Daniel 1:8-16
Ten days, and pulse to eat
He purposes in his heart not to defile himself, and then handles the man who has to say yes. The test is his idea, the risk is named out loud, and at the end of ten days their faces are fairer.
People of the Bible
Daniel
Served four kings of two empires without ever pretending to belong to either.
Daniel is taken to Babylon as a teenager, renamed, and enrolled in a three year course in the literature of the Chaldeans. His first recorded act is a negotiation about food, handled so carefully that the steward who could be executed for it is given a ten day trial rather than an order. From there he reads a dream nobody will repeat to him, survives a change of empire, is found out by men who could only convict him by making his prayers illegal, and keeps his windows open toward Jerusalem anyway.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Daniel
- 01
- 02
Daniel 2:26-45
A stone cut without hands
The king will not say the dream, only demand it. Daniel asks for time, prays with his companions, and comes back with the image of gold, silver, brass, iron and clay, and the stone that fills the earth.
- 03
Daniel 5:1-31
Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin
Fingers write on the plaster of the wall opposite the lampstand during a feast using the temple vessels. Daniel refuses the gifts, gives the history first, and then reads four words.
- 04
Daniel 6:1-23
His windows open toward Jerusalem
They can find no fault except concerning the law of his God, so they write a law about prayer. He goes home and kneels three times a day as he did before, with the windows open.
- 05
Daniel 9:1-19
We have sinned
Reading Jeremiah, he works out that the seventy years are nearly up, and responds not by celebrating but by confessing, using the word we throughout, though nothing in the book accuses him.
- 06
Daniel 7:9-14
One like the son of man
Thrones set, the Ancient of days seated, and one brought near with the clouds of heaven who is given dominion and glory and a kingdom that shall not pass away.
Why it matters
Daniel is the model for living under a government that is not yours. He is unfailingly useful to Babylon and unfailingly not Babylonian, and the book keeps both. The visions push further than anything before them: four beasts, one like a son of man coming with the clouds and given a kingdom that shall not be destroyed, and a resurrection of many that sleep in the dust, some to everlasting life. Jesus quotes the son of man passage at his own trial.
22 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
