Daniel

Wendy L. Widder, Tremper Longman III,Scot McKnight

• Publisher: Zondervan Academic
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780310491309
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Études bibliques

A new commentary for today's world, The Story of God Bible Commentary explains and illuminates each passage of Scripture in light of the Bible's grand story.

The first commentary series to do so, SGBC offers a clear and compelling exposition of biblical texts, guiding everyday readers in how to creatively and faithfully live out the Bible in their own contexts. Its story-centric approach is ideal for pastors, students, Sunday school teachers, and laypeople alike.

Each volume employs three main, easy-to-use sections designed to help readers live out God's story:

• LISTEN to the Story: Includes complete NIV text with references to other texts at work in each passage, encouraging the reader to hear it within the Bible's grand story.
• EXPLAIN the Story: Explores and illuminates each text as embedded in its canonical and historical setting.
• LIVE the Story: Reflects on how each text can be lived today and includes contemporary stories and illustrations to aid preachers, teachers, and students.

—Daniel—

The book of Daniel is often read for its contribution to our understanding of end-times events, but sometimes Christians have been so obsessed with this that we have missed its main message: God is in control, no matter how things look, and his kingdom will one day fill the earth.

Edited by Scot McKnight and Tremper Longman III, and written by a number of top-notch theologians, The Story of God Bible Commentary series will bring relevant, balanced, and clear-minded theological insight to any biblical education or ministry.

CHAPTER 1

Daniel 1:1 – 21

LISTEN to the Story

¹In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. ²And the Lord delivered Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the articles from the temple of God. These he carried off to the temple of his god in Babylonia and put in the treasure house of his god.

³Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring into the king’s service some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility — ⁴young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve in the king’s palace. He was to teach them the language and literature of the Babylonians. ⁵The king assigned them a daily amount of food and wine from the king’s table. They were to be trained for three years, and after that they were to enter the king’s service.

⁶Among those who were chosen were some from Judah: Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. ⁷The chief official gave them new names: to Daniel, the name Belteshazzar; to Hananiah, Shadrach; to Mishael, Meshach; and to Azariah, Abednego.

⁸But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way. ⁹Now God had caused the official to show favor and compassion to Daniel, ¹⁰but the official told Daniel, “I am afraid of my lord the king, who has assigned your food and drink. Why should he see you looking worse than the other young men your age? The king would then have my head because of you.”

¹¹Daniel then said to the guard whom the chief official had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, ¹²“Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. ¹³Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see.” ¹⁴So he agreed to this and tested them for ten days.

¹⁵At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food. ¹⁶So the guard took away their choice food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables instead.

¹⁷To these four young men God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning. And Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds.

¹⁸At the end of the time set by the king to bring them into his service, the chief official presented them to Nebuchadnezzar. ¹⁹The king talked with them, and he found none equal to Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah; so they entered the king’s service. ²⁰In every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king questioned them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom.

²¹And Daniel remained there until the first year of King Cyrus.

Listening to the Text in the Story: 2 Kings 23:29 – 24:17 (cf. 2 Chr 35:20 – 36:23); Jeremiah 25:1 – 14; Genesis 11:1 – 9; Genesis 39 – 41; 47:13 – 26

The first chapter of Daniel sets the stage for events that happen during the Babylonian exile of God’s chosen people, the Israelites. But the exile itself was an event long in the making, the culmination of a series of events in the world of the ancient Near East and in the life of Israel.

In the big picture of the Old Testament, the cause of the exile was Israel’s failure to keep the covenant God had made with the nation at Mount Sinai after he redeemed the people from Egyptian bondage. This colossal failure reached its climax early in the sixth century BC (587 BC) when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem, but the historical circumstances had been developing since late in the seventh century. Second Kings 23:29 – 24:17 (see also 2 Chr 35:20 – 36:23) traces the final years of the nation of Judah.

Josiah, the last good king of Judah, met his untimely death in 609 BC at the hand of Pharaoh Neco. His immediate successor, anointed by the people of Judah, was his son Jehoahaz. Neco, however, deposed Jehoahaz after only three months, levied a heavy tribute against the nation, and put Josiah’s son Jehoiakim on the throne. Jehoiakim, king of Judah for eleven years (608 – 597 BC), remained a vassal of Egypt until Babylon rose to prominence. When the Babylonians first invaded in 605 BC, Judah became a vassal state to Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom. When Jehoiakim later rebelled against Babylon, Yahweh sent raiding armies to destroy Judah. The result was that in 597 BC, Jehoiakim was shackled¹ and some articles from the temple in Jerusalem were sent to Babylon. His son Jehoiachin reigned in Jerusalem for three months before surrendering to Babylon. He was then carried to exile with the balance of the temple’s gold articles. Jerusalem and the temple still stood, however, and Nebuchadnezzar installed Zedekiah, a third son of Josiah, as king in place of the exiled Jehoiachin. Zedekiah proved to be no better a vassal than his predecessors, and in 587 BC, Nebuchadnezzar had had enough: Jerusalem and the temple were torched, while all but the poorest people were carried to Babylon, along with the rest of the temple’s bronze and silver.

Jeremiah, the prophet whose ministry spanned the last days of Judah, the southern kingdom, proclaimed Yahweh’s words of judgment against the nation just before Nebuchadnezzar’s army showed up on their doorstep in 605 BC.² The prophet told the people exactly what was going to happen and why. God was about to judge them for their idolatry and their failure to listen to his prophets. Furthermore, he was going to use the foreign king Nebuchadnezzar as his servant, an instrument of judgment against his own people. The nation would serve the king of Babylon for seventy years before God would also bring judgment on the Babylonians (Jer 25:1 – 14).³

This land of exile, Babylon, is the setting for the book of Daniel, but it appears in the biblical story long before God’s people were deported to the far away land. The city of Babylon is born in Genesis 11:1 – 9, when, on the plains of Shinar, a group of settlers decided to build a city with a tower that reached to the heavens. The tower of Babel was a ziggurat, part of a temple complex that seemed to function as a staircase for the gods to make their way down to earth, where they could accept gifts from their worshipers.⁴ Worshipers built ziggurats for the ease and convenience of their gods. The settlers at Shinar, however, built their tower to make a name for themselves. The tower should have been all about their god, but the builders blurred the lines between the divine and the human. Ironically, the God Yahweh did come down to Shinar (perhaps he even used their little staircase) and, after assessing the situation, put an end to their city-building by confusing their language — and so the name “Babel,” an ironic mispronunciation of the Hebrew word that means “to confuse.” The people confused about their role as humans had their language confused and they scattered.

In this land of Shinar, Daniel served in the royal court as Joseph did before him in a different foreign court (Gen 39 – 41; 47:13 – 26). Sold by his brothers to a band of passing traders, Joseph found himself in Egypt, a slave in the house of Potiphar. When Joseph, described as “discerning and wise” (Gen 41:33) and “well-built and handsome” (Gen 36:6), dodged the advances of Potiphar’s wife, his commitment to do what was right before God cost him dearly. He was immediately demoted to jail. In spite of his unfortunate circumstances, he distinguished himself during his Egyptian exile, and everyone he served benefited because of his presence among them: Potiphar’s household prospered; the prison warden left all the prisoners in Joseph’s able care; Pharaoh gained relief from his troubling dreams about fat and skinny cows and corn; and Egypt itself was saved during horrible famine because of Joseph’s leadership.

In the next section, we will show how these texts provide the background for the events of Daniel 1.

EXPLAIN the Story

Daniel 1 sets the stage for the book by introducing its main characters and establishing key themes that will play out in the rest of the book. We meet the quintessential wise man, Daniel, and his three Hebrew friends in exile, and we meet the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar and his courtiers. Most importantly, we witness a clash of kings and cultures, a conflict between the gods of Babylon and the God of Israel — and we realize immediately that it is not a conflict at all: the God of Israel has everything under control.

The chapter begins with a historical introduction in which we learn that some of the Israelite elite have been carried to exile in Babylon, along with vessels from God’s temple. The king of Babylon subjected the young captives to an enculturation process designed to make them fit for service in his court. Daniel demonstrates his loyalty to God when he determines not to eat the king’s food and then he exhibits great wisdom when he finds a way to keep his resolution. Because of their faithfulness to God and God’s favor on them, the exiles from Judah not only survive in the foreign idolatrous culture; they thrive.

The Historical Setting (1:1 – 2)

The opening verses of the book introduce us to two human kings engaged in a military conflict: Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and Jehoiakim king of Judah. In 605 BC the army of Nebuchadnezzar was on the march to expand the Babylonian empire into Syria-Palestine. Although the Babylonian Chronicle refers only generally to Nebuchadnezzar’s success in the region, Jerusalem was apparently among the cities attacked by the Babylonian army and Jehoiakim was reduced to vassalage during this campaign.⁵ It is possible that at the time of this siege, Nebuchadnezzar was the heir apparent to his father’s throne and not yet king, in which case the author of Daniel calls him “king” in “an anticipatory sense.”⁶ However, it is also possible that the siege of Jerusalem took place after his father Nabopolassar’s death in 605 BC.⁷

On the historical surface, the events of verses 1 – 2 portray the defeat of the Judean king at the hands of the Babylonian king. In the worldview of the ancient Near East, a king’s military victory signaled the victory of his god over the god(s) of the conquered people. As a representative of his god, a king engaged in battle as a way to expand the god’s territory.⁸ This way of seeing the world is evident in the account of Nebuchadnezzar’s success over Jehoiakim: the Babylonian king took vessels from the temple of Israel’s God and transferred them to the coffers of his god in Babylon (1:2). The king’s military victory mirrored the religious victory of his god over the God of Jerusalem.

However, the text reinterprets these historical events. Nebuchadnezzar’s victory was, in fact, no victory at all. Rather, the God whose temple vessels were on their way to Babylon had given⁹ his king and his vessels into the foreign king’s hand. This was no defeat of the God of Israel. As he had done centuries earlier when the Philistines captured the ark of the covenant and put it in the temple of Dagon, the God of Israel only appears to have been defeated (1 Sam 4 – 5). Actually, he was very much in control.

Not only does the text make clear the real situation behind the events of Jehoiakim’s downfall, but it also foreshadows the demise of mighty Babylon itself. By stating that Nebuchadnezzar carried the temple vessels off to Shinar,¹⁰ an infrequently used name for Babylon, the narrator provides something of a mental hyperlink. The mention of Shinar brings to mind the story of the tower of Babel, the biblical birth of the city of Babylon, where men blurred the lines between deity and humanity, and God came down to judge their hubris (Gen 11:1 – 9). The author of Daniel calls to mind this story of beginnings because, in the pages that follow, he will tell the story of Babylon’s end in similar fashion. Nebuchadnezzar may worship his god in his Shinar temple, but he is a king who will act more like a god himself. And the ultimate end of Babylon will come on a night when a certain King Belshazzar will make even Nebuchadnezzar look almost saintly. The mighty kingdom of B...