Daniel (2)

21Daniel continued even to the first year of king Cyrus.

Isaiah 44:28-45:8

28Who says of Cyrus, ‘He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure,’ even saying of Jerusalem, ‘She will be built;’ and of the temple, ‘Your foundation will be laid.’” 1Yahweh says to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held, to subdue nations before him, and strip kings of their armor; to open the doors before him, and the gates shall not be shut: 2“I will go before you, and make the rough places smooth. I will break the doors of brass in pieces, and cut apart the bars of iron. 3I will give you the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that you may know that it is I, Yahweh, who call you by your name, even the God of Israel. 4For Jacob my servant’s sake, and Israel my chosen, I have called you by your name. I have given you a title, though you have not known me. 5I am Yahweh, and there is no one else. Besides me, there is no God. I will strengthen you, though you have not known me; 6that they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is no one besides me. I am Yahweh, and there is no one else. 7I form the light, and create darkness. I make peace, and create calamity. I am Yahweh, who does all these things. 8Rain, you heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness. Let the earth open, that it may produce salvation, and let it cause righteousness to spring up with it. I, Yahweh, have created it.

Ezra 2:1-2

1Now these are the children of the province, who went up out of the captivity of those who had been carried away, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away to Babylon, and who returned to Jerusalem and Judah, everyone to his city; 2who came with Zerubbabel, Jeshua, Nehemiah, Seraiah, Reelaiah, Mordecai, Bilshan, Mispar, Bigvai, Rehum, and Baanah. The number of the men of the people of Israel:

Hammurabi, the sixth king of Babylon, enacted the Code of Hammurabi, kept social order, brought about economic justice, and made a golden age of culture. After that the city fell to the Hittites, and under the rule of Assyria and Elam and others Babylon suffered the humiliation of having the image of Marduk, the god they served, carried off to a Hittite city.

Nebuchadnezzar I opened the Middle Babylonian period by recovering the stolen image of Marduk; but Babylon resisted Tiglath-Pileser III of the Neo-Assyrian empire and was wiped out by his successor Sennacherib. Sennacherib’s son Esarhaddon tried a conciliatory policy toward Babylon, but he could not break the citizens’ will to independence, and at last, with Nabopolassar at their head, they drove off the Assyrian army and Babylon became the central city of an empire again. Babylon enjoyed its greatest days under Nabopolassar and his son Nebuchadnezzar II, and it was then that the people of Judah lost their country and were carried off to Babylon as captives. But in the reign of King Belshazzar, around 539 B.C., Babylon was destroyed by Cyrus of Persia. On the day the Persian king took the city, King Belshazzar was killed.

Darius the Mede — Cyaxares II — set Daniel up as chief of the ministers, but he was deceived by men who envied Daniel and had him put into the lions’ den. Yet by a work of God that no common sense could imagine, Daniel survived the lions’ den. He was thrown in because he would not serve a man as a god; and by a faith that testified to God’s existence and his power he came out of the den alive and could plead his innocence to the king.

Darius, who had experienced the grace of God in saving Daniel, issued a decree to the peoples and nations of all the earth, saying that Daniel’s God is the living God who never changes, and telling them to fear him. He proclaimed that God’s kingdom will not be destroyed and his dominion has no end, that he saves and delivers, and that he works signs and wonders in heaven and on earth.

Would you believe it if someone saw a miracle like this and proclaimed the Word? We believe in God because we heard the word preached by people who saw the risen Jesus Christ. Consider whether you have experienced a change of your whole person, as Darius did. Darius said that he proclaimed God this way because he had seen Daniel saved from the mouths of lions. Daniel’s faith, which believed God would act and kept the faith to the end, is what became the occasion for God’s name to be lifted up in the world. We are believers who trust in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and look for our own resurrection; look back and ask whether we are living our faith better than Darius, who did not know God.

Daniel 6:28

28So this Daniel prospered in the reign of Darius, and in the reign of Cyrus the Persian.

Daniel, who lifted up God’s name with his mind made up to die, prospered by the grace God gave him and had a peaceful old age, through the reign of Darius and on into the reign of Cyrus. This is a God who does not put to shame those who love him. People of faith who endured suffering with a firm faith, like Job, or who were not ashamed of God’s name and endured, like Daniel’s three friends, will come to enjoy peace within God’s grace. There are also people who are martyred for the calling entrusted to them, of course; but if you fear betraying God more than death, you will receive an eternal blessing from him.

Daniel 1:21

21Daniel continued even to the first year of king Cyrus.

Isaiah 45:1

1Yahweh says to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held, to subdue nations before him, and strip kings of their armor; to open the doors before him, and the gates shall not be shut:

At last Cyrus, whom God had prophesied in advance through Isaiah, appears. Once he became king, Cyrus sent the Jewish captives home — and for a king holding such enormous power to send captives back to their own country is in fact impossible. He had conquered a great many nations, so he needed able men, as Nebuchadnezzar had needed Daniel and his three friends, and he needed the labor that went with them. But Cyrus sent the people of Judah back to Israel.

Cyrus is the founding father of Iran and a figure revered around the world, and since the story of his childhood is on record I would like to pass it on. Cyrus’ father was Cambyses, the builder of the Persian empire, and his mother was a princess of Media, a country of enormous power at that time. Media was ruled by Cyrus’ maternal grandfather, King Astyages, and Persia was a vassal state.

One day the king of Media had a dream: his daughter Mandane, Cyrus’ mother, urinated and it covered the whole of Media. When the diviners interpreted the dream as meaning that the child his daughter bore would challenge him, he married her off to small, powerless Persia. Then word reached King Astyages that his daughter was pregnant. The king had been told the dream meant the grandson Mandane bore would drive him out and become king, so he brought his daughter back and kept her until the birth. When Cyrus was born, he ordered his general Harpagus to kill him. Harpagus in turn ordered a herdsman who kept the horses at his house to kill the boy, and the herdsman could not bring himself to kill the king’s grandson. His own wife had just given birth to a stillborn child, and that is why the herdsman took Cyrus home and raised him as his son.

In the year Cyrus turned ten he was playing at kings and courtiers with his friends, and when Cyrus was chosen king, a nobleman’s son complained that he could not serve Cyrus as king; Cyrus struck the nobleman’s son and was summoned for it. The nobleman was furious that his high-born son had been struck by a herdsman’s son and said he would have Cyrus killed, so the herdsman had no choice but to appeal to the king, and Cyrus came before the king for questioning.

Dragged before the king, Cyrus was not cowed in the least, and argued boldly that failing to obey the appointed king under the agreed rules was wrong. Watching Cyrus explain the situation coherently and argue back with such spirit, the king thought how much he resembled his daughter, and the suspicion came to him that this might be his grandson. He called Harpagus and the herdsman and questioned them, and they confessed that the boy was his grandson.

Astyages was furious, and knowing that Harpagus had deceived him and disobeyed a royal command, he killed Harpagus’ son in Cyrus’ place. The king called his officials and asked what should be done with Cyrus, and they said Persia had no strength and could never threaten the throne. It seemed so to the king too — the boy lived in a very small country and could not oppose him — and so he sent Cyrus back to Persia, to his real parents.

Cyrus went home, and when he came of age he prepared a revolt against his grandfather Astyages, and in 554 B.C. he began a war with Media. Cyrus, who had always feared that his grandfather would kill him, made two attempts and failed both times; and Harpagus, watching this, resolved to betray the king who had killed his son. He went over to Cyrus, and in 549 B.C. the Median empire fell. Looking at this, we see that every moment must be decided for good. After his victory Cyrus changed the country’s name to Persia, but it is said that he did not kill his grandfather and treated him well.

When Cyrus killed Belshazzar and conquered Babylon, he would have been shown by the Jews that his own name was written in Isaiah, and he would have heard, from Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the great image, that Media and Persia would take Babylon. And hearing in detail about Daniel in the lions’ den and about Daniel’s friends in the fiery furnace, he would have seen how great God is. That he, an idol worshiper, had already been prophesied to God’s people must have astonished Cyrus himself.

Cyrus’ tomb stands at Pasargadae, which he founded as the capital of Persia. Normally the tomb of a defeated king is destroyed, but Cyrus’ tomb has been preserved as it was. The inscription inside the tomb records these words: ‘I, Cyrus, once ruled the world; but I know that one day I will be conquered by another king. Conqueror, one day the same will be done to you as was done to me, so do not disturb my tomb.’ It is said that Alexander read this record and did not destroy the tomb.

Alexander burned Persepolis, the vast Persian palace Darius had built, and meant to smash Cyrus’ tomb next. But when Alexander found this inscription he took off the robe he was wearing and covered Cyrus’ tomb with it instead, and gave orders that the tomb be restored to its original state. Alexander too would have heard the prophecy of Nebuchadnezzar’s image, and would have heard that the one to defeat Persia was himself, the king of Greece.

We ought to look at God through the events these men lived through. What matters is not that Cyrus, whose name was prophesied in the Bible, was destroyed by Alexander; it is that we must serve well the God who planned it, made it human history, and completes his salvation without the slightest wavering. Cyrus’ joy at taking Babylon, and the ability of an Alexander who brought down a Cyrus with all that power, were both brought down by the Rome prepared next; look at that, and you see how meaningless human plans and human challenges are. Human history disappears and is built anew according to God’s planning, but the plan of the God who works from the first to the last does not change, and that is why believers must lean on that unchanging God.

The dream of Nebuchadnezzar that Cyrus and Alexander heard about is this.

Nebuchadnezzar saw a great image in a dream. The king called the magicians, the enchanters, the diviners and the Chaldeans, and without telling them his dream he demanded that they find out the dream and interpret it. They said, how can we interpret a dream you will not tell us? So the king said he would kill them if they could not find out his dream. It is an absurd situation, but the captain of the guard, under orders to kill every one of the wise men, went hunting for them and for Daniel and his friends. When Daniel met the captain of the guard and heard the whole story, he asked for time, saying he would pray, find out the dream, and then tell the king.

God showed Daniel the whole dream in a vision while he prayed. Meeting Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel said that no wise man, enchanter, magician or diviner could ever tell the king his dream; but the God in heaven knows every dream the king had on his bed, and had made known to him what would happen in his future.

The king saw a great image in his dream, Daniel said, and that image was large, its brightness dazzling and its form terrible to look at. He described it exactly: the head was pure gold, the chest and both arms silver, the belly and thighs bronze, the legs iron, and the feet partly iron and partly clay. And as the king watched, Daniel said, a stone was cut out without hands and struck the feet of iron and clay and broke them, and the whole image broke to pieces and became like chaff on a summer threshing floor, and the wind carried it away so that no place was found for it. And the stone that struck the image, he told the king in detail, became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

To interpret this dream: the golden head of the image is Babylon, the most glorious of empires, because God gave the kingdom, the power, the strength and the glory all to the king. And the chest and arms made of silver mean that another kingdom, lesser than the king’s, will arise, which is a prophecy that Media and Persia will bring Babylon down. Daniel went on: the belly and thighs were made of bronze, which means that a kingdom strong as bronze will arise and rule the whole world — that is, Alexander of Greece defeating the Persian army with his outstanding strategy. But when Alexander died at thirty-three with no successor, a power struggle broke out among his generals and the empire split apart rapidly. When Greece fell, Rome, strong as iron, took power. As was seen in the golden image, the feet being partly iron and partly clay means that, just as iron and clay can never mix, Rome adopted a policy of accommodating the Jews, but polytheistic Rome and monotheistic Jews would not mix.

Then, Daniel said, a stone cut out without hands came and brought down everything human beings had built, and God set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and its sovereignty will not pass to another people. The kingdom Daniel spoke of is the kingdom Jesus Christ established. He was proclaiming that God’s covenant will be fulfilled in Christ’s first and second coming, and that the messianic kingdom — the kingdom of God — is eternal. Through the dream God told the king everything that was to come.

What we must understand is that the one who told the king his dream exactly and interpreted it was not Daniel, but the power of the God who used Daniel. Through dreams and visions and a man of faith, God gave Nebuchadnezzar chance after chance, and waited for him to turn. God, who governs history, gave Nebuchadnezzar many chances, and he will have given you your chances too. Do not forget that just as he waited for Nebuchadnezzar to turn, he is waiting even now for you to turn toward him.

Zechariah 9:3-4

3Tyre built herself a stronghold, and heaped up silver like the dust, and fine gold like the mire of the streets. 4Behold, the Lord will dispossess her, and he will strike her power in the sea; and she will be devoured with fire.

Tyre was only a small island, but it was ringed by the sea and by high walls, and Shalmaneser of Assyria besieged it for five years and failed. Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon besieged it for thirteen years and could not take it either. God protected it like that, and still Tyre did not believe in God; it trusted its great wealth and its position. And so Alexander the Great of Greece filled in seven hundred meters of sea for seven months, made Tyre part of the mainland, and conquered it exactly as Zechariah had prophesied. The next places Alexander the Great conquered after Tyre were Samaria and Judea, and astonishingly these people actively helped Alexander and welcomed him as their ruler. It must be because the Jews already knew the course of history through the Word. Alexander the Great, too, would have heard from the Samaritans that God had appointed him as the next king, the one to defeat Cyrus and conquer Israel. Daniel’s prophecies were all fulfilled in history like this.

Matthew 28:18

18Jesus came to them and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.

Look at Daniel’s life, and you see how much it resembles Jesus. Daniel’s name means that God judges, and he was given the work of governing a whole country as prime minister; Jesus too received all authority in heaven and on earth from God, and became the judge.

John 19:6

6When therefore the chief priests and the officers saw him, they shouted, saying, “Crucify! Crucify!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves, and crucify him, for I find no basis for a charge against him.”

The men who hated Daniel wanted to find evidence to accuse him and could not, because he always worked honestly; in the same way, they tried to find fault in Jesus and could not, so Pilate declared him innocent.

Just as they schemed to put anyone who prayed to another man or god besides King Darius into the lions’ den, the chief priests and the scribes watched the people follow Jesus and schemed to kill him.

Luke 22:2

2The chief priests and the scribes sought how they might put him to death, for they feared the people.

The ministers and officials who looked for grounds to accuse Daniel in God’s law knew he would refuse to worship an idol, which is why they made a situation where he would have to betray God, and put him into the lions’ den.

In the same way, they looked for false evidence in order to kill Jesus, but the evidence of the people who testified that they had heard him blaspheme did not agree. So the high priest, knowing Jesus would not deny God, threw out an irrelevant question: are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?

Mark 14:62

62Jesus said, “I am. You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of the sky.”

The time had come for Jesus to take up the cross, and so he said, I am; and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power and coming with the clouds of the sky. The high priest rejoiced that he had certain evidence at last, and cried out that we need no more witnesses, that they had heard him blaspheme, and that Jesus deserved death.

Daniel knew they were framing him, but he could not stop praying to God, and he was dragged away while praying three times a day. Jesus too, after the Lord’s Supper, went to the Mount of Olives to pray. Reaching the garden of Gethsemane with his disciples, he told them to stay there while he went over to pray, and he prayed earnestly.

Matthew 26:39

39He went forward a little, fell on his face, and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass away from me; nevertheless, not what I desire, but what you desire.”

Daniel prayed knowing perfectly well that the men framing him were watching and would report him to the king; in the same way, Jesus kept the place of prayer knowing that he would be handed over into the hands of sinners. Just as Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah were chosen from among the children of Judah to serve the king, Jesus too is a descendant of the tribe of Judah.

Revelation 5:5

5One of the elders said to me, “Don’t weep. Behold, the Lion who is of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has overcome; he who opens the book and its seven seals.”

While the apostle John was weeping over a vision, one of the elders told him not to weep, and said, behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has overcome, and he will open the book and its seven seals; and this is the evidence that Jesus is of the tribe of Judah and a descendant of David.

Daniel was dragged away as he prayed and thrown into the lions’ den; the entrance was blocked with a rock and sealed with the seals of the king and his nobles. Jesus was praying when Judas Iscariot handed him over to be nailed to the cross, and after every kind of mockery Jesus died on it. When Jesus died, the veil of the sanctuary was torn from top to bottom, the earth shook, the rocks split, the tombs were opened and many bodies of sleeping believers rose — and they watched those miracles and still rejoiced at his death.

Matthew 27:66

66So they went with the guard and made the tomb secure, sealing the stone.

They laid Jesus’ body in a new tomb and rolled a great stone across the entrance. The chief priests and the Pharisees asked Pilate to have the tomb sealed and guarded.

When King Darius went to the lions’ den at dawn to find out whether Daniel was alive or dead, Daniel said he was alive because an angel had already shut the lions’ mouths.

Matthew 28:1-4

1Now after the Sabbath, as it began to dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb. 2Behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from the sky, and came and rolled away the stone from the door, and sat on it. 3His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. 4For fear of him, the guards shook, and became like dead men.

In the same way, at dawn as the first day after the Sabbath was drawing on, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary ran to see the tomb, and there was a great earthquake, and they saw an angel of the Lord come down from heaven, roll the stone away and sit on it. Jesus had already opened the tomb and risen.

Matthew 27:25

25All the people answered, “May his blood be on us, and on our children!”

The men who accused Daniel were themselves killed, along with their families. The men who accused Jesus cried out that his blood should be on their descendants, and history shows us that their descendants suffered greatly.

Daniel showed through his own life what work Jesus Christ would do when he came to this earth. Keeping the faith in order to lift up God’s name is never easy; but you have learned through Daniel that one person’s life and one nation’s history alike come about by God’s providence, and so may you not lean on a life that is vanity of vanities.

Daniel lived in Babylon, and the grace of the God who guarded his life and never left him for a moment will be with you as you live in this harsh world.