Below is a transcript of William H Shea’s bible study on the book of Daniel. This part is titled, Prophet Daniel: Study of Daniel Chapter 3-6 by William H Shea.
Dr. Shea is one of the world’s respected theologians and archaeologists. He taught for 14 years at Andrews University School of Theology before retiring in 1986 and joining the Biblical Research Institute.
Prophet Daniel: Study of Daniel Chapter 3-6 by William H Shea
We had a good session studying the book of Exodus yesterday afternoon. Our assignment for today is to finish out the historical chapters of Daniel. So we have basically four chapters to look at. We want to emphasize Daniel chapters three and five because we have more information about them. We’ll touch briefly on Daniel chapters four and six.
Review of Image of Daniel 2
So let’s review the image of Daniel chapter 2. The head of gold stands for what? Babylon. How do you know that? “Thou o king are the head of gold.” And we said that Nebuchadnezzar ruled for forty-three years. He was a long live long-reigning ruler. He ruled for forty-three years of the seventy years that the Neo-Babylonian kingdom lasted.
He was the great conqueror who extended the borders of Babylon all the way to the Mediterranean sea, all the way to Asia Minor and to the borders of Egypt. So he was the great conqueror that built the empire. And in addition, he built the city of Babylon. I’m going to put a map of Babylon on the board for you so you can get an idea of where some of this action took place.
But the old city of Babylon that goes back to about two thousand B.C. was a mile square. Nebuchadnezzar extended the city wall; he added a new city wall that was seven miles long and so he was a great builder.
Now the tradition got garbled and the tradition was that a queen named Semiramis was the one who built Babylon. That’s not true, you know, because there in the book of Daniel, Daniel chapter four, he’s walking on the roof of the palace and he’s looking out over the city and he says “is this not great Babylon which I have built”. And the bricks of Babylon testified to that too. Because stamped in those bricks, thousands and thousands and thousands of those bricks is the royal insignia of Nebuchadnezzar.
And so the evidence of the bricks itself tells us who was the great builder of Babylon. So he built the empire; he built the capital city; and he ruled it the longest of any king of that dynasty. So when Daniel says you are the head of gold, Daniel has a perfectly appropriate historical setting in which to say that.
But then he changes the word a little bit, he doesn’t say now the next king is going to follow you. He says after you shall follow another what? “Another kingdom, which will be inferior to you”. And so the Medes and the Persians come and conquer the city of Babylon.
We’re going to talk about that in Daniel chapter five because that transition took place right in the Book of Daniel. So the change from the head of gold to the breast and arms of silver, to the Medo-Persian Empire took place right within Daniel’s own lifetime and right within the records of the Book of Daniel.
Now the third one is the belly empire of bronze which represents Greece. We have the names of these kingdoms in chapter eight. Daniel 8:20 gives us Medo-Persia. Then Daniel 8:21 gives us Greece. So we have Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and then the last kingdom is not named. And so it simply takes a historical deduction to look at what happened to see that Rome was the one who followed and conquered the rest, mopped up, if you please, the Greek empire.
Alexander the Great conquered the east all the way to Egypt and all the way into the Indus River of India. And when the Roman Empire came along they picked off the pieces of Alexander’s empire little by little. They defeated Greece first in 168 and they conquered the city of Corinth in 146 and destroyed it. So the city of Corinth that we know so well from the New Testament was in ruins for a century and then it was rebuilt in the first century B.C. So when Paul came there, there was the rebuilt city. So that took care of Greece.
And then Asia Minor had a king who did not have a male heir and so he willed his kingdom, the kingdom of Pergamon was willed to Rome in 133 B.C.
Then the Roman general Pompey marched farther south into Syria conquered Syria and Judea and that was 60 B.C. And I told the story in the afternoon class about how he went into the most holy place of the temple in Jerusalem because he wanted to see what the statue of the Israelite God looked like. But the room was empty. The most holy place, remember the Ark of the Covenant was hidden as the Babylonian troops were approaching and apparently the knowledge of where it was hidden was lost and so they did not replace it. All of the other equipment of the temple were replaced but the Ark of the Covenant was not. And so Pompey walked in there to see the idol. No idol. It’s an empty room.
So that’s Rome conquering Syria and Judea and finally Julius Caesar conquers Egypt. So those are the pieces of the Greek empire that Alexander conquered now conquered by Rome. So Rome is the kingdom which succeeds Greece.
So we have the names that you know so well Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome and then finally the question that I ended up on yesterday was what happened thereafter? Do we have another major world Kingdom? We have two more three more four more? No. Does Rome stand forever? No, Rome did not stand forever. The Barbarians knocking at the gates of Rome eventually destroyed the Roman Empire. And the Roman Empire broke up into pieces. And the pieces were first represented by the tribes and then were represented by the modern nations which have developed from those tribes.
But that’s not the end of the story is it? The glorious end of the story comes with the stone kingdom. On the stone, you know there was a man named Augustine and he was a theologian of the fifth century A.D. and his contributions to theology were not very helpful. He wrote a book about the City of God and says the kingdom of God is right here in Rome and he changed the teaching on the millennium. And he said that the millennium started with the cross and this teaching is known as amillennialism.
If that were true where would the stone have to strike? On the legs of iron. It doesn’t strike the legs, it strikes the feet of iron and clay after the divisions of Rome have taken place because that’s what we have in Europe today.
And so the view of amillennialism that’s held by some branches of Christendom is not the correct view. We believe in what is called premillennialism that the millennium starts with the second coming of Christ. So this is the image that we looked at and that prophecy has a connection with the historical chapters that follow. It has a connection to Daniel chapter three and it has a connection to Daniel chapter five.
And for just a moment I want to look ahead with you to Daniel chapter five. And just see this interesting little connection because if you read the text carefully you deserve a family prize like they give out in the preceding worship service. If you read it carefully you’ll see an interesting little hint.
Now Daniel chapter five is of course the story of the great banquet that Belshazzar has in the palace. In fact he has the banquet in the night, in the palace, when the city fell to the Medes and the Persians. And you’ll notice what’s going on during this banquet with Daniel chapter five verse four, “They drank wine and praised the gods of gold, silver, bronze, iron ,wood and stone”. Where have you seen those medals before? Daniel 2.
Now then if you look down in verse twenty three, Daniel is brought in to help to see if he can interpret the handwriting on the wall. And he chastises Belshazzar and he says “but you have exalted yourself against the Lord of heaven and they have brought the vessels of his house before you” This is the blasphemy which you committed. Sacrilege. “and you and your nobles, your wives and your concubines have drank wine from them and you have praised the gods of silver, gold, bronze, iron, wood and stone”.
Did you catch it? What happened? The reverse ain’t it? In the first list, gold starts the list just as gold starts the image but when the list is given the second time by Daniel he puts silver in front of gold and the rest of the list is the same. It’s a tiny little hint right in this chapter. Then Daniel is pointing you back to Daniel two showing you that the transition from the gold head to the silver rest in arms has taken place. It’s going to take place right now, this night. We will come back to that.
Daniel 3 Bible study
Let’s go to Daniel three. So what is the connection between Daniel two and Daniel three. Well suppose for a moment that you’re the king, you’re Nebuchadnezzar. You’re pleased with the fact that Daniel comes in and explains to you what the dream was that you had and what that dream meant. That’s good. But wait a minute, there’s some bad news in that vision. What’s the bad news? There is going to be another kingdom after you. I don’t want another kingdom after my kingdom, I want my kingdom to stand forever. So in Daniel chapter three he makes an image and does he make the image like the image of Daniel 2? Does he put gold at the head and silver and bronze and iron? Is that the way he made the image? No he didn’t.
Sixty cubits or ninety feet high is this great image. It’s probably, the interior is probably wood and on the outside it has gold foil, but it has gold foil all the way up so that it looks like a gold image. One metal and one metal only. I don’t want a silver kingdom to follow mine. I want the gold kingdom to rule forever.
Do you probably know that Hitler said that the Third Reich was going to last for a thousand years. In actuality it lasted for five years. So you know the proverb I gave yesterday afternoon in the other classes. Man proposes but God disposes and that happened to Hitler and it happened to Nebuchadnezzar and it happened to Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom.
Now I’d like to suggest another setting for Daniel Chapter three. I talked yesterday a little bit about the tablets from Nebuchadnezzar’ reign. The first thirteen years. And we learn a number of things about his is reign and one of the things we learned about his reign was there was a revolt against him. This was news, you know, because we had this picture of this magnificent all world encompassing powerful ruler. Nobody could resist him and nobody could gain sway against them. But in actuality there was a revolt against him and the revolt was so serious that there was fighting in the palace and it was hand to hand. Nebuchadnezzar himself was involved in hand to hand fighting in the palace to put down the revolt.
And so let me let me read the Babylonian record. This is for the year 595 B.C. “in the tenth year the king of Babylon was in his own land”. This was Nebuchadnezzar, “From the month of December to the month of Tebetu which is about February, there was rebellion in Akkad with arms he slew many of his own army. His own hand captured his enemy”. This was big news. We didn’t know that prior to the discovery of these tablets or the translation, decipherment of these tablets. We didn’t know that there’d been a revolt against Nebuchadnezzar.
Now let’s put yourself in Nebuchadnezzar’s place again. If there’s a revolt against you and some of the elements are from the army and probably some of the elements from the palace, what would you do to correct that? Well you want to make sure that everybody in government and the army are loyal to you, right? What do you do? Loyalty oath.
So I want you to notice the first feature about Daniel chapter three; notice who is at the great congregation or the great assembly on the plain of Dura. And we have the list given twice or three times and it says “then Nebuchadnezzar, the king sent word to assemble the satraps, the prefects, the governors, the councilors, the treasurers, the judges, the magistrates and all the rulers of the provinces to come to the dedication of the image that Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up.”
And verse three repeats the list all over again. “Then they all came”. It gives the whole list. So they did. Nebuchadnezzar did not say everybody in Babylon out on the plain, everybody out, that is not what he said. He says all of the officials of my government every one of you come to this, the dedication of this image. So it is not for the general population of Babylon. It’s for the officials and probably included within that would have been the army. And what does he have them do? The music plays everybody bows down. They’re pledging loyalty to the great image.
There’s some discussion about what the image is and some have said well it’s maybe Nebuchadnezzar himself. More likely it was Marduk who was his personal God and the God of the city of Babylon and the God of the country of Babylon. Because when we come to the Hebrew boys they say “we will not serve your gods”. So it probably is a representation of the god. So it looks like because of this revolt he wants to have his officials pledge a loyalty oath and so he gathers them all together before this great image he has made.
Now the next point is where is it? Well it’s on the plain of Dura. And where is the plain of Dura? Well, biblical geographers have looked for a city named Dura and they have not found one. So somebody looked at the word again more carefully and said, “hey, wait a minute, the word Dura is the Babylonian word for wall and the “A” at the end of the word is simply the article. In the Aramaic language you put the article at the end of the word instead of the beginning of the word. So the plain of Dura really means the plain of the wall. That’s a literal translation.
And then somebody noticed, “well there’s an ideal place in Babylon itself for this to take place”. So let me give you a little map you have to have a map and know where you’re going. So here’s the Euphrates River. The old city of Babylon that I mentioned before was one mile square and it has seven or eight gates around it. The great Ishtar Gate is located right here and the palace is located here and the temple located here. And so most of this is the official buildings and homes and chapel.
There are fifty different temples in the city but the main big temple was right at the bank of the Euphrates river. Nebuchadnezzar as I mentioned was the great builder of the city and so he built a new wall here. So this wall is one mile square and this wall is seven miles long. Now he didn’t have time to fill in a lot of buildings here but this space between the two walls was used by the Babylonian army so when they came back from a campaign in the field they would park their chariots out here and so forth. So this is the plain between the walls, or put it another way, the plain of Dura. So we don’t need to look for Dura in another city and someplace else. It’s right here at Babylon.
And so he makes a great image. And notice that in this temple area was the temple tower and the temple tower looked like a pyramid but it looked like a pyramid that is built up this way and it had seven layers, seven levels and it had a walkway this way and a walkway this way and these were made of colored bricks. It must have been very very beautiful in its heyday.
So if you think about the temple over here and the great image over here and the great images looking at the temple tower. Now the colors were, I don’t remember their order, red green blue yellow and so on and so forth. So they had enamel colored bricks that they put on the outside but inside its sun-dried bricks. It’s an artificial mountain, that’s what it is and the only part used was this part up here which is a temple. So this is the temple tower and they had a word for that and it’s called a Ziggurat.
Now this temple tower and the temple on top of this had a name. Very interesting name. I want you to think not about the Book of Daniel but about the Book of Genesis. The name of this temple tower was “the house or temple which lifts its head up to heaven”. That’s its name. And if you think about the story of the Tower of Babel that was what they were trying to do in that construction. So the name used for this temple tower echoes what happened in Genesis.
Well now Nebuchadnezzar summons all of his officials and the image is built here. It’s sixty cubits high or ninety feet but it’s only six cubits wide at the base. And so critics have said it couldn’t have been built.
Well on this recent trip I was on to visit the seven churches in Asia Minor. We went to Patmos and from Patmos took a boat to the island Rhodes. And on Rhodes there was the Colossus and the Colossus of Rhodes was a statue which was a memorial for a victory. Actually at the feet of the enemies who besieged the capital city of the island and this Colossus of Rhodes was shaped in the form of a man and it stood one hundred feet high, ten feet higher than Nebuchadnezzar’s great image. Now unfortunately the Colossus is no longer there. It’s gone. It fell into the sea after an earthquake and so on and so forth. But we saw the spot where they think it used to stand. The stand was as close as you can get to Nebuchadnezzar’s image too.
So the image is constructed. The people are assembled and then we have an orchestra. The Babylonian Symphony Orchestra the B.S.L.. I used to listen occasionally to the Boston Symphony Orchestra or the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra which incidentally has a woman directing it now.
So the orchestra is assembled and it’s very interesting to see the list of the instruments used because one of the instruments used in that orchestra was played here this morning. And the name for it in the biblical text is the kithara which you know today as the guitar. And it migrated across North Africa from Morocco into Spain and from Spain all over the world. So we have guitars here today probably too many of them. So the kithara or guitar was one of the instruments in Nebuchadnezzar’s orchestra.
There are also other stringed instruments, two different types of harps, a large harp, and a small harp and they had wind instruments where they had something called a double flute. And then the last word is symphony. And people have debated whether that means all of the instruments playing together or whether it’s a name for another instrument. So linguists are still working with that list.
Now the interesting thing about that list is three of the words in the list are Greek. Three Greek words. So critics of the Book of Daniel say well the Book of Daniel must have been written in the Greek Period not the Babylonian period. Well if you look back at the list of the officials which we just read there’s no Greek words in those lists. Remember Daniel lived through the Babylonian period and into the Persian Period. So he knew the names or titles for Babylonian officials and he knew the titles for Persian officials and that’s what he uses is in the list. But as I just mentioned about the story of the guitar, musical instruments can migrate. Cultural diffusion it’s called. They are spread and so probably these Greek instruments were brought by Greek traders or Greek mercenaries. The Greek mercenaries were also employed.
All right so we have the orchestra playing and we have all the officials gathered. We have the image built and there’s an additional emotional stimulus. They have a brick kiln over at one side fired up with a nice hot fire in case you didn’t want to bow down. So there’s quite a bit of pressure quite a bit of pressure on then your three friends, what do they do? Can you imagine.
Picture the scene. Three thousand people. Have you seen these photographs of all the people at Mecca when they all bow down? That’s what the scene must to look like. A sea of people all bowing down. And here are three people still standing and you must have looked like and felt like a sore thumb sticking it out. Well they of course are immediately reported to the king. And the king, of course is already angry the way it describes it.
And they come before him and there is the interview between them and the king and he gets mad or is getting red in the face. Look I just went through a rebellion and here are three disloyal servants. These are just the kind of people that are going to start another rebellion against me. And so the king gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter and redder and redder in the face and you’re standing isolated from everybody else on the plain of Dura. You’re standing before the world’s single most powerful human individual. What are you going to say? What would you say oh I made a mistake let me go back and try it again. But let me take another shot at it. That’s not what they said. This is a wonderful example of spiritual courage and we should read it and revel in it. The courage that these young men is amazing. After all these guys are about twenty one years of age, maybe a little bit more maybe they’re twenty five or thirty.
And so they they replied to the king verse sixteen” Oh Nebuchadnezzar we do not need to give you an answer concerning this”. We do not hesitate to give you an answer. “if it be so our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace and he will deliver us out of your hand o king. But even if he does not, let it be known to you o king we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image which you have set up”.
They have determined on pain of death that they are going to be firm to their faith, firm to their God and they will not worship this idol image which has been set up even if it cost them their lives. But they preface it by saying our God can deliver us if he decides to. So Nebuchadnezzar says “away with them”. So they are bound and they were taken to what probably looks a lot like an igloo. The brick kiln in Babylon looks something like this. There were steps going up and there you would put a tray of bricks in here and you would fire the bricks and then the pallet of bricks would be brought out. So they probably were dropped down from above if you please.
And Nebuchadnezzar wants to make sure that the fire does a good job. So he comes over and he probably bows down here and what he sees is four men. And he said well wait a minute, didn’t we put three in. And now there’s four. And he says, and I want to translate this exactly with you “and the fourth one looks like a son of the gods”. That’s an accurate translation of the Aramaic language here.
You see at this point Nebuchadnezzar is not yet converted. In Daniel chapter four he’s converted but he’s still a pagan polytheist. But he can recognize the difference between an ordinary human being and a divine being and that’s what he’s saying. He says the fourth one that I’m looking at looks like a divine being. There’s a divine being in there with them. He doesn’t know it’s Christ. He doesn’t know it’s him standing beside them but he can tell the difference between an ordinary human being and this divine being who’s come to rescue them.
And nothing happened to them not the hair of their heads is singed except the ropes fall off their arms or legs into the fire. And so they are removed from the fire and God has honored their courage and their fidelity to the truth of the Ten Commandments and the truth of the God they serve.
Now that’s a lesson for us because the Book of Revelation Chapter thirteen talks about a time when another image is going to be set up. Now here we have a literal image a literal object but the image in the Book of Revelation chapter thirteen is a symbolic image. Laws enacted by the state at the expense of the church and that is coming soon to my understanding.
And when it comes the question is not whether it’s going to come or not. The question is what kind of response are you going to give when it does come? What are you going to say when you go to the market they say sorry you can’t buy here anymore you don’t have such and such on your card? And when the governments of the earth threaten you with a death decree as they were threatened with a death decree here. What kind of response are you going to give?
They gave the right response and may it be that each and every one here will give the same response. “Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fire furnace or from your death decree. From your prohibition to buy and sell, whatever it is, our God whom we serve can deliver us. He can feed us with ravens, like he fed Elijah if necessary but if not I’m still willing to die for him and not surrender.
There’s an interesting story about a woman who was imprisoned in a castle in France for a period of, I have forgetten exactly how long, but I think it was like eighteen or twenty years and she died there. And when they went in to remove her body they found written on the wall- Je résiste I resist. And that’s what these friends of Daniel did and that’s what we’re supposed to do when the test comes.
See the test hasn’t come yet. We live in a land of freedom. It’s wonderful. You can worship here if we want. You can worship down the street if you want. You can worship in another denomination if you want. Religious freedom. One of these days it’s not going to be that free. And so the question is what are you going to do? What’s going to be your response when that comes, when that happens? May it be that each one here will give the same answer as Daniel’s friends did.
Daniel 5 Bible Study
I want to talk about Daniel five because it’s a very interesting chapter to illustrate how accurate in history the Book of Daniel is. So there’s a big argument about when the Book of Daniel was written. Was it written in the sixth century B.C. when Daniel himself says it was? Or was it written in the second century B.C. by an unknown author in Jerusalem who made up these stories or just used little kernels of truth here and there and then expanded these into nice stories?
You can test that theory, that hypothesis by various bits of historical information in the book. And what those bits of historical information in the book show is that the book of Daniel the author of The Book of Daniel knew the history and experience of the six century B.C. of Babylon to an accurate degree that somebody in the second century could not have known.
Now I am going to illustrate that in two ways, one in a general way and one in a specific way. The general way is, who is there, who is the king in Daniel chapter five? Belshazzar. But if you look at the official king lists of Babylon, Belshazzar was not the last official king of Babylon. The last official king of Babylon was a man named Nabodinus. He ruled for seventeen years and the tablets are dated from year one to year seventeen and then the Persian conquest.
So who’s Belshazzar? His son and the crown prince. But an unusual thing happened, you know in later times, the people of Babylon said Nabonidus was a madman but he got into a feud with the priests of Marduk and so he left the city Babylon. He left his capital city and he left for ten years and he went to live at an oasis in Tema in Arabia. Actually it was a big city and it controlled the trade routes through Arabia so he had good reason to go to that particular place.
If the King leaves the capital what are you going to do with the kingship? And the answer is you got to give it to somebody. So what he did was he gave it to his son.
Now Belshazzar is a very obscure person. Outside of the book of Daniel until the year 1880 he was unknown. Unknown. You see what happens for some big and famous figures; stories about them are passed down, you know, to the Greek and Roman historians and later on and so forth. And Nabonidus was known. There were stories about Nabodinus but there were no stories about Belshazzar.
You know we have stories about Cyrus in the ancient world. Lots of stories about Cyrus . Lots of stories about Nebuchadnezzar. And these stories survived so we knew these kings. We did not know Belshazzar. Belshazzar was unknown except in the Book of Daniel. Then starting about 1880 they began to decipher tablets, business tablets that mentioned Belshazzar. So his name first began to appear and as his name appeared he was identified as the crown prince, the son of Nabonidus.
And these discoveries of the name of Belshazzar continued until 1929 and a man named Sidney Smith working in the British Museum published a tablet which is called the “Verse Account of Nabonidus”. And it’s the story of how he left the city and went away from the city and how he entrusted the kingship to Belshazzar.
So Belshazzar is an unusual person in that he is a co-king. We call it a co-regent. We have coregents in the Bible in Israel. David put Solomon on his throne with him before he died. Do you remember that story in 1 Kings chapter 1 and David says “Praise be to God that He’s given me a son to sit with me in my throne”. Coregents. And there are other co regents in the Old Testament.
The Egyptians use coregents commonly. There are a lot of co regents in Egypt. The Babylonians did not use it. This is an unusual arrangement. Rare. But Belshazzar and his father Nabonidus ruled as co-rregents in the ten years that Nabodinus was in Tema in Arabia. During the ten years that Nabonidus is up in Tema in Arabia, Belshazzar is governing the city and country of Babylon. And that’s why the dates on Daniel Chapter 7 and and Daniel chapter 8 says the first year of Belshazzar and in the third year of Belshazzar. And so those are the dates during that ten year period when Nabodinus his father is away from the kingdom.
Now the Persians were threatening and they were knocking on the gates of the east and so Nabodinus comes back to the city in the year 540 and they’re getting ready for the Persian attack. And there was a military technique. In fact I even read, you know, I read to you the story of the campaigns of the year 605 and in the year 605 the king stayed home but the crown prince took the army out. Or it could be the reverse the king could take the army out and the crown prince would stay at home.
And so they divided the army. There was a division in Babylon and a division in the field. And the king would take the division in the field or the crown prince would take the division in the field. And the other one was left behind for the obvious purpose of guarding the throne because if everybody left the city and you came back you just might find somebody sitting on your throne. So the idea is to protect the throne and that’s what they did.
Now then as the Persians attack; the Persians are crossing the Tigris River to the east. So what are you going to do to defend your country. What happened according to the tablet known as the Nabonidus Chronicle is the king Nabonidus took a division of the army and went out to the Tigris River and fought with Cyrus as they crossed the Tigris at a place called Opis.
And at the Opis on the Tigris Cyrus’s forces defeated the forces of Nabonidus and Nabodinus fled. It doesn’t say where he fled. It just says he fled. He is retreating. At the same time the Persian attack on Babylonia was a two pronged attack. Cyrus with his division met Nabonidus with his division. And Cyrus took a general whose name is Gubaru who may be Darius the Mede of the book of Daniel. And Darius the Mede took the other division and went around and encircled the city of Babylon. And so that’s where we find this episode in Daniel chapter five.
In fact the tablet gives us a precise date when the city fell. It says that it happened on the sixteenth day of the month of Tishri. Now some of you may have heard that name Tishri because the month of Tishri is a very important month in the Bible. It’s also known as the seventh month of the Israelite calendar. Month the Tishri is the seventh month and the seventh month has some very important festivals. It has Rosh Hashana falls on New Year’s day on the first day of the month. It has Yom Kippur on the tenth day of the month and it has the Feast of Tabernacles on the fifteenth of the twenty second day of that same seven month Tishri.
So it’s interesting to see, you know, the Babylonians gave us a specific date the night the city fell. It’s the sixteenth day of Tishri in the seventeenth year of Nabonidus and we have tables that you can look that up and it comes out to October 12, 539 B.C. So you can write that date at the head of Daniel chapter five fulfilled, occurred historically, took place October twelfth 539 B.C. That’s the date on the chapter even though there is not a date in the text of the chapter.
In fact the tablet goes on to say that the city fell without a battle. We have three different sources, two Greek historians and the Nabonidus chronicle, all three of them agree that the city fell without a battle. Now the battle took place out in the battlefield at the Tigris River. There was a battle going on but there wasn’t a battle at the fall of Babylon which took place approximately the same time.
Now that’s the setting when we go into the palace. And you might say well Belshazzar was a fool, you know, he’s holding this huge banquet when he knows the Persian army has encircled the city. They’re out there. Well if you look at this wall. This is a triple wall. So if you’re an attacking army you have to get through three walls here and you have to get through three walls here. If you’re going to fight your way into the city. they didn’t fight their way into the city as you know the story so well.
The story is about the diversion of the river. And incidentally in the month of October the Euphrates River is at its lowest. You see the mountains in Turkey snow up and fill up the Euphrates in the spring and first half of the summer. And then gradually the river goes down down down so it’s at its lowest ebb at the time of the attack. The amount of work involved would have been much less in October than if you’re going to do it in April and so the Persian army comes down and they enter by the water gate. You see we had our Watergate scandal and they had their water gate scandal.
So you see he felt perfectly secure. “I’ve got six walls six walls twenty feet thick. Each one of them twelve to twenty feet, they varied, between me and the Persians; they’re never going to get in that wall”. But they did get in and they got in this way through the back door.
Now there were supposed to have been guards at those gates and that’s the interesting story. The prophecy in Isaiah about Cyrus says “I will open before you the bronze gates”. Now the common historical view is since Nabonidus was a much detested ruler that the guards at the gate just opened the gate and let the Persians in. A fifth column. Traitors. Let’s get rid of this crazy king and Cyrus will give us liberation.
In fact, there’s a text from Cyrus about his conquest of Babylon in which he said all the people praised, it’s probably propaganda, but he says all the people praised me and threw olive branches in front of me and so on and so forth. He says of the time came into the city like he was the great deliverer.
Now let’s go back to the scene in the palace that night before the city falls. Well, they’re having this big banquet and then the handwriting comes on the wall. Let’s say an angel or maybe God himself is doing the writing. And so maybe, just maybe, the hand that wrote on the wall of the palace was also the hand that opened the gates by the river. It’s a possibility. Maybe it wasn’t just disloyal soldiers who wanted to get rid of a mad king. Maybe God directly intervened. He certainly directly intervened in the past.
So now it’s the same problem for those poor wise men in Babylon, they don’t come off very good in the book of Daniel, you know, because they don’t seem to be able to solve any of the puzzles. So they’re called to interpret the writing and they can’t. So the Queen Mother remembers, “oh there was a Hebrew captive from a long time ago, from Nebuchadnezzar’s time. Call him he may be able to help you”. So then Daniel comes in and of course Daniel interprets it and he says you’ve been weighed in the balance and found wanting and your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and the Persians. Death Sentence.
So the only person who died in the battle for the palace that night was the king. The troops didn’t die because there was no battle within Babylon but the king died because he was taken prisoner and executed.
Now if we want to look at the accuracy of history let’s suppose for a moment that you are writer in Jerusalem in the second century B.C. and you’re writing up a story about the fall of Babylon. What king would you know about that you would put in the palace that night in your story. The answer is Nabonidus for he was known. So if you’re going to create a story, Nabonidus is the king that you would have known as the last king of Babylon. You would not have had any knowledge of Belshazzar if you’re creating this chapter of the book of Daniel at that time.
But that’s not what the writer Daniel does. He picks a king who is unknown in the second century B.C. He was unknown. And he says he’s the king who was in the palace the night it fell. And who doesn’t he put there? He doesn’t put the chief king, the superior regent, because the superior regent is out at the Tigris River fighting a battle. We could easily have caught the writer of the book of Daniel on a mistake. All he had to do was put Nabonidus in the palace that night and we say look we have Babylonian texts who show us who was where and this is wrong.
That’s not what he did. He knows that Nabonidus, the chief king is not in the palace that night or he would have attended the banquet. Why is he not at the banquet? Because he wasn’t in the city. Where is he? He is out of the Tigris River fighting a battle. So who goes to the banquet? Who calls the banquet? Belshazzar or the obscure King that nobody in the second century B.C. would have known anything about. So the Book of Daniel shows that.
How did Daniel know that? It is because he was an eye witness. Only an eyewitness in the palace that night in the sixth century B.C. on October 12, 539 B.C. could have known that. Or somebody who lived right around that time or in the next few months or weeks months or years. Somebody in the second century B.C. would never have known that. So you can apply a historical test to Daniel chapter five and Daniel chapter five comes through with flying colors.
No historian and no literary creator in the second century B.C. could have done that. Impossible. Sources were not available to him to know that. Only an eyewitness in the palace that night could have known it. So you see we have a general information supporting the accuracy of this chapter because we know of how Belshazzar came to be a co regent and we have specific detailed information about what happened that very night in the palace.
Now when the Persians take over, there is this obscure king called Darius the Mede, and there is much discussion about who he is and I have spent too much time and resources on that problem and I don’t know. My guess is that it probably was Gubaru the general for Cyrus who conquered Babylon and that he ruled Babylon for Cyrus. Cyrus was the Emperor of the Persian Empire and Darius was the vassal king underneath him who ruled the province of Babylon. But other suggestions have been made. Some people say that it is Cyrus himself, depends on how you translate the last verse in Daniel chapter six. So we have these different possibilities.
And the problem that Daniel gets involved in is what we call professional jealousy. Well, if you work in an office or a company you may have run into professional jealousy. Somebody doesn’t like you because you’re higher up the ladder or because you’ve got something, a promotion, above them. Professional jealousy of the officials of the new government of Babylon. They were all promoted into the Persian government but they want to get rid of Daniel.
So they set a plot, and you know the plot, the plot is nobody can pray to anybody but the king for thirty days and you may think that’s a very strange story. Incidentally the gods of Babylon were brought into the city of Babylon during the Persian siege. The gods were supposed to defend the city. Of course they didn’t do a very good job of that. So that shows how impotent those Babylonian gods were. So that may be the setting for this unusual request quite well. Anyway Daniel continues to pray three times a day on his knees and he doesn’t even bother to pull the curtains and so they didn’t have to wait thirty days. They caught him on the first or second day.
Well you know the old story goes if you were indicted for being a Christian how much evidence would there be against you? How would you fare under the decree against Daniel, would you be convicted like he was or would you go scot free? Well you can answer that question yourself.
But anyway he is thrown down in the lion’s den. Incidentally, we have tablets which tell about the rations given to the animals in the Royal zoo. And the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were located right here in this corner of the palace and probably, we don’t know this for certain, the zoo was located immediately adjacent either here or here. So the royal zoo had lions in it and Daniel was cast down in the den but he survived.
And then Darius chose him to be one of the three presidents because he could see what a qualified man of character this Daniel was.
And so the king is anxious he can’t sleep all night long, so he goes the next morning and says “Oh Daniel your god whom you serve has he delivered you?” and Daniel says, “O king my God has sent his angels who have shut the mouth of the lions”.
I’ll conclude with a story, a modern story. I didn’t meet the person involved but I met the editor who wrote up the story and the story comes from Recife, Brazil. I was teaching in Brazil several times and I heard this story on one of my trips down there.
In the city of Recife there is this public zoo and there was a young man working in that zoo who took Bible studies from the Adventists and eventually was baptized in the Adventist church. And so Monday morning after his baptism he comes to work and he’s thrilled. He is really charged up and he says a wonderful thing happened on the Saturday. So his fellow workers say what is that? “I was baptized in the Seventh Day Adventist Church”.
And one particularly cynical and sarcastic fellow worker says to him, “Oh yeah, well if you’re such a great hero of the faith why don’t you jump down here in this cage with these lions”. Now there is such a thing as presumption. But sometimes the Lord has people do very strange things.
And on this particular occasion without a moment’s hesitation he jumped down in the cage with the lions and those lions like Daniel’s Lions hadn’t been fed for twenty four hours. And so one of the big male lions with a big rough …..around his neck notices a movement over there and he is laying out there sleeping. And so he sees this movement and so he walks over and he comes up to the man who’s standing there.
And he sniffs his pants leg and then he turns around and walked back and plopped down and goes to sleep again. Now you may ask why would God stimulate that man to do that action at that time? And the answer is in the sequence of the story because seven of his fellow workers were eventually baptized in the Adventist church as a result of his witness. And Daniel had his convert too because Darius the Mede at the end of the story gives praise to the God of Daniel.
We need to pray to the God of Daniel now and we should dismiss with prayer. So let’s stand. Our loving heavenly Father we thank you for the faithful witness of Daniel’s three friends that they could stand firm against the image that was set up even though the rest of the world bowed down. We pray that when the test comes upon us in this country and around the world that we too may stand faithful and firm like they did.
We thank you for Daniel’s courage and his faith which shut the mouth of lions. We pray Dear Lord that you will give us that kind of faith. And as we look forward to your soon coming we thank you for the example of these faithful ones who have gone on before us. And may we join them soon when you come. We ask it in Jesus’ name, amen.
Related Posts:
Daniel Chapter 3 Commentary: Fiery Furnace (Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego)
Daniel Chapter 4 Commentary: Nebuchadnezzar Goes Mad
Prophecies of Daniel : Chapter 5 God’s Handwriting on The Wall
Prophecies of Daniel Chap 6 Commentary: Daniel in the Lions’ Den
