Daniel 1:4

The Learning and Tongue of the Chaldeans.

Facility in acquiring languages

It is amazing what pains some saintly people have taken in order to win souls for Christ! When John Wesley was crossing the seas on his way to Georgia, he found on board a number of German emigrants who were also crossing to the Western lands. He was seized by a passionate desire to speak to them about the love of the Saviour, but he was hampered by the hindrance of an unknown tongue. He did not know German, and so an intimate communion was impossible. There and then he set himself to learn the language. For many hours every day he laboriously pursued the study, until, long before the journey ended, he was able to tell his German brothers the uplifting story of the Christ of God. Keith Falconer was once in great need of information which would enormously help him in his sacred work. He found, however, that the information was buried in the Dutch language, which was altogether unknown to him. There and then he set himself to learn Dutch, and mastered it in order that he might gain the hidden treasure. (Hartley Aspen)

The Study of Science

From one point of view religion and science are altogether separate spheres, with different methods. Physical science consists in the observation, description, and classification of the phenomena of the material universe. But the physicist mistakes when he applies the same principle of investigation to the phenomena of the human mind, and especially to theological and cosmological questions. On the other hand, you cannot learn the laws of matter from the necessary conditions of the operations of mind. You cannot teach science by the exposition of the Bible. In scientific studies you may be profoundly religious. A certain enthusiasm of heart and a deep moral purpose are as needful for true advance in science as the clear light of the understanding itself. May the study of science afford illustrations, enforcements, helps to a religious life? Yes. Religion and science both rest upon truth. It is truth that religion recognises. It is truth that science seeks. They cannot be irreconcilable, and finally they must be one. It must be remembered, that no finality has been reached in either sphere. Dogmatism is as impertinent as it is unphilosophical. The very principles of some of our sciences have been reversed within a few years. And in religion, men’s conceptions are ever changing, growing in their sweetness, in their scope. Is the study of science to be pursued without any religious thoughts being associated with it? Certainly not. Both religion and morality aid scientific investigation. The man of science will not gain his highest purpose unless he seek in the subject of his learning, to find the supreme God. Two points. The first relates to the care which the scientific student must; observe when he transfers his attention from the objects of his proper pursuit to other occupations. And be careful that you do not forget in science that you have human duties. All knowledge is but the means to that nobility of living which we gather up in the word “service.” (Llewellyn D. Bevan, L.L.B.)

The Chaldeans

They were to be taught “the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans.” The name “Chaldeans” is used by the Old Testament writers in a double sense. Sometimes it is used instead of “Babylonian,” and applies to the whole nation of which indeed it was the ancient name. Sometimes it refers to a certain order or sect within the nation, the “wise men of Babylon,” as they are called throughout the Book of Daniel. To speak of the Chaldean order as a “priestly caste” would be misleading. They were not a caste, since foreigners might be numbered among them, as Daniel afterwards was. Neither were they priestly, in the sense of their functions being confined solely to religion, and their studies to mythology. (Niebuhr compares them to the Brahmins). The Chaldeans were the most influential class in the nation, and derived their power from a remote antiquity. They had a monopoly of the national learning, secular and sacred, and members of their order took a leading part in the affairs of state. Their president stood next to the king; in the event of an interregnum, the government devolved on him; as, for example, after the death of Nabopolassar, when the throne was kept vacant for his son. The wise men of Babylon formed a class which is without precise analogy in the history of any other nation. Religion, politics, science, education--all were in their hands. It would be hard to over-estimate the importance of such an order in an empire like the Babylonian, founded on military conquest, and made up of a congeries of different races. They were the civilisers of the empire; they gave continually to the national life, and conserved the national traditions; to them it was owing that mental progress in any measure kept pace with the material. (P. H. Hunter.)

Enlarged Mental Outlook

Among those chosen for the royal service were some whose hearts God had specially touched. Young as they were, the troubles through which they had passed had wrought upon them both for moral and spiritual good. But how strange are the workings of God’s providence! Up to this time they had been trained in that noble learning, which, from the time of Samuel, had been the glory of the prophetic schools. Now they were to be trained in that strange heathen learning, so wonderfully disentombed in our days. Magic, and the interpretation of dreams and omens, formed an important part of this knowledge; and there were besides, liturgies, hymns, and histories. Up to this time the documents discovered at Babylon have been mostly of a religious character, while among those found at Nineveh and other Assyrian cities have been historical documents of priceless value. To Jewish youths much of this heathen literature must have been repulsive; it must have offended their religious ideas, and often shocked their moral sense. It had nevertheless a good side. It taught them how large the world is, and that God’s empire extendeth over all, and that all are objects of his care. Possibly coming before them with the charm of novelty, it may have made them pursue their studies with the same eagerness and zeal and curiosity which have spurred on scholars to recover the interpretation of the Sanscrit language, and to decipher these very cuneiform inscriptions in which Daniel and his friends were to have their training. And in thus enlarging their mental vision, God was preparing them to do service for His Church at a time when it was no longer hidden away among the mountains of Judah, but in danger of being trampled under foot in the highway of the nations. (Dean Payne Smith, D.D.)

Revelation from a new stand point

The new revelation which the people of God required for the period beginning with the Babylonian captivity, was to teach them how to regard the powers of the world which they were to obey, to teach them their nature and purpose, and to show them the relation in which the work of salvation which was to begin in Israel, stood to them. A new subject was thus given to prophecy, which, in the nature of things, could not have been given before the captivity, but which now forced itself, as it were, by an internal necessity. But if, according to God’s intention, a revelation was to be given concerning the powers of the world and their development, the prophet must needs take a different standpoint from his predecessors; for the Divine word has always a historical starting point, and thus its organ is made fit to receive the Divine revelation. Revelation does not fall from heaven like a written book, which one has but to take into his hands and read; but a man must first receive it into his living spirit, and afterwards write it down, so that it may be adapted to the necessities of the horizon of men. And to qualify him for this work, his historical position must be such that the word from above is not altogether strange to him, such that his whole situation may be, so to say, the human question to which revelation proclaims the divine answer. As the subject of revelation now was no longer as it had been in the time of the earlier prophets, Israel in its relation to the Powers of the world, but the powers of the world m their relation to Israel, so the man of God who was chosen to prophecy of this, could not have lived among his own people, but necessarily, at the very centre of the heathen world-power. For only there could he gain such a clear insight into its nature and development as would fit him for receiving the revelation from on high. (Carl August Auberlen.)