Reading: Daniel 1-3, Psalm 55
Following the farcical story of Esther, we come to a more serious, but at times just as comical, look at the descendants of Jacob in exile. The book of Daniel, which has three famous stories oft heard in children’s Sunday School classes, contrasts deeply with the book of Esther, though in the end has the same theme of God’s protection and elevation of the Jewish people wherever they might find themselves.
This is the theme in the first half of the book. Then, in chapter 7, everything gets really, really strange. Daniel begins having visions not unlike those of Ezekiel, but they are even more intense, and concern world history far beyond that of the Jewish people. It is my belief that this division, between story and prophetic visions, is deliberate and important. The stories of Daniel’s faithfulness and wisdom, as well as God’s deliverance of him and his friends, serve as signposts that Daniel is a true prophet. This makes the otherwise bizarre things he recounts in the rest of the book credible.
Okay, let’s look at the stories. The weird stuff can wait. The book opens by giving us some background on how Daniel and his friends got to Babylon. We already know from the book of Kings that Babylon invaded Judah a couple of times before totally razing the city of Jerusalem. In one of those invasions, they carried off a bunch of people connected to the royal family, priests, social leaders, etc. A group of what appear to have been promising students were taken, and among them were Daniel and his three friends. Ironically, the Babylonians give them names that suggest they are associated with their gods, while every story we get about them shows how they were faithful to the God of Israel.
The first story is about food. Note that this is in no way a dietary suggestion, but a conscious act on the part of Daniel to turn away good food in order to obey the dietary laws of the books of Moses. I have heard this story used for everything from getting children to eat their vegetables to formal arguments for Christian veganism. This badly misunderstands the situation Daniel was in. Turning away the king’s food meant real deficiencies in nutrition for him. The point of the story is not eating healthy, it is that Daniel was willing to sacrifice for his faithfulness to the covenant law. That he and his friends wound up healthier as a result should be read as miraculous, not as an argument for vegetables.
The second story is that of dreams and statues, and here we get some parallels to the farcical stories in Esther. Nebuchadnezzar has a dream and wants an interpretation, but refuses to tell anyone what the dream was. His advisers clearly find this as ridiculous as anyone would today, but he insists, threatening to wipe out all the wise men in the empire if they cannot tell him the dream.
Meanwhile Daniel, who is minding his own business, is shocked to find out he is to be executed. Understandably upset by this, he asks the guards why this is happening, and volunteers to tell the king what his dream was. He is brought to the king, where he directly credits the God of Israel with being able to see and interpret dreams. If this doesn’t remind you of the story of Joseph in Egypt way back in Genesis, it really should. Enslaved in a foreign land, brought in to interpret dreams… he will even be falsely accused in tomorrow’s reading. It should also remind you of another character we met just one book ago, Esther’s guardian Mordecai. It seems there is something about this kind of story that is important to the Story we are telling.
The dream Daniel interprets concerns a large statue, of which Nebuchadnezzar is the head. There are important interpretive questions about what each piece of the statue below the head means that connect with the weird part of Daniel down the line, but the point is the statue is crushed by a rock not made by human hands, which overtakes the whole world. Nebuchadnezzar gets the point: the everlasting kingdom of God is greater than any kingdom of men, which always eventually end. He even sings a song about it, and in another repeat of Joseph and Mordecai, Daniel is promoted to the head of the wise man in the kingdom.
Next scene, Nebuchadnezzar is building a golden statue of himself. Maybe he didn’t get the point after all. The statue is absurdly gigantic, and he is mandating that everyone worship this image. Hmm. An image, of a foreign king, which everyone has to worship. As a good student of the books of Moses, this is a pretty bad situation. It violates the first two commandments of the law of Moses. Daniel’s three friend are having none of it, and in result they are thrown into a super hot furnace. We are back to the farcical story now, as the guards throwing them into the furnace are fried by the heat. Everything in these stories is over the top. Giant statues, royal overreactions, super hot furnaces. Anyway, the king gets freaked out because he sees a fourth man, who is super shiny, hanging out with Daniel’s friends. He calls them to come out and they are cool as cucumbers. Nebuchadnezzar again appears to get the point… sort of. He repeats part of his song about how the God of Israel is super great…. then says anyone who insults this God will be torn to pieces. Because apparently that is the way you deal with powerful gods; by ripping up anyone who doesn’t like them.
The story in Daniel so far is leading us to a realization about the foreign kings and nations in which the people of Israel have been exiled. While the prophets have told us they are God’s servants, they are not knowingly servants, and they require the witness of the people of Israel. The king of Persia in Esther is saved from disastrous misdeeds by the courage of Esther and the attentiveness of Mordecai. The king of Babylon (one from Persia will show up as well) in Daniel is warned about his foolish self worship, but it remains to be seen whether he will learn his lesson. Spoiler: tomorrow shows us that he does not.
Daniel and his friends, the unfortunate exiles, are in the process elevated to the leadership of the Babylonian empire. The exiled people of God have never been in a better place to bear witness to the character and power of the their God. Their very existence is a kind of new creation narrative, a story that proves the claim that God makes all things new.