Daniel 3:11

Burning fiery furnace— Another cruel method of punishment among the Chaldeans; see Jeremiah 29:22. Burning alive is still inflicted, as Shaw tells us, on Jews and Christians, for capital crimes, at Algiers: see also Psalms 21:9. Mr. Bruce, vol. 1: p. 516 has given us the following narrative: "Phineas, an Arabian prince from Medina, having beat St. Aretas, the governor of Najiran, began to persecute the Christians by a new species of cruelty, by ordering certain furnaces or pits full of fire to be prepared, into which he threw as many of the inhabitants of Najiran as refused to renounce Christianity. Mohammed, in his Koran, mentions this tyrant by the name of the Master of the fiery pits, without either condemning or praising the execution; only saying, the sufferers shall witness against him at the last day."