A Law That Catches the King as Well as Daniel

In Aramaic Bibles every verse of this chapter is numbered one higher. “It pleased” is the formula of royal decision from 4:2, it seemed good before him. Herodotus says Darius I organised twenty satrapies; the hundred and twenty here are more likely district governors under a satrap-like title, and Esther 1:1 counts a hundred and twenty seven provinces.

“Presidents” is sarkin, a Persian word for chief officials, found only in this chapter. “Damage” is the word Ezra 4:13 and 4:22 use for loss to the king’s revenue. The three supervisors exist to stop the governors skimming the taxes, which says something about why Daniel was unpopular.

“Preferred” is better distinguished himself, outshone the rest. “An excellent spirit” is the queen’s phrase from 5:12, carried into a new reign. The king only “thought” to set him over everything; the plan was still a plan, and that was enough to start the plot.

“Occasion” means a pretext, grounds for a charge. “Error” is shalu, the “amiss” of 3:29, a careless slip. “Faithful” is mehaiman, from the root of amen, the word Daniel used in 2:45 for a trustworthy interpretation. Auditors went through his work and found not even negligence.

“Law” is dat, the same word the chapter will use three times for the law of the Medes and Persians. The conspirators set one law against the other: the only way to catch Daniel breaking a law is to make one that collides with his God’s.

“Assembled together” is hargishu, a verb that suggests thronging in, coming as a crowd or a conspiracy. It will be used of these men again in verses 11 and 15: three times they arrive as one body, each time closing the trap a notch further.

The “den” is gubba, a pit, entered from above: a stone is laid over its mouth (verse 17), Daniel is taken up out of it (verse 23), and the accusers never reach its bottom (verse 24). Kings of the region kept lions for royal hunts. Thirty days is one month of god-like status.

“Sign” is reshim, the verb for the writing inscribed on Belshazzar’s wall in 5:24. The notion that Persian law could not be revoked appears also in Esther 1:19 and 8:8, where a second decree has to be issued because the first cannot be cancelled.

One verse, one action, and no question asked. The word for “writing” is the same one used for the writing on the wall in chapter 5. Darius signs without asking whom the law might catch, and the book records no hesitation.

Solomon had prayed that exiles would pray “toward their land... the city... and the house” (1 Kings 8:48), and knelt to do it (8:54). Psalm 55:17 gives the three times: “Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray.” Daniel’s habit is built from both.

Hargishu again: they burst in together, the crowd verb of verse 6. “Making supplication” is mitchannan, asking for grace, from chanan, the root of Hananiah’s name. They catch him asking a petition of a God, exactly as the decree defined the crime.

“Hast thou not signed” is a question built to be answered yes. They make the king confirm the law and its irrevocability before they name the man, so that by the time he hears “Daniel” he has already testified against him.

“Regardeth not thee, O king” is word for word the charge laid against the three in 3:12. The accusers skip Daniel’s rank and name his origin, of the children of the captivity of Judah, as Arioch did in 2:25 and Belshazzar in 5:13.

The Aramaic says the matter was very evil to him; the King James “with himself” means within himself, not that he blamed himself. “Set his heart” is literally set his mind. A king spent a whole day looking for a legal way round his own signature and found none by sunset.

“Know, O king” echoes “be it known unto thee, O king” in the mouths of the three in 3:18. Here the phrase belongs to the accusers, and they use it to teach the king his own law. It is their third arrival as a crowd, and the last.

The king’s words can be read as a wish, may your God deliver you, as easily as a prediction; the Aramaic form allows both. The man who wrote the law that condemns Daniel is the first to speak of Daniel’s God delivering him.

Two seals go on the stone, the king’s and his lords’. Each side guards against the other: the nobles make sure the king cannot let Daniel out, and the king makes sure no one can finish him off in the night. “Purpose” means the matter, the case.

“Instruments of musick” translates dachavan, a word found nowhere else, guessed as music, food, entertainers or concubines. Whatever was usually brought, nothing was. “His sleep went from him” echoes Nebuchadnezzar in 2:1; kings in this book do not sleep well.

“Very early” is the first glimmer of dawn. “In haste” is the verb used for Arioch rushing Daniel to the king (2:25) and Nebuchadnezzar rising at the furnace (3:24). The king is out of the palace before the day properly starts.

“The living God” appears for the first time in the book, the title David used when Goliath defied “the armies of the living God” (1 Samuel 17:26). The question, is he “able to deliver”, is the question Nebuchadnezzar put in 3:15 and the three answered in 3:17.

It is the first time in the book that Daniel uses the court greeting, and he uses it from the pit, to the man who put him there. The accusers used the same words in verse 6 while setting the trap.

Hebrews 11:33 remembers this verse: those who through faith “stopped the mouths of lions.” The verb chabal runs through Daniel’s answer: the lions have not hurt me, and I have done thee no hurt. Harm is refused in both directions.

“Believed” is heiman, from the same root as “faithful” in verse 4. The auditors found him faithful to the king’s business; the rescue is explained by his trust in God. One Aramaic root covers both, and the chapter uses it at both ends.

“Had the mastery” is shelet, to rule over, the verb of 3:27, where the fire had no power over the three. “Or ever” is old English for before. Herodotus (3.119) tells of Darius I condemning a man together with his household; Israel’s law in Deuteronomy 24:16 forbade putting children to death for a father’s crime.

The chapter turned on one royal writing that could not be revoked. Darius does not revoke it; he issues another, addressed to the whole world. The opening formula is the one Nebuchadnezzar used in 4:1, as if royal letters about Daniel’s God had become a genre.

“Tremble and fear” is the pair used in 5:19 of how the nations stood before Nebuchadnezzar; Darius redirects it to Daniel’s God. “Stedfast” is qayyam, enduring. “Unto the end” uses sof, the word for “the end” that dominates the visions of chapters 7 to 12.

“The power of the lions” is literally the hand of the lions. Hands have run through the book: God gave Jehoiakim into the king’s hand (1:2), Nebuchadnezzar asked who could deliver from his hands (3:15), and a hand wrote on the wall. “Signs and wonders” repeats Nebuchadnezzar’s phrase from 4:2.

“Prospered” is the verb of 3:30. The Aramaic “and” can also mean “even”: in the reign of Darius, even the reign of Cyrus the Persian. Donald Wiseman proposed reading it that way, making Darius another name for Cyrus. The chapter closes the court accounts of chapters 1–6.