Daniel 6

6:1 It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom an hundred and twenty satraps, which should be throughout the whole kingdom; and over them three presidents, of whom Daniel was one; that these satraps might give account unto them, and that the king should have no damage. Then this Daniel was distinguished above the presidents and the satraps, because an excellent spirit was in him; and the king thought to set him over the whole realm. Then the presidents and the satraps sought to find occasion against Daniel as touching the kingdom; but they could find none occasion nor fault; forasmuch as he was faithful, neither was there any error or fault found in him. Then said these men, We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God. Then these presidents and satraps assembled together to the king, and said thus

7 unto him, King Darius, live for ever. All the presidents of the kingdom, the deputies and the satraps, the counsellors and the governors, have consulted together to establish a royal statute, and to make a strong interdict, that whosoever shall ask a petition of any god or 8 man for thirty days, save of thee, O king, he shall be cast into the den of lions. Now, O king, establish the interdict, and sign the writing, that it be not changed, according to the 9 law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not. Wherefore king Darius signed the writ- 10 ing and the interdict. And when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; (now his windows were open in his chamber toward Jerusalem;) and he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did 11 aforetime. Then these men assembled together, and found Daniel making petition and 12 supplication before his God. Then they came near, and spake before the king concerning the king’s interdict; Last thou not signed an interdict, that every man that shall make petition unto any god or man within thirty days, save unto thee, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions? The king answered and said, The thing is true, according to the law of the 13 Medes and Persians, which altereth not. Then answered they and said before the king, That Daniel, which is of the children of the captivity of Judah, regardeth not thee, O king, nor 14 the interdict that thou hast signed, but maketh his petition three times a day. Then the king, when he heard these words, was sore displeased, and set his heart on Daniel to deliver 15 him: and he laboured till the going down of the sun to rescue him. Then these men assembled together unto the king, and said unto the king, Know, O king, that it is a law of the Medes and Persians, that no interdict nor statute which the king establisheth may be 16 changed. Then the king commanded, and they brought Daniel, and cast him into the den of lions. Now the king spake and said unto Daniel, Thy God whom thou servest continually, 17 he will deliver thee. And a stone was brought, and laid upon the mouth of the den; and the king sealed it with his own signet, and with the signet of his lords; that nothing might 18 be changed concerning Daniel. Then the king went to his palace, and passed the night fasting: neither were instruments of music brought before him: and his sleep fled from 19 him. Then the king arose very early in the morning, and went in haste unto the den of 20 lions. And when he came near unto the den to Daniel, he cried with a lamentable voice: the king spake and said to Daniel, O Daniel, servant of the living God, is thy God, whom 21 thou servest continually, able to deliver thee from the lions? Then said Daniel unto the 22 king, O king, live for ever. My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions’ mouths, and they have not hurt me: forasmuch as before him innocency was found in me; and also 23 before thee, O king, have I done no hurt. Then was the king exceeding glad, and commanded that they should take Daniel up out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the 24 den, and no manner of hurt was found upon him, because he had trusted in his God. And the king commanded, and they brought these men which had accused Daniel, and they cast them into the den of lions, them, their children, and their wives; and the lions had the mastery of them, and brake all their bones in pieces, or ever they came at the bottom of the den. 25 Then king Darius wrote unto all the peoples, nations, and languages, that dwell in all the 26 earth; Peace be multiplied unto you. I make a decree, that in all the dominion of my kingdom men tremble and fear before the God of Daniel: for he is the living God, and stedfast for ever, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed, and his dominion shall be 27 even unto the end: he delivereth and rescueth, and he worketh signs and wonders in heaven 28 and in earth; who hath delivered Daniel from the power of the lions. So this Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius and in the reign of Cyrus the Persian.

Chap. 6. This chapter treats of the administration of Darius. Daniel is promoted to the highest position next to the king; the other presidents and all the princes, through envy, plot his destruction by procuring a law making it a capital crime to offer any petition to any god or man, save unto the king, for thirty days: Daniel continues to pray as aforetime; is therefore cast into the lions’ den, but comes forth unharmed; whereupon the king by public lic decree calls on all men to fear the God of Daniel. H. C.

This familiar incident is the more impressive if we remember that Daniel was now far advanced in years. He had now attained, perhaps exceeded, the age of eighty-five. Under Nebuchadnezzar he had fulfilled the Divine order (New Testament) to “fear God and honor the king.” And he had been honored for his long and wise and faithful service. From a seclusion of a considerable period, he had been brought, at Belshazzar’s summons, and by him elevated for a brief honor to the station next his own. Here he was found by Darius, who by appointment of Cyrus succeeded to the rule of the Babylonish kingdom, now a mere appendage to the Persian Empire. B.

Daniel might now indulge his solemn meditations over the memories and the tombs of departed monarchs, whom he had beheld in all the plenitude of imperial splendor and pride. They were now but dust and a name; left among the memorials of an empire also departed. But his great Master still lived! unchangeable in glory and goodness; and he remained unchangeably devoted to Him, all the same, whatever became of mortal potentates and empires. He wanted no patron; the smiles or frowns of monarchs were indifferent to him. He was in favor with the Highest Power—insomuch that he had been addressed by an angelic messenger with the unequalled appellation, “O man greatly beloved!” To a man who had heard that, think how any title of worldly dignity, of mortal favor would have sounded! John Foster.

Apprised of the great worth and services of Daniel, Darius (also an old man) set him in the very highest station. He appointed him first of three presidents, to whom the governors of the one hundred and twenty districts of the kingdom were directly accountable. Because a Jew, Daniel could be trusted by the monarch. But his foreign origin not only alienated from him his associates in office, but, connected with his superior wisdom and excellence, drew upon him their jealousy and hate. Nothing evil or corrupt, neither error nor fault, nor flaw in his loyalty to Darius, could they find upon which to base an accusation against him. So they cunningly arranged to base it upon his very excellence; to entangle him through his piety, his beautiful life habit of daily communion with his God. They did not dare to “speak evil” of his “good,” but they dared attempt to make his devotions the means of his destruction. B.

1,2. The kingdom as here spoken of is Babylonia proper, and not the whole of that vast realm, embracing several distinct nationalities, which was brought under the sway of Nebuchadnezzar. Darius himself was a sort of deputy or viceroy under Cyrus, and Babylonia was virtually a province in the great Medo-Persian Empire. These verses show how the executive department of the government was organized.

3. Daniel was pre-eminent, not only in wisdom and executive ability, but in his disinterested devotion to the public weal. While the other high officers were selfish and corrupt men (as is usual), the king could not but see that Daniel was thoroughly a good man, devoted to the welfare of his country, and unselfishly true to the interests of his king. Hence the king put him above all his other officers, and had even thought to intrust the whole executive management of the kingdom in his hands—i.e., by making him sole president instead of being simply the head man of the three.

4. Such a model of excellence, so far surpassing and so uncomfortably eclipsing themselves, was keenly cutting to those corrupt officers, and aroused their bitterest hostility. So they sought to find some fault in his official life, but they sought there in vain. He was both wise and faithful, and hence left them no ground of accusation there. H. C.

In the narrative of Daniel’s being committed to the den of lions one trait comes out quite incidentally, which was one of his grandest characteristics. His enemies could calculate on the certainty of the prophet’s maintaining his fidelity to duty under any circumstances, and irrespective of any consequences whatsoever. There is nothing finer than this in the whole history. Could we have more emphatic testimony to the exalted piety of Daniel? It was resolved to ruin him. A certain method was deliberately adopted. One important element in the calculation was that the intended victim would do the same faithful thing, though it seemed to lead straight into the abyss. Daniel did not belie the calculation. Pusey.

It is of the highest moment that we walk consistently. The men of the world will do many things which they would condemn, and very properly, too, in us. They expect us to walk by a higher rule, because we profess to do so. If you would not inflame their prejudices, you must remember your high calling. If you do so, they will say of you, as was said of Daniel, they “could find no matter against him, except in the law of his God.” R. Hall.

5. Abandoning all hope of finding any occasion even for slander against Daniel in the line of his official conduct, they set themselves to make an occasion in the line of his religion. This is avowedly their only hope. They know he is not an idolater, but is a conscientious worshipper of the true God. They know him to be a praying man.

6-9. They shaped this proposed law to take with the king by a bait for his vanity, and to entrap Daniel through his known decision and firmness in the worship of his God. It was the best compliment they could pay to Daniel that they assumed so confidently that he would pray to God none the less for this monstrous law. H. C.

Their scheme was a simple one; an open easy snare to the vanity of an Oriental monarch, because one which harmonized with the received notions of a despotic rule. It was a not unfamiliar adulation of royalty which they proposed. An exclusive worship of the king for thirty days; during that period no petition should be presented to any being, Divine or human, save the king. B.

10. Daniel saw in an instant that this law was planned for his destruction, yet without one moment’s debate with his love of life or fear of lions, he said, I shall pray to God none the less but all the more for that, and none the less openly. With the God whom I serve I leave the whole question of my living or dying. I know it is my duty and my right to pray. I cannot know that it is my duty to live. If the Lord sees fit to protect my life, He can readily do so. I bear my case to Him, and leave it in His hand. With his heart thus full of firmness, prayer and trust, he hastened home to his house and to his accustomed chamber of prayer, and there, his window open, not closed, as if he would conceal his devotions, but open and toward Jerusalem as the place of God’s visible glory and the locality of His earthly mercy-seat, he kneeled and prayed as aforetime. H. C.

“He knew that the writing was signed,” and he knew, too, that it was aimed at him, and that it was a compound of malignity and absurdity; but he uttered no reproach, and made no remonstrance, either with his persecutors for their injustice, or against them in any appeal to the misguided sovereign. It is a great attainment in Christian excellence to be able to maintain silence amid extreme provocation, and to hold on our way in firm and dignified adherence to the truth amid the machinations or insults of the world. “He went into his house”—and for what purpose? Not to indulge in bitter lamentations over his hard lot, or secret repinings at the conduct of Providence, but to pray. This was his habit “three times a day,” and he continued the practice as before. F. A. Cox.

All prying vigilance was superfluous; for he, “as aforetime,” and with his windows unclosed, uncurtained, “prayed and gave thanks before his God three times a day.” A striking admonition against subterfuges in duty and religion; against contrivances at once to quiet conscience and preserve an immediate self-interest. Especially in every trial of religious integrity which is to be conspicuously public, under the observant attention of men to seem to forego a principle is to do it in fact. Foster.

How clear the conscience, how holy the soul, how steadfast the faith, how lively the hope, how fervent the charity, how invincible the courage of Daniel must have been, who, in such circumstances, could calmly and composedly go on in the regular and exact performance of his devotions! Bp. Horne.—He prayed kneeling, as he had always done. He prayed aloud, as had been his wont, three times a day. Not so much as by the lowering of his voice or the closing of a shutter would he seem to fear man more than God. Phelps.—Confronted by the immovable law of the Medes and Persians that only the king should be prayed to for such a time, he simply keeps on in his habit of devotion to Jehovah. Aforetime he had served God. Now, held in the habit of righteousness, he would continue to do so. It is the best boon and blessing for a man that he be able to avail himself of this law and momentum of holy habit. W. Hoyt.

Three times a day. It is very true that mere rounds of observance in religion, however faithfully kept, have in themselves no value, nothing of the substance of piety; but they have an immense value when kept and meant to be as the means of piety. It is equally true that nothing is acceptable to God which is not an offering of the heart. But it does not follow that we are therefore to wait, doing nothing till the inclinations or impulses of the heart are ready. Thus, when the disciple says, “Why should I attempt to pray? what is my prayer but mockery, when I go to it by fixed times without or against inclination?” he overlooks entirely what belongs to the very economy of prayer, and constitutes its highest practical value—viz., that not being an exercise to merely play out impulse and inclination, it is an exercise to kindle impulse and beget inclination. This, in fact, is the very particular blessing of it, that when we are averted from it and slacked in all our inclinations toward it, we may still get our fire kindled by it. When we go to it, therefore, by fixed times of observance, we do just what is necessary to beget fixed inclinations and train the soul into a habit of abiding impulse. Otherwise, or desisting because we have no inclination, we consent to have no inclination, but that which wavers fitfully, and probably, at last, no inclination at all. The whole argument turns here just as it does in other matters. There is no genuine prayer, for example, that is not offered in the Spirit, and yet God promises the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. Shall we then decline to ask because we have not the Spirit already, and because such kind of asking will be only mockery! No! for the very design of God is to meet us in the asking, and to enter His Spirit into the asking itself. He puts us to the asking for the purpose of getting us open to the Spirit, and accessible to His holy inspirations. We go to obtain inspirations, inclinations, gales of impulse, and not simply to exercise such as we have already. Nothing in this view is weaker, more unpractical, closer to a shallow dissipation, more certain to end in a dreadful collapse in character than this most treacherous doctrine, which makes it even a law that we surrender everything to our inclinations. Bushnell.

In spiritual as in secular things the deepest and strongest characters need much solitude to form them. Thoughtfulness, self-knowledge, self-control, a chastened wisdom and piety, are the fruit of habitual meditation and prayer. In these exercises heaven is brought near, and our exaggerated estimate of earthly things corrected. By these our spiritual energies, shattered and worn by the friction of worldly work, are repaired. In the recurring seasons of devotion the cares and anxieties of worldly business cease to vex us; exhausted with its toils we have, in daily communion with God, “meat to eat which the world knoweth not of.” Caird.

Daniel’s piety consisted not so much in his belief in God, as in his constant intimacy with Him. He was a man whose integrity was beyond question—so the earlier verses of the chapter intimate; but quite beside this, God stood near to him, and was a very real and personal thing to him. He confided in God; he talked over with God his wants and distresses. He did not say his prayers. Prayer meant with him coming within speaking distance of God and getting into social relation with Him. He told God the secrets of his heart, and in consequence God told him His. When we let God into our confidence He lets us into His. And so all the way through the last half of this book we have nothing but a record of the way in which God made Daniel His confidant. The last six chapters of it are only a series of the secrets that God told Daniel—revelations, visions, we call them—but that is only another name for secrets, and means that now and then God makes a man His confidant, and trusts His secrets to the man, because the man first trusted his to Him. C. H. P.

It is possible to keep up unbroken communion with God amid the roar of the busy street, as in the inmost corner of His secret place. The communion which expresses itself in the continual reference of all common actions to His will, and is fed by constant realizing of His help, and by lowly dependence on Him for strength to do the prosaic tasks of business or statesmanship, is as real as that which gazes in absorbed contemplation on His beauty. True, the former will never be realized unless there is much of the latter. Martha soon gets worried, and forgets the Master, even while she is making ready for His reception, unless she comes and sits at His feet with Mary. But, on the other hand, gazing, without work, is apt to degenerate, too, as many a mystical dreamer has found to his cost. There is more communion with God in a Christian man’s counting house than in many a convent; and the noblest field for religion is the field of common life. It “should control,” says Law, “small common things, both duties and troubles; for these do really make up life; and if these be not the sphere of religion, what sphere has it?” A. M.

11-13. These men assembled, all intensely eager to see if their scheme was working well, and moreover apparently aware of his accustomed hours of devotion. They find him praying; and now they feel sure of his ruin. They hasten to the king, and artfully begin with referring to the decree, the standing law of the realm, for these thirty days. When the king had recognized it, they bring out the fact that Daniel has broken it, putting this in the most offensive light possible even for slander; “regardeth not thee, nor the decree which thou hast signed.” That same Daniel whom thou hast promoted so excessively and so unwisely, has no proper regard for thee, O king! He prays to others as much as he pleases, despite of thine own law. H. C.

14, 15. The king’s fruitless endeavor to deliver Daniel. Too late for remedy, and with sore self-reproach, Darius sought to undo his hasty action. He had not foreseen the issue, as involving the very life of Daniel. Darius, too, was an old man, irresolute and weak. He needed just the stay of such a pure, wise, strong character as even the more aged prophet had already proved himself to possess. No wonder that “he labored” through the day on which the accusation was brought “till the going down of the sun to deliver Daniel.” Of the particular efforts he put forth we are not told; nor does it seem that any reasonable conjecture can be formed. Upon this and every similar matter merely curious, the time and ingenuity that may be expended will scarcely find adequate return. The king’s persistence is the only point of interest here. This was honorable to his heart, and showed, as did all the after incidents, the strength of his respect and attachment for Daniel, and the force of Daniel’s exemplary piety. Punctually at sunset, when the day was finished, came the accusers, and pressed upon the king the necessity of executing his decree against Daniel. B.

14. The king is chagrined that he allowed himself to be caught in this snare. Now for the first time he sees the envious and mean spirit of his officers in obtaining from him that decree, and bites his lips in shame that he could have been so beguiled and entrapped. He labored to save Daniel till the going down of the sun. No doubt he heartily esteemed Daniel and probably loved him, and felt, therefore, the bitterest grief and shame that he should be made unwittingly the author of his destruction. But all his efforts are unavailing. H. C.

15. Law of the Medes and Persians. In this two principles are involved: one, the existence of a settled law or rule by which the king himself, theoretically at any rate, is bound, and which he cannot alter; the other, the inclusion under this law or rule of the irrevocability of a royal decree or promise. Both of these principles are recognized as Medo-Persic by profane writers. It was applied to Cambyses, one of the most despotic of the Persian monarchs (Herodotus, iii., 31), and Xerxes, son of Darius Hystaspes (Herodotus, i., 109-111). Rawlinson.

16. 17. Daniel cast into the den of lions. The king was constrained to issue the command that Daniel be cast into the lions’ den. The law of the united kingdom of the Medes and Persians making every statute of the monarch irreversible, was an ancient one, long antedating the union of the two nations. This law Darius could not disregard in Daniel’s case. It was probably the first test case under the newly established government of Babylon. It was specially important therefore that the principle should now be carried out. The king’s strong interest in Daniel, too, was manifest to all. Any interposition now would be justly charged as a breach of law by the king, through personal partiality toward the offender. But while he issued the command, he touchingly expresses to Daniel the hope, if not the conviction, that his God whom he had served so faithfully would deliver him. Darius evidently recognizes Daniel’s refusal to proceed from a principled obedience to his own God, and not from any feeling of disloyalty. Once and again, in the same touching words, he bears testimony to Daniel’s consistent, habitual fidelity to Jehovah.

From the unchangeableness of Oriental customs, we infer that the lions’ den was a large underground excavation. In the modern den, the whole is under the open sky, only surrounded with a wall. The statement here implies that the den was covered; with a single opening at the top, which could be closed by a large stone. Into such a den Daniel was cast, and upon its mouth a stone was laid. They “made sure” of the sacrifice of their victim, by doubly sealing the stone with the signet of the king and that of his lords, impressed upon moist clay. The lions’ den seemed about to prove the prophet’s sepulchre. B.

16. That parting word witnessed to the impression made by the life-long consistency of Daniel. He must be a good man who gets such a testimony from those who are harming him. The busy minister of state had done his political work so as to extort that tribute from one who had no sympathy with his religion. Do we do ours in that fashion? How many of our statesmen on either side of the Atlantic “serve God continually” and obviously in their public life? A. M.

The den of lions. Lions, which though all but extinct in India, and absolutely so in other parts of Asia, are still common in Babylonia and Persia, were kept in the parks of great princes as part of their estate. The same custom still continues among the native rulers of India, and is alluded to in the Assyrian monuments. The dens in which wild beasts are confined are not cavernous, or vaults, like those in which the Romans kept the wild beasts in readiness for the cruelties of the amphitheatre. They are simply pits open to the sky, but enclosed with high walls. The Babylonian den might be like these, or it might be a cave with an enclosure round it. A great stone is still an ordinary mode of securing a doorway in the East, as we know it was for closing tombs. If the access to the lions’ den was arranged like that of a sepulchre, a bar would be fixed across the front of the stone, fastened to either side of the doorway by thongs, the knotting of which was sealed with wax stamped by a signet. Many of these signets and seals have been found; and it is interesting to note that the favorite device on the seals of the Babylonian and Persian kings is one in which the king is represented as slaying a lion. There are several specimens extant of a double sealing, like that here of the signet both of the king and of his lords. Tristram.

Daniel had now the same kind of opportunity of showing his fidelity to God as his three Hebrew companions before. The lions were not less terrible than the fiery furnace. A stone was brought. All this precaution served the purposes of the Divine Providence. There could be no trick nor collusion here; if Daniel be preserved, it must be by the power of the Supreme God. The same precaution was taken by the Jews, in the case of the burial of our blessed Lord; and this very thing has served as one of the strongest proofs of the certainty of His resurrection and their unmixed wickedness. A. C.

The entrance was sealed with two seals, one the king’s, one the conspirators’, that neither party might steal a march on the other. So, down in the dark there, with the glittering eyeballs of the brutes round him, and their growls in his ears, the old man sits all night long, with peace in his heart, and looking up trustfully, through the hole in the den, to his Protector’s stars shining their silent message of cheer. A. M.

18-23. The king’s restless night, and early morning visit to the den. The usual evening banquet, and its accompanying entertainment for diversion and soothing by which rest was invited, were set aside. So intense was his anxiety in behalf of the imperilled prophet, that he could not sleep. This shows how strong was Daniel’s hold upon the king’s sympathy and regard; and perhaps, that his conscience had been stirred the more deeply by a conscious sense of injustice done to the prophet. With the dawn he rose from his sleepless couch, and hastened to know the result to Daniel.

There is a blending of hope with doubt in his saddened tone of inquiry. His question itself is sublimely instructive as well as touching. It shows that the single thought, expressed when Daniel was about to be immured in the den, has been upon his mind all the night. The unwavering truth and fidelity of Daniel to his God, this is the thought. “Has thy God,” is his question, “has He to whom thou hast been so true, indeed proved mighty to deliver thee?” Then instantly from the gloom of the den came the prophet’s response. With the same respectful salutation as if he stood on the palace floor, and with a calm, clear tone of assured faith he speaks. His God had proved able to deliver him. Fierce and famished though the lions were (as we know from their after instant destruction of the wicked accusers), God had restrained them from hurting His faithful servant. And the reason for deliverance he asserts to be his innocence of evil in the matter for which he had been so fearfully endangered. He had been delivered because he had been loyal in act to his God and in heart to the king.

Thus relief was brought to the king’s troubled spirit. Gladness overpowered wonder, as he ordered the release of Daniel from his peril; and the prophet came forth unharmed. The record adds the reason of the miraculous protection. It was the prophet’s faith in a faithful God. He believed that God was able to deliver him from the lions. He knew that God would so deliver him, if it consisted with His own perfect purposes. One of the grandest of the worthies of the faith enrolled (though not by name) in the eleventh of Hebrews, Daniel was yet only one of multitudes whose faith has had rich reward. Distinguished as he was above many by a present deliverance, he was yet more distinguished in that, through his single testimony of tested and triumphant faith, the then world of living men heard of the unknown but living God. B.

22. God has preserved his life by a miracle. Darius had called Him Daniel’s God (thy God whom thou servest); to which Daniel does, as it were, echo back, Yea, He is my God, whom I own, and who owns me, for He has sent His angel. The same bright and glorious Being that was seen in the form of the Son of God with the three children in the fiery furnace had visited Daniel, and it is likely in a visible appearance had enlightened the dark den, and kept Daniel company all night, and had shut the lions’ mouths that they had not in the least hurt him. The angel’s presence made even the lions’ den his stronghold, his palace, his paradise; he never had had a better night in his life. See the power of God over the fiercest creatures, and believe His power to restrain the roaring lion that goes about continually seeking to devour, from hurting those that are His. See the care God takes of His faithful worshippers, especially when He calls them out to suffer for Him. If He keep their souls from sin, comfort their souls with His peace, and receive their souls to Himself, He does in effect stop the lions’ mouths, that they cannot hurt them. II.

Simple trust in God brings His angel to our help, and the deliverance, which is ultimately to be ascribed to His hand muzzling the gaping beasts of prey, may also be ascribed to the faith which sets His hand in motion. The true cause is God, but the indispensable condition without which God will not act, and with which He cannot but act, is our trust. Therefore all the great things which it is said to do are due, not to anything in it, but wholly to that of which it lays hold. A foot or two of lead pipe is worth little; but if it is the channel through which water supplies a city, it is priceless. Faith may or not bring external deliverances, such as it brought to Daniel; but the good cheer which the lesson teaches us does not depend on these. When Paul lay in Rome, shortly before his martyrdom, this story of Daniel was in his mind, as he thankfully wrote to Timothy, “I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.” He adds a hope which contrasts strangely, at first sight, with the clear expectation of a speedy and violent death, expressed a moment or two before (“I am already being offered, and the time of my departure is come”) when he says, “The Lord will deliver me from every evil work;” but he had learned that it was possible to pass through the evil and yet to be delivered from it, and that a man might be thrown to the lions and devoured by them, and yet be truly shielded from all harm by them. So he adds, “and will save me unto His heavenly kingdom,” thereby teaching us that the true deliverance is that which carries us into, or something nearer toward the eternal home. Thus understood, the miracle of Daniel’s deliverance is continually repeated to all who partake of Daniel’s faith, “Thou hast made the Most High thy habitation, . . . thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder.” A. M.

The prophet, having justly offended neither God nor the king, very truly offers the righteousness of his cause as the reason of the Divine interference for his security; not from any ostentatious display of his own merit, but to direct the attention of the king to the power and providence of that great Being who is “mighty to save,” and whose favor is more to be regarded than life itself. Wintle.—Before thee, O king, have I done no hurt. Though I disobeyed thy decree, it was not done out of contumacy or stubbornness, but purely to preserve a good conscience, which is the only true principle of loyalty and obedience. (See Rom. 13:5.) W. Lowth.

23. The king is relieved and joyous to find that his valued friend is safe and that no serious consequences have come from his wicked law. The demands of the law having now been met, he orders Daniel brought forth from the den. Not a scratch is on him, and those heathen men know that this comes of his believing in his God. They are witnesses to the saving power of Jehovah, God of Israel.

24. The great crime of Daniel’s accusers now meets its righteous punishment. They had plotted his death; and though they had sought to effect it by the forms of law, yet their malice and hence their guilt were none the less for this reason. It was right and just that they should be made a public example. H. C.

25-28. Following the entire occurrence, Darius issued a decree throughout the realm, that all men should fear and tremble before the God of Daniel. And the prophet was restored to more than his former favor and power. Through the two years of Darius, into the reign of Cyrus, he remained the premier minister and counsellor of the kingdom. B.

26. I make a decree, that men tremble and fear before the God of Daniel. As in the case of the three Hebrews (chap. 3:29). The true God was known by His servants, and by the deliverances He wrought for them. See His characters in this decree. He is the living God; the Author and Giver of life: all others are dead gods. He is steadfast forever. All things change, but He is unchangeable. He has a kingdom; for as He made all things, so He governs all things. His kingdom shall not be destroyed. No human power can prevail against it, because it is upheld by His omnipotence. His dominion is without end. It is an everlasting dominion, under an everlasting rule, by an everlasting God. He delivereth them that are in danger and bondage. He rescueth those who have fallen into the hands of their enemies, and implore His succor. He worketh signs in the heavens, and wonders upon earth; showing that both are under His sway, and are parts of His dominion. And to complete all, He hath delivered Daniel. Before our own eyes He has given the fullest proof of His power and goodness, in rescuing His faithful servant from the teeth of the lions. What a fine eulogium on the great God and His faithful servant! A. C.

Edicts to this effect were published by Nebuchadnezzar, Darius, Cyrus, and Artaxerxes. “Such public and solemn testimonies to the majesty of the God of Israel,” observes Dr. Graves, “must have contributed materially to check error and idolatry, in a country where the form of the government rendered the example and opinions of the monarch so powerful and operative. They must have gained the Jews, even in their captive and degraded state, much consideration and attention; and as such a state led them to take pride in their religious superiority—the only superiority now left them—and to exalt the Divine original and wisdom of their religion; so these events must have gained their representations weight and credulity.” Wines.

28. So this Daniel prospered. Few courtiers had so long a reign, served so many masters without flattering any, been more successful in their management of public affairs, been so useful to the States where they were in office, or have been more owned of God or left such an example to posterity. A. C.

The verse is a note of time probably added—whether by Daniel himself or not is immaterial—to close the historical section of the book and forming a natural conclusion to the events narrated in the chapter. The reign of “Darius the Mede” was confessedly a short one; it was followed by the reign, so pregnant with glory to his own name and so eventful in the history of God’s chosen people—of Cyrus the Great. B. C.

The final verse implies Daniel’s restoration to rank, and gives a beautiful, simple picture of the old man’s closing days, which had begun so long before, in such a different world, as Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, and closed in Cyrus’s, enriched with all that should accompany old age—honor, obedience, troops of friends. “When a man’s ways please the Lord, He maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.” A. M.

Suggested Thoughts.

Like the Son of Man, of whom he spake in vision, Daniel witnessed a good confession before many observers. In his worship he was open, but not ostentatious. Not like the Pharisee, praying in the streets to be seen of men, yet so ordering his devotion that men might know whom he worshipped, he thus realized Christ’s injunction, “Let your light,” etc. (Matt. 5 : 16).

His regular habit of prayer, the similar habit of David (referred to in the Psalms), suggests a plain, personal inquiry to all who profess a vital union with the same Jehovah. The only possibly better practice than this thrice-a-day worship, is intimated by the injunctions of the Holy Ghost, “Pray without ceasing,” “In everything make known your requests.”

In Daniel’s refusal we are reminded of the aged Polycarp’s sublime reply. Like the ancient prophet, this early Christian disciple was called upon by persecutors to deny his Master, “Eighty-and-six years,” answered he, “have I served Him, and has He blessed me. Why should I now deny Him?”

A consistent Christian life carries its own witness and wins the respect and admiration of honest worldly men. It is an element of mighty force and vast effectiveness in the extension of Christ’s kingdom of truth among men.

God will never suffer the righteous to be moved. Fidelity to Him is sure of the richest present or ultimate reward.

As here, so ever, God brings to naught the malice of the wicked against the good. Often, too, He turns upon the evil the force of their own destructive machinations.

The supreme teaching of the eleventh of Hebrews, the one great truth of Revelation, is here signally illustrated: We are saved by grace, God’s favor, through faith—an obedient, vital faith in God’s promised mercy.

A life of activity needs, as a preparation or as a counterpoise and restorative, its times of retirement and prayerful thought. The still hour of quiet thought and devout communion with our Heavenly Father fills the soul with light, girds it with strength, and cheers it with hope and serene, glad trust. B.

The grandeur of the Book of Daniel is not only the sweep of those majestic visions which opened the mysteries of future time, but the vivid portrait it holds before us of a man who has all the springs of his actions in faithfulness to God—a man so thoroughly forgetful of himself that the one only question which rises in him, when anything is to be done or suffered, is whether that thing is his Lord’s will. If it is, no doubt remains; nothing is to be said or thought about costs or consequences. If it is not, no consequences will justify it. F. D. H.

Such honor as we give to martyrs must needs be accorded to the prophet Daniel. A martyr—so far as the strict etymology of the word goes—is one who witnesses, and is usually applied exclusively to one who has witnessed unto death for righteousness and truth. Those who witness to the truth without dying for it are commonly called confessors. It would be difficult to decide to which “goodly fellowship” Daniel strictly belonged. But we are not careful to decide; enough for us to know that all the essential characteristics of those who are enrolled in “the noble army of martyrs” were found in him. Pusey.