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Commentaries and Other Bible Study Helps - Prayer Tents - Prayer Tents
1:1-6:28 Daniel and the Three Friends at the Babylonian Court. The Hebrew exiles live faithfully to the Lord while serving in the court of Nebuchadnezzar and his successors, from down to the fall of the Babylonian Empire () and into the early years of Persian rule; their service brings blessing to the Gentiles.
1:1-21 Prologue. Daniel describes how he and his three friends were taken into exile (vv. 1-7), remained undefiled (vv. 8-16), and were promoted and preserved (vv. 17-21).
1:1-7 Daniel and His Friends Taken into Exile. Here it is explained how the Hebrew youths came to be trainees for service in the Babylonian court.
1:1-2 In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim (), Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and took Daniel and other promising young people to Babylon to be trained in Babylonian culture and literature. This deportation was the beginning of what came to be known as the Babylonian exile, which was the result of the Lord's judgment on his people. In Lev. 26:33, 39 the Lord threatened his people with exile if they were unfaithful to the terms of the covenant established at Mount Sinai (see also Deut. 4:27; 28:64). After a lengthy history of disobedience, this threat was carried out in several stages, culminating in the destruction of Jerusalem and the burning of the temple in The final destruction and exile were foreshadowed by this earlier exile in which vessels of the house of God were taken into captivity along with some of his people. Daniel calls it the "third year of the reign of Jehoiakim," apparently using the Babylonian system for counting the length of a reign, while Jer. 25:1 calls it "the fourth year," using the Jewish system. (Reigns could be counted from the beginning of the new year preceding a king's ascension, or from the actual date of ascension, or from the beginning of the new year following his ascension; the third system was used in Babylon.)
1:3-4 Some of the royal family and nobility were also exiled. Like the temple vessels and sacrifices, they had to be without blemish. Their exile was a fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy to King Hezekiah in 2 Kings 20 and Isaiah 39, . Hezekiah had shown the representatives of Babylon around his treasuries, hoping to win a political partner against the Assyrians. This failure to trust in the Lord was met with a prophecy that the treasures he had shown the Babylonians and some of his own descendants would be carried off to Babylon.
1:5-7 Nebuchadnezzar sought to assimilate the exiles into Babylonian culture by obliterating their religious and cultural identity and creating dependence upon the royal court. For this reason, the exiles were given names linked with Babylonian deities in place of Israelite names linked with their God. Daniel ("God is my Judge"), Hananiah ("Yahweh is gracious"), Mishael ("Who is what God is?"), and Azariah ("Yahweh is a helper") became names that invoked the help of the Babylonian gods Marduk, Bel, and Nebo: Belteshazzar ("O Lady [wife of the god Bel], protect the king!"), Shadrach ("I am very fearful [of God]" or "command of Aku [the moon god]"), Meshach ("I am of little account" or "Who is like Aku?"), and Abednego ("servant of the shining one [Nebo]"). They were schooled in the language and mythological literature of the Babylonians, and their food was assigned from the king's table, reminding them constantly of the source of their daily bread.
1:8-16 Daniel and His Friends Remain Undefiled. Daniel and his three friends resisted the attempted assimilation. They retained their original names (see v. 11) and resolved not to defile themselves with the king's food and drink (v. 8). Many have thought that the four men's resolve came from their intent to eat only ceremonially clean food, not any "unclean" food as specified in Lev. 11:1-47 and Deut. 14:3-20--much as a group of Jewish priests later did in Rome, eating only figs and nuts (see Josephus, Life of Josephus 14; cf. Rom. 14:2). That may be part of the explanation, for the Babylonians would have eaten such things as pork, which was unclean for Jews. But wine (Dan. 1:8) would not have been prohibited by any law in Jewish Scripture, so that cannot be the entire explanation (unless the young men feared that somehow the wine had been polluted through failure to grow the grapes according to the rule of Lev. 19:25-28; cf. Deut. 20:6). Another view is that they feared the meat and wine would have been first offered to Babylonian idols. Again, this may have provided part of the reason for their reluctance to partake of the Babylonian food, but the vegetables and grains would probably also have been offered to idols, so that does not seem to be the most persuasive explanation. A third view, that they were following a vegetarian diet for health reasons, is unhelpful, because no OT laws would have taught them that (modern) idea. A fourth view combines elements of the first two, and seems the best explanation: Daniel and his friends avoided the luxurious diet of the king's table as a way of protecting themselves from being ensnared by the temptations of the Babylonian culture. They used their distinctive diet as a way of retaining their distinctive identity as Jewish exiles and avoiding complete assimilation into Babylonian culture (which was the king's goal with these conquered subjects). With this restricted diet they continually reminded themselves, in this time of testing, that they were the people of God in a foreign land and that they were dependent for their food, indeed for their very lives, upon God, their Creator, not King Nebuchadnezzar. (It is possible that Daniel later came to accept some of the Babylonian food; see Dan. 10:3.) The Lord gave Daniel favor (1:9) with his captors, an answer to Solomon's prayer for the exiles (1 Kings 8:50), and the steward honored their request for a special diet. At the end of a trial period, Daniel and his friends looked fitter (fatter in flesh; Dan. 1:15) than those who had consumed a high-calorie diet. This confirmed that God's favor was upon them.
1:17-21 Daniel and His Friends Promoted and Preserved. God also gave to all four of them exceptional knowledge and understanding of the Babylonian literature and wisdom, and to Daniel the ability to discern all visions and dreams (v. 17). God's favor enabled them to answer all of Nebuchadnezzar's questions, so that he found them ten times better than all of his pagan advisers (v. 20). God placed them in a unique position where they could be a blessing to their captors and build up the society in which they found themselves (see Jer. 29:5-7), while at the same time enabling them to remain true to him amid extraordinary pressures.
1:21 until the first year of King Cyrus. That is, , when Cyrus conquered Babylon. God's faithfulness proved sufficient for Daniel throughout the of his exile. Babylonian kings came and went, and the Babylonians were replaced as the ruling world power by the Medo-Persian King Cyrus, yet God sustained his faithful servant (cf. 10:1).
