Lives of Scripture

Daniel was among the young Judean nobles taken to Babylon after Nebuchadnezzar's first siege of Jerusalem, where he and three companions — renamed Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego — resolved not to defile themselves with the king's food, and God gave them wisdom "ten times better" than all the royal magicians (Daniel 1). Daniel alone could recall and interpret Nebuchadnezzar's forgotten dream of a great statue representing successive kingdoms, struck down by a stone "cut out without hands" — a picture of God's eternal kingdom breaking into human history (Daniel 2). His three friends survived being thrown into a fiery furnace for refusing to worship Nebuchadnezzar's golden image, emerging without even the smell of smoke on them (Daniel 3). Decades later, under Belshazzar, Daniel alone could interpret mysterious handwriting on the palace wall announcing the kingdom's fall that night (Daniel 5). Under Darius the Mede, jealous officials tricked the king into banning prayer to anyone but himself; Daniel kept praying openly toward Jerusalem anyway and was thrown into a den of lions, but God shut the lions' mouths and he emerged unharmed (Daniel 6). Daniel also received visions of seventy "weeks" of years counting toward the Messiah's coming and being "cut off," and a coming "son of man" given everlasting dominion — language Jesus applied directly to Himself (Daniel 7:13-14; 9:24-27; Matthew 26:64).