God’s superior power in his servants’ faithfulness.
This earlier part of the book of Daniel has a clear chiastic structure where …
· Chapter 2 is statue dream … about four kingdoms
· Chapter 3 is about three faithful Jews being challenged over faithfulness
· Chapter 4 is Nebuchadnezzar’s 2nd dream of a tree which is about God judging Nebuchadnezzar for his pride.
· Chapter 5 is Belshazzar and the handwriting on the wall which is all about God’s judgement on a human King for their human pride.
· Chapter 6 is about Daniel in the Lion’s Den, challenged over faithfulness
· Chapter 7 - Daniel has a vision of his own in which he sees 4 mutant beasts rising out of a tumultuous sea which is again about four kingdoms of mankind.
So, the chiastic counterpart of this chapter 3 of Daniel is chapter 6 … and both are stories of God’s faithful people, who face death because of their faithfulness to God and God miraculously delivers them out of it simply to prove Himself more powerful than the pagan gods of the nations.
So, the primary purpose of this chapter is NOT to showcase the fact that Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are better than the best of Babylon (great guys - which they undoubtedly are) but to highlight the absolute supremacy of their God.
And there’s an awful lot of repetition in this story … so the people hearing it could almost start joining in with it as it was read.
It is verses 15-18 that make the point that this story addresses:
“if you do not worship it, you will be thrown immediately into a blazing furnace. Then what god will be able to rescue you from my hand?”
See?
It is not about how good these three are, but about how powerful their God is.
16 Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to him, “King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. 17 If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. 18 But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”
And just as at the end of chapter 2 where the point was how Daniel’s God had superior wisdom and knowledge, it is again the King who is the one who hammers home the point of what this chapter’s about in the resolution of the story in v. 29 “no other god can save in this way.”
The God of these three has superior power.
And that’s against the context where chapter 3 begins with …
Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold (we’re not told any time reference).
So then …
a) This statue, v. 1
In chapter 2 King Nebuchadnezzar dreamed of a statue … and right next to it (in chapter 3) you get him making a statue even more elaborate than the one in chapter 2.
That statue had a HEAD of gold - this one is made entirely of gold.
And it is HUGE.
60 cubits high and six cubits wide is 90 feet tall and nine feet wide.
Now the glaringly obvious thing here is that this thing is REALLY out of proportion for the statue of a human figure.
Mebbe it’s a smaller human statue on top of an obelisk … there were similar things in Babylon that archaeologists can tell us about.
Otherwise, it’s a pretty weird looking representation of a human being …
· But the close association with chapter 2 and the golden part of that statue being gold,
· and the building of this totally gold statue here does suggest this is pretty likely to be Nebuchadnezzar setting up a statue of himself and requiring Emperor worship of all his subjects.
It’s rank idolatry, and the idol seems to be designed to be him.
So there stands the statue.
b) The big event, vv. 2-7
The striking thing about this event here is that
· the King says ‘come’ … and they all come.
There’s a great long list of dignitaries and office-holders who come.
· The King says ‘bow down’ … and they all bow down, all of them.
And anybody who was anybody was there
… that ridiculously long list of officials gets repeated.
… that ridiculously long list of instruments is repeated.
(Are you seeing this point?)
And then …
· Throughout this account the big striking thing is that the King says to build a statue and they build a statue.
· The King says to come, and everybody comes.
· The king says to bow down, and everybody … you’re getting the idea?
The King has the power to say ‘do this’ and it is done.
And it is ridiculous.
And it is idolatrous.
And it is ALL ABOUT the claim to great power being made by this, by the King.
Now, if you go back through Scripture and search out just who it is that actually does have the power and authority to say ‘do this’ and it is done … well, it isn’t Nebuchadnezzar!
Idolatry of this sort does seem to be a very direct attempt by the autocrat to usurp the authority of God … there’s idolatry for you.
And, well, that’s where the idolatry of Babylon comes slap bang up against the faithfulness of these young worshippers of the One True Living God … which gets called out by the apparently authoritative but utterly idolatrous, self-idolising King Nebuchadnezzar.
That would be a fantastic storyline for a grand opera, wouldn’t you think?
Well, in fact, it got written in 1841
‘Nabucco’ is the opera that is considered to have permanently established Verdi's reputation as a composer.
The opera follows the plight of the Jews as they are assaulted, conquered and subsequently exiled from their homeland by the Babylonian king Nabucco (Nebuchadnezzar II), and the historical events in this Bible book are used as background for a romantic and political plot.
Verdi in fact, rather ironically, commented that "this is the opera with which my artistic career really begins. And though I had many difficulties to fight against, it is certain that Nabucco was born under a lucky star."
And in so commenting, falls straight into the idolatry and astrology that Daniel confounds … but there it is!
We’re heading into the set-up for the big dramatic denouement as we get the big betrayal of the idolatry-resistant Hebrews in vv. 8-12 …
2) The big betrayal, vv. 8-12
We’re told that certain Chaldeans come forward to the king and told him (in tones of ethnic prejudice … ‘who you appointed’) that certain Jews didn’t bow down.
How did the Chaldeans know if THEY were bowing down?
Well, they bring a malicious accusation, but it is true that the three Hebrew men did not bow down.
This would have been seen as insubordination and treason so their lives are now very immediately and very perilously on the line with a brutal, self-idolising monarch.
It tells us these guys accused are ‘the Jews’ and they’re described as these men ‘who you, O King, appointed’ … it looks as if there is race-based ethnic rivalry here.
For whatever reason the accusers don’t like these Hebrews and they read as being pretty malicious.
But these three men have broken a serious law, and they are liable for the death sentence as a result.
And there it is.
That’s really all that’s going on here … this section just serves to take us to this next one which informs our thinking by means of this human power-play between the three and the over-vaunting King.
So, in this third section of the chapter the really big stuff gets STATED.
In it the arrogant, God-defying King is going to blow up and he is going to develop the challenge to faith at the centre of the whole chapter.
a) The King
The challenge is explicit in
v. 15 “Now when you hear the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, pipe and all kinds of music, if you are ready to fall down and worship the image I made, very good.
But if you do not worship it, you will be thrown immediately into a blazing furnace.
Then what god will be able to rescue you from my hand?”
See that last bit?
THAT is the point!
Nebuchadnezzar seems to give them a second chance, but he is saying and re-emphasising what god is powerful enough to deliver you out of my hand?’
This is a huge claim … it is the claim of a human King to be more powerful than any other god out there.
Who has ultimate power?
The King is challenging the idea that the God of the Bible is the Sovereign God.
It is a REMARKABLE claim, but as Wendy Widder says: “that is a challenge that the God of the Bible will take”.
So … for the first and only time now … the three men Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego speak, and they don’t speak individually they speak as one, united as one character in the storyline.
b) The Three Men
In some ways, as a unit these three guys represent the ideal Jew.
But the great big shocking thing in that culture that would REALLY hit home is that the way these guys address Nebuchadnezzar in v. 16 … by his name rather than ‘O King’ … well, you’d never do that.
There is a more respectful way of construing the Aramaic, but … you almost have here what sounds like impudence or disrespect.
And what you make of that determines what you make of the rest of what they say …
We’ve no reason to suspect they are being disrespectful to Nebuchadnezzar … Daniel and these men earlier in the book are very respectful.
Daniel is not respectful to Belteshazzar later but there are other reasons for that!
ESV is probably about right in choosing a slightly more respectful manner of address to the King, and that means you take the men to be saying ‘well, if that’s the way it is if we don’t worship your statue … if that’s what’s going to happen, then know this: our God is able to deliver us.’
Now, there’s an anomalous sentence structure in the Aramaic, which makes it possible that the NET translation of the three men’s response to Nebuchadnezzar is correct to translate:
“We do not need to give you a reply concerning this.
If our God whom we are serving exists, he is able to rescue us from the furnace of blazing fire, and he will rescue us, O king, from your power as well.”
· The first translation runs: ‘if you’ve made this threat, then our God is able to deliver us’.
· The second runs ‘if our God exists, then He is able to deliver us’.
· There is a Third option (NIV) ‘if we are thrown in, the God we serve is able to deliver us … etc.’
Now, that’s quite a bit different.
· Fourth option is in the NRSV ‘if our God is able, He will deliver us’ … significantly different!
Now, in terms of the structure of the sentences and the way Aramaic seems to work, it looks like this last one ‘if our God is able, He will deliver us’ is likely to be the translation most faithful to the text.
But we don’t like it.
We don’t like it because it makes it sound as if the three men are very ponderous in their faith rather than big and brassy and bold in challenging idolatry … and that makes us feel uncomfortable.
It makes it look like they’re doubting their God.
Well, that’s no reason to reject what the best analysis of the text tells us is the best translation because if we discounted everything in the Bible that made us feel uncomfortable, we would be in real trouble!
Remember … this isn’t a propositional truth these guys are delivering.
This is reflecting their thoughts, possibly even their doubts.
It seems important to remember that they are in Exile because their God had NOT delivered them from the hand of Nebuchadnezzar!
And it’s possible these three men are reflecting as the typical representation of their people, some common pattern of doubt that these people really had.
Why DIDN’T our God deliver us?
It is a DIFFICULT passage and it gives us something to chew over.
John Cook (grammarian in Hebrew and Aramaic) reckons they are saying that the three are putting aside the issue of whether God is going to deliver them or not … whether He does or not we are not going to bow down.
It’s a new take on this verse and we need to give it time to air in the groves of academe to have his really ground-breaking work on the Aramaic grammar evaluated.
At the end of the day what matters is that whatever happens the three are STILL not going to bow down.
They will NOT violate the first and second commandments no matter what.
So EVEN IF the 4th option is accurate and the three are quaking with doubt, the point is that they are STILL going to be faithful, regardless of consequence.
And the King is impressed with that.
They are NOT going to conform.
Are the Three taking a huge risk with the good Name of their God?
Well, bear this in mind: if their God DOESN’T deliver them, the King is still shown to be powerless, because he couldn’t even get these three rather young captive men to bow down and worship his idolatrous way as specified, in spite of threatening them with the worst that he’s got.
He is shown to be weak just by their response.
So the King gets ANGRY.
He has lots of hot words.
There’s an interesting story-telling device here:
1. The King gets hot then the furnace gets hot.
Then
2. the king gets hotter again and then,
3. the furnace is heated up SEVEN times hotter (you can’t take that as a measure, there wasn’t a knob on the front of the furnace, they didn’t rotate it from gas mark 5 to …
No: 7 is the number of completion so this furnace is as hot as it can be).
And who does the King call to throw the boys in?
V. 20 -some of his strongest men.
And what happens when they throw the three in?
Some of the King’s mightiest men fall dead … but the three fall in and yet are seen to be walking about in the flames.
They are described as wearing all sorts of combustible garments in there, all materials specified and they are fire-prone, but they are not burned up.
There is no WAY those guys should come out alive, let alone leave the furnace without even a whiff of the fire on them.
The phrase ‘These men’ refers turn and turn about here to both the King’s mighty men and to the three Hebrew young men.
There’s the contrast between these mighty men of Neb and these bound weak men, the faithful Hebrews being painted for us in the telling of the story there!
Interestingly enough …
a) Nebuchadnezzar alone sees a fourth man in the fire
Nebuchadnezzar reports that the fourth man in the fire has the appearance of ‘a son of the gods’.
The Aramaic is not being faithfully rendered by translations that say ;’the Son of God’ or whatever.
Nebuchadnezzar does not at this point have a clear understanding of Jesus and Daniel 3 is not saying that, however tasty a morsel that might seem to us.
What the King means is that he is looking at what seems to be a supernatural being … not another being like the three men.
This is a very distinct sort of being.
And what does the unique being do?
The men fall right into the heart of the fire.
No parachute.
No life-line thrown quickly from Heaven to pull them out, or for them to climb up.
Does this supernatural being rescue them out of there?
The amazing thing is that he does not!
What sort of rescue story is it where the people rescued are left in a fiery furnace heated up as fully as possible?
He is seen to be in it, in there with them.
This is NOT (the way it is so often preached) a promise that God will deliver faithful people because they are being good.
Today in many parts of the world God is not doing that for very faithful people.
I don’t think we can decide from Scripture what we might wish to decide: that is that God delivers His faithful people from this world’s catastrophes.
Hebrews 11 with its talk of faithful people being devoured by lions or sawn in half bound between two planks tends to suggest that saying that God always delivers you if you stay faithful to Him is patently wrong.
This one like a son of the gods does NOT deliver God’s faithful people out of that fire.
But He is in here with them.
And if God DOES deliver His people in THIS world, it is not for any other reason than for His Glory.
If you can’t live faithfully with that then you have fallen into the trap of holding an over-realised eschatology … which is at least every bit as serious a complaint as it sounds!
You don’t want to go telling the faithful martyrs of this world that if they’d been faithful enough, they wouldn’t have been killed.
The is a DESCRIPTIVE account not a prescriptive theology of the unbreakable connection between being faithful and getting released from the consequences you fear.
(Do you see how ludicrous that idea sounds when you put it like that?)
This is not a rescue story but a self-rescue, a self-extrication (to use the appropriate jargon).
The satraps etc., the highest officials, are witness to the fact that the three come out AT THE KING’S BIDDING (he’s clearly changed his mind now) and that as they do so they are clearly untouched by the fire in any way, save one.
Can you see what it is?
The ropes that had bound them had fallen off in the fire, where we saw that they had been walking around unbound.
The King is really impressed by that and makes a big statement, and he seems to be doing SO well in the first part of that, v. 28 “Then Nebuchadnezzar said, “Praise be to the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who has sent his angel and rescued his servants!
They trusted in him and defied the king’s command and were willing to give up their lives rather than serve or worship any god except their own God.”
Yay Neb.!
Except … he’s learning but he’s not making great strides because he goes on immediately in v. 29“Therefore I decree that the people of any nation or language who say anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego be cut into pieces and their houses be turned into piles of rubble, for no other god can save in this way.”
In chapter 2 Nebuchadnezzar meets the God Who has superior knowledge and understanding way above the King’s grasp.
In this chapter, chapter three, Nebuchadnezzar meets the God Who has superior power way above the King’s own grasp.
And the King is amazingly impressed by that.
What was that fourth figure doing in the fire?
What was he doing there?
Was he in there getting them out?
No.
God delivered them from the fire.
Was he going around covering them with fire blankets and shielding them from the fire?
No.
God stopped them … even their highly combustible garments … from getting burned up in the fire.
So, what was he doing in there?
He wasn’t in there for anyone who didn’t see him and only the King saw him!
What was he doing in there for Nebuchadnezzar?
Two things:
1. It showed the King a DISPLAY of God’s power.
It makes it obvious that the whole thing was down to God and His power not to anything special in those three guys.
It wasn’t that THEY were special … a little while before they weren’t even sure that their God WAS going to deliver them!
The second thing he’s there for is …
2. It kept him from thinking that these three guys themselves delivered themselves because they were gods.
It is God showing the King that GOD was the One doing these things.
What are the takeaways from this story?
This chapter is about idolatry.
And in contrast to that these guys are not being faithful to God SO THAT He will pull them out of a hole.
That’s how idolatry thinks and functions.
It’s ‘penny-in-the-slot’ religion.
No, these guys are faithful to God BECAUSE He is God.
· They didn’t stay faithful because that would fix things for them.
· They didn’t do as they did because God was their fire insurance.
· They were committed to honour God in life and in death … they were faithful to live or to die in His un-compromised service.
He was GOD and they were going to follow Him no matter what.
And that faithfulness does not always lead to deliverance.
In later chapters people are going to suffer worse things than even these three suffered.
There will be martyrs.
But even in the midst of what they suffered, God was with - He was AMONGST - His faithful people.
So then,
· the previous chapter was all about God’s superior knowledge and understanding (the ability to describe and interpret the dream) and
· this chapter is all about God’s superior power, and His faithful presence with His faithful people.
This is really NOT so much about our faithfulness leading to deliverance.
Guaranteed deliverance lies beyond here.