Exile · c. 605–603 BC
Chapter 1
Daniel in Babylon
The king answered to Daniel, and said, “Of a truth your God is the God of gods, and the Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets, since you have been able to reveal this secret.”
For parents
Jerusalem is besieged, and young men of Judah are put in the care of the man in charge of the Babylonian king’s eunuchs, a word the chapter’s name card explains (Daniel 1:1–7). In chapter 2 the king threatens to have his wise men cut to pieces and their houses made dung heaps. Then he orders all the wise men of Babylon killed, Daniel and his friends among them, and the captain of his guard goes out to kill them (2:5, 12–14). No killing is described.
In the third year of ’s reign as king of , king of came to and surrounded it with his army.
The Lord handed Jehoiakim king of Judah over to him, together with some of the vessels of God’s house. Nebuchadnezzar carried them off into the land of , to the house of his own god, and he put the vessels in his god’s treasure house.
The king told , the chief of his , to bring in some of the who were of the royal family or of noble birth. They were to be young men without any flaw, good-looking, skilled in every kind of wisdom, with knowledge and a mind for learning, and able to serve in the king’s palace. Ashpenaz was to teach them the learning and the language of the .
The king set aside for them a daily share of his own fine food and of the wine he drank. They were to be brought up this way for three years. When the three years were over, they would stand before the king and serve him.
Among them, from the people of Judah, were , , and . The chief of the eunuchs gave each of them a new name: Daniel became Belteshazzar, Hananiah became Shadrach, Mishael became Meshach, and Azariah became Abednego.
But in his heart Daniel decided that he would not make himself with the king’s fine food or with the wine the king drank. So he asked the chief of the eunuchs for permission not to make himself unclean.
God made the chief of the eunuchs look on Daniel with kindness and compassion.
The chief of the eunuchs said to Daniel, “I’m afraid of my lord the king. He is the one who chose your food and your drink. What if he sees your faces looking worse than those of the other young men your age? Then you would put my head in danger with the king.”
Then Daniel spoke to the man whom the chief of the eunuchs had put in charge of Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. “Please,” he said, “test us for ten days. Have them give us vegetables to eat and water to drink. After that, look at our faces and at the faces of the young men who eat the king’s fine food, and decide what to do with us by what you see.”
The man agreed, and he tested them for ten days.
At the end of the ten days, the faces of the four looked better, and they had more flesh on them than any of the young men who were eating the king’s fine food. So the man in charge took away their fine food and the wine they were given, and gave them vegetables.
God gave these four young men knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom. And Daniel understood every kind of vision and dream.
The king had set a time for the young men to be brought to him. When that time was over, the chief of the eunuchs brought them in to Nebuchadnezzar. The king talked with them, and among them all there was no one like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. So these four took their places serving the king.
Whenever the king asked them about anything that needed wisdom and understanding, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters anywhere in his kingdom.
Daniel stayed on until the first year of King .
In Nebuchadnezzar’s second year as king, he had dreams, and his spirit was troubled. He couldn’t sleep.
The king called for the magicians, the enchanters, the sorcerers and the Chaldeans, to tell him his dreams. They came in and stood before the king. “I have had a dream,” he told them, “and my spirit is troubled. I want to know the dream.”
The Chaldeans answered the king in Aramaic, “O king, live forever! Tell us the dream, and we will explain what it means.”
The king answered the Chaldeans, “The thing has gone from me. If you don’t tell me the dream and what it means, you will be cut to pieces, and your houses will be turned into dung heaps. But if you tell me the dream and its meaning, you will receive gifts, rewards and great honor from me. So tell me the dream and its meaning.”
A second time they answered, “Let the king tell us the dream, and we will explain it.”
The king answered, “I know for sure that you are trying to buy time, because you see that the thing has gone from me. If you don’t tell me the dream, there is only one punishment for you. You have your lies and twisted words ready to tell me until things change. So tell me the dream, and then I’ll know you can explain it to me.”
The Chaldeans replied, “There isn’t a man on earth who can tell the king what he is asking, because no king, lord or ruler has ever asked a thing like this of any magician, enchanter or Chaldean. What the king asks is a rare thing. No one else can tell it to the king except the gods, and the gods don’t live among people.”
At this the king became very angry. In his fury he ordered every wise man in Babylon to be destroyed. So the order went out that the wise men were to be killed, and they went looking for Daniel and his companions to kill them.
, the captain of the king’s guard, had gone out to kill the wise men of Babylon. Daniel spoke to him wisely and carefully. “Why is the king’s order so urgent?” he asked Arioch, the king’s captain. Then Arioch told Daniel about it.
Daniel went in and asked the king to give him time. Then, he said, he would tell the king what the dream meant.
Then Daniel went home and told his companions, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, what was happening. They were to ask the God of heaven for mercy about this secret, so that Daniel and his companions would not die with the rest of the wise men of Babylon.
That night, in a vision, the secret was shown to Daniel, and Daniel praised the God of heaven.
These were Daniel’s words:
Praise the name of God forever and ever,because he has wisdom and power.He changes the times and the seasons.He removes kings and sets up kings.He gives wisdom to the wise,and knowledge to those who understand.He reveals what is deep and secret.He knows what is in the darkness,and the light lives with him.I thank you and praise you,O God of my ancestors,for giving me wisdom and power.Now you have shown me what we prayed for:you have shown us what the king wanted to know.
So Daniel went to Arioch, the man the king had appointed to destroy the wise men of Babylon. “Don’t destroy the wise men of Babylon,” he told him. “Take me to the king, and I will explain the dream to him.”
Arioch hurried Daniel in to the king. “I have found a man among the captives from Judah,” he said, “who will tell the king what it means.”
The king asked Daniel, whose other name was Belteshazzar, “Can you tell me the dream I had, and what it means?”
Daniel answered, “No wise man, enchanter, magician or fortune-teller can tell the king the secret he has asked for. But there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets, and he has told King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen in the latter days. This was your dream, and these were the visions you saw in your head as you lay on your bed.
“O king, as you lay on your bed, thoughts came to you about what would happen after this, and the one who reveals secrets has shown you what will happen. And this secret wasn’t shown to me because I am wiser than any living person. It was shown so that the king would be told what it means, and so that you would know the thoughts of your heart.
“You looked, O king, and there stood a great statue. It was mighty, and it shone with a wonderful brightness. It stood in front of you, and the sight of it was terrifying.
“Its head was fine gold. Its chest and its arms were silver, its belly and its thighs bronze, its legs iron, and its feet part iron and part clay.
“As you watched, a stone was cut out, though no hands cut it. It struck the statue on its feet, the feet of iron and clay, and broke them to pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were smashed to pieces, all together. They became like chaff, the dry husks of grain, on the in summer. The wind carried them away, and they were nowhere to be found. But the stone that struck the statue turned into a great mountain, and it filled the whole earth.”
“This is the dream,” Daniel went on, “and we will tell the king its meaning. You, O king, are king of kings, and the God of heaven has given you the kingdom, the power, the strength and the glory. Wherever people live, he has put the wild animals and the birds of the sky into your hands, and he has made you rule over them all. You are the head of gold.
“After you, another kingdom will rise, lesser than you. Then another, a third kingdom, of bronze, will rule over all the earth. The fourth kingdom will be strong as iron, because iron breaks things to pieces and overpowers everything. Like iron that crushes all these, it will smash and crush.
“You saw the feet and toes, part potter’s clay and part iron. It will be a divided kingdom, but there will be some of the iron’s strength in it, because you saw the iron mixed with muddy clay. Just as the toes were part iron and part clay, so the kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. And since you saw iron mixed with muddy clay, they will mix themselves with the offspring of men, but they won’t cling to one another, just as iron doesn’t mix with clay.
“In the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom, and it will never be destroyed. Its rule will never pass to another people. It will break all these kingdoms to pieces and make an end of them, and it will stand forever. You saw that a stone was cut out of the mountain, though no hands cut it, and that it broke to pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold. So the great God has made known to the king what will happen after this. The dream is certain, and you can trust its meaning.”
Then King Nebuchadnezzar bowed with his face to the ground and worshiped Daniel, and he ordered that an offering and sweet-smelling incense be given to Daniel.
The king told Daniel, “Truly your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings, and he reveals secrets, since you have been able to reveal this secret.”
Then the king made Daniel a great man. He gave him many great gifts, made him ruler of the whole province of Babylon, and put him at the head of all the wise men of Babylon.
The king did what Daniel asked and put Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in charge of running the province of Babylon. But Daniel himself stayed at the king’s court.