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, established the Code of Hammurabi, upheld social order, pursued economic justice, and ushered in a golden age of culture. Later the city fell to the Hittites, and under the rule of Assyria, Elam, and others it suffered the humiliation of seeing the statue of Marduk, the god it worshiped, carried off to a Hittite city.

Nebuchadnezzar I recovered the stolen statue of Marduk and in doing so opened the Middle Babylonian period, but Babylon resisted Tiglath-pileser III of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and was then utterly destroyed by Sennacherib, who came after him. Sennacherib’s son Esarhaddon tried a policy of appeasement toward Babylon, yet he could not break its citizens’ will to be free. At last, under Nabopolassar, Babylon drove out the Assyrian army and became once again the center of an empire. Babylon reached the height of its glory under Nabopolassar and his son Nebuchadnezzar II, and it was at this time that the people of Judah lost their nation and were carried off to Babylon as captives. But in the days of King Belshazzar (around 539 BC), it was destroyed by Cyrus of Persia. On the day Babylon fell to the king of Persia, King Belshazzar was killed.

Darius the Mede (Cyaxares II) made Daniel chief of the presidents, but, deceived by those who envied Daniel, he ended up putting him into the lions’ den. Yet by the working of God, beyond anything human common sense could ever conceive, Daniel survived the den. He had been thrown in because he would not worship a man as a god, but through a faith that bore witness to God’s existence and power, he came out alive and could declare his innocence to the king.

King Darius, having seen the grace of God that kept Daniel alive, sent a decree to all the peoples and nations on earth, telling them to fear the God of Daniel, for he is the living God, steadfast forever. He proclaimed that God’s kingdom will not be destroyed and his dominion will have no end, and that he delivers and rescues, and works signs and wonders in heaven and on earth.

If someone saw a miracle like this and proclaimed God’s word to you, would you believe? We believe in God because we have heard the word passed on by those who saw the risen Jesus Christ. Let us ask ourselves whether we have been changed in our whole person, as Darius was. Darius said that what moved him to proclaim God in this way was seeing God save Daniel from the mouths of the lions. Daniel’s faith, holding firm to the end in the confidence that God would act, became the occasion for God’s name to be raised high in the world. We believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and look forward to our own; I hope you will take an honest look at whether you are walking with God more faithfully than Darius, who had not known him.

Daniel 6:28

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

Daniel, who had exalted God’s name at the risk of his life, spent a prosperous and peaceful old age by the grace God gave him, through the reign of King Darius and on into the reign of King Cyrus. Such is our God: he does not put to shame those who love him. People of faith who, like Job, endured their season of suffering with steadfast faith, or who, like Daniel’s three friends, were not ashamed of God’s name and endured hardship, will enjoy peace within God’s grace. Of course, some are martyred because of the calling entrusted to them; but if we fear betraying God more than we fear death, we 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 appeared, the king God had made Isaiah foretell. As soon as Cyrus became king, he sent the Jewish captives home. For a king of such power to send captives back to their own country was, in practice, impossible. Having conquered so many nations, he needed talented people, just as Nebuchadnezzar had employed Daniel and his three friends, and he needed the labor that came with them. Yet Cyrus sent the people of Judah back to Israel.

Cyrus is the founder of Iran and a figure honored around the world, and since stories of his boyhood have been recorded, I would like to share them with you. Cyrus’s father was Cambyses, builder of the Persian Empire, and his mother was a princess of Media, which was very powerful at the time. Media was ruled by Cyrus’s maternal grandfather, King Astyages, and Persia was its vassal.

One day the king of Media had a dream in which his daughter Mandane, Cyrus’s mother, passed water, and it covered all of Media. When a soothsayer interpreted the dream to mean that the child his daughter bore would challenge the king, he married her off into Persia, a small nation without power. Then news reached King Astyages that his daughter was with child. Because he had been told that Mandane’s child, his grandson, would drive him out and become king, he brought his daughter back and kept her with him until she gave birth. When Cyrus was born, the king ordered his general Harpagus to kill him. Harpagus in turn ordered the stableman who kept the horses at his house to kill Cyrus, but the man could not bring himself to kill the king’s grandson. As it happened, his own wife had just given birth to a stillborn child, and the stableman took Cyrus and raised him as his son.

In the year Cyrus turned ten, he played a game of king and courtiers with his friends. When Cyrus was chosen king, the son of a high-ranking nobleman complained that he could not serve Cyrus as king, and Cyrus beat him, and for that he was summoned. The nobleman was furious that his highborn son had been struck by a stableman’s son, and when he threatened to kill Cyrus, the stableman had no choice but to appeal to the king, and Cyrus was brought before the king to be questioned.

Brought before the king, Cyrus was not the least bit cowed. He argued boldly that it was wrong not to obey the king when that was the rule of the game. As the king watched Cyrus lay out what had happened so clearly and make his case so spiritedly, he thought how much the boy resembled his daughter, and he began to suspect the boy might be his grandson. The king called in Harpagus and the stableman and questioned them, and they confessed that the boy was his grandson.

Astyages flew into a rage when he learned that Harpagus had deceived him and defied the king’s command, and he killed Harpagus’s son in place of Cyrus. He called his officials and asked what he should do with Cyrus, and they said that since Persia was powerless, Cyrus would pose no threat to the throne. Reasoning for himself that Cyrus, living in so small a nation, could not stand against him, the king sent Cyrus back to Persia, where his real parents were.

Once he was home and had come of age, Cyrus prepared a revolt against his grandfather Astyages, and in 554 BC he went to war with Media. Cyrus had always feared that his grandfather would kill him. He challenged him twice and failed both times, and Harpagus, seeing this, resolved to betray the king, since the king had killed his son. He went over to Cyrus, and in 549 BC he brought down the Median Empire. All this reminds us that in every moment we must choose what is good. After his victory Cyrus renamed the nation Persia, but it is said that he did not kill his grandfather and treated him well.

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

Cyrus’s tomb stands at Pasargadae, the city Cyrus founded as the capital of Persia. Usually the tomb of a king defeated in war was desecrated, but Cyrus’s tomb has been preserved as it was. The inscription inside the tomb reads: “I, Cyrus, once ruled the world, but I know that one day I will be conquered by another king. Conqueror, you too will one day suffer just as I have, so do not touch my tomb.” It is said that when Alexander saw this inscription, he left the tomb undamaged.

Alexander burned Persepolis, the vast royal palace of Persia that Darius had built, and was about to destroy the tomb of King Cyrus as well. But when he found this inscription, Alexander instead took off the robe he was wearing, covered Cyrus’s tomb with it, and ordered the tomb restored to its original state. Alexander too would have heard of the prophecy in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the image, and of the prophecy that the one to overthrow Persia was himself, the king of Greece.

Through the events these men lived through, we ought to look to God. What matters is not that Cyrus, whose name was foretold in Scripture, was destroyed by Alexander. What matters is that we serve well the God who planned it, wove it into human history, and is bringing salvation to completion without the slightest wavering. The joy of Cyrus, who took Babylon, and the might of Alexander, who brought down so powerful a Cyrus, both crumbled before Rome, which God was preparing next. From this we see how meaningless human plans and ambitions are. Human history rises and falls by God’s plan, old things passing away and new things being raised up; but because God’s plan, at work from the beginning to the end, does not change, we must lean on the unchanging God.

This is the dream of Nebuchadnezzar that Cyrus and Alexander had heard.

In his dream Nebuchadnezzar saw a great image. The king summoned the magicians, the enchanters, the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans, and without telling them his dream, he demanded that they find out what it was and interpret it. They asked how they could interpret a dream he would not tell them. Then the king said he would kill them if they could not discover his dream. It was an absurd situation, but the captain of the guard, ordered to kill all the seers, went looking for the wise men and for Daniel and his friends to put them to death. When Daniel met the captain of the guard and heard the whole story, he asked for time, saying that he would pray, learn the dream, and then make it known to the king.

As Daniel prayed, God showed him the whole dream in a vision. When Daniel met Nebuchadnezzar, he said that no wise man, enchanter, magician, or soothsayer could ever tell the king his dream, but that the God in heaven knew the whole dream the king had dreamed on his bed and had made known to the king what was to come.

Daniel told the king that the image he had seen in his dream must have been huge, dazzling in its brightness, and terrifying to look at. Its head, he went on, would have been of fine gold, its breast and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of brass, its legs of iron, and its feet part iron and part clay; so precisely did he describe it. And as the king watched, a stone cut out without hands would have struck the feet of iron and clay and broken them in pieces; then the whole image would have been broken and become like the chaff of the summer threshing floors, carried off by the wind until no trace of it remained. Daniel told the king his dream in full detail, down to the stone that struck the image becoming a great mountain that filled the whole earth.

Interpreted, the dream means this. The head of gold is Babylon, the most glorious of empires, because God had given the king the kingdom, the power, the strength, and the glory. The breast and arms of silver mean that another kingdom, inferior to the king’s, would arise; this is the prophecy that Media and Persia would bring Babylon down. Daniel went on: the belly and thighs were of brass, which means that a kingdom strong as brass would arise and rule over the whole earth: Alexander of Greece would defeat the Persian army with his brilliant strategy. But when Alexander died at thirty-three without an heir, a power struggle broke out among his generals, and the empire rapidly split apart. When Greece fell, Rome, strong as iron, took power. As seen in the golden image, the feet were part iron and part clay, and this is what they mean: just as iron and clay can never mix, polytheistic Rome and the monotheistic Jews could not be joined together, though Rome adopted a policy of embracing the Jews.

At that time, Daniel said, a stone cut without hands would come and bring down everything people had built; and since it was God who would set up a kingdom, that kingdom would never be destroyed, nor would its sovereignty pass to another people. The kingdom Daniel spoke of is the kingdom Jesus Christ established. He was proclaiming that the messianic kingdom, the Kingdom of God, in which God’s covenant is fulfilled through Christ’s first and second comings, will last forever. Through the dream God made known to the king all that was to come.

What we must be sure to understand is this: the one who told the king his dream precisely and interpreted it was not Daniel but the power of God, who used Daniel. Through dreams, visions, and a man of faith, God gave Nebuchadnezzar chance after chance and waited for him to turn back. As God, the Lord of history, gave Nebuchadnezzar many chances, he must have given you chances as well. May you never forget that just as he waited for Nebuchadnezzar to turn back, he is waiting even now for you to turn to 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 ringed as it was by the sea and by high walls, it held out when Shalmaneser king of Assyria besieged it for five years. Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon also besieged it for thirteen years without conquering it. Though God protected it in this way, Tyre did not believe in God; it trusted only in its great wealth and its terrain. So Alexander the Great of Greece spent seven months filling in the sea to make dry land out to Tyre, which lay 700 meters offshore, and conquered it, just as Zechariah had prophesied. After Tyre, Alexander the Great conquered Samaria and Judea, and remarkably, these people actively helped Alexander and welcomed him as their ruler. That was likely because the Jews already knew, through the word, the course history would take. Alexander the Great, too, must have heard from the Samaritans that God had appointed him as the next king to overthrow Cyrus and conquer Israel. In this way, Daniel’s prophecies were all fulfilled through history.

Matthew 28:18

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

In Daniel’s life we can see a close likeness to Jesus. Daniel’s name means “God judges,” and as prime minister he was given charge of governing the whole country; Jesus, too, received from God all authority in heaven and on earth 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.”

Daniel’s enemies sought grounds to accuse him but found none, because he always worked honestly. It was the same with Jesus: people tried to find fault with him but found none, so Pilate declared that he found no basis for a charge against him.

Just as Daniel’s enemies plotted to throw into the lions’ den anyone who prayed to any man or god other than King Darius, so the chief priests and the scribes, seeing the people follow Jesus, plotted 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.

Knowing that Daniel would refuse to worship an idol, the presidents and officials who looked for grounds to accuse him in the law of his God set a trap that put betrayal of God before him, and they had him thrown into the lions’ den.

Jesus’ enemies likewise looked for false testimony to put him to death, but the testimony of those who claimed to have heard him blaspheme did not agree. Then the high priest, knowing that Jesus would not deny God, put to him a question out of nowhere: was he 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.”

Because the time had now come for him to bear the cross, Jesus answered that he was, and that they would see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power and coming with the clouds of the sky. The high priest, glad to have caught solid evidence, cried out that they needed no further witnesses; they had heard the blasphemy themselves, and Jesus deserved death.

Daniel knew they were plotting against him, but because he could not stop praying to God, he was taken while praying three times a day. Jesus too, after the Lord’s Supper, went out to the Mount of Olives to pray. Coming with his disciples to the garden of Gethsemane, he told them to stay there while he went over there 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 though he knew full well that his accusers were watching and would report him to the king. Jesus, too, kept to his place of prayer though he knew he would be betrayed into the hands of sinners. And just as Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were chosen from the descendants of Judah and made to serve the king, Jesus too was 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.”

When the apostle John wept as he saw the vision, one of the elders told him not to weep, for the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, had overcome and would open the book and its seven seals. This shows that Jesus is of the tribe of Judah and a descendant of David.

Daniel was taken while praying and thrown into the lions’ den; the entrance was blocked with a stone and sealed with the signets of the king and his nobles. Jesus was betrayed while praying, handed over by Judas Iscariot to be crucified, and after enduring every kind of mockery he breathed his last on the cross. When Jesus died, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, the earth quaked, the rocks were split, the tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. Yet even as his enemies saw these wonders, they rejoiced at his death.

Matthew 27:66

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

Jesus’ body was laid in a new tomb, and a great stone was rolled against the door of the tomb. The chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate and had the tomb sealed and guarded.

When King Darius went to the lions’ den at dawn to learn whether Daniel was alive or dead, Daniel told him that 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.

So it was with Jesus: as it began to dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary hurried to see the tomb. There was a great earthquake, and they saw that an angel of the Lord had come down from the sky, rolled away the stone, and sat 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!”

Those who had accused Daniel were themselves put to death, along with their families. Those who accused Jesus cried out that his blood be laid on their descendants, and history shows us how greatly those descendants suffered.

Through his own life, Daniel showed what work Jesus Christ would do when he came into this world. Keeping faith in order to exalt God’s name is never easy. But through Daniel we have learned that whether it is one person’s life or a nation’s history, all of it comes about by God’s providence. So I hope you will not lean on a life that is vanity of vanities.

Daniel lived in Babylon, yet God kept his life and never left him for a moment. That same grace of God will be with you as you live in this harsh world.