BY BRUCE GREEN
There’s nothing on Tik Tok, Netflix or Disney that can begin to compare with the grandeur and sweeping trajectory of God’s unfolding story. It deals with heaven and earth and everything in between. It touches on time and eternity. It tells how the Creator of the universe came to earth in the person of Jesus on behalf of His lost creation because He wants to have eternal life with us. That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.
The book of Daniel is part of this amazing story. It tells us about God’s covenant people being sent into captivity after they have finally exhausted Yahweh’s patience through their idolatry and rebellion. It inspires us with its account of people living godly lives in an ungodly culture. It contains majestic, apocalyptic visions which spell out the coming of God’s kingdom in Jesus. But the undercurrent running through the book is the sovereignty of God (1:2, 2:21, 37-38, 4:25, 32, 34-35). We’re reminded over and over how God doesn’t need to have a huge army or a person on the throne to have His purposes accomplished. He is sovereign because He is God.
This is important because the book begins with an unsettling scene in 1:1-7. The time is 605 BC and Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Babylonians, has made the first of what will be three “visits” to Jerusalem. He helps himself to some items of great value from the temple. He also chooses some of the best and brightest young men of nobility to be trained to serve in his kingdom (This includes Daniel and his three friends.). That’s the story from Nebuchadnezzar’s perspective. From the vantage point of Daniel and his friends though, it’s quite different.
- They are in a strange land. We know from Daniel 6 that Daniel lived the entire time of the Babylonian captivity and into the Medo-Persian era. Therefore, it’s likely that he was a young teen at the time he and his friends were taken to Babylon. This makes sense as the younger they were, the easier it would be to train them and the longer their service would be. All this means that at a tender age they are torn from their families, friends and their way of life to be reprogrammed in Babylonian ways (v. 4).
- The people practice a strange faith. Not only are they away from friends and family, but there is also no one in Babylon who shares their faith. Their chief god is Marduk, but he reigns over a pantheon of gods and goddesses. There’s something deeply ironic about Judah going into captivity because of idolatry and ending up in place like Babylon where the idols were limitless. C. S. Lewis observed that there are two kinds of people: those who pray that God’s will be done and the persistently rebellious to whom God finally says, “Okay, have it your way.” In sending them to Babylon, God gives Judah what the nation as a whole wanted (though not Daniel and his friends).
- Things will get worse before they get better. Nebuchadnezzar will return to Jerusalem two more times. On his second visit, he will take more treasures from the temple as well as 10,000 people (2 Kings 24:14). On his final visit in 586 BC, he will raze the temple, destroy the city and kill many of the inhabitants and take the remainder into captivity (2 Chronicle 36:15ff). These two invasions would have brought harm to some and possibly all the family and friends of the young men. We can only imagine the sense of loss and desolation they experienced during these years in Babylon.
But their story doesn’t end here.
Next Week: Changing the world.
Green has written a two-volume work on the minor prophets called Known Intimately Loved Ultimately. It is available through 21st Century Christian.