Daniel in Babylon

In context

Daniel begins “in the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah,” when Nebuchadnezzar carries some of the vessels of God’s house to Shinar, the land of Babylon (Daniel 1:1–2; Genesis 11:2). Young men of Judah’s royal family and nobles are chosen to learn “the language of the Chaldeans,” and the four from Judah are renamed: Daniel becomes Belteshazzar, and Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah become Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego (1:3–7).

Daniel “purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the king’s delicacies,” though the chapter doesn’t say why that food would defile him. He asks for ten days of vegetables and water, and the four end up healthier than the other young men, and in wisdom “ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters” (1:8–20).

When Nebuchadnezzar orders all his wise men killed, Daniel and his friends pray, and the secret is shown to Daniel in the night (2:12–19). “There is a God in heaven who reveals secrets,” he tells the king (2:28). The dream is a great image of gold, silver, bronze, iron and clay, broken by a stone “cut out without hands” that fills the whole earth: kingdoms that pass, and a kingdom from God that “will stand forever” (2:31–45). Readers have long differed about which kingdoms are meant.