Daniel in Babylon

The story of a great man’s faith

Part 1. Exile from Zion

He walks on to the stage a youth, life just opening out before him, an exile from his native country, doomed to attain manhood’s estate in an alien land, far from the Temple of God and all that Temple represented. When the curtain drops, we see him still on the stage, an old man and full of days, too aged and infirm to join the procession of rejoicing men and women wending their way back to the land of their fathers, there to rebuild their Temple and worship God in his appointed way. During the long years of a life spent alternately in prominence and seclusion, in honour and neglect, he maintained inflexible faith and a constant passion for the restoration of his people to their own land; when at last the fruition of his hopes appeared he was too old to share in the home‑going! Nevertheless, he died content, knowing that God would remember him and, in the resurrection life, grant him his heart’s desire. For the intervening time he left on record, as his legacy to all who in after times would come to know God, a narrative so thrilling in adventure and so stimulating in sterling faith that it has been the inspiration of thousands who in their own day and generation have endured the fires of persecution and withstood opposition to righteousness.

The Book of Daniel is full of interest to the student of prophecy and the believer who seeks strength and encouragement for faith. Its vivid stories, of heroic deeds dared by stalwart believers in God, and of the mighty arm of God stretched out on their behalf, never grow old and will never die. The revelation of things to come, given to Daniel by means of visions and dreams, have proven themselves to be "Visions of God." They have occupied the attention of students through the twenty‑four centuries which have elapsed since his day. Less than two hundred years after his death, if the historians are to be believed, Jaddua the High Priest of Israel showed the prophecies of Daniel to the Greek conqueror Alexander the Great, explaining to him how his own career of conquest was foreshadowed in those prophecies. Now in the last century Christian students scan the ancient words to gain some clue to the significance of present‑day events, and take assurance from them that the days of the Kingdom cannot be much longer delayed. But what is of greater importance is the insight this remarkable book gives into the personal lives of men, the stimulus to faith and constancy which is afforded by the stories of loyalty, fortitude and Divine deliverance which have made the book to stand out in the Old Testament as a record of marvellous achievements against a background conspicuous for its gallery of remarkable men. The lad Daniel, making his way, by sheer force of character and unswerving loyalty, to the highest office in an idolatrous and materialistic land; the proud king Nebuchadnezzar, arrogant in his might, at length abased and humbled before God; his effeminate grandson Belshazzar, ignominiously slain in the midst of unheeding revelry; the three servants of God, prepared to suffer a cruel death rather than deny him; Nitocris, the royal daughter of Nebuchadnezzar who grew up with Daniel, never espoused his faith yet turned to him for enlightenment when the mysterious hand wrote the doom of Babylon upon the banqueting room walls; the jealous courtiers who plotted the death of Daniel but themselves fell into the pit of their own contriving; these characters stand out vividly against a background which tells us more about the life and customs of ancient Babylon than any other single book now in existence.

Daniel and his three companions, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, were boys together at the time, about six hundred years before Christ, when the Kingdom of Judah was declining to its fall. The ten‑tribe kingdom of Israel, inhabiting the northern part of the land, had already gone into captivity, over a century earlier. Now it was the turn of Judah, the kingdom of the two tribes. Jehoahaz, king of Judah, had been deposed by Pharaoh Necho of Egypt, and Jehoiakim placed upon the throne. He had reigned only a little over two years when Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, not yet sole king, for his father Nabopolassar was still alive, invaded Judah and laid siege to Jerusalem. Jehoiakim was forced to renounce allegiance to Egypt and become the vassal of Babylon. As surety for his good behaviour, the Babylonians took some of the aristocracy and nobility of Judah back to Babylon as hostages, and these four lads, either of royal blood or related in some way to the royal line of the kings of Judah, were taken among them.

It was common practice of the Babylonians thus to take into the royal court of their own land selected members of the younger relatives of vassal kings. The idea was to train them in the ways and ideas of the conquerors so that eventually they might become trustworthy rulers over the conquered peoples from whom they had been drawn. Daniel and his companions found themselves thrown into the society of other lads of their own age in the king’s court at Babylon, taken from other countries which the Babylonians had overrun and conquered. Nabonidus, the father of Belshazzar, was a son of the High Priest of the Moon god at Haran, where Terah the father of Abraham died, and he had been taken captive in the same way as Daniel and ultimately rose to become the husband of Nebuchadnezzar’s daughter, Nitocris, and, by virtue of that marriage, the last but one king of Babylon. Belshazzar, their son, was the last king.

Daniel could hardly have been less than eighteen years of age when he was taken to Babylon. Nabopolassar died in the next year and Nebuchadnezzar became sole king. Two years later Daniel stood before him and interpreted his dream of the great image. (Dan.2) The term "children" (Dan.1:4) in the original Hebrew has the meaning of youths or young men, a different word being employed when the meaning is limited to a child; the word used allows for any age up to twenty‑four or so.

Jeremiah was living at Jerusalem at that time and had been for twenty years past. He was well known in Court circles and the lad Daniel must have been well acquainted with him. Ezekiel, too, was a lad of seventeen at this same time but since his home was, in all probability, by the Dead Sea he and Daniel may not have met. It was not until eight years later that Ezekiel in his turn was taken captive to Babylon. Two other prophets who also lived and prophesied at this same time were Obadiah and Habakkuk, but there is no evidence to indicate whether or not they and Daniel ever came into contact. It would seem, however, that Daniel kept in touch with the older prophet, Jeremiah, and had obtained copies of his writings as the years passed by, for when in Dan.9:2 we are told that Daniel understood by the books of Jeremiah that seventy years were to mark the limit of the Exile he refers to a prophecy that Jeremiah uttered in the first year of Zedekiah (Jer.29:10) by which time Daniel had been in Babylon eight years.

So it came about that one day a little procession could have been seen making its way out of the Damascus Gate on the northern side of Jerusalem. First, a detachment of Babylonian soldiers, stepping smartly along the highway, their coats of mail gleaming in the sunlight. Behind them, a line of chariots, each containing five or six passengers, chiefly bearded Babylonians, but in some of them Jewish youths. After these came heavy wagons, lumbering along with their loads of treasure, of gold and silver vessels, taken from the Palace and the Temple. Finally, another detachment of soldiers. Daniel and his friends were leaving their native home for perpetual exile in a strange and idolatrous land. Never again were their eyes to look upon that Temple which Solomon had built more than three centuries earlier. They could not have known, at that moment, that only another nineteen years were to elapse before that glorious edifice was to sink down in the destroying flames and lie, a desolate mass of rubble, while Israel expiated her national sin in a foreign land.

So the land of Judah was left behind, and for something like thirty days the little party travelled, through Samaria and Syria, along the great high road that led to the Euphrates, and then, turning southward, and following the course of the river as it flowed across the flat Babylonian plain, come at last in sight of the great city Babylon.

Daniel could not have failed to reflect that he was retracing the steps of his forefather Abraham, in the reverse direction. This was the road by which Abraham had come from Ur of the Chaldees, following the river Euphrates past Babylon and up to Haran, and, when his father Terah was dead, down through Syria into Canaan. Abraham, obeying God’s call, had left the luxury and glitter of that pagan land for the simplicity and purity of a pastoral life in the place to which God had led him. Here had he lived and died, his son Isaac lived and died, and the twelve tribes of Israel grown into a nation. Now this young lad was called upon to leave the hills and valleys, the tree‑clad mountains and rushing streams, the vineyards and olive groves, the orange groves and pomegranates, of this hallowed country where God had put his name and planted his chosen people, for a land of great and luxurious cities, gigantic temples and magnificent palaces, wide rivers and straight‑cut canals, busy with the trade and commerce of many nations. Instead of the chaste and dignified worship of God Most High he was to witness every form of idolatry, the reverence of the people given freely to images of gold and silver and wood and stone—objects that could neither see, nor hear, nor speak. Like his friend and teacher, Jeremiah (10:4‑5) he might say of their idols, "They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not. They are upright as the palm tree, but speak not: they must needs be borne, because they cannot go. Be not afraid of them; for they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them to do good." Abraham was called to come away from this place and be separate from the unclean things: Daniel was called to go back among them. Surely the ways of God are mysterious and past finding out! Daniel must have wondered what purpose God could have in sending him to such a place, what usefulness a life spent in these surroundings could have for him. And as the towering walls of the world’s greatest city loomed up before him the lad’s young heart must have been lifted to God in supplication that, in the unknown life which he must now face, his faith and loyalty might never give way.

(To be continued)
AOH