Daniel 1:17-21

III. PROSPERITY AWARDED

TEXT: Daniel 1:17-21

17

Now as for these four youths, God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom: and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams,

18

And at the end of the days which the king had appointed for bringing them in, the prince of the eunuchs brought them in before Nebuchadnezzar.

19

And the king communed with them; and among them all was found none like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah: therefore stood they before the king.

20

And in every matter of wisdom and understanding, concerning which the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters that were in all his realm.

21

And Daniel continued even unto the first year of king Cyrus.

QUERIES

a.

How did God give these youths knowledge, learning and wisdom?

b.

Who were the magicians and enchanters in Babylon?

c.

Who is king Cyrus?

PARAPHRASE

God gave these four youths supernatural ability to learn and they soon mastered all the literature and science of the time; and God gave to Daniel special ability in understanding the meanings of dreams and visions when they are given as divine messages. And when the three-year training period was completed, the chief of the eunuchs brought all the young men in this training program to the king for interview and examination. King Nebuchadnezzar interviewed each one at length and found that none of them impressed him as much as Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. So they were appointed to his regular staff of advisors. And in all matters requiring information and reasoned judgment the king found these young men's advice ten times better than that of all the skilled wise men and prognosticators in his realm. And Daniel held this appointment as the king's counsellor for some twenty-four years and through five or six emperors, until sometime in the first year of the reign of Cyrus the Persian.

COMMENT

Daniel 1:17. GOD GAVE THEM KNOWLEDGE AND SKILL IN ALL LEARNING AND WISDOM. The only conclusion to reach from the statement in Daniel 1:17 is that the ability to gain knowledge and have learning and wisdom was a direct and supernatural gift of God to the four young lads. The gift of God was received, of course, willingly and we may safely presume they applied themselves diligently to their task. The phrase skill in all learning and wisdom indicates God gave them a power to perceive, distinguish and judge everything they learned whether it was to be accepted and practiced and taught as truth or to be rejected as false. They had inerrant insight into all the knowledge and learning of Babylonians. Leupold says, ... a discernment that enabled these four to sit in judgment on all secular learning that was offered them and to evaluate it according to the estimate of all-wise God. They were also given wisdom which is the ability to rightly apply the knowledge acquired as God would have it applied. Daniel was given an additional gift that the other three did not haveunderstanding in all visions and dreams.

Visions and dreams were often used by God in the Old Testament to reveal special missions or messages to certain men (cf. Jacob, Joseph, etc.), Inasmuch as these dreams and visions were usually in extended symbolism they required special, divine interpretation, directly from God or through one of God's appointed messengers. This would be especially necessary when such dreams and visions were given to pagan rulers. Daniel's gift was extraordinary. See our introductory study entitled Interpreting The Prophets, in The Minor Prophets, by Paul T. Butler, pub. College Press, for information on dreams and visions. Daniel was not unique in this gift of interpreting dreams and visions (Joseph had the gift and exercised it extensively).

Daniel 1:18-19. AND AMONG THEM ALL WAS FOUND NONE LIKE DANIEL, ETC.. It is still amazing to some people, but true in most cases, that firm but courteous propagation of principle and truth will be appreciated and rewarded even by pagans who themselves are prone to follow falsehood and myth. Joseph, Moses, Peter and John and Paul are prime examples as they stood before pagan rulers and princes. This is true because truth is always wise! What is true may not be immediately and physically pleasurable, but it is always wise. And only the degraded reprobate will fail to recognize that. It did not take Nebuchadnezzar long to recognize the contrast between the wisdom of these four youths and the foolishness of the mythology and mysticism of the enchanters and magicians.

Daniel 1:20-21. HE FOUND THEM TEN TIMES BETTER THAN ALL THE MAGICIANS AND ENCHANTERS. The word ten is, of course, hyperbolic and simply means Daniel and his three companions were found exceedingly wise and perceptive. They were much more learned and discerning than the young men who had been born and reared in Babylonin fact more than all the trained wise men of Babylon!

It would be well to give a brief resume of Babylonian religion here. The religion which the Jews of the Exile found in Babylon had roots which went back over two thousand years. The ancient Sumerian religion was highly polytheistic and made a practice of absorbing or incorporating every religion or god it contacted. The god of a victorious state was considered to be the most powerful deity, for warfare was always waged on two levels. The earthly states were championed by their celestial deities, and the battles in the sky were accounted as real as the battles on earth (cf. Daniel chap. 10). In very ancient Sumerian times (2000 years before the Jewish captivity) the chief god was known as Anu, the sky god who was regarded as father of the great gods. The second great god was Bel (the Semitic Baal) which means Lord, and he was ruler of earth. The third of the great Sumerian gods was known as Enki who ruled the waters upon which the Babylonians believed the terrestrial world floated. Then there was a pantheon of some 4000 gods which included Sin the moon-god, Shamash, the sun-god, and Adad the storm god. Fertility and reproduction in the Tigris-Euphrates valley were associated with Ishtar also the goddess of war. There was Ninurta, fertility god who was responsible for the annual flooding of the rivers; Gibil the god of fire who was invoked by magicians in their tasks of exorcismhe was called upon to burn to death evil spirits and sorcerers; Nergal, destroyer of life, the god of pestilence and death, god of the land of no return; Nabu (Nebo) god of the scribes who was keeper of the Table of Fate with power to prolong or shorten life (Nebuchadnezzar's name expresses faith in Nebo).
During the First Dynasty of Neo-Babylon an important revolution took place in the religion of the country. A minor deity named Marduk was chosen as the principal god of the whole of Babylonia and was placed at the head of the pantheon. The mythological story of how he rescued all the gods and goddesses from the monster Tiamat and was acknowledged by all he rescued as chief god is too long to recount here, Tammuz, son of Ishtar, was a god of vegetation who disappeared each year in the late summer and returned (i.e. was resurrected) the following spring (cf. Ezekiel 8:14), In the Greco-Roman world Tammuz was worshiped as Adonis (a name which is a variant of the Semitic Adon, lord, or master).

The Babylonians of Daniel's day had an elaborate system of good genies or spirits and evil genies. Evil genies were believed to enter houses even when doors were bolted and if they found men or women in sin without the protection of their personal god they entered that man or woman and possessed them. The Babylonian felt himself surrounded by ghosts, or spirits of men whose lives had proved unhappy on earth. The ghosts had been cheated out of happiness in this life and, nursing their grief, they were determined to torment the living.
This is the kind of learning and wisdom Daniel and his three friends, and especially Daniel, would later renounce in favor of being true to Jehovah God and would, indirectly at least, expose as mythological and false. We shall deal with the magicians and enchanters in chapter two.

QUIZ

1.

What was the knowledge and skill in learning and wisdom given these youths?

2.

Why did God use visions and dreams to communicate to man?

3.

Why is truth usually rewarded with respect even by heathen?

4.

What was the character of Babylonian religion?

5.

Who was the chief god of the Babylonians in Daniel's day?