1KING NEBUCHADNEZZAR MADE an image of gold, ninety feet high and nine feet wide, and set it up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon. 2He then summoned the satraps, prefects, governors, advisers, treasurers, judges, magistrates and all the other provincial officials to come to the dedication of the image he had set up. 3So the satraps, prefects, governors, advisers, treasurers, judges, magistrates and all the other provincial officials assembled for the dedication of the image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up, and they stood before it.
4Then the herald loudly proclaimed, “This is what you are commanded to do, O peoples, nations and men of every language: 5As soon as you hear the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, pipes and all kinds of music, you must fall down and worship the image of gold that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up. 6Whoever does not fall down and worship will immediately be thrown into a blazing furnace.”
7Therefore, as soon as they heard the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp and all kinds of music, all the peoples, nations and men of every language fell down and worshiped the image of gold that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.
8At this time some astrologers came forward and denounced the Jews. 9They said to King Nebuchadnezzar, “O king, live forever! 10You have issued a decree, O king, that everyone who hears the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, pipes and all kinds of music must fall down and worship the image of gold, 11and that whoever does not fall down and worship will be thrown into a blazing furnace. 12But there are some Jews whom you have set over the affairs of the province of Babylon—Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego—who pay no attention to you, O king. They neither serve your gods nor worship the image of gold you have set up.”
13Furious with rage, Nebuchadnezzar summoned Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. So these men were brought before the king, 14and Nebuchadnezzar said to them, “Is it true, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the image of gold I have set up? 15Now when you hear the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, pipes 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?”
16Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. 17If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. 18But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”
19Then Nebuchadnezzar was furious with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, and his attitude toward them changed. He ordered the furnace heated seven times hotter than usual 20and commanded some of the strongest soldiers in his army to tie up Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and throw them into the blazing furnace. 21So these men, wearing their robes, trousers, turbans and other clothes, were bound and thrown into the blazing furnace. 22The king’s command was so urgent and the furnace so hot that the flames of the fire killed the soldiers who took up Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, 23and these three men, firmly tied, fell into the blazing furnace.
24Then King Nebuchadnezzar leaped to his feet in amazement and asked his advisers, “Weren’t there three men that we tied up and threw into the fire?”
They replied, “Certainly, O king.”
25He said, “Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods.”
26Nebuchadnezzar then approached the opening of the blazing furnace and shouted, “Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out! Come here!”
So Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego came out of the fire, 27and the satraps, prefects, governors and royal advisers crowded around them. They saw that the fire had not harmed their bodies, nor was a hair of their heads singed; their robes were not scorched, and there was no smell of fire on them.
28Then 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. 29Therefore 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.”
30Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the province of Babylon.
Original Meaning
DANIEL 3 CONTAINS a single story with a clear beginning, middle, and end. In other words, though it fits nicely into the broader context, it has its own plot, which generates tension but moves toward resolution.
As with the first two chapters, Daniel 3 is set during the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. This is the first chapter, however, that does not give a more precise chronological marker. We do not know how much time has elapsed since the previous episode, but we must imagine a gap of not a few years to account for Nebuchadnezzar’s shift from honoring the God of Daniel as he did at the end of chapter 2 to throwing that God’s devotees into a burning furnace.1
The plot tension is introduced when Nebuchadnezzar made a huge golden statue and then insisted that everyone present bow down and worship it. Later we will explore the possible significance behind this command, but here we simply note that people of the time would by and large have had little difficulty with this request. After all, most people in the ancient Near East were polytheists, used to acknowledging many deities. They could easily assimilate this statue into their religious scheme, especially under the duress of capital punishment. But this was not true of the Judeans in exile. Their belief in one God prohibited participation in this ritual, and their adversaries knew it.
The text indicates that the three friends of Daniel could have gotten away with their nonconformance if it were not for certain enemies who turned them in (vv. 9–12). These informers are identified as “some astrologers” (v. 8) and probably were professional colleagues who hated to see these gifted foreigners rise so quickly and so high in the Babylonian government. They thought they had the perfect plan to do away with them.
Thus, from a literary point of view, this account is a narrative of “court conflict.”2 This label rightly indicates that here the Judeans encounter the animosity of their enemies in a way that they have not yet experienced. This account may be the first record of specifically religious persecution, but unfortunately not the last.3
In chapter 2, God made known his great wisdom. Here, he will reveal his power. The story in this way will again support the overarching theme of the book of Daniel: In spite of present appearances, God is in control. The specific focus of this chapter is that God’s power transcends even death. This stirring story intends to bolster the courage of God’s people as they face what seems to be overwhelming odds.
The structure of the chapter is as follows: (1) Nebuchadnezzar’s image of gold (3:1–7); the accusation against the three friends (3:8–12); the confrontation with Nebuchadnezzar (3:13–18); the miraculous deliverance (3:19–27); Nebuchadnezzar worships God (3:28–30). Catholic editions of Daniel include two additions to this chapter: a short prayer of Azariah, followed by a song sung by the three young men.4 The prayer is one of confession and acknowledgment of God’s justice, much like Daniel 9 in tone. The song (preceded by a short prose description of the furnace ordeal) is a hymn extolling God.
Nebuchadnezzar’s Image of Gold (3:1–7)
THE EPISODE BEGINS with the simple statement that Nebuchadnezzar built a golden image on the plain of Dura.5 The author of Daniel does not inform us whether the image was a god or the king himself? In one sense, this distinction does not matter. Whether deity or the divinized king, the command was to worship and bow down to this statue, to treat it or what it represented as the most important power in the universe. Such a command was impossible for a faithful follower of the true God to obey, and that is the point of the text.
All we learn about the statue is its dimensions and the material out of which it was made. Like many ancient idols it was made from a precious metal, in this case gold. Analogies with other idols known from this time period suggest that the statue was gold-plated and not solid gold. The gold of this statue links the story with Nebuchadnezzar’s recently described dream in which he was the head of gold. Perhaps this is a clue that the statue was indeed of the king, though rarely did Mesopotamian kings present themselves as gods, and we have no other evidence that Nebuchadnezzar broke this tradition.
The size of the image is startling: “ninety feet high and nine feet wide.”6 Commentators have grappled with what Young has called the “grotesque” shape of this statue,7 suggesting solutions like a large dais included in the dimensions or pointing to the long, thin (though much smaller) statues of deities and worshipers recovered through archaeology.8 Collins provides the most exhaustive list of large statues known in the ancient world, most notably mentioning the statue of Bel in Babylon as reported by Herodotus (who calls it Bel Zeus), though this statue was only eighteen feet high.9 Other scholars mention the colossus of Rhodes, closer in height to Nebuchadnezzar’s statue and built in the following Persian period.10
Nebuchadnezzar not only built the statue; he demanded a public demonstration of adoration. For this purpose, he issued a call for “the satraps, prefects, governors, advisers, treasurers, judges, magistrates and all the other provincial officials” to attend its dedication. With this rather imposing list of officials, we encounter a lengthy list that is repeated a number of times in the chapter. These lists appear ponderous to us, but their literary effect is to heighten the tension and the feeling of danger toward the three friends, who will soon be singled out of the group. As Fewell states it, “through repetition, the narrator creates a scenario in which conformity is normative, disobedience is unthinkable.”11 The various categories of people in the list are political officials from around the empire, which may signal that this was Nebuchadnezzar’s attempt to solidify control over the diverse elements of his vast empire.
We encounter a second lengthy list as well, which is also repeated (cf. vv. 5, 7, 10, 15: “the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, pipes and all kinds of music”). This is a list of musical instruments at whose sound everyone was to show their respects to the statue. This list emphasizes the “pomp”12 surrounding the ceremony and heightens the tension, focusing on the moment of obedience or disobedience.
As reported in these first seven verses, everything seems to be proceeding according to the specifications of the king. The order was given through the musical prelude, and “all the peoples, nations and men of every language fell down and worshiped the image of gold that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up” (v. 7). Or so he thought.…
The Accusation Against the Three Friends (3:8–12)
INDEED, WHEN VERSE 7 reports that everyone worshiped the image, it is probably giving Nebuchadnezzar’s perspective. As his eyes scanned the plain of Dura, he apparently saw only the large crowd obeying his command to prostrate themselves before his golden statue. His contentment was shattered, however, by the report he received from a contingent of astrologers, who accused “some Jews” (v. 12) of disobedience to the king’s direct command in spite of the threatened penalty of a horrible death.
We should note that this is an accusation by some astrologers against some Jews. It is not a class action against a whole people. Indeed, many aspects of this story leave us with various questions. What about the other Jewish people? Were any others present? Did they conform? And, most provocatively, where was Daniel?
We should avoid making dogmatic pronouncements when the text is silent. Wood goes over the edge when he asserts, for instance, that the three friends stood completely alone and every other Jewish person gave in.13 Critical scholars take the silence of the text too far in a different direction when they use Daniel’s absence to speak of a separate tradition that knew of the three friends but not of Daniel, and a later redaction that brought the two strands together in a kind of slipshod manner.14
Perhaps it is correct to treat Daniel 2:49 (“Moreover, at Daniel’s request the king appointed Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego administrators over the province of Babylon, while Daniel himself remained at the royal court”) as an implicit answer to the question of Daniel’s absence. It certainly explains why Daniel and the three friends were not automatically together, but we cannot, again, be dogmatic.
The text is a bit more suggestive, though once again not explicit, about the motivation of the accusing astrologers. The hint comes when they describe the three Jews as those “whom you have set over the affairs of the province of Babylon” (v. 12). These men appear to be motivated out of professional jealousy. They beat them out for best honors in their school (ch. 1), and now they are rapidly rising in the ranks of the government—and they are foreigners to boot!
Close attention to the words of the astrologers reveal their strategy as they stir the king to action against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. In a phrase, they appeal to his sense of vanity. The disobedience of the three Jews is a personal affront. After all, he was the one who issued the decree and warned of the penalty. These rebels “pay no attention to you, O king. They neither serve your gods nor worship the image of gold you have set up” (v. 12, italics added). With this approach, Nebuchadnezzar’s reaction is predictable.
The Confrontation With Nebuchadnezzar (3:13–18)
A CASE COULD be made as early as chapter 2 that Nebuchadnezzar betrays a sense of insecurity. This sounds surprising for the most powerful human being on the face of the earth, but with power and wealth come those who want to take it away for themselves, even if it means murder. Nebuchadnezzar’s insecurity is apparent in his treatment of the wisdom teachers in chapter 2 as well as in his happiness after learning that he was the head of gold.
The premise of this chapter is the enforced worship of Nebuchadnezzar’s golden statue, which, whether idol or royal statue, is a way of compelling a display of loyalty. The report of disloyalty among the three friends causes an explosion of anger on his part. He immediately has them brought into his presence for a personal loyalty test.
The tension reaches fever pitch when Nebuchadnezzar orders a personal ceremony for the three, instructing the band to strike up the introit, at the end of which they are to worship the image. He climaxes his exhortation with a statement that gets at the heart of the theological teaching of the chapter: “What god will be able to rescue you from my hand” (v. 15). In chapter 2, we saw the astrologers themselves unknowingly throwing down the challenge to the Lord God as they asserted that no god had the requisite wisdom to answer the king’s question (2:11). Here the king asserts his own power above all gods, and we can imagine the God of Psalm 2 raising his eyebrows and emitting a slight chuckle.
The three friends are not ready to laugh, but they stand their ground in a rather startling way. Their answer seems arrogant at first hearing: “We do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter” (v. 16). They go on to explain in a way that strikes us as odd, but when properly understood, becomes an example of tremendous courage in the context of intense religious persecution (vv. 17–18): “If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”
This is no easy answer to the king’s anger. They begin by acknowledging God’s ability to save them, but then they envision the possibility that God may choose not to do so.15 In other words, they answer Nebuchadnezzar in light of the possibility that they will be burned to ashes in the blazing furnace. Whichever is the case, they say, they will not worship the golden image.
In its original setting, this answer heightens the literary tension of the story (at least on first hearing). Even the faithful follower of God does not know what will happen to the three friends. Will they live or die? God may rescue them or they may die, martyrs to the cause of faith. But even those original hearers of the story who know the outcome can find great significance in this answer. Yes, the three friends survive, but they also know that some of their people have died at the hands of the persecutors. Was this because God was unable to deliver at those times? Was it because these others did not have the requisite faith? No, it was that God, in his unfathomable wisdom, did not chose to save them. No matter what the result, deliverance or death, they will not give into the evil powers of the world. They will stay faithful to God. This, of course, will have tremendous implications for how we think about suffering today (see below).
The Miraculous Deliverance (3:19–27)
THE THREE FRIENDS’ speech, courageous in our ears, exasperates the king. He grows even more furious. Interestingly, the Aramaic text, which the NIV idiomatically translates as “his attitude toward them changed,” may more literally be translated, “the image [selem] of his face changed.” The one who in his pride has created an image with the purpose of assuring uniform loyalty finds his own image provoked beyond his control. He orders the furnace, apparently burning in the background of the scene, to be superheated, reflecting perhaps the heat of his own anger. Then he orders his soldiers to throw the three Jews in.
Our picture of this furnace is supplied by the description of the text rather than any firm archaeological knowledge. For the narrative to make sense, the furnace must be large. Some scholars have suggested that this is a furnace near the plain of Dura that was used to make the great golden image in the first place.16 Apparently the three are thrown in from an opening at the top, but Nebuchadnezzar’s ability to look into the furnace indicates that perhaps there was a window or opening at the side as well.
In any case, the soldiers obediently cast Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into the fire. The fire is so hot that it kills the soldiers. Loyalty to a godless and foolish king brings death, not the life one would expect. But what about those who refuse obedience when it comes to a choice between faithfulness to Nebuchadnezzar and to God himself? Is there “a god” who can rescue them from the hands of such a powerful ruler?
Nebuchadnezzar himself gives us the answer: “I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods” (v. 25). The king quickly gets the message and orders the three out, and then Nebuchadnezzar and all the others, including the accusers, witness the extent of the miracle of deliverance. Verse 21 narrated the clothing of the three when they were thrown in. They were fully dressed in “robes, trousers, turbans and other clothes,” but when they emerged, “the fire had not harmed their bodies, nor was a hair of their heads singed; their robes were not scorched, and there was no smell of fire on them” (v. 27). It was as if they were not even in the fire.
In this way, God is showing Nebuchadnezzar who is in charge. Even if the image that precipitated the crisis is not of Nebuchadnezzar himself, he has certainly put himself in place of God, insisting that he is the ultimate power of the universe, from whose rage no deity could hope to save a follower. By contrast, it is only the true God who can proclaim that “no one can deliver out of my hand” (Deut. 32:39). And this great God was a proven deliverer. After all, when he rescued his people from Egypt centuries before, Moses told the Israelites that it was God who “brought you out of the iron-smelting furnace, out of Egypt, to be the people of his inheritance, as you now are” (4:20).
Nebuchadnezzar Worships God (3:28–30)
THAT GOD RESCUED the three Jews no one is in doubt, but who was that “fourth [who] looks like a son of the gods” (v. 25)? As in chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar is moved from anger to praise toward God and his followers. In his concluding speech in the present chapter, he again mentions the mysterious fourth person. When he first saw the figure, he labeled him a “son of the gods”; now he calls him God’s “angel” (v. 28). His dual description has launched a debate that continues to the present day, which will take us into the next two sections as well as into a consideration whether our later perspective might throw even more light on the issue. But at this stage we must remember that the narrative places these two descriptions in the mouth of Nebuchadnezzar, who is not an Israelite theologian. Relying on his words, we are thrown into a quandary: Was this God himself as “a son of the gods” might lead us to believe,17 or an angel?
In one sense, it does not make any difference. Even if the fourth figure was an angel, it was God’s angel; God is still the redeemer. Even Nebuchadnezzar recognizes this. He further acknowledges that the three have been right to obey this God rather than a king like him.
The king then issues a command that, while not instituting worship of the true God, will not allow anyone in his kingdom to show such a powerful deity any disrespect. Furthermore, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego get a further promotion, thus completely thwarting the intentions of their accusers.
Bridging Contexts
THE PRECIPITATING CAUSE of the action in Daniel 3 is Nebuchadnezzar’s construction of a huge statue with the attendant insistence that all the leaders, indeed the “peoples, nations and men of every language” (v. 4), bow down in worship to this statue.
Near Eastern idolatry. As we have noted, it is impossible to be dogmatic concerning the identity of the statue. Is it the king himself or, as is more likely, one of the gods? And, if the latter, which one? There are two reasons to tip the scale slightly in favor of seeing the statue as that of a deity. (1) It was rare for Mesopotamian kings to be divinized, and there is no evidence that Nebuchadnezzar ever moved in this direction.
(2) If the king were divine, why would he need to build a statue-idol to receive worship when he himself was physically present?18 An idol of a god in Mesopotamian religious conception was a way in which to make the normally invisible god present. The gods were active in the world, often as personified forces of nature, but they were not visible. An idol made a god visible. The idol was not the god, but since it represented the god, it was imbued with the god’s aura. A sophisticated Mesopotamian theologian would have denied an equation between the physical idol and his god; but in another sense, the idol, being the physical manifestation of the god, was treated as if it were the god. We know about elaborate ceremonies of bathing and feeding statues that showed the awe with which these physical objects were approached.19 While the theologian and other sophisticated thinkers in the society approached the idol as a symbol of the god, I suspect that many people were more crass in their identification of god and idol.20
Regardless of whether the idol was royal or divine, the statue was understood to represent a god or even in the minds of some identified with a god. It was a deity represented by a statue constructed from precious materials and intended to represent a deity of some sort. It was therefore the appropriate object of adoration. The three friends knew exactly what the statue stood for, and they also understood that they could not be faithful to the true God and bow the knee to the statue. They also realized that the cost was heavy indeed, namely, their lives.
They understood their God’s will concerning their participation in the ritual on the plain of Dura, because God had expressed that will through the Ten Commandments centuries before and had laid the foundation with the first two commandments (Ex. 20:3–6):
You shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
By not worshiping this deity, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego became role models for God’s people when faced with the seduction or the threat of the worship of deities constructed by human minds and human hands.
This occasion, of course, was not the first time where Israel felt the seduction of idol worship. Indeed, God’s people during the Old Testament period lived constantly in the dangerous world of idols. Their danger was in their seductive power. All the nations around Israel worshiped them, nations more powerful and successful (in a worldly sense) than they were. Indeed, these are the nations that overpowered them. The temptation would be strong to worship the gods of their oppressors for one’s own advancement and because of the apparent superiority of their culture and their military power. Daniel 3 itself illustrates how, at least in this case, the worship of idols would advance one’s career, while refusing to worship this idol could result in death. Many Jewish exiles may have been tempted to worship idols because they would understand Babylon’s political superiority as a reflex of the superior power of their gods.
As we read the story of Israel in the Old Testament, we observe that the people and the leaders did not always successfully resist the temptation to worship those shiny, impressive-looking statues. It is for this reason that the prophets inveigh so heavily against them. Indeed, Isaiah is at his sarcastic and rhetorical best when he ridicules the idols of the surrounding nations. He satirizes idol worship by reducing it to a fetish (Isa. 44:12–20):21
The blacksmith takes a tool
and works with it in the coals;
he shapes an idol with hammers,
he forges it with the might of his arm.
He gets hungry and loses his strength;
he drinks no water and grows faint.
The carpenter measures with a line
and makes an outline with a marker;
he roughs it out with chisels
and marks it with compasses.
He shapes it in the form of man,
of man in all his glory,
that it may dwell in a shrine.
He cut down cedars,
or perhaps took a cypress or oak.
He let it grow among the trees of the forest,
or planted a pine, and the rain made it grow.
It is man’s fuel for burning;
some of it he takes and warms himself,
he kindles a fire and bakes bread.
But he also fashions a god and worships it;
he makes an idol and bows down to it.
Half of the wood he burns in the fire;
over it he prepares his meal,
he roasts his meat and eats his fill.
He also warms himself and says,
“Ah! I am warm; I see the fire.”
From the rest he makes a god, his idol;
he bows down to it and worships.
He prays to it and says,
“Save me; you are my god.”
They know nothing, they understand nothing;
their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see,
and their minds closed so they cannot understand.
No one stops to think,
no one has the knowledge or understanding to say,
“Half of it I used for fuel;
I even baked bread over its coals,
I roasted meat and I ate.
Shall I make a detestable thing from what is left?
Shall I bow down to a block of wood?”
He feeds on ashes, a deluded heart misleads him;
he cannot save himself, or say,
“Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?”
Isaiah shows in most graphic and even darkly humorous terms that the worship of an idol (in the case of Dan. 3, the statue in the plain of Dura) was a confusion of the creation with the Creator. In idol worship, a person takes a bit of created matter and says, “You are the most important thing to me in the world. You have all the power and the wisdom!”
Now, it is true that a sophisticated ancient Near Eastern theologian (as opposed to the general populace) would likely have responded to Isaiah, “Don’t be ridiculous. We don’t worship that wood and metal statue! That object is simply a representation of the deity, who is not restricted to the statue but is a power above human power.” But even so, what do the gods of the ancient Near East themselves represent? Who are Marduk and Ishtar, or Baal and Astarte? They are personifications of bits of creation as well. Marduk, the leading god of the neo-Babylonian empire of Nebuchadnezzar, and Baal, his counterpart in Canaan, were the power of fertility, the storm, the dew. Ishtar, also from Mesopotamia, and Astarte, her counterpart in Canaan, personified sexual potency and the violence of war.
In other words, not only the statues but the deities that they represented are bits of creation raised to the level of the Creator. We can hear Paul’s later words ringing in our ears (Rom. 1:21–22):
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
We can see the seriousness of the challenge to the faith of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They are being told to demote their God, the one who created them, by not giving him their exclusive worship. They are also to worship a statue of a god they know does not exist. They cannot simply rationalize their actions, because the act of bowing down and worship indicates that they affirm the statue as equal to their God. By accepting this statue into the category of deity, they will inevitably reduce the ultimacy, authority, and jurisdiction of the true God and demote him in such a way that will make him out to be no more than one of the deities of the polytheistic world. Ultimately, the dilution or diminishment of deity is a denunciation of deity.22
As Christians in the West at the end of the twentieth century, we are not confronted with the same threat as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—or are we? Certainly no one would build a statue and insist that we all bow down before it. But the threat of idolatry is much more subtle and therefore threatening to us today. To understand this, I find a concept of Paul Tillich, a German-American theologian of the mid-twentieth century, helpful, namely, that of “Ultimate Concern.”23 Tillich pointed out that a person’s god is the thing or person that one is most concerned about, thinks the most about, or affects one’s life the most.
If Tillich’s language is a tad abstract for some, let me introduce a phrase made famous by Bill Bright and Campus Crusade. He used a catchy metaphor to get people to think about what is acting as a god in their lives by inquiring, “Who is on the throne of your life?” If it is not the true God of the Bible, he suggests, then it is an idol. In the Contemporary Significance section we will explore what permutations idolatry takes in our time.
Faithful in the face of death. But harking back to our comments on Daniel 3, we want to observe how the three friends react to Nebuchadnezzar’s insistence that they worship the idol. In many ways, the problem is similar to the one encountered in chapter 1 How are God’s faithful people to act in a faithless world?
In our present chapter, the dangers are heightened at least on the surface. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are compelled to conform to Nebuchadnezzar’s aberrant religious ceremony in a public setting under the threat of death. We are first struck again by the lack of stridency exhibited by the faithful Jewish youths. Unlike the young third-century A.D. theologian Origen, who wanted to throw himself in front of the emperor’s chariot and proclaim Christ, they simply quietly decide not to participate. Apparently, the king does not even notice them; it takes a group of informants who are out to get the three to bring it to the king’s attention. But when they are then brought in for private interrogation, they show that their quiet rebellion earlier does not hide a heart of cowardice. They calmly and boldly proclaim their faith without a moment’s hesitation.
Their courage is remarkable. They do not seek death, but neither do they shirk it. They refuse to betray their God even in the light of the real possibility that they may die for their stand.
Indeed, we must be very careful not to let the optimistic outcome of the story cloud our vision. The friends have no confidence that they will survive the ordeal (“even if he does not [save us], we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up” [v. 18]). They know that that type of confidence is nothing but the most irksome of presumptions.
Their response preserves the story from devolving into a false promise that God will save every faithful person from suffering and death. Such a story would betray the faithful martyrs who have stood faithful but suffered death. Jesus himself honored God’s followers who died during the Old Testament time when he spoke of “all the righteous blood that has been shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah” (Matt. 23:35). The story of church history from its beginnings under the Roman empire to the present has countless stories of faithful witnesses who have stood firm to the end.
The three friends’ courage is all the more amazing when we reflect on what they may have thought concerning life after death. In a word, it is not at all clear that they had a definite idea of a judgment or reward after death, and it is extremely unlikely that, even if they did know of the resurrection of the dead, that they had an extensive picture of the blessings of heaven. They certainly do not appeal to such a hope here, and there is little explicit teaching about the resurrection of the dead, eternal life, or heaven in previous Scripture. The teaching is there implicitly, and later in the book of Daniel it becomes explicit (Dan. 12:1–3), but something other than future bliss motivates the three friends and invests their potential death with meaning.
Towner at least partially captures their motivation when he states that “their deaths subverted the power of the authorities to crush integrity and to silence truth.”24 In this regard, he compares the meaningfulness of the martyr’s death to the meaninglessness of the death of the guards, who obediently escorted the three friends to the mouth of the fiery furnace.
But a more specific answer to the question is forthcoming when we consider the actual contents of the three friends’ “truth” and “integrity.” They stand firm because they trust their God—no matter what, and no matter what includes death. Victor Frankl, a survivor of German death camps and no stranger to courage in the face of the danger of death himself, quotes Nietzsche’s aphorism that applies to the three friends as well as to himself, “He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.”25 But the three friends take it far beyond Nietzsche. That philosopher is well known for his statement, “That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.” The three friends bear witness to the fact that even death does not defeat them.
Contemporary Significance
MODERN IDOLATRY. AT first it is difficult for us as Christians living at the turn of the millennium to identify with the challenge facing the Jewish people on the plain of Dura. But we have suggested that the issue transcends the worship of a particular statue and concerns instead the constant threat to dilute the worship of the true God by elevating anything or anyone else to a comparable place of importance in our life. As John Calvin has provocatively charged, the human mind is a “factory of idols.” We are constantly, even as Christians, in a struggle with this temptation.
The temptation can come from a variety of sources, not all of which seem so bad on the surface of it. Our addictions can make pleasure an idol, so that all our efforts and thoughts are directed toward where we will get our next high, whether through alcohol, drugs, sex, or some other cheap thrill. We might seek power in order to control our world or simply to have the resources of revenge toward those who have hurt us in some way. All our efforts and strength thus become directed toward amassing power and influence in society, our family, or even the church. We may make relationships, or one particular relationship, an idol. We may be gearing our life and decisions not around what we understand to be God’s will, but rather the will of a spouse, a child, or a friend. Seeking knowledge or degrees, writing books, or delivering impressive sermons, these too may become idols.
The list is vast, which is why the danger is so real. The seduction is subtle, which is why we can slip so easily into idol worship.26 But though subtle and varied, I suggest that idolatry, whether of Nebuchadnezzar’s sort or the kind we discover in our own hearts, ultimately has one object. When the masks are ripped away, behind every idol is the self. Frederick Nietzsche, the late nineteenth-century philosopher whose thought has such a huge influence on contemporary postmodern culture, saw this, and in his brutal and honest atheism, advocated the killing of God and the construction of a new idol, the human self. Hear him as he preaches his new doctrine:
Whatever in me has feeling, suffers and is in prison; but my will always comes to me as my liberator and joy-bringer. Willing liberates: that is the true teaching of will and liberty—thus Zarathustra teaches it. Willing no more and esteeming no more and creating no more—oh, that this great weariness might always remain far from me! In knowledge too I feel only my will’s joy in begetting and becoming; and if there is innocence in my knowledge, it is because the will to beget is in it. Away from God and gods this will has lured me; what could one create if gods existed?
But my fervent will to create impels me ever again toward man; thus is the hammer impelled toward the stone. O men, in the stone there sleeps an image, the image of my images. Alas, that it must sleep in the hardest, the ugliest stone! Now my hammer rages cruelly against its prison. Pieces of rock rain from the stone: what is that to me? I want to perfect it; for a shadow came to me—the stillest and lightest of all things once came to me. The beauty of the overman came to me as a shadow. O my brothers, what are the gods to me now?
Thus spoke Zarathustra.27
God is dead; the self must replace it. In a sense, this might seem to be the opposite of Daniel 3, but it is not. It is not so much a ridding the world of God, but a replacing of God by another god—the self. Nietzsche attempted to kill God because he could not tolerate any but himself in that position: “But let me reveal my heart to you entirely, my friends: if there were gods, how could I endure not to be a god! Hence there are no gods.”28
Here is the heart of modern postmodern society: In the absence of the gods we may and must create our own meaning. No longer does Christ provide meaning. No longer do we feel the existential nausea of no meaning. Now we feel the will to power and the joy in constructing our own meaning in the absence of the gods. All substitutes for God are ultimately this idol—the idol of self. And as the end of the twentieth century is in the process of discovering, this idol does not lead to life, but to death—cultural and individual.
As Christians, we may not bow to this idol in any of its manifestations. Our only worship is to be directed to the one and only true and full image of God, Jesus Christ, the one whom Paul called “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15).29 Ultimately, then, the second commandment, which was the heart of the three friends’ resistance to the idolatry of Nebuchadnezzar, when read in the context of the canon as a whole, draws us to Jesus Christ, Word of God and Image of God. It is to this image alone that our worship is properly directed.
Resistance to the point of death. Daniel 3 teaches us that we must not only resist idolatry, but we must be prepared to resist it to the point of death. American Christians, in spite of all their complaints about the infringements on their religion, are rarely, if ever, confronted with that kind of decision. This is not true of Christians in many other parts of the twentieth-century world, where their faith and witness can lead to a prison term or a death penalty. Such Christian witness indicates to us that the courage of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego lives on.
But, of course, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are not the only biblical role models for faithful resistance to powerful and oppressive human governments. We can think of Acts 24–26, when Paul bore witness before Felix and Agrippa, or 5:29, when Peter proclaimed before the high priest, “We must obey God rather than men!” They knew the force of Jesus’ warning, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28).30
Where does the Christian, starting with Peter and the apostles until today, find the moral and religious strength to make such a courageous stand? From Jesus Christ. Jesus himself was put on trial for his religious claim that he was the Messiah. Facing death himself, he refused to capitulate, dying on the cross (cf. Matt. 27:11–14).
But was Jesus at the heart of the hope of the three friends as they faced death in the furnace? It is difficult to say how specifically their hope focused on the coming Savior, the Messiah. They trusted in the saving power of God, but it is provocative to reflect on the way God chose to deliver the three from the fire. Calvin pointed out that if God wanted, he could have extinguished the flames of the fire in order to save the three men. He saved them in the fire, not from the fire.31 They were in the very jaws of death. Moreover, he could have saved them without further fanfare, simply having them walk out of the fire unscathed, but instead he chose to save them by the presence of a “fourth [who] looks like a son of the gods” (v. 25).
Was this “fourth” being Jesus, as many interpreters from the earliest Christian times have suggested? It is impossible to be dogmatic unless one insists that every incarnate appearance of God must be the second person of the Trinity. It is safer to say that what we have here is a reflection of Immanuel, “God with us.” God dwelt with the three friends in the midst of the flames to preserve them from harm. In this sense, the Christian cannot help but see a prefigurement of Jesus Christ, who came to earth to dwell in a chaotic world and who even experienced death, not so that we might escape the experience of death but that we might have victory over it.
While this discussion might be an appropriate place to reflect further on the Christian hope of resurrection, we will reserve our comments until Daniel 12, which takes us even further in the book’s theology of death.