Exile · c. 538 BC
Chapter 17
Bel and the Dragon
The Greek parts of Daniel are in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles; most Protestant Bibles leave them out or print them apart as the Apocrypha.
Daniel said, “You have remembered me, O God! You haven’t forsaken those who love you!”
For parents
In this chapter the king seizes the priests of the idol Bel, with their wives and children, for secretly eating its food, and kills them (Greek Daniel 14:21–22). Daniel is thrown into a den of seven lions for six days, and at the end those who tried to destroy him are thrown in and devoured in a moment (14:31–32, 42). It is told plainly, without detail.
King died and joined his ancestors, and his kingdom passed to the Persian. lived with the king and was honored more than any of his friends.
The people of had an named . Every day twelve large measures of fine flour, forty sheep, and six firkins of wine, about sixty-six gallons, were spent on it.
The king honored Bel, and every day he went to worship it, but Daniel worshiped his own God. The king asked him, “Why don’t you worship Bel?”
“Because I must not honor idols that people have made with their hands,” Daniel said. “I honor only the living God, who created the sky and the earth and rules over everything that lives.”
“Don’t you think Bel is a living god?” the king asked him. “Can’t you see how much he eats and drinks every day?”
Daniel laughed. “Don’t be fooled, O king,” he said. “This is only clay on the inside and brass on the outside. It has never eaten or drunk a thing.”
At this the king was angry. He called for his priests and said to them, “If you don’t tell me who is eating up all these supplies, you will die. But if you can show me that Bel is the one eating them, then Daniel will die, because he has Bel.”
“Let it be as you say,” Daniel told the king.
There were seventy priests of Bel, not counting their wives and children. The king went with Daniel into Bel’s temple.
“We will leave now,” said Bel’s priests. “You, O king, set out the food, and mix the wine and set that out too. Then shut the door tight and seal it with your own . When you come back in the morning, if Bel hasn’t eaten everything, we will be put to death. If Bel has, Daniel will be put to death instead. He is the one saying false things about us.”
They weren’t worried, because they had made a secret entrance under the table. They came in through it all the time and ate everything up.
When the priests had gone out, the king set the food in front of Bel. Now Daniel had ordered his servants to bring ashes. With only the king watching, they scattered them all over the temple. Then they went out, shut the door, sealed it with the king’s seal, and left.
In the night the priests came with their wives and children, as they usually did, and ate and drank it all.
In the morning the king got up, and Daniel with him. “Daniel,” said the king, “are the seals still unbroken?”
“Yes, O king,” he said. “They are unbroken.”
As soon as he had opened the door, the king looked at the table and cried out at the top of his voice, “You are great, O Bel! There’s nothing false about you at all!”
Then Daniel laughed and held the king back to stop him from going in. “Look down at the floor,” he said. “Look closely. Whose footprints are these?”
“I see the footprints of men, women and children,” said the king. Then he was angry.
He seized the priests with their wives and children, and they showed him the secret doors where they had been coming in to eat what was on the table. So the king killed them. He handed Bel over to Daniel, and Daniel tore down the idol and its temple.
In that same place there was a great dragon, and the people of Babylon worshiped it.
The king said to Daniel, “Will you say that this one is made of brass too? Look, he is alive. He eats and drinks. You can’t say he isn’t a living god. So worship him.”
“I will worship the Lord my God,” said Daniel, “because he is a living God. But if you allow me, O king, I will kill this dragon without a sword or a staff.”
“You have my permission,” said the king.
Then Daniel took pitch, a thick, sticky tar, along with fat and hair. He melted them together and made lumps out of them, and he put these in the dragon’s mouth. The dragon ate them and burst apart. “Look,” said Daniel. “These are the gods you all worship.”
When the people of Babylon heard that, they were furious, and they plotted against the king. “The king has become a Jew,” they said. “He has pulled down Bel, killed the dragon, and put the priests to death.”
So they came to the king and said, “Hand Daniel over to us, or we will destroy you and your family.”
The king saw that they had him trapped. He was forced to hand Daniel over to them, and they threw him into the lions’ den, where he spent six days.
Seven lions lived in the den. Each day they had been fed two carcasses and two sheep, but now these were held back from them, so that the lions would devour Daniel.
In , the had made a stew and broken bread into a bowl. He was on his way out to the field to take it to the harvesters.
But the angel of the Lord said to Habakkuk, “Go, and carry the dinner you have into Babylon, to Daniel in the lions’ den.”
“Lord,” said Habakkuk, “I have never seen Babylon. I don’t know where the den is.”
Then the angel of the Lord took hold of the top of his head and lifted him up by his hair. With the blast of his breath he set him down in Babylon, above the den.
Habakkuk called out, “Daniel! Daniel! Take the dinner God has sent you.”
“You have remembered me, O God!” said Daniel. “You haven’t deserted those who love you!”
So Daniel got up and ate. And at once the angel of God put Habakkuk back in his own place.
On the seventh day the king came to mourn for Daniel. When he came to the den, he looked in, and Daniel was sitting there.
Then the king cried out at the top of his voice, “You are great, O Lord, you God of Daniel! There is no other but you!”
So he pulled Daniel out, and he threw those who had tried to destroy Daniel into the den. In a moment, before his eyes, they were devoured.