius was far less spectacular, but equally against God. For all practical purposes there shall be no God but Darius for thirty days!
In Dan 3:1-30, Daniel is absent, and courage was given to his companions to stand firm in their allegiance to the one true God, and refuse to bow down to the image. In the present chapter the three companions are absent and Daniel alone is seen. Exactly the same spirit is seen in him. They would not for one moment bow down to worship a god of man’s devising. He would not for one day cease to pray to the true God, whom he knew. They acted negatively, defying the king’s command to worship Satanic powers. He acted positively, maintaining contact with the God of heaven, though it involved defying the command of Darius. In both cases God stepped in, and miraculously sustained and delivered His servants in a way that exposed the folly of the kings.
Darius indeed was quickly made to discover his folly. Daniel made no sensational protest; he only went on doing what had been his custom. Three times each day he knelt before God with thanksgiving and prayer, and he made no secret of it, since he did it with windows open, and thus all could see.
But why did he have his windows open ‘toward Jerusalem’? Read 1Ki 8:46-50, and the reason is plain. He believed God would answer that petition in Solomon’s prayer, so he fulfilled the stipulation that the prayer should be made, ‘toward their land… the city which Thou hast chosen.’ Such was the record in the Scriptures. In obedience he fulfilled it, and went on fulfilling it in spite of the king’s decree.
Let us seriously ask ourselves if we are as observant of Scripture as Daniel, and moved by it to obedience, as he was.
His courage has become almost proverbial. ‘Dare to be a Daniel!’ has become a well-known phrase. Good advice it is. But what gave him the courage to dare? The answer surely is – his reliance on God and His word. We may safely affirm that, down to our own time, all the saints who have acquired courage to stand for the truth, and suffer for it, have been fortified in the same way. In the tolerant, easygoing lands where English is spoken, compromise is the fashionable thing. But this was not Daniels’ way, and should not be ours.
Hence, though ‘an excellent spirit’ was in Daniel, the jealous ‘princes’, who were under him, had no difficulty in denouncing him to the king, who foolishly and blasphemously had signed the decree, which could not be altered or revoked. Realizing his folly, the king made desperate attempts until nightfall to release Daniel, and incidentally himself, from the entanglement, which he himself had created. But all in vain.
So, just as in Dan 3:1-30, we saw the three faithful Hebrews going to their doom, now we see Daniel going to his. And with the same result. God intervened; altering the order of nature, and delivering His servant. Here we have a miracle equally remarkable with that recorded in chapter 3. God has established a certain order in creation, whether in the action of fire or that of living animals. Fire will uniformly burn clothes and even human bodies that wear them. Hungry wild beasts, such as lions, will uniformly spring upon and devour their prey. God, who has established this order can reverse it, should it please Him so to do. It did please Him to do so in both cases. And His control of the lions in this case is equally remarkable with His suspension of the action of fire.
Some may wish to enquire why God has not acted in this way on behalf of His servants far more frequently? The answer surely is, that God acts in this miraculous way at the beginning of some change in His dealings with men, though He may often act on behalf of His saints in a providential way. It was so, for instance, at the beginning of the Christian dispensation. Peter was miraculously delivered from prison and death, as recorded in Act 12:1-25. Since then, many a saint has died in prison for the sake of the Gospel, though some have been providentially delivered.
As we ponder over this, one reason for it at least becomes clear. In the two cases before us the times of the Gentiles had just begun by the complete overthrow of Israel and the destruction of Jerusalem. The natural conclusion to be deduced was that the gods of the Babylonian world were more powerful than Jehovah, whose temple was at Jerusalem. They were not, and God demonstrated it by these miraculous deliverances of His servants in the teeth of the powers of darkness. At the end of the age He will demonstrate it by the damnation of His foes, and theirs.
The same thing may be said of this present Gospel age. Act 12:1-25, which begins with the deliverance of Peter, ends with the judgment of Herod. In both cases an angel ‘smote.’ He smote Peter up for deliverance, and then smote Herod down to a miserable and disgusting death. God has not repeated these actions, just because we live in this Gospel age, which is characterized by grace. When this age of grace ends, we shall see God’s saints completely delivered, and their oppressors completely judged.
In Dan 6:1-28 we see not only Daniel delivered but also the evil men, who conspired against him, judged. They and their families suffered the exact fate that they had designed for Daniel, and that by the order of the king they had deceived into the evil law.
The end of the chapter reveals the salutary effect of the whole episode on the mind of Darius. His confession and decree, which was sent so widely abroad, was similar to the edict sent forth previously by Nebuchadnezzar. Thus in the second of the four great world-empires this tribute to the One, confessed not only as ‘the God of Daniel’, but also as ‘the living God, and steadfast forever’, was sent out to all men. The time had not come for the love of God to be manifested, but His power was declared in striking fashion, and everywhere men, under the sway of Darius, were commanded to ‘tremble and fears before Him.
Let us notice the ‘decree’ of verse Dan 6:8, and by way of contrast, the ‘decree’ of verse 26. Both were issued in an empire that permitted no alteration or cancellation of its decrees, yet they do stand in contrast. The first was nullified as to its penalty; the second was soon nullified as to its performance. The subsequent history of that empire shows that men did not tremble and fear before the living God, as they were commanded to do. No empire can legislate in the things of God; and so this ‘law of the Medes and Persians’ was soon flatly and universally broken! We see this, for instance, in the book of Esther.
Fuente: F. B. Hole’s Old and New Testaments Commentary
A Man of Affairs
Selections from Dan 6:1-28
INTRODUCTORY WORDS
In a previous study, we observed Daniel as a seer. Here we will see him as a man of affairs.
As we watch Daniel moving among the great leaders of the Babylonian empire, managing affairs of state with marvelous wisdom, standing head and shoulders above all the men of his day in his moral integrity; we assure ourselves that the seed which produced so great a life was sown in the days of his youth.
Daniel, the model youth, was Daniel, the model man of affairs in embryo. Character may be displayed to greater advantage in the maturity of the man, but character is in formation in the boy and the youth who knows how to dedicate himself to God, and to say “no” to sin and the world.
Few men in the Bible stand forth in the limelight of unimpeachable integrity as did Daniel. He was a man against whom neither God nor man found fault. Nevertheless, Daniel, himself, confessed his own sin and the sins of his people.
We need men today in every realm of life, panoplied as was Daniel with the armor of righteousness.
Queen Elizabeth asked a merchant to go on business for the crown. The man held back, saying, that his business would suffer. The queen replied, “You take care of my business and I’ll take care of yours.” The result was that the man obeyed his queen and the queen in turn directed a great volume of business toward the man. He who serves God faithfully, God will serve.
Daniel never was so entangled in the affairs of Babylon that he neglected his life of prayer and his duties toward God, He served his generation with marked success but he first served God. Has not God said, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness”? When this is done will not God add unto us the “all things”? We need men who will never stoop to a mean deed or an un-Christly act in order to seek preferment in business. It is far better for men to secure the backing of the great and eternal God, whose eyes run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show Himself strong toward the perfect, than it is to seek the plaudits of all men. Men may do much, God can do indescribably more.
I. THE SUPREMACY OF DANIEL (Dan 2:48)
The time came when Nebuchadnezzar dreamed a dream. He called for the wise men of Babylon and demanded that they tell him both his dream and the interpretation thereof. In this they utterly failed. Therefore, the king in wrath sent forth a decree that all of the wise men should be slain. When Daniel heard what had been done, he said, “Destroy not the wise men of Babylon: bring me in before the king, and I will shew unto the king the interpretation.”
As Daniel stood before the king, he said, “There is a God in Heaven that revealeth secrets.” He and his three comrades gave themselves to prayer and God showed Daniel the dream and made known unto him the interpretation.
Let us consider whether the treachery of the worldly-wise was worth as much to them as the faithfulness of the Divinely-wise. If it had not been for Daniel and his God all the wise men of Babylon would have been slain. No one can doubt that it pays to keep in touch with the One who holds all wisdom in His hands.
In after years the wise men of Babylon sought to destroy Daniel because of Daniel’s preferment, but once more the God of Daniel delivered him, and the men who were so treacherous against him were themselves slain by the order of the king.
He who puts God first will be put first. He who honors God will be honored by God. It was God who brought Daniel into favor. It was God who gave Daniel knowledge and skill. It was God who gave Daniel preferment in the reign of various kings throughout a long and eventful life.
We appeal to men to take God into their business affairs. The men who desire to reach the top, must be prepared in character and in intellect to hold sway, and no one dare deny that both character and intellect are tremendously enhanced by walking with God.
Petty politicians and frenzied financiers may be men of questionable integrity but the man who reaches the heights of honor in any realm must be the man of unimpeachable morals.
“Let us work and pray together,
With a firm and strong endeavor;
Hearts and hands united ever
In the service of the Lord:
In His constant love abiding,
And to Him our all confiding,
With His gentle hand still guiding,
We shall conquer through His Word.”
II. THE FAR-FLUNG VISIONS OF DANIEL (Dan 1:17; Dan 2:28; Dan 5:12)
Daniel can never be rightly appreciated without emphasis being placed upon his far-flung visions. It was said of old, concerning Joseph, “Behold this dreamer cometh.” Daniel was pre-eminently more than a dreamer. He was a man to whom God revealed Himself and to whom God revealed His will. The truth is that Daniel looked far down through the centuries, through millenniums and saw the very end times in which we now dwell.
Daniel was not a dreamer in the visionary sense of the word. His gift was the interpretation of dreams, which had been Divinely given. It was in the night visions that Daniel saw one like unto the Son of Man coming in the clouds of Heaven. It was in a dream, and in the visions of his head upon his bed, that Daniel saw four great beasts which outlined the four great world empires. This vision concluded with the ten horns on the fourth beast, which are ten kingdoms which shall arise, and which we believe are even now forming.
It was to Daniel that the angel said, “Understand, O son of man: for at the time of the end shall be the vision.”
It was to Daniel that the angel said, “I am come to make thee understand what shall befall thy people in the latter days: for yet the vision is for many days.”
It was to Daniel that the angel said, “I will shew thee that which is noted in the Scripture of truth.”
Daniel did not live with his vision and ambition circumscribed by the petty four walls of his own interests. He held a whole world in his grasp. Its needs were his needs. Its cry, his cry. More than this, however, Daniel held a world in his grasp that had not yet arisen. He looked far down the centuries and saw the finality of blessedness which should come to his own nation, Israel, in the end times; and he saw as well, the array of nations in those same days. Yet, more than this, Daniel saw in visions of the night, the Lord Jesus Christ descending from Heaven; he saw His throne established and His righteous reign.
We need today men of a like vision. Too many of us are circumscribed by our own little personal affairs. Moses endured because he saw Him who was invisible. Abraham and the patriarchs lived looking for a city whose builder and maker was God. David said, “I have set the Lord alway before me: * * I shall not be moved.”
“Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of our faith; who, for the joy that was set before Him, endured the Cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:1-2).
“The prize is set before us;
To win, His words implore us:
The eye of God is o’er us,
From on high!
His loving tones are calling,
While sin is dark, appalling;
‘Tis Jesus gently calling:
He is nigh!”
III. THE PRAYER LIFE OF DANIEL (Dan 2:18; Dan 6:11; Dan 9:3-4)
Daniel early learned to look away in prayer to the God of Heaven. As we read the Divine Record which reveals Daniel at different epochs of his great life, we always find him with his face turned toward God. He prayed as naturally as a flower lifts its face upward. Prayer to him was not a great mountain peak followed by valleys of self-seeking and God-forgetfulness, and then another mountain peak of petition, and so forth. Daniel walked and talked with God.
“He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own,
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.”
Daniel in his prayer life was not of the sort that prayed, “God bless me and my wife, my son John and his wife, us four and no more.” Daniel prayed with a passion burning in his soul for his own people. He remembered the day when the city was taken and when his people were carried into captivity. To be sure, he, himself, had been raised by a foreign nation to a place of power and affluence. That however, did not cause him to forget the cry and tears of those who suffered in servitude.
Three times a day this mighty man, this man of affairs, this man upon whom many demands of state fell, took the time to plead with God, with his windows open toward Jerusalem. He could heartily join with the Prophet who said, “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.”
God give us men, not only with a great vision, but with a great prayer. He who lives for himself, lives in vain. He who lives for others and for God is thrice blest in his life. The man who prayed for others, could also pray for himself. When the king cast him into the den of lions, Daniel committed himself unto the Living God. He had been taken as it were, from his very knees as he prayed for others; how then could God forsake him, when he, himself, was in need? Thus, did God shut the lions’ mouths and delivered His servant.
“Sweet hour of prayer! sweet hour of prayer!
That calls me from a world of care,
And bids me at my Father’s throne
Make all my wants and wishes known.
In seasons of distress and grief,
My soul has often found relief,
And oft escaped the tempter’s snare,
By thy return, sweet hour of prayer!”
IV. THE UNDAUNTED COURAGE OF DANIEL (Dan 4:19; Dan 5:17; Dan 6:9-10)
When Daniel was a youth, he was not afraid to request of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself. When Daniel heard of the decree of the king to slay the wise men, he was not afraid to request Arioch to bring him in before the king and there Daniel stood stating positively that God would reveal to the king his dream and its interpretation.
The supreme test, however, came to Daniel when Nebuchadnezzar dreamed the dream which foretold his downfall. Daniel stood before him then and shunned not to declare the whole counsel of God. He told Nebuchadnezzar that by reason of his pride, God was going to cut him down. That a beast heart was to be given him until seven times had passed over him. Then Daniel pled with the king to break off his sins by righteousness and his iniquities by showing mercy to the poor.
Another great proof of Daniel’s courageous faithfulness was when he stood before Belteshazzar and pronounced upon him his doom, giving interpretation of the handwriting upon the wall.
Yet another great proof of Daniel’s undaunted courage came, when he threw open wide his windows and prayed toward Jerusalem, knowing that the king, Darius, had signed a decree that would involve his certain casting into the den of lions.
As test after test came to Daniel and he stood true and unflinching in his fidelity to God, he found that God never failed him. Has not God written, “Be strong and of a good courage, * * neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest”?
In this namby-pamby, milk-and-water age, when so many are mere automatons, the dupe and slaves to public opinion, carried about by every waft of wind, we need real men, who will not be afraid of the faces of those who would oppose their fidelity to God.
“Oh, for a faith that will not shrink,
Though pressed by every foe;
That will not tremble on the brink
Of any earthly woe:
That will not murmur or complain
Beneath the chastening rod;
But in the hour of grief or pain
Will lean upon its God:
A faith that shines more bright and clear
When tempests rage without;
That when in danger knows no fear,
In darkness feels no doubt.”
V. THE SPOTLESS REPUTATION OF DANIEL (Dan 6:4)
Whatever else may be said concerning this Prophet, this seer, this man of affairs, it would all fall into nothingness, had Daniel not been above reproach in his record, both morally, politically and spiritually.
The Lord, our God, is looking for men who are clean in character, untarnished in business: men who are living soberly, righteously and godly in this world, denying ungodliness and all worldly lusts.
When Paul left Titus in Crete, he commanded him that he should ordain elders in every city; men who were blameless as stewards of God; not self-willed, not soon angered, not given to wine, no striker, not given to filthy lucre, but a lover of hospitality, a lover of good men, sober, just, holy, temperate; holding fast the faithful Word as he had been taught. Titus may have thrown up his hands in despair, saying, “There are no such men in Crete, for the men of Crete are foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts, and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another.”
When the Holy Spirit gave command to look out seven men to put over the affairs of the church at Jerusalem, he said, “Look ye out from among you, seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom.”
Daniel stood every test of both God and man. If you want the world to discover any “meanness” that was in your buried past, or even in the past history of your nearest relatives, just run for office. The politicians of Daniel’s day were a group of ingrates-they sought to slay the man who had saved their lives; not that alone, they scoured the whole history of Daniel and finding no vulnerable point in his morals, and conduct of the affairs of state, they sought a case against him on account of his God.
VI. THE RICH REWARD THAT AWAITS DANIEL (Dan 12:13)
How meaningful are the words. “Thou shalt stand in thy lot at the end of the days.” Do you wonder what Daniel’s lot may be at the end of the days? Do you wonder as to what place of honor and of responsibility shall be given unto Daniel, in the reign of Christ?
The expression, “The end of the days” need not bother us. Those words are used frequently in the revelations given to Daniel. Let me suggest some of them:
“There is a God in Heaven… [who] maketh known… what shall be in the latter days” (Dan 2:28).
“O son of man: for at the time of the end shall be the vision” (Dan 8:17).
“What shall befall thy people in the latter days” (Dan 10:14).
“Even to the time of the end” (Dan 11:35).
“Even to the time of the end” (Dan 12:4).
“What shall be the end of these things?” (Dan 12:8-9).
With a study of the words quoted, in the light of their context, it is easily seen that the end of the days is the time of the Lord’s Return, and the time of Israel’s restoration.
In those days Daniel will stand in his lot-that is, Daniel will receive his reward. Has not Christ said, “Behold, I come quickly; and My reward is with Me”?
We must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ to receive the things done in our body. God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love, which ye have showed toward His Name.
Bless God, Daniel shall receive a rich reward! We, too, will stand in our lot at the end of the days-what will the Lord say unto us, and what reward will He give?
AN ILLUSTRATION
How many nice people there are in the world; so kind, loving, generous, so upright and honest, goodness itself; thinking nothing a trouble if they can in any way give others a helping hand, willing to spend and be spent, full of sympathy and practical philanthropy, loved and admired by all who know them, temper and temperament finely adjusted, perfect characters, charming in every way; but just wanting one thing, and that, the vital thing, Christ!
It is morality without conversion, amiability of the flesh alone; beauty of character, untouched by the beauty of holiness; good citizens of the world, but not soldiers of Jesus Christ; excellent members of society, but not members of His Body, Just like some exquisite picture or charming piece of sculpture, every feature and line perfectly brought out; people gather round and are never tired of gazing at it, such wondrous beauty, but it has no life, and is only painted canvas or chiselled marble, cold and irresponsive to all life and power.
Just one thing wanting. What is the worth of a cypher? nothing, not a farthing, but with “1” in front it is ten immediately. All these good virtues in a man are just a row of cyphers, without Christ, nothing, no good, lifeless, worthless, see 000,000, but with Christ we might put it thus, 1,000,000.
Fuente: Neighbour’s Wells of Living Water
Dan 6:1. We should bear in mind that historically speaking the 70year captivity ended at the same time the Babylonian Empire fell, which event was effected by the death of Belshazzar recorded in the close of the preceding chapter. That means the present chapter is at the beginning of the MedoPersian reign in Babylon. We also should distinguish between the Darius named here and the men of the same name who will be referred to later on who were Persian rulers. The present one is Darius the Median (uncle of Cyrus), named in the last verse of chapter 5, It will be very helpful for the reader if he will make frequent reference to the passages of history quoted from time to time in my comments. When Cyrus slew Belshazzar and took possession of Babylon, he seems to have turned the political affairs over to his uncle Darius, and the appointment of the 120 princes was one of his first acts.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Dan 6:1. It pleased Darius That this Darius was the Cyaxares of Xenophon, as has been observed in note on Dan 5:31, St. Jerome not only asserts, but proves by the testimony of Josephus, Trogus Pompeius, and other historians; so that it appears to have been the generally received opinion in his time, as it probably was also in the time of Josephus, which was not more than five or six hundred years after Cyrus. He was the son of Astyages, or Ahasuerus, or Assuerus, as he is called Dan 9:1, and Tob 14:15; namely, that king of Media who concurred with the Assyrian monarch in the destruction of Nineveh. To set over the kingdom a hundred and twenty princes According to the number of the provinces, which were subject to the Medo-Persian empire. These were afterward enlarged to a hundred and twenty-seven, by the victories of Cambyses and Darius Hystaspes: see Est 1:1. Darius acts here as the absolute master of the Babylonish state. He distributes the employments; he divides the kingdom, and orders that an account of the whole should be rendered to three principal officers, to whom he gives the superintendence over the rest. Several writers have thought, that after Darius had conquered Babylon, he returned to Media, and took Daniel with him, and that it was there that the establishments here spoken of were made. But if this was not done at Babylon, it is much more likely to have been done at Shushan than in Media: see Dan 8:2. See Lowth and Calmet.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Dan 6:2. Three presidents, of whom Daniel was the first. His former celebrity had spread through the east. Ezekiel 14. It being now sixty five years since Daniel was first promoted by Nebuchadnezzar, he is supposed at this time to be about ninety years of age, and at the same time the most able state minister in the empire. The king therefore made no secret of his design to make him premier of all the satraps, and place him in power next to the king at the foot of the throne.
Dan 6:8. Now, oh king, establish the decree according to the law (lex custorum) of the Medes and Persians, that it be not changed. Oriental monarchs were regarded as invisible divinities, who could not err in council, nor fail in decree. So the Pope who assumed the title, vice Deo, is just as infallible as Darius.
Dan 6:10. When Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he opened his window that looked towards Jerusalem, and prayed as usual three times a day. With him, the path of duty was the path of safety. The Lord having put his great name in Jerusalem, the jews usually turned their faces toward the holy temple, when in distant lands, or in the city. So king Hezekiah turned his face towards the wall of the temple, and the Lord heard him out of his holy habitation. Daniel prayed in the morning. He also prayed, like Elijah, at the time of the evening sacrifice, or as it is called, the hour of prayer. Act 3:1. Daniel prayed also at night, before he retired from the duties of the day.
Dan 6:12. The den of lions. A spacious subterranean range, connected with a lake of water, as the word legob is sometimes taken. In ancient monarchies, lions were kept for the diversion of the people; and criminals were given them for fights and for food. This it would seem was the case in Persia, and in Babylon. A hundred lions were once exhibited at a show in Rome.
Dan 6:22. My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions mouths. This phrase, as in Psalms 2., designates the person of Christ, where it is said, that the kings of the earth took counsel against the Lord, and against his Anointed; that is, against his Messiah.
Dan 6:24. The king commandedand they cast those men into the den and their children, and their wives. The law of Moses says, The fathers shall not be put to death for their children, neither the children for their fathers. Deu 24:16. Yet the gentile nations destroy the families of those who commit high treason. Yea, the christian Spaniards have done it in the darker ages of the church. Though Darius acted now to the extent of his law, yet he was a weak prince. Xenophon says that Cyrus once reproved him for drunkenness, by observing that he, his courtiers and his cup-bearers were all kings together, when lying on the floor, vanquished with wine.
REFLECTIONS.
After the death of Nebuchadnezzar, Daniels sun was eclipsed for a course of years; but now, under the Persian kings, it emerged with brighter beams, and so as to excite the envy of the nobles of Persia. They could not brook to see a jewish prince wear laurels to which they thought themselves entitled.Oh envy, thou foul offspring of the serpent! Why conspire against a holy man, who wore virgin laurels, the fair rewards of superior wisdom and virtue. Oh envy, thou fiend, clothed with the garb of loyalty, as an angel of light. Those are the foulest deeds which wear the mask of virtuous actions, to hate with politeness, and love with dissimulation.
Among Daniels virtues, integrity of professional character shone with a lustre which commanded applause, even from those who sought his life. We shall not find any thing against Daniel, except it be concerning his religion. Think of this, oh ye professors of the present age. Your enemies are tracing your character; they are studying your habits to deprive you of bread, or even to take away your life. The friendship of this world is enmity with God.
But go on; fear not; relax in no duty; it is only flesh and blood which is against you, while hosts of angels surround your path. God will be with you in the water and in the fire; he will break the head of leviathan, and shut the mouths of lions. And why, oh infidel, dost thou affect to doubt of revelation, because of those special interpositions of his arm? Would it not have been a greater cause of doubt, if heaven had not interfered when religion was come to a crisis? He will not allow the final spark of piety to become extinct. But how instructive is the end, the tragic end of those insidious courtiers. Their scheme was profound; they flattered the royal ear. Their malice against Daniel was not perceived; their aims at wealth and power were not to appear till Daniels high offices were to be filled up. Oh the depths of the human heart! Yet there was one eye that saw; there was one tribunal which from the crimes of men, would reveal the righteousness of heaven, by sending them, and alas, their families to the dreadful death they had blindly devised for Daniel. And is it thus, that thou, Lord, wilt judge and develope the deep labyrinths of the heart in the day of retribution? Lead us then, from the devices of men, to the simplicity of a little child.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Daniel 6. Daniel in the Den of Lions.After giving an account of the reorganisation of the empire by Darius after the fall of Babylon, this chapter describes a conspiracy formed against Daniel by the princes, which resulted in his being thrown into a den of lions for refusing to obey a decree which forbade prayer to God. Daniel is found alive and unhurt the next morning. His accusers are thrown to the lions and instantly devoured. Darius then issues a decree commanding the whole world to honour the God of Daniel. The purpose of the chapter is obviously to strengthen the Jews in their resistance to the demands of Antiochus Epiphanes.
1. Dan 5:31*.satraps: we have no outside evidence in support of this statement. According to Herodotus the Persian Empire was first divided into twenty satrapies by Darius Hystaspis (522485 B.C.).
Dan 6:4. as touching the kingdom: in the work of his administration.
Dan 6:6. assembled: render, came tumultuously (mg.).
Dan 6:7. mg., that the king should establish a statute is better.
Dan 6:8. altereth not: passeth not away. For an illustration of the statement, see Est 1:19; Est 8:8.
Dan 6:10. three times a day (cf. Psa 41:7). The specified hours of prayer were: (a) the time of the morning burnt offering, (b) the ninth hour, i.e. 3 P.M., (c) sunset.before his God: the Jews were accustomed to speak of praying before God rather than to Him.
Dan 6:11. assembled: Driver translates came thronging; Charles, kept watch upon.
Dan 6:18. instruments of music. The meaning of the Aramaic word is uncertain. Some scholars translate concubines or dancing girls.
Dan 6:24. had the mastery of them: or fell upon them.
Dan 6:25-27. This edict of Darius may be compared with the proclamations of Nebuchadnezzar in 329 and 413.
Dan 6:26. stedfast: enduring, immovable.Cyrus the Persian: the conqueror of Babylon in 538 B.C. His reign lasted till 529 B.C. (see Dan 1:21, Dan 10:1).
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
APOSTACY
Daniel 6
We have seen that the moral characteristics of the governing powers during the times of the Gentiles are set forth in the historical incidents recorded in Daniel 3 to 6. The worst and final evil is apostacy, or man usurping the place of God upon the earth. The setting aside the rights of God, the exaltation of man, the open defiance of God, that have already passed before us, end in the awful attempt to stamp out all recognition of God on the earth by dethroning God and enthroning man in His place.
This climax of all evil is forecast in the decree signed by King Darius whereby no petition is to be addressed to any God or man, save to the king, for thirty days.
This apostacy is clearly presented in the New Testament as characterising the end of the times of the Gentiles. In the second chapter of the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, the coming apostacy is foretold in connection with the revelation of the man of sin who opposeth and exalteth himself against all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he himself sitteth in the temple of God showing himself that he is God. From Revelation 13 we further learn that this man of sin is the second beast. The acts of this wicked man are shadowed forth by the decree of Darius, not, be it noted, by what Darius was as a man, but by what he did. Personally, Darius appears to have been a very different character to the vile Belshazzar. He would seem to have been an amiable man, and, in this respect, he may set forth the character of the man of sin who will probably appear in the sight of men as an exceedingly attractive man.
(Vv. 1-3). The opening verses give the occasion which called forth this wicked decree. Daniel had been appointed by Darius as chief of the three presidents to whom the one hundred and twenty princes, who ruled the kingdom, had to render account. That a child of the captivity should be exalted to this high position aroused the jealousy of the Chaldean presidents and princes. Moved by jealousy, they sought in malice to find some fault wherewith to prefer a charge against him before the king.
(Vv. 4, 5). First, they sought occasion against him in connection with his administration of the kingdom. But, though all these presidents and princes sought to find some Fault in Daniel’s management of the affairs of state, forasmuch as he was faithful they could find neither “error” nor “fault” in him. They concluded that it would only be possible to find a complaint through the law of his God – a wholesome lesson or the Christian, whose relations with the world should be so faithfully carried out, that the world would only find it possible to condemn us by intruding themselves into the things of God and passing decrees, the observance of which would involve disobedience to God.
(Vv. 6-9). This is the situation that these presidents and princes, with satanic subtlety, conspire to bring about. Apparently, it was customary for the administration to make the decrees and for the king to give them authority by his signature. Accordingly, these men present themselves before the king with a decree, that no petition should be made to any God or man, save the king only, for thirty days on pain of being thrown into the den of lions. Three things mark this decree. First, the decree is in itself the very height of wickedness, for it is the awful attempt to dethrone God and set up man in His place. It seeks to install the king in a place of absolute supremacy over heaven and earth, above God and man, for, during the thirty days no petition should be asked of “any God or man.” Great as was the sin of Nebuchadnezzar this is far greater. Nebuchadnezzar had set up an idol in the place of God; but now Darius sets himself up in the place of God. It is the deification of man. Secondly, the motive of the decree is evil in the extreme. Trading upon the uprightness of Daniel’s character, and his known fidelity to the law of his God, these men purposely devise a decree which they know Daniel will not obey. Thirdly, the decree that they frame appears highly flattering to the king. The decree is so presented that the true motive is carefully concealed, and the king foolishly falls into the trap and signs the decree.
( V. 10). Daniel Is evidently aware of all that is taking place and yet apparently he makes no charge against these wicked men, nor does he seek to defend himself. His faith is in God (verse 23), not in himself or his own efforts. His part is simply to obey God and leave the results with Him. Consequently, he goes to his house and, as usual, he prays towards Jerusalem three times a day, the windows of his house being open. In all this there is no ostentation; he simply acts “as he did aforetime.” Having been in the habit of praying in this open way, suddenly to close the windows and pray in secret would have been interpreted by all Babylon as cowardice, or acquiescence in the decree. In the midst of that idolatrous city Daniel had borne a public witness to the true God. He was not a secret disciple. To obey the decree would involve the transgression of the first commandment. Moreover, the word of God gave Daniel plain directions for the circumstances in which he found himself. Solomon’s prayer, at the dedication of the Temple, anticipated his difficulties. “If,” said King Solomon, “they shall bethink themselves in the land whither they were carried captives . . . and pray unto Thee toward their land, which Thou gavest unto their fathers, the city which Thou hast chosen, and the house which I have built for Thy name: then hear Thou their prayer and their supplication in heaven Thy dwelling place, and maintain their cause” (1Ki 8:46-49). Such was Solomon’s prayer, and God accepted his prayer, for the Lord said, “I have heard thy prayer and thy supplication, that thou hast made before Me” (1Ki 9:3). In faith in God, Daniel acted according to the word of God. He refused to make any compromise. The carnal mind might suggest, Why not close the window and pray in secret? Refusing any such compromise, he prayed, “his window being open.” But if he must pray with his window open, why select a front room facing towards the street? Without hesitation he prayed “in his chamber toward Jerusalem.” But if he must pray with an open window toward Jerusalem, why need he go down on his knees; could he not assume some other attitude that would not call attention to the fact that he was praying? No, Daniel will not give up the right attitude toward God; “he kneeled upon his knees.” If, then, he is so very strict that he must pray with his windows open, looking toward Jerusalem and kneeling upon his knees, what need is there for doing it “three times a day”? Surely he could pray early in the morning before anyone is abroad, or late in the evening after everyone has retired? Indeed, could he not for these thirty days give up praying by day and pray by night instead? God can see and hear in the dark. No such suggestions influence Daniel: he prays three times, and in the day. And though he is in captivity, and surrounded by those who are plotting for his life, he finds occasion to “give thanks,” as well as to pray. Moreover, he prays and gives thanks “before his God.” Men may see him praying, but it is before God, not men, that he prays. This was no new thing with Daniel. It was not something that he suddenly commenced in a fit of religious zeal for his God, or in defiant opposition to the king’s decree; it was the continuance of his usual ways – “as he did aforetime.”
(V. 11). For the success of their plot, the enemies of Daniel had counted upon his known habit of prayer, and his unswerving faithfulness to his God, and they did not count in vain. Assembling before Daniel’s house they find, as anticipated, that Daniel is praying and making his supplications before his God, undeterred by the decree of the king, the plot of his enemies and the den of lions.
(Vv. 12, 13). Having gathered their evidence, these men draw near to the king and remind him of the terms of the decree, the truth of which he has to admit. Then they prefer their charge, pressing the fact that Daniel is a captive of Judah and he regards not the king and ignores his decree. They refrain from saying that he makes his petition to his God and regards His law.
(Vv. 14-17). For the success of their plot these men had counted upon the vanity of the king and the faithfulness of Daniel. Had the king been proof against their flattery, or Daniel unfaithful to God, their scheme would have miscarried. But Daniel remained faithful, and the king accepted their flattery, and so far their plot prospered. Accepting their flattery the king became their slave. Betrayed into the hands of these wicked men by his own vanity, he perceived when it was too late the real object of the decree that he had signed, with the result that he “was sore displeased with himself.” Appreciating the integrity of Daniel, the king set his heart to deliver him, labouring throughout the day to this end. The problem that Darius sought to solve was, how to carry out the desire of his heart and yet maintain the law to which he had put his hand. David, in his day, had to face this problem in the matter of his son Absalom. David could not reconcile love with law, so he ignored the law and acted in love, with the result that he was driven from his throne by the man to whom he had shown grace. Darius ignored the dictates of his heart and maintained the law, with the result that he retained his throne, but Daniel was cast into the den of lions, every precaution being taken that the king’s decree be carried out to the letter.
God, alone, in His dealings with the sinner can reconcile the claims of righteousness with the sovereignty of grace. On the ground of the death of Christ grace reigns through righteousness.
Though carrying out his law to the letter, the king has the conviction that Daniel’s God, “Whom,” says he, “thou servest continually,” will intervene for the deliverance of His faithful servant. The king commends Daniel for doing that which was in direct disobedience to his own decree, and he is confident that the man who puts the fear of God above the fear of the greatest man on earth, will not be abandoned by God. His conviction was right, and it is ever so, though, in this dispensation of faith, the intervention of God does not always take the direct and miraculous form that it did in past dispensations.
(V. 18). In spite of his conviction that God will intervene on behalf of His servant, the king is filled with remorse for his own action and spends a sleepless night in fasting.
(Vv. 19-24). Early in the morning the king hurries to the den of lions, and, to his relief, finds that God has indeed intervened. In calling to Daniel he addresses him as “the servant of the living God,” and again he recognises that Daniel has served God continually. In their charge the wicked men had made everything of the king and nothing of God; the king makes everything of God and nothing of himself.
Daniel informs the king that God has intervened on his behalf through angelic power, and stopped the mouths of the lions, for he had a good conscience toward God and toward the king.
The men who drew up the decree left God out of their calculations. They had not counted upon any power being able to restrain the ferocity of the lions. They had made no provision in their decree that anyone thrown to the lions must be killed by the lions. Thus the law was fulfilled and Daniel was saved, and these malicious men, having been thoroughly exposed, were themselves with their families cast into the den of lions, and thus caught in the snare they had laid for the man of God.
(Vv. 25-27). Darius now sends forth a second decree to all that dwell upon the earth, that all men are to tremble and fear before the God of Daniel. This surpasses the decree of Nebuchadnezzar, recorded in Daniel 3, which merely commanded that no one was to speak anything amiss against God. This decree commands that due respect and fear be paid to God as a recognition of His sovereignty as the living God. Thus, through the faithfulness of one man, the effort to set up man in the place of God becomes the occasion of a world-wide testimony to the living God.
The whole incident strikingly illustrates the truth of Psalm 57. There the Psalmist finds himself in the presence of those who would swallow him up. He cries to the Most High God that performeth all things. Having cried to God, he has the confidence that God will “send from heaven” and save him. In this confidence he is kept in calmness, though, as to his circumstances, he “is among lions,” and surrounded by enemies whose tongue is as “a sharp sword.” In result, the Psalmist says, “they have digged a pit before me, into the midst whereof they are fallen themselves.” Moreover, God is exalted; His praise goes out “among the nations,” and He is exalted “above the heavens” and “above all the earth.” The final end of the apostacy of men will be that the wicked will be punished with everlasting destruction, the godly will be recompensed for all their suffering, and God will be glorified throughout the earth through the glory of Christ.
Fuente: Smith’s Writings on 24 Books of the Bible
6:1 It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom {a} an hundred and twenty princes, which should be over the whole kingdom;
(a) Read Ezr 1:1 .
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
1. Daniel’s promotion in the Persian government 6:1-3
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
When the Medo-Persian alliance overthrew the Neo-Babylonian Empire, it acquired much geographic territory that it proceeded to incorporate into its kingdom. The Persian Empire became the largest that the world had yet seen, eventually encompassing modern Turkey, Egypt, and parts of India and North Africa as well as Babylonia. Darius divided his realm into 120 satrapies or provinces, and set a satrap ("protector of the realm") in charge of each one (cf. Est 1:1; Est 8:9). They reported to three commissioners, one of whom was Daniel. Evidently Darius had heard about Daniel’s unique gifts and accomplishments as a Babylonian administrator, and wanted to use him in his cabinet. Dan 6:1 strongly suggests that "Darius" and "Cyrus" refer to the same person. Because of the vast geographical region that 120 satrapies entailed, this number and size of provinces would be consistent with the Persian Empire as historically ruled by Cyrus.