Daniel 1
Babylon grooms Daniel as royal advisor
Looking for a few good men
1Soldiers of Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar surrounded and attacked Jerusalem before King Jehoiakim [1] had a chance to finish his third year as Judah’s king.2The Lord let Nebuchadnezzar capture King Jehoiakim and take sacred containers [2] from inside Jerusalem’s Temple. He carried them off to his homeland of Babylonia. [3] And he stored them in the sacred treasury of his gods.
3King Nebuchadnezzar told his chief of staff, Ashpenaz, [4] to find some of the best people Israel had to offer, especially from among the royal family and the nobles. 4Babylon’s king wanted to take an assortment of young men who were handsome, intelligent, and able to serve as the king’s palace advisors. He wanted them to learn the Chaldean language and read its literature.
5The king ordered his people to educate them for three years and provide them with food and wine as a palace expense. Then he expected them to work for him as advisors. [5]
6Ashpenaz chose men from Judah’s tribe. Among them: Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. 7Then Ashpenaz gave them Babylonian-style names.
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- Daniel became Belteshazzar.
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- Hananiah became Shadrach.
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- Mishael became Meshach.
- Azariah became Abednego.
Daniel asks to eat only kosher food
8But Daniel decided to continue following Israel’s kosher [6] food laws. So he asked the palace chief of staff for permission to do that.9God made sure palace official’s were inclined to help Daniel and agree to his requests.
10The palace chief of staff told Daniel, “Listen, you’re asking a huge favor. The king himself set your menu. If you eat something else and end up looking puny or sickly compared to the others, the king will take my head.”
Test: Vegan vs Meat lover
11Daniel appealed to the man appointed to guard him and Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. 12Daniel said, “Please, take 10 days to test what I’m requesting. Feed us vegetables and water. 13Then compare us to the other men who have been eating the king’s food. Decide what to do after you see the results of this test.”14The guard agreed. And he ran the test for 10 days. 15After that, he could see for himself that the four men from Judah look healthier and better fed than the young men eating the king’s food. 16So the guard continued to switch out the royal food and palace wine for vegetables.
17God gave all four of these men incredible intelligence, wisdom, and ability to digest and understand all kinds of literature. Daniel also knew how to interpret dreams and visions.
Interview with the king
18When the men finished the educational program Nebuchadnezzar had ordered for them, it was time to meet the king.19He spoke with all the young men who finished their education. And he decided that the four men of Judah were the best of the bunch. No one seemed better suited to serve the king than Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. They got the job, stationed in the palace.
20On a scale of one to ten, the king gave the men of Judah a ten for their wisdom. All the other advisors and magicians managed no better than a “one.”
21Daniel served in the palace until Persian King Cyrus [7] took over.
Footnotes
Jehoiakim ruled from about 609-598 BC, ending about a dozen years before Babylon leveled Jerusalem and the Temple in 586 BC. He was the second son of King Josiah and the great-great grandson of Hezekiah.
Ezra reports what Persian King Cyrus released from Babylon’s treasury—objects Nebuchadnezzar took from the Jerusalem Temple. “Inventory of sacred objects included: 30 gold dishes, 1,000 silver dishes, 29 pans, 30 gold bowls, 410 silver bowls, 1,000 other objects. In all, there were 5,400 gold and silver vessels from the former temple” (Ezra 1:9-11).
Babylonia was a territory in what is now southeastern Iraq, just north of the Persian Gulf. This is where the Babylon Empire emerged and grew into a powerful force that overwhelmed the Assyrian Empire. Assyrians lived in what is now northern Iraq. Babylonians ran off the Assyrian army, chased them as far away as the Syrian-Turkey border near the Mediterranean Sea, and killed them in battles.
“Ashpenaz” was a term referring to someone in charge of taking care of guests. But it seems used here as the personal name of perhaps the highest official working for Nebuchadnezzar. It’s a bit like people today referring to the sheriff as Sheriff.
This fulfilled a prophecy Isaiah gave to Jehoiakim’s great-great grandfather King Hezekiah: “There’s a day coming when Babylonians will take everything in your house and everything your ancestors have collected and treasured throughout the years. They won’t leave anything valuable. They will even take some of your own sons and turn them into eunuchs who will serve in Babylon’s palace” (1 Kings 20:17-18).
See Leviticus 11 for a list of food the Israelites (and today’s observant Jews) could and couldn’t eat. No lobster, softshell crab, or steaks cooked rare. But they could pig out on baked grasshoppers, fried locusts, and wild honey. No pig, though. Most importantly, they could not eat meat with blood in it. “Blood is what brings a body to life. I’ve given you blood to use exclusively on the altar” (Leviticus 17:11). It was reserved for God as a gift people sometimes gave to express their regret for sinning. All sin was considered a capital offense. And the animal’s lifeblood substituted for the blood of the human.
Persian King Cyrus absorbed Babylon in 539 BC. That’s about 66 years after Babylonians took Daniel from Judah in 605 BC. So, Daniel would have been well into his 70s by the time Cyrus arrived.
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