Who is Daniel?

Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's delicacies, nor with the wine which he drank; therefore he requested of the chief of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself." (Daniel 1:8) 

Daniel was a young man of deep convictions. He knew and understood the ways of God, even in his youth. He must have spent much of his young life studying the law because he knew it well by the time he was taken captive into Babylon. Daniel knew the importance of remaining pure and undefiled, even in a culture that was saturated with pagan practices and idol worship. It was because of his love for God and his commitment to purity that God entrusted Daniel with the ability to understand and interpret dreams and visions. And this divine ability served him well many times during Daniel's service to the king. 

Daniel was among the Israelites taken captive from Jerusalem when King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon besieged it. Although Scripture does not specifically state so, many scholars believe that Daniel became a eunuch. Yet despite the unfair circumstances, his faith remained strong. Daniel was selected to be part of the king's court because he met certain criteria according to the king's request. The men chosen were to be ones "in whom there was no blemish, but good-looking, gifted in all wisdom, possessing knowledge and quick to understand, who had ability to serve in the king's palace." (Daniel 1:4) 

Daniel, even as a youth, displayed these characteristics. He already was considered one of the best of the best. But because of Daniel's obedient and submissive heart, God took him and made him better. In fact, the Bible says that in wisdom and understanding, Daniel and his three friends, Shadrach, Meshac, and Abed-nego, were 10 times better than any of the magicians and astrologers in the entire empire. 

Daniel's new life in a foreign land included instruction in both the language and literature of the Babylonians. As a eunuch in the king's court, Daniel was exposed daily to the riches, the luxury, and all the other seductions of the Babylonian Empire. Yet he was determined to remain consecrated, not partaking of the delicacies provided to him by the king. To refuse the provisions meant sure consequences for him and for those overseeing his instruction. Yet Daniel remained steadfast, knowing that God would honor his choice to obey divine law rather than the laws of men. 

Daniel had a greater respect for and fear of God than he did of the king. Knowing and believing that God would use him, Daniel kept his focus on God. In both the Babylon and the Persian Empires, Daniel was made great in the eyes of the kings and fellow men. The supernatural miracles that occurred in Daniel's life were recognized as ones that only the God of heaven and earth could do. To have the ability to not only interpret a dream but to state the dream without having prior foreknowledge, or to interpret the writings on the wall made by the finger of God, or to be rescued from the mouths of lions, are all displays of the faith of a man who, from his youth, determined to learn and follow the ways of God. 

Early Life Of Daniel In Babylon

Article contributed by www.walvoord.com

The first chapter of Daniel is a beautifully written, moving story of the early days of Daniel and his companions in Babylon. In brief and condensed form, it records the historical setting for the entire book. Moreover, it sets the tone as essentially the history of Daniel and his experiences in contrast to the prophetic approach of the other major prophets, who were divine spokesmen to Israel. In spite of being properly classified as a prophet, Daniel was in the main a governmental servant and a faithful historian of God’s dealings with him. Although shorter than prophetical books like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, the book of Daniel is the most comprehensive and sweeping revelation recorded by any prophet of the Old Testament. The introductory chapter explains how Daniel was called, prepared, matured, and blessed of God. With the possible exceptions of Moses and Solomon, Daniel was the most learned man in the Old Testament and most thoroughly trained for his important role in history and literature.

The Captivity of Judah

1:1-2 In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon unto Jerusalem, and besieged it. And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, with part of the vessels of the house of God: which he carried into the land of Shinar to the house of his god; and he brought the vessels into the treasure house of his god.

The opening verses of Daniel succinctly give the historical setting which includes the first siege and capture of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. According to Daniel, this occurred “in the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah,” or approximately 605 b.c. Parallel accounts are found in 2 Kings 24:1-2 and 2 Chronicles 36:5-7. The capture of Jerusalem and the first deportation of the Jews from Jerusalem to Babylon, including Daniel and his companions, were the fulfillment of many warnings from the prophets of Israel’s coming disaster because of the nation’s sins against God. Israel had forsaken the law and ignored God’s covenant (Is 24:1-6). They had ignored the Sabbath day and the sabbatic year (Jer 34:12-22). The seventy years of the captivity were, in effect, God claiming the Sabbath, which Israel had violated, in order to give the land rest.

Israel had also gone into idolatry (1 Ki 11:5; 12:28; 16:31; 18:19; 2 Ki 21:3-5; 2 Ch 28:2-3), and they had been solemnly warned of God’s coming judgment upon them because of their idolatry (Jer 7:24— 8:3; 44:20-23). Because of their sin, the people of Israel, who had given themselves to idolatry, were carried off captive to Babylon, a center of idolatry and one of the most wicked cities in the ancient world. It is significant that after the Babylonian captivity, idolatry never again became a major temptation to Israel.

In keeping with their violation of the Law and their departure from the true worship of God, Israel had lapsed into terrible moral apostasy. Of this, all the prophets spoke again and again. Isaiah’s opening message is typical of this theme song of the prophets: They were a “sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward… Ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment” (Is 1:4-6). Here again, the ironic judgment of God is that Israel, because of sin, was being carried off captive to wicked Babylon. The first capture of Jerusalem and the first captives were the beginning of the end for Jerusalem, which had been made magnificent by David and Solomon. When the Word of God is ignored and violated, divine judgment sooner or later is inevitable. The spiritual lessons embodied in the cold fact of the captivity may well be pondered by the church today, too often having a form of godliness but without knowing the power of it. Worldly saints do not capture the world but become instead the world’s captives.

According to Daniel 1:1, the crucial siege and capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came “in the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah.” Critics have lost no time pointing out an apparent conflict between this and the statement of Jeremiah that the first year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon was in the fourth year of Jehoiakim (Jer 25:1). Montgomery, for instance, rejects the historicity of this datum.36 This supposed chronological error is used as the first in a series of alleged proofs that Daniel is a spurious book written by one actually unfamiliar with the events of the captivity. There are, however, several good and satisfying explanations.

The simplest and most obvious explanation is that Daniel is here using Babylonian reckoning. It was customary for the Babylonians to consider the first year of a king’s reign as the year of accession and to call the next year the first year. Keil and others brush this aside as having no precedent in Scripture.37 Keil is, however, quite out of date with contemporary scholarship on this point. Jack Finegan, for instance, has demonstrated that the phrase the first year of Nebuchadnezzar in Jeremiah actually means “the accession year of Nebuchadnezzar”38 of the Babylonian reckoning. Tadmor was among the first to support this solution, and the point may now be considered as well established.39

What Keil ignores is that Daniel is a most unusual case because he of all the prophets was the only one thoroughly instructed in Babylonian culture and point of view. Having spent most of his life in Babylon, it is only natural that Daniel should use a Babylonian form of chronology. By contrast, Jeremiah would use Israel’s form of reckoning which included a part of the year as the first year of Jehoiakim’s reign. This simple explanation is both satisfying and adequate to explain the supposed discrepancy. However, there are other explanations.

Leupold, for instance, in consideration of the additional reference in 2 Kings 24:1 where Jehoiakim is said to submit to Nebuchadnezzar for three years, offers another interpretation. In a word, it is the assumption that there was an earlier raid on Jerusalem, not recorded elsewhere in the Bible, which is indicated in Daniel 1:1. Key to the chronology of events in this crucial period in Israel’s history was the battle at Carchemish in May-June 605 B.C., a date well established by D. J. Wiseman.40 There Nebuchadnezzar met Pharaoh Necho and destroyed the Egyptian army; this occurred “in the fourth year of Jehoiakim” (Jer 46:2). Leupold holds that the invasion of Daniel 1:1 took place prior to this battle, instead of immediately afterward. He points out that the usual assumption that Nebuchadnezzar could not have bypassed Carchemish to conquer Jerusalem first, on the theory that Carchemish was a stronghold which he could not ignore, is not actually supported by the facts, as there is no evidence that the Egyptian armies were in any strength at Carchemish until just before the battle that resulted in the showdown. In this case, the capture of Daniel would be a year earlier or about 606 b.c.41

In the present state of biblical chronology, however, this is too early. Both Finegan42 and Thiele,43 present-day authorities on biblical chronology, accept the assumption that the accession-year system of dating was in use in Judah from Jehoash to Hoshea. Thiele resolves the discrepancy by assuming that Daniel used the old calendar year in Judah which began in the fall in the month Tishri (Sept.-Oct.) and that Jeremiah used the Babylonian calendar which began in the spring in the month Nisan (March-April). According to the Babylonian Chronicle, “Nebuchadnezzar conquered the whole area of the Hatti country,” an area that includes all of Syria and the territory south to the borders of Egypt, in the late spring or early summer of 605. This would be Jehoiakim’s fourth year according to the Nisan reckoning and the third year according to the Tishri calendar.

Still a third view, also mentioned by Leupold,44 offers the suggestion that the word came in Daniel 1:1 actually means “set out” rather than “arrived” and cites the following passages for similar usage (Gen 45:17; Num 32:6; 2 Ki 5:5; Jon 1:3). Keil, following Hengstenberg and others, also supports this explanation.45 This argument, which hangs on the translation “set out” (for the Hebrew bo’), is weak, however, as the examples cited are indecisive. In verse 2, the same word is used in the normal meaning of “came.”

Both of Leupold’s explanations given as alternates are far less satisfactory than the method of harmonization offered by Finegan and Thiele. The probability is that Wiseman is right, that Daniel was carried off captive shortly after the capture of Jerusalem in the summer of 605 B.C. In any case, the evidence makes quite untenable the charge that the chronological information of Daniel is inaccurate. Rather, it is entirely in keeping with information available outside the Bible and supports the view that Daniel is a genuine book.

According to Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar, described as “king of Babylon,” besieged Jerusalem successfully. If this occurred before the battle of Carchemish, Nebuchadnezzar was not as yet king. The proleptic use of such a title is so common (e.g. in the statement “King David as a boy was a shepherd”) that this does not cause a serious problem. Daniel does record, however, the fact that Jehoiakim was subdued and that “part of the vessels of the house of God” were “carried into the land of Shinar to the house of his god.” “Shinar” is a term used for Babylon with the nuance of a place hostile to faith. It is associated with Nimrod (Gen 10:10), became the locale of the Tower of Babel (Gen 11:2), and is the place to which wickedness is banished (Zee 5:11).

The expression he carried is best taken as referring only to the vessels and not to the deportation of captives. Critics, again, have found fault with this as an inaccuracy because nowhere else is it expressly said that Daniel and his companions were carried away at this time. The obvious answer is that mention of carrying off captives is unnecessary in the light of the context of the following verses, where it is discussed in detail. There was no need to mention it twice. Bringing the vessels to the house of Nebuchadnezzar’s god Marduk46 was a natural religious gesture, which would attribute the victory of the Babylonians over Israel to Babylonian deities. Later other vessels were added to the collection (2 Ch 36:18), and they all appeared on the fateful night of Belshazzar’s feast in Daniel 5. Jehoiakim himself was not deported, later died, and was succeeded by his son Jehoiachin. Jehoiakim, although harrassed by bands of soldiers sent against him, was not successfully besieged (2 Ki 24:1-2).