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Daniel 3:1 Bible in Basic English (BBE)

1 Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold, sixty cubits high and six cubits wide: he put it up in the valley of Dura, in the land of Babylon.

Cross Reference

Habakkuk 2:19 BBE

A curse on him who says to the wood, Awake! to the unbreathing stone, Up! let it be a teacher! See, it is plated with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all inside it.

Jeremiah 16:20 BBE

Will a man make for himself gods which are no gods?

Isaiah 46:6 BBE

As for those who take gold out of a bag, and put silver in the scales, they give payment to a gold-worker, to make it into a god; they go down on their faces and give it worship.

Hosea 8:4 BBE

They have put up kings, but not by me; they have made princes, but I had no knowledge of it; they have made images of silver and gold, so that they may be cut off.

Acts 19:26 BBE

And you see, for it has come to your ears, that not only at Ephesus, but almost all through Asia, this Paul has been teaching numbers of people and turning them away, saying that those are not gods who are made by men's hands:

Acts 17:29 BBE

If then we are the offspring of God, it is not right for us to have the idea that God is like gold or silver or stone, formed by the art or design of man.

Isaiah 40:19-31 BBE

The workman makes an image, and the gold-worker puts gold plates over it, and makes silver bands for it. The wise workman makes selection of the mulberry-tree of the offering, a wood which will not become soft; so that the image may be fixed to it and not be moved. Have you no knowledge of it? has it not come to your ears? has not news of it been given to you from the first? has it not been clear to you from the time when the earth was placed on its base? It is he who is seated over the arch of the earth, and the people in it are as small as locusts; by him the heavens are stretched out like an arch, and made ready like a tent for a living-place. He makes rulers come to nothing; the judges of the earth are of no value. They have only now been planted, and their seed put into the earth, and they have only now taken root, when he sends out his breath over them and they become dry, and the storm-wind takes them away like dry grass. Who then seems to you to be my equal? says the Holy One. Let your eyes be lifted up on high, and see: who has made these? He who sends out their numbered army: who has knowledge of all their names: by whose great strength, because he is strong in power, all of them are in their places. Why do you say, O Jacob, such words as these, O Israel, The Lord's eyes are not on my way, and my God gives no attention to my cause? Have you no knowledge of it? has it not come to your ears? The eternal God, the Lord, the Maker of the ends of the earth, is never feeble or tired; there is no searching out of his wisdom. He gives power to the feeble, increasing the strength of him who has no force. Even the young men will become feeble and tired, and the best of them will come to the end of his strength; But those who are waiting for the Lord will have new strength; they will get wings like eagles: running, they will not be tired, and walking, they will have no weariness.

Isaiah 2:20 BBE

In that day men will put their images of silver and of gold, which they made for worship, in the keeping of the beasts of the dark places;

Psalms 135:15 BBE

The images of the nations are silver and gold, the work of men's hands.

Psalms 115:4-8 BBE

Their images are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. They have mouths, but no voice; they have eyes, but they see not; They have ears, but no hearing; they have noses, but no sense of smell; They have hands without feeling, and feet without power of walking; and no sound comes from their throat. Those who make them are like them; and so is everyone who puts his faith in them.

1 Kings 12:28 BBE

So after taking thought the king made two oxen of gold; and he said to the people, You have been going up to Jerusalem long enough; see! these are your gods, O Israel, who took you out of the land of Egypt.

Daniel 2:48 BBE

Then the king made Daniel great, and gave him offerings in great number, and made him ruler over all the land of Babylon, and chief over all the wise men of Babylon.

Daniel 5:23 BBE

But you have been lifting yourself up against the Lord of heaven, and they have put the vessels of his house before you, and you and your lords, your wives and your women, have taken wine in them; and you have given praise to gods of silver and gold, of brass and iron and wood and stone, who are without the power of seeing or hearing, and without knowledge: and to the God in whose hand your breath is, and whose are all your ways, you have not given glory;

Daniel 2:31-32 BBE

You, O King, were looking, and a great image was there. This image, which was very great, and whose glory was very bright, was placed before you: its form sent fear into the heart. As for this image, its head was made of the best gold, its breast and its arms were of silver, its middle and its sides were of brass,

Jeremiah 10:9 BBE

Silver hammered into plates is sent from Tarshish, and gold from Uphaz, the work of the expert workman and of the hands of the gold-worker; blue and purple is their clothing, all the work of expert men.

Isaiah 30:22 BBE

And you will make unclean what is covering your pictured images of silver, and the plating of your images of gold: you will send them away as an unclean thing, saying, Be gone!

Deuteronomy 7:25 BBE

The images of their gods are to be burned with fire: have no desire for the gold and silver on them, and do not take it for yourselves, for it will be a danger to you: it is a thing disgusting to the Lord your God:

Exodus 32:31 BBE

Then Moses went back to the Lord and said, This people has done a great sin, making themselves a god of gold;

Exodus 20:23 BBE

Gods of silver and gods of gold you are not to make for yourselves.

Exodus 32:2-4 BBE

Then Aaron said to them, Take off the gold rings which are in the ears of your wives and your sons and your daughters, and give them to me. And all the people took the gold rings from their ears and gave them to Aaron. And he took the gold from them and, hammering it with an instrument, he made it into the metal image of a young ox: and they said, This is your god, O Israel, who took you out of the land of Egypt.

Revelation 9:20 BBE

And the rest of the people, who were not put to death by these evils, were not turned from the works of their hands, but went on giving worship to evil spirits, and images of gold and silver and brass and stone and wood which have no power of seeing or hearing or walking:

Daniel 3:30 BBE

Then the king gave Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego even greater authority in the land of Babylon.

Esther 1:1 BBE

Now it came about in the days of Ahasuerus, (that Ahasuerus who was ruler of a hundred and twenty-seven divisions of the kingdom, from India as far as Ethiopia:)

2 Kings 19:17-18 BBE

Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have made waste the nations and their lands, And have given their gods to the fire; for they were no gods, but wood and stone, the work of men's hands; so they have given them to destruction.

Judges 8:26-27 BBE

The weight of the gold ear-rings which he got from them was one thousand, seven hundred shekels of gold; in addition to the moon-ornaments and jewels and the purple robes which were on the kings of Midian, and the chains on their camels' necks. And Gideon made an ephod from them and put it up in his town Ophrah; and all Israel went after it there and were false to the Lord; and it became a cause of sin to Gideon and his house.

Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Keil & Delitzsch Commentary » Commentary on Daniel 3

Commentary on Daniel 3 Keil & Delitzsch Commentary


Introduction

Daniel's Three Friends in the Fiery Furnace - Daniel 3:1-30

Nebuchadnezzar commanded a colossal golden image to be set up in the plain of Dura at Babylon, and summoned all his high officers of state to be present at its consecration. He caused it to be proclaimed by a herald, that at a given signal all should fall down before the image and do it homage, and that whosoever refused to do so would be cast into a burning fiery furnace (Daniel 3:1-7). This ceremony having been ended, it was reported to the king by certain Chaldeans that Daniel's friends, who had been placed over the province of Babylon, had not done homage to the image; whereupon, being called to account by the king, they refused to worship the image because they could not serve his gods (Daniel 3:8-18). For this opposition to the king's will they were cast, bound in their clothes, into the burning fiery furnace. They were uninjured by the fire; and the king perceived with terror that not three, but four men, were walking unbound and uninjured in the furnace (Daniel 3:19-27). Then he commanded them to come out; and when he found them wholly unhurt, he not only praised their God who had so wonderfully protected them, but also commanded, on the pain of death, all the people of his kingdom not to despise this God (Daniel 3:28-30).

The lxx and Theodotion have placed the date of this event in the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar, apparently only because they associated the erection of this statue with the taking of Jerusalem under Zedekiah, although that city was not taken and destroyed till the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 25:8.). But though it is probable that Nebuchadnezzar, after he had firmly established his world-kingdom by the overthrow of all his enemies, first felt himself moved to erect this image as a monument of his great exploits and of his world-power; yet the destruction of the capital of Judea, which had been already twice destroyed, can hardly be regarded as having furnished a sufficient occasion for this. This much, however, is certain, that the event narrated in this chapter occurred later than that of the 2nd chapter, since Daniel 3:12 and Daniel 3:30 refer to Daniel 2:49; and on the other hand, that they occurred earlier than the incident of the 4th chapter, in which there are many things which point to the last half of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, while the history recorded in the chapter before us appertains more to the middle of his reign, when Nebuchadnezzar stood on the pinnacle of his greatness. The circumstance that there is no longer found in the king any trace of the impression which the omnipotence and infinite wisdom of the God of the Jews, as brought to view in the interpretation of his dream by Daniel, made upon his mind (Daniel 2), affords no means of accurately determining the time of the occurrence here narrated. There is no need for our assuming, with Jerome, a velox oblivio veritatis , or with Calvin, the lapse of a considerable interval between the two events. The deportment of Nebuchadnezzar on this occasion does not stand in opposition to the statements made at the close of Daniel 2. The command that all who were assembled at the consecration of the image should all down before it and worship it, is to be viewed from the standpoint of the heathen king. It had no reference at all to the oppression of those who worshipped the God of the Jews, nor to a persecution of the Jews on account of their God. It only demanded the recognition of the national god, to whom the king supposed he owed the greatness of his kingdom, as the god of the kingdom, and was a command which the heathen subjects of Nebuchadnezzar could execute without any violence to their consciences. The Jews could not obey it, however, without violating the first precept of their law. But Nebuchadnezzar did not think on that. Disobedience to his command appeared to him as culpable rebellion against his majesty. As such also the conduct of Daniel's friends is represented to him by the Chaldean informers in Daniel 3:12. The words of the informers, “The Jews whom thou hast set over the affairs of the province of Babylon have not regarded thee, O king; they serve not thy gods,” etc., clearly show that they were rightly named (Daniel 3:8) “accusers of the Jews,” and that by their denunciation of them they wished only to expel the foreigners from their places of influence; and for this purpose they made use of the politico-national festival appointed by Nebuchadnezzar as a fitting opportunity. Hence we can understand Nebuchadnezzar's anger against those who disregarded his command; and his words, with which he pronounced sentence against the accused - ”who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hand?” - are, judged of from the religious point of view of the Israelites, a blaspheming of God, but considered from Nebuchadnezzar's heathen standpoint, are only an expression of proud confidence in his own might and in that of his gods, and show nothing further than that the revelation of the living God in Daniel 2 had not permanently impressed itself on his heart, but had in course of time lost much of its influence over him.

The conduct of Nebuchadnezzar toward the Jews, described in this chapter, is accordingly fundamentally different from the relation sustained by Antiochus Epiphanes towards Judaism; for he wished entirely to put an end to the Jewish form of worship. In the conduct of Daniel's friends who were accused before the king there is also not a single trace of the religious fanaticism prevalent among the Jews in the age of the Maccabees, who were persecuted on account of their fidelity to the law. Far from trusting in the miraculous help of God, they regarded it as possible that God, whom they served, would not save them, and they only declare that in no case will they reverence the heathen deities of the king, and do homage to the image erected by him (Daniel 3:16.).

The right apprehension of the historical situation described in this chapter is at complete variance with the supposition of the modern critics, that the narrative is unhistorical, and was invented for the purpose of affording a type for the relation of Antiochus Epiphanes to Judaism. The remarkable circumstance, that Daniel is not named as having been present at this festival (and he also would certainly not have done homage to the image), can of itself alone furnish no argument against the historical accuracy of the matter, although it cannot be explained on the supposition made by Hgstb., that Daniel, as president over the wise men, did not belong to the class of state-officers, nor by the assertion of Hitz., that Daniel did not belong to the class of chief officers, since according to Daniel 2:49 he had transferred his office to his friends. Both suppositions are erroneous; cf. under Daniel 2:49. But many other different possibilities may be thought of to account for the absence of all mention of Daniel's name. Either he may have been prevented for some reason from being present on the occasion, or he may have been present and may have refused to bow down before the image, but yet may only not have been informed against. In the latter case, the remark of Calvin, ut abstinuerint a Daniele ad tempus, quem sciebant magnifieri a Rege , would scarcely suffice, but we must suppose that the accusers had designed first only the overthrow of the three rulers of the province of Babylon.

(Note: Kran.'s supposition also (p. 153), that Daniel, as president over the class of the wise men, claimed the right belonging to him as such, while in his secular office he could be represented by his Jewish associates, and thus was withdrawn from the circle of spectators and from the command laid upon them of falling down before the image, has little probability; for although it is not said that this command was laid upon the caste of the wise men, and even though it should be supposed that the priests were present at this festival as the directors of the religious ceremonial, and thus were brought under the command to fall down before the image, yet this can scarcely be supposed of the whole caste. But Daniel could not in conscience take part in this idolatrous festival, nor associate himself with the priests, nor as president of all the Magi withdraw into the background, so as to avoid the ceremony of doing homage of the image.)

But the circumstance that Daniel, if he were present, did not employ himself in behalf of his friends, may be explained from the quick execution of Babylonish justice, provided some higher reason did not determine him confidently to commit the decision of the matter to the Lord his God.

(Note: We have already in part noticed the arguments against the historical accuracy of the narrative presented by the opponents of the genuineness of the book, such as the giving of Greek names to the musical instruments, and the conduct of Antiochus Epiphanes in placing an idol-image on the altar of burnt-offering (pp. 34, 50). All the others are dealt with in the Exposition. The principal objection adduced is the miracle, on account of which alone Hitz. thinks himself warranted in affirming that the narrative has no historical reality.)


Verses 1-18

The erection and consecration of the golden image, and the accusation brought against Daniel's friends, that they had refused to obey the king's command to do homage to this image.