Daniel 3:1-7

CHAPTER THREE

I. DIVINE DELIVERANCEDaniel 3:1-30

a. PAGAN DEITY

TEXT: Daniel 3:1-7

1

Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold, whose height was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof six cubits: he set it up in the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon.

2

Then Nebuchadnezzar the king sent to gather together the satraps, the deputies, and the governors, the judges, the treasurers, the counsellors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces, to come to the dedication of the image which Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up.

3

Then the satraps, the deputies, and the governors, the judges, the treasurers, the counsellors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the provinces, were gathered together unto the dedication of the image that Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up; and they stood before the image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

4

Then the herald cried aloud, To you it is commanded, O peoples, nations, and languages,

5

that at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psalter, dulcimer, and all kinds of music, ye fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king hath set up;

6

and whoso falleth not down and worshippeth shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace.

7

Therefore at that time, when all the peoples heard the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and all kinds of music, all the people, the nations, and the languages, fell down and worshipped the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up.

QUERIES

a.

Why did Nebuchadnezzar make an image of gold?

b.

Why did he command that it be worshipped?

c.

Why all the different musical instruments at once?

PARAPHRASE

King Nebuchadnezzar ordered that a great image, ninety feet high and nine feet wide, overlaid with gold, be fashioned and erected on the Plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon, Then he sent messages to all the princes, governors, captains, judges, treasurers, counsellors, and other minor judiciary and all the rulers of the different provinces that they should come to the dedication of this great statue. When all these different officials had arrived and were standing before the statue, a herald shouted out, Oh people of all nations and languages, this is the king's command: when you hear the sound of these instruments all together, the horn, flute, harp, trigon, psaltery, bagpipe and all kinds of music, you are to fall on your face and worship king Nebuchadnezzar's statue. Anyone who refuses to obey will immediately be thrown into a flaming furnace. So when these instruments were all played at once, everyonewhatever his nation, language or religionfell to the ground and worshipped king Nebuchadnezzar's statue.

COMMENT

Daniel 3:1. THE KING MADE AN IMAGE OF GOLD. Nebuchadnezzar's motive for such a grand undertaking is not stated. It is quite possible that, overcome with pride because of his conquests and influenced by Daniel's identification of him as the head of gold of the great dream-image, the king erected this image to do honor to his gods for victory as well as to do honor to himself.

The image was 60 v 6 cubits (dimensions expressed in terms of Babylonian sexagesimal system), which would measure today 90 x 9 feet. Imposing but not impossible. It may have been in the form of an obelisk, nine feet in breadth at the base. Grotesque, to be true, but this is characteristic of much of Babylonian sculpture. Diodorus records a statue of a god which was forty feet in height and weighed 1000 Babylonian talents. The Colossus of Rhodes was 70 feet tall. Some of the Buddhist images of Buddha are equally as imposing and grotesque.
The plain of Dura according to one archaeologist was about 12 miles southeast of the city of Babylon where there is excavated a rectangular brick structure forty-five feet square and twenty five high which may have formed the pedestal of a colossal image. The Babylonian empire was divided into provinces over which satraps ruled. This great image was located somewhere in the province of Babylon, probably very near the capital city of Babylon.

Daniel 3:2-3 THEN NEBUCHADNEZZAR THE KING SENT TO GATHER TOGETHER THE SATRAPS. For the formal, dedication of this great golden image Nebuchadnezzar sent RSVP invitations to all of the officials of the kingdom. If all the under-rulers of the realm were there, there would also be a great throng of thousands of people. Such a dedication would have a great psychological effect upon officials and people of the power of the empire and the king. It would bind the empire together in patriotic and religious bonds. In those days practically all nations believed that success in military conquests was attributable to the power of the victor's gods over the gods of the vanquished. If a nation had prevailed over another nation, the thing that happened behind the scenes was that the victorious nation's gods had prevailed over the defeated. The king was merely expecting men to do what men naturally expected to dopay homage to Babylon's god for many victories. There was no primary intention, on Nebuchadnezzar's part, to practice any religious persecution, or to interfere with anyone's worship of his own gods, or to compel men to accept a new god as their own. In those days all men were expected to practice syncretism in religion. That is, it was taken for granted that they would do homage to the god or gods of any particular nation or culture in which they found themselves. At the same time, they might worship their own particular deity without fear of interference if they did homage to the local deity also. In fact, the worship of as many gods as one might know about was the vogue of the day.

In the list of Babylonian officials we have three, perhaps four, of the official terms of office in the Persian language. So many Persian titles some fifty years before the Persians ruled the world proves rather disconcerting at first glance. Consider, however, the fact that Daniel lived well into the Persian empire and was a man of great stature in that government. Now Daniel would surely have taken pains as nearly as possible to bring his book up to date and to have kept it so in case certain portions had been written earlier during the days of Babylon. Daniel would not want to leave his book for a new generation of Jewish exiles in the Persian era cumbered with a lot of antiquated terms which would need interpretation for the generation which knew only Persian terms. The use of Persian words by Daniel certainly lends no credence to the liberal theory that an unknown author of the Maccabean era wrote the book and used the pseudonym, Daniel.

Satrap literally means kingdom-guardian and according to Gesenius means, ... the governors or viceroys of the large provinces among the ancient Persians. being in the provinces the representatives of the sovereign, whose state and splendor they also rivalled. Daniel is using a Persian term in Nebuchadnezzar's day to describe some official who would be immediately next to the king in ranka prince or an immediate lieutenant of the king. Daniel probably was a satrap. The other official titles probably descend in rank down from the satrap to the sheriff.

Daniel 3:4-7. AT WHAT TIME YE HEAR. WHOSO FALLETH NOT DOWN AND WORSHIPPETH SHALL. BE CAST INTO THE MIDST OF A BURNING FIERY FURNACE. The individual musical instruments are enumerated: comet (horn of a beast made into a musical horn); flute (to whistle, suggests an instrument with a shrill sound); harp (or zither, a stringed instrument); sackbut (a triangular board with short strings which gave off high-pitched notes); lyre (a stringed instrument with twenty strings); psaltery (another stringed instrument of triangular shape); dulcimer (translated by some bagpipe whether like the Scotch or not is unknown); and all kinds of music (may have been percussion instruments of all kinds), from the Greek sumphonia (symphony).

Critics claim that here we find Greek words in the text of Daniel in the names of at least three of these musical instruments and therefore, the book of Daniel must have been written at least as late as Alexander's Greece (approx. 330 B.C.). Leupold offers the most complete argument against this claim. To assume that Greek words would begin to appear in Hebrew or Aramaic only after Alexander's Greek empire had been established is to ignore historical evidence which points to contacts with the Greeks before Nebuchadnezzar's time. (a) Relations between Assyria (which empire preceded even the Babylonian) and Greece were established already before the beginning of the Assyrian Empire had its peak; (b) Ionian Greeks established merchantile connections very early as the Assyrian population began crowding the Semitic peoples toward Asia Minor; (c) From very early times Sinope (on the Black Sea) was an outpost of trade between Assyria and Greece; (d) in the Assyrian army of Esarhaddon (682 B.C.) as well as later in the Babylonian army of Nebuchadnezzar, Greek mercenary troops were found; (e) in the very early musical and philosophical culture of Greece we find influences of Semitic, Assyrian and Babylonian culture; (f) finally, if Daniel had been written in the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, it would be very difficult to explain why so few words of Greek origin occur in the Aramaic of Daniel.

Young writes, ... as we know from recent archaeological discoveries, there was not a century of the Iron Age during which objects of Greek origin, mostly ceramic in character, were not being brought into Syria and Palestine. Greek traders and mercenaries were familiar in Egypt and throughout Western Asia from the early seventh century on, if not earlier. As early as the sixth century B.C. the coasts of Syria and Palestine were dotted with Greek ports and trading emporia, several of which have been discovered during the past five years.
One can imagine the unharmonious din that would be caused at the shrieking, blowing and thrumming of such a diverse collection of instruments. But the sound was not intended to furnish a soothing symphony for cultured critics. It was to serve as a very impressive signal that the time had come to worship the king's image.

The furnace was probably a furnace used commercially as a lime-kiln, or brick-kiln. Eastern potentates of that day were accustomed to practice methods of cruel punishment for the slightest disobedience to their commands. Refusal to do homage to the image, since it was erected by the king and for his glory, would be regarded as equivalent to treason to the state. No heathen of any race or language would have scruples against doing homage to another god or image since it simply involved the acknowledgement that the gods of Babylon were at that time more powerful than their own gods. But for devout Jews to worship this statue would have been a violation of the first principle of their religion that there is a Living God and He is One God and The Only True God.

A traveler of some three centuries ago (1671-77) by the name of Chardin went to the territory of Persia and noted that two furnaces of fire were kept burning for a month for consuming those who overcharged for food.
The religious implications of this event are rather incidental compared with the political significance. Yet the Jews who were firm in their faith had no alternative but to desist.
The question always arises, where was Daniel? The following text indicates that only the three Hebrew companions of Daniel were arrested and thrown into the furnace of flaming fire. As a matter of fact, we do not know why there is no mention of Daniel in this chapter, and it is pure conjecture to state otherwise. We would conjecture, however, that Daniel might have been on some official mission away from the immediate vicinity of the Plain of Dura and his mission was of such importance that his presence at the great image was excused by the king.

The love of the Babylonians for music is recorded in Isaiah 14:11; Psalms 137:3; Herodotus 1.191.

QUIZ

1.

What was the size of the image made by Nebuchadnezzar?

2.

Where is the Plain of Dura?

3.

What is a satrap?

4.

What is a dulcimer?

5.

What kind of furnace was probably to be used for traitors?

6.

Why would doing homage to a new god not bother any heathen of that day?