Comments on Daniel 3

     This story deals with rejecting idols in favor of the true
and living God of Israel.  The three from ch. 1 are singled out,
presumably because of their prominent status, and threatened with
death if they do not submit.  They refuse to do so and say the
Lord is able to spare them from death.  The king is enraged and
has them cast into the furnace.  But, they survive without even
their clothing being singed while the soldiers who threw them in
die from merely being exposed to the heat.  An angel attends the
three in the furnace and when the king sees all of this he
decrees the Jews are permitted to worship the Lord as He has
manifested His power in such a miraculous manner.
     Again, obviously, the purpose of the story is to emphasize
the importance of fidelity to the Lord regardless of
circumstances.

v1-2  The king's intention here may be to unify his disparate 
peoples under a single god.  Being a conquerer of many nations 
who brings exiles back to his home country and occupies the 
lands, he was surely facing each of their respective gods and 
the problems associated with disparate religions.  In an effort
to stabilize things politically the king may have made this
attempt introduce a universal religion, based upon his military
successes (the king would naturally attribute his success to his
god and he exiled other's gods into his god's temple so it would
naturally follow that his god was the most powerful god, right?). 
If this is the case, then it would explain why his reaction at
the Jews rejection of the idol would have been so extreme as this
is precisely what he is trying to stamp out.

     But, this "image" sounds an awful lot like the "image" in 
the king's dream from the previous chapter.  There we saw a huge
statue with a gold head, which Daniel equated with the king.  
Now this almost sounds as though the king has taken Daniel's
equation between the statue's head and himself way too literally.
So, perhaps what is happening here is the king has become 
egomaniacal and erected this statue in his own honor.  This would
then explain why he was so angry when the Jews refused to worship
it, because then it is an insult to his royal person.

v8  The KJV doesn't represent well the implicit hostility in the
text.  Here is the JPS:

     Seizing the occasion, certain Chaldeans came forward to
     slander the Jews.

These particular Chaldeans were unfavorably disposed towards the
Jews previously and were now using the present situation to have
them executed.

v22  Apparently the soldiers were shielded from the flames when
they were carrying the three of them, but when they cast them in
they were no longer shielded and therefore killed.  This detail
makes it perfectly clear than there was absolutely no way the
three could have survived had it not been for providence.

v29-30  Those who had formerly persecuted the Jews and brought
about the near execution are put at odds with the Jews now.  In
the short run the persecution was short-lived and terrifying, but
the upshot of it is the Jews are afforded religious freedom and
the three are promoted because of it.



Copyright © 2002 by S. Kurt Neumiller <kurtn@cybcon.com>.  All rights 
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