02: World News & Prophecy - Daniel 1:1-8

[Darris McNeely] Welcome back to the World News and Prophecy class. We're still in introduction to Daniel. We're going to talk a little bit here for a minute about the background to Daniel to understand his setting and his time. And we talked earlier about discerning the times and Daniel wanting to understand the why of what had happened to him and to his nation. But with Daniel, we open the first verse of Daniel... I think we can turn there real quick. And if you will, go ahead and open your Bibles to the book of Daniel 1:1. It kind of drops us into the scene.

Daniel 1:1 “In what is called the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and besieged it.”

Now, that's a straightforward matter-of-fact statement, but there's a lot of background that we should understand as well as just lifting a few things out from that verse, and we'll come back to that. But let's take a moment to talk about the background of Daniel because that will also help us to appreciate the flow of the book of Daniel. And again, put some flesh and blood on the idea of Daniel. I mentioned that he was a prophet, but he was also a disciple. And at the time that the story opens, he's really a young man, probably about 17 years of age. I say probably because we can't know that for sure, because we don't have the dating.

But it says in Daniel 1:3 that the king took some of the children of Israel and some of the king's descendants and some of the nobles. This was this first wave of captivity. What happened, Nebuchadnezzar just gathered up the cream of the crop of the Jewish youth. And so if they're called the children of Israel, that's not the larger nomen of the descendants of Jacob, but I think we would take this that he gathered up those who were children. Now, we're not talking about necessarily seven or eight-year-olds. We're talking probably about teenagers. And I said that possibly 17. How can we say that? Only by inference, but not from an explicit scripture.

Genesis 37:2 It says about Joseph, "Joseph was 17." "A lad of 17," it says. 

And so we, typically...you know, a lad or a child and he is said to be 17 at that point in the story of Joseph, and so if we then kind of take that forward into the book of Daniel, and Daniel is among the children of Israel, it's logical to assume or to infer, and without the specific verse that he could have been about age 17. Maybe he was 16, maybe he was 18. You know, we can accept all of that, but I'm not going to test you necessarily on that. But understand that he's about your age when he finds himself taken to Babylon.

Now, at the time that this verse is written, Daniel 1:1, we are in the period or the year of 605 BC. Anybody know what BC stands for?

[Woman] Before Christ.

[Darris McNeely] Before Christ. Yeah, before Christ. So this is the year 605, when Nebuchadnezzar comes to Jerusalem and besieges it and takes these people to Babylon. If Daniel was about 17, let's say, then he could have been born about the year 623 BC, okay? 623. Now, that would put him 17 years earlier than the captivity here. It would be that he was born during the reign of the king of Judah named Josiah. Are you familiar with King Josiah? He was one of the good kings. He became king at, I think, what's it, age eight and was a righteous king. He reformed the whole nation, got them back on track, worshiping God for a period of time. And so it is possible if he was born in 623, Josiah would have been on the throne. And so that's the time setting here.

Now, this also connects us to another percentage of the Bible, the Prophet Jeremiah. All right, the whole book of Jeremiah that you know and you'll get to know a whole lot more as Dr. Dunkel takes you through that. Jeremiah was working and prophesying during the time of Josiah. In fact, when Josiah gets killed by an Egyptian army, Jeremiah writes the book of Lamentations. And it's a lament at the death of Josiah. And so the point is, if Daniel's born in 623, during this period of time, as he's growing up over the next few years, he would have known of Jeremiah. Not that he would have known him personally necessarily, but the Prophet Jeremiah as he walked the streets of Jerusalem, as he gave his utterances and became this personality, Daniel would have known him or known of him, been aware of him.

So this puts him in the context of that particular prophet that we have here, that of Jeremiah. And keep in mind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego, his three friends would have known him as well. And so at this particular point in time in the story, there is a great deal taking place in the politics of the nations in and around Judah and Jerusalem. I would just turn the page right here to a broader map of the area. This is where Israel was. Jerusalem is right there. That's where Daniel is and Jeremiah. And at this particular time, you have, let's just mention, three great powers that are impacting the events of this time. You've got Egypt that is still a relative power, not as big as they were during the time of Moses and before the Exodus.

But you've got Egypt down here that is still powerful enough to actually come up and annex Judea for a period while Daniel is a young man. Daniel for a period of time was actually a subject of the Egyptians because of that whole area kind of coming under the control of the Egyptians. But you've got the nation of Babylon that is over here. And we've read about that in verse 1. And then you have to the north, the great power of Assyria. So you've got Assyria. Let's put down Egypt. Assyria, which plays in the biblical story, and Babylon. These are the great powers of the day that are impacting the events. Today, we have with China, Russia, the United States, just to pick three powers that are vying for domination and control of the world today. And of course, Russia and China are challenging the United States and that's creating problems and a lot of the events that take place.

In Daniel's day, it was the interplay of these three great powers that was influencing day-to-day events for Daniel in the streets of Jerusalem. And so Josiah, the king, has to pay tribute money to Assyria. Assyria is this monolithic, huge empire. They've already taken the nation of Israel to the north captive. You'll read about that. You'll study about that in the Kings and Chronicles that Assyria came down in the year 721 BC and they took the 10-tribe nation of Israel to the north. They took them captive, and they, essentially, disappear. Babylon then...and Assyria becomes this huge empire. They're vicious. They kind of romp and stomp all over this part of the world here. Nineveh is their capital.

You may recall from the book of Jonah that Jonah goes to Nineveh and prophesies against the Ninevites. Babylon is in a resurgence down here, kind of their second growth spurt. And they're rising now. And then Egypt is still trying to be a power, kind of like Russia is today. Russia formerly had its empire then during the Soviet Union days under communism. They had this great world empire that came apart in the early 1990s. Yet today, Russia, under Putin, is still trying to punch above its weight. They're influencing events in Europe. They've been at war with Ukraine for over two years and creating other mayhem in other parts of the world. Egypt was kind of like that in the time of Daniel.

And they came up, and there was this great battle at a place called Carchemish, which is right up here. And Babylon got involved. They had knocked off the Assyrian empire. Babylon knocks off Egypt at a battle of Carchemish. And that is when then Babylon comes down under King, this Nebuchadnezzar, and they besiege Jerusalem, Daniel 1:1, at that particular point in the story. And so in the meantime, there's a story of Josiah dying in battle against the Egyptians. Daniel was probably 12 or 13 years old when Josiah dies. And they come under then the vassalage of Egypt for a period of time. And then, eventually, Babylon, which is the rising power, just gobbles up all of this.

And that's kind of the setting and the background to what we are dealing with, the battle of Carchemish, Palestine coming under Egypt, Daniel becoming an Egyptian subject. It's covered in 2 Kings 23, beginning at verse 31. I'm not going to turn and read that necessarily at the time, but this is all chronicled in other parts of the Bible with what we are dealing with. Nebuchadnezzar II is the king that we are most concerned with in Daniel 1:1. Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, is the one that is spoken of. And he comes and besieges Jerusalem. And he comes also down and, basically, ends the power of Egypt. In Egypt, of which there are a number of biblical prophecies, from that time forward, for all intents and purposes, Egypt is no longer a significant power in the story of the nations of the Middle East.

They come all the way down to Judah, and this is where Daniel is taken captive. Let me make a point that I'm going to come back to probably in a little bit larger presentation, but just understand something. I mentioned Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, these three powers that are vying for control and relating it a little bit to what is taking place in our time today with China, Russia, and America, and then the events that surround the pushing and shoving between these countries and the events that are going on around us right now, war in the Middle East, the war in Europe, and other things. Some people say we're actually in World War III right now. It's not on the scale of World Wars I or II, but there are conflicts that could get bigger, and there are conflicts that are literally taking place.

But this period of time, and if we just kind of circle the year 605, which is the time when Daniel is taken to Babylon, there's a lot going on in the world of the Middle East and the Bible. And there's a phrase or there's a term that is used for this period called the...this is the Axial Age. The Axial Age. It's a time when... If you know what an axis is, or a hinge, sometimes they call it a hinge of history, a hinge is what a door pivots on and swings on. An axis is what a wheel is mounted upon and goes round and round. History and the events of nations are going around. There's a lot that is moving and taking shape into almost like another chapter of the story in this part of the world right now, and frankly, in other parts of the world that we don't read about in the biblical story, but history tells us about.

This is a period of time when the Buddha is talking over here in the East and Buddhism is in its origins. Hinduism is in its origins. These religions that are still with us today, over in Greece, which is way up over here, you have some of the early Greek philosophers beginning to do their work and laying a foundation. And so when it comes to politics, government, nations, religion, and culture, there's a lot that is going on in the world of the 7th century BC, 605 BC at the time of Daniel, of events that are very important to shaping the modern world and our world today. That's the connection. And of course, the most important thing that is taking place is in connection with the biblical story. To look at this axial age in relation to the biblical story, you not only have Jeremiah, but you also have...let's go ahead and put Daniel down here, okay? The prophet.

In your Bible, there is a minor prophet named Zephaniah. He's doing his work at the same time. There's also a prophet named Habakkuk. You'll study these books with Dr. Dunkel in Minor Prophets. He's a contemporary with these as well. There's one other prophet that you should know the name of, Ezekiel. Ezekiel does his prophecy from Babylon as an exile. You've got five prophets that are working, used by God to come to Judah, the remnant of His people, prophesying repentance and warning them of what's going to come if they don't change their way. But these are all...they're contemporaries. And so my point is this period of time, biblically and in the larger world, there's a lot taking place that is laying the foundation for the modern world. And that can help us appreciate why in the book of Daniel, God focuses upon four empires, Babylon, Persia, Greece.

What's the fourth? Anybody know? What's the fourth empire?

[Darius] Rome.

[Darris McNeely] Very good, Rome. Was that Darius? Yeah, listening to your sister.

So these four empires, this is the story of the book of Daniel. Now, Daniel's not concerned with India, China, or others. God's just telling us a story here, but it doesn't mean there aren't other events taking place. But this is the story in connection with what God is doing. And we start right here in Babylon, which is a city, a name, a place, a system, a culture, a religion that has been with us since the Tower of Babel and will be with us all the way to the end of the age. And we will study when we get to Revelation 17 and 18. So Babylon is very important to the biblical story.

But just as there were a lot of events taking place in the world at large that was reshaping this time, God was also laying the foundation through Daniel and these other prophets of prophecies against these nations and information and a whole system that we should study to appreciate that God, who controls all of history, was not absent with His own people and His own prophets to lay down certain key thoughts. So with that in mind, I will just mention I've got this in your notes here, Habakkuk 1:5. Habakkuk opens up and he's lamenting to God why there are so many sins in Israel or in Judah. God says, "Well, they are, and I'm going to bring Babylon and punish them." And Habakkuk can't figure that out, that out, why God would use a people worse than the Jews, the Babylon, to punish them. He does.

Habakkuk 1:5 God says, "'Look among the nations and watch. Be utterly astounded, for I will work a work in your days which you would not believe, though it were told you.'" 

God did do an astounding work in the days of Habakkuk, but they were also the days of Daniel and these other men. Again, keeping that in mind, He did a great work among the nations. And that's important to understand with what is taking place. I want to just reference Jeremiah, those of you that heard Dr. Dunkle's sermon here on the Sabbath and the morning service, he went through the first chapter of Jeremiah and talked about Jeremiah in the context of being a young man and what God called him to do.

But in Jeremiah 1:6-10, essentially, God is saying to Jeremiah that you're going to be pulling down and setting up. Maybe I should just read that rather than paraphrasing it. But part of the initial pronouncement by God to the Prophet Jeremiah does really speak to what he was involved with. 

Jeremiah 1:10 God says to Jeremiah, "I have this day set you over the nations and over the kingdoms." 

Why would He put a prophet over nations and kingdoms? What's that about? Keep in mind, Daniel will be in Babylon, and he's going to rise to be kind of the right-hand chief of staff of the king. That's no small potatoes. That's pretty important and God operates that. He makes it happen.He says to Jeremiah, in Jeremiah 1:10, "Set you over the nations and over the kingdoms to root out and to pull down, to destroy and to throw down, to build and to plant." 

Now, there's a lot packed into verse 10 of Jeremiah 1. And it speaks to the times that we are talking about here of all these five prophets and what's taking place in the larger world, both with the development of what will be world religions, Buddhism, Hinduism. And they're with us to this day. I mean, we are dealing in the nations, and we're working...where we have members in Myanmar and in Bangladesh right now, we are dealing with Buddhism and Hinduism. We have two members in Bangladesh recently baptized who were run out of their village by other Hindus.

Our members, they're Christian. They're not run-of-the-mill Christians. They're Sabbatarian Christians. They're keeping the holy days, and they're dealing with this religion. And in Myanmar, we have members in Myanmar, which is a Buddhist country. And they've come out of all of that and are worshiping God. And so hundreds of years later from the time of the origins of this, God's still working, calling people from nations who have to contend with the impact of events that were forming and shaping during this period of this Axial Age, this period where Daniel finds himself, where there were great movements culturally, through religion, and even politically that was not only shaping their world but impacting generations down to our time today. That's how relevant the Bible is and what God is doing and what we study as we look into all of this and come to understand everything that is there.

So Daniel's a young man when he comes to this point. Now, I've given you a map, this particular map that you see on the screen. You've got a copy of this map. I'll be handing out a lot of maps this year in class, so keep this one and all the others. But it will be important that you learn a little bit of geography through your studies here at ABC because the Bible didn't happen in a vacuum. It happened on land and in ancient nations that those lands are still around today. Nations have come and gone, but we still have events playing out in the area that was Israel, in the area of Babylon, but is today Iraq, the area of Persia of the ancient world but is today Iran.

And what we learn from these prophecies and these stories of the Old Testament can give us insight into what is happening and the importance of these events that are taking place today and to just be able to know them in your mind's eye, and be able to look at a map and know where Egypt is, know where Babylon was, Asia Minor, today what is the nation of Turkey. And to know these things and the waters, the bodies of water, that's part of education. I like to tell students that if you stay with us in this class especially, but certainly all the others, you'll be a whole lot smarter by the time you get through it all, all right?

And you're going to hear names and episodes of history and people that you may never have heard before. And honestly, you may never hear about again after you leave ABC. That's okay. But while you're here, you'll hear about them. And because of their connection with the Bible, you should meet us halfway and come to understand exactly why they are important. And who knows? In some distant period in your future, you're going to be sitting in an office or with some coworkers and at lunch one day over the table or dinner on a Saturday night, and you're going to drop a name like Josephus. And they're going to look at you like, "Who and what?" And you're going to say, "Yeah, Josephus." "Who's Josephus?"

And for one brief fleeting nanosecond, you'll have an opportunity to explain to somebody who in the world is Josephus. And it'll be because you learned it at ABC. And they'll think, wow, you're pretty smart. You're pretty smart. Or let them think that. May not be true, but if they want to think it, let them think that. My son grew up in the Church listening to all the sermons of the church, came through ABC as well. He's a doctor and administrator in a hospital over in the Indianapolis area. And because of what he was exposed to in the church and what we exposed him to in our family, he knows Shakespeare. And he can quote Shakespeare. And he can drop that in the midst of a gathering of his coworkers and it just shuts them down.

Because whenever they were in English lit and Shakespeare came up, their mind was someplace else and they didn't get it. And he just loves to do that just to impress them or to drop something on them that they just don't know about. They may know medicine and science and physical therapy and how to run a half marathon and things like that, but they don't know about Othello and Macbeth and some of these characters out of Shakespeare. But you're going to know about Josephus and Antiochus Epiphanes at a time when others will not. Let's move on to Daniel 1. So let's go ahead and start into the text. All of this is background and introduction at this point. Let's get into the book of Daniel.

We've already read Chapter 1, verse 1. And for the remainder of the time here in this session, let's look at what we have, see how far we can get into Chapter 1. All right. So let's go ahead and repeat verse 1.

Daniel 1:1 "In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and besieged it." 

So here we are at the year 605 BC. So put that in your margins, put that in your notes, whatever, but you should know that one. Now, there are three dates to the siege of Jerusalem that you should know about. And the first one is 605. This is where Daniel was taken captive. A few years later, there was a second siege. Babylon, again, in 605, they didn't destroy the city. They didn't burn the temple down. They just took it over, left the garrison of troops, and took the cream of the crop like Daniel and his friends.

But in the year 597 BC, which is 8 years later, there was another invasion by the Babylonians on the city. They deposed the king at that time. And then 10 years later, in the year 587, there was a 3rd and a final conquest of the city. And at this time, they were so fed up with the Jews, they burned the city, they destroyed the temple, and brought it to an end, 587. So there's three different attacks by Babylon upon Jerusalem, all right? So you should know that. And you should know that Daniel and his friends, they're taken captive to Babylon in the year 605. If you look at this map and the one that I've given, in front of you, if you look at Jerusalem down here and Babylon is over here, it took a few months for them to walk from Jerusalem to Babylon. Now, they didn't go straight across the desert like this. They would have gone north and then down the Tigris and the Euphrates River Valley to Babylon.

And that was a circuitous route, but that was the way it was in those days because it was far more pleasant than taking a straight path across the desert. And so Daniel, literally, but most likely as a captive, walked several months that it would have taken to go to Babylon at this time. So know these three dates and know what happened. And the final one here is when the temple is destroyed, all right? And you should know that that is what is called the First Temple, the First Temple. It was the one built by Solomon. In the story of Jerusalem and the history of Israel, there are two temples called the First Temple and the?

[Together] Second Temple.

[Darris McNeely]Second Temple. Brilliant. You guys are really on top of it here.

The Second Temple is the temple that we encounter in the New Testament where Jesus walked, okay? But that was a separate temple rebuilt after the First Temple had been destroyed beginning 70 years later when the Jews returned from Babylon to Jerusalem. So you should know that's just kind of another fundamental point. The 2 temples, 587 is when the First Temple was destroyed. It was destroyed in the year of August or in the month of August, the equivalent of August. So it's called, I believe, the 9th of Av, maybe it's the 10th of Av. But the Jews remember that to this day, and that coincides with early August when the First Temple was destroyed.

And so in verse 1, we also are introduced to two cities, Babylon and Jerusalem, okay? So where can I...do have any room left up here? Awesome. Babylon and Jerusalem. Okay. Babylon is the capital of the Babylonian empire. It's a city. Its origins go back to Genesis and the Tower of Babel that began to be built there where God came down and confused the languages. Jerusalem, obviously, was the capital of the united monarchy under King David. David put his capital there. It's where the temple was built by Solomon, the son of David. And to this day in the same geographic spot, Jerusalem is still there. And so Daniel 1:1 sets this up with two stories or two cities. And if I can borrow the title from Charles Dickens' book, it's "A Tale of Two Cities." "A Tale of Two Cities."

And that in one sense is a way to understand the whole Bible. The Bible is a story of a tale between two cities, Jerusalem and Babylon. Jerusalem, the city of God. Babylon, the city of Satan, Satan the devil. A city that represents all that Satan represents and his adversarial relationship with God, his purpose, and his plan. Babylon epitomizes or personifies that. That's why it begins in Genesis with what began to be built at Babel, the city of Nimrod. And it arches all the way to the end of the Bible in the book of Revelation where we talk about this system called Babylon the Great that will appear at the time and the end of the age and it has that name. And that's why again, the name Babylon, the city Babylon, the whole system of Babylon, the culture of Babylon, and the religion of Babylon stretches from Genesis to Revelation as the personification of the system that goes against God.

While Jerusalem, the city of God, the city where...it was the capital of the united monarchy, where the temple stood, that is the city that represents, if you will, God and His system. In Revelation 20, what's the name of the city that will come down out of the heavens after all the events that we read about in Revelation? It's called the New Jerusalem, okay? So Jerusalem and Babylon, they're central cities to the story and here we have them right here. Now, one other thing I want to make the point about in regard to what happens here in verse 1 of Chapter 1 and the time setting, I've already told you that it's 605 BC. And with the capture of Jerusalem, effectively, the nation of Israel comes to a conclusion. There's still a king, but he's a vassal king. He's under Babylon.

And there'll be a lot of intrigue and Jeremiah is still there. Jeremiah never leaves the city. He's still prophesying, still working. But for all intents and purposes, the nation that God created through Moses, through Joshua, through the kings that was united under David comes to an end. Conclusion. When the story opens here, that's important. The curtain now is rising on the story of Daniel. Israel as a nation no longer exists for all practical purposes. And we begin to read about a servant, Daniel, in Babylon. I want you to remember that. When we come to the book of Revelation, we are going to read in the first chapter of the book of Revelation that John was in vision on the Lord's day, the day of the Lord. And as we understand the timeline, the prophetic timeline of the day of the Lord, with the opening of the book of Revelation, we are looking at a time, even future from us here, where Israel no longer exists.

And we are going to be seeing and the book of Revelation is going to be talking to us about a period called the times of the Gentiles and the dominance of these Gentile powers that begin in Babylon with the story of Daniel. And the descendants of Abraham, those who have received the Abrahamic promises, by the time Revelation opens, their time has passed from the scene of history. So there is a parallel between Daniel 1:1 and Revelation 1. In Revelation 1, ancient Israel is no longer. Babylon now has come on the scene and these four empires that the book of Daniel is going to tell us about, Gentile powers, are going to dominate the world's scene. In the end of the age, God has not forgotten His promise to Abraham and his descendants, and He has blessed Israel and those descendants in the end of the age with material promises and blessings of which we are the inheritors in America.

But when we come to the time of the events of Revelation because of sin, because of God's judgment, our time will have come to an end. And we are going to be seeing and read as we do read about in Revelation, the rise of another power, Babylon, the end time Babylon. And that's why we study Daniel in Revelation in tandem here. First Daniel this semester, Revelation the next semester. They're connected. And in all these ways, we'll show you how that works when we study into the histories of it all here. So there's a lot just in this first chapter, during first verse to consider as we begin to open it up. All right, with that, let's move on to verse 2. Now, you know why we have to have a whole semester to get through a book like Daniel.

Daniel 1:2 "The Lord gave Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into his hand with some of the articles of the house of God, which he carried into the land of Shinar to the house of his god. And he brought the articles into the treasure house of his god." 

Jehoiakim is the king of Judah at that point. He is put into the hand or the control of King Nebuchadnezzar. And he then goes into the temple and takes some of the articles, some of the vestments of the temple, carries them into the land of Shinar. Now, Shinar is just a name for Babylon. It's another name, an older name for Babylon, but that's what is being described. "He carries them into the land of Shinar to the house of his god. And he puts them into the treasure house of his god."

Now, this was a common practice in the ancient world when one nation would go to war against another, beat them up. To prove their dominance, they would go into the temple of the vanquished country and rob the images of their god or goddess, their chief deity. They would take them out of that temple, take them back to their home, put them in the temple of their god in a subservient role to show the fact that, in this case, Babylon's god is greater than the God of Israel or Jerusalem. But this was done all over the ancient world because they all had deities, temples to their pagan deities, and it was the trophy. It was what they did.

But guess what? They went into the temple in Jerusalem. Did they find an idol in there? What do you think?

[Man] No.

[Darris McNeely] No. Why? Why didn't they find an idol in the temple in Jerusalem? An image of God.

[Woman] Ten commandments.

[Darris McNeely] Ten commandments. Yeah. Thou shalt make no graven image before you. That was one of the wonders of any foreign occupier of Israel. They couldn't believe that these Jews had a temple that didn't have an image of their god in it because their temples did. Apollo, Athena, Diana, and Ephesus, and other places. And these pesky Jews, they didn't do that. I mean, there's one Roman general who comes into the temple in Jerusalem in the first century BC. His name is Pompey. He walks right into the temple, goes into the Holy of Holies. He's looking for a god. And he can't believe that these Jews don't have a god. He doesn't find an image.

Alexander the Great is said to have wanted to visit the temple as well. We don't... Josephus, there's that name again, says that he did go to Jerusalem, but we don't have a record of him going into the temple. They did bring...according to Josephus, the high priest brought out a copy of the book of Daniel and read it to Alexander and said, "Right here, this chapter, Chapter 6, it's talking about you. Chapter 7, it's talking about you, Alex." And he's supposed to be all impressed by that. I think that story actually happened. But Alexander the Great always visited every temple in every city that he conquered because he thought he was descended from a god, from Zeus. And he wanted to see all these images. But in Jerusalem, they didn't have that.

So what Nebuchadnezzar takes are bowls and plates, goblets, and instruments out...the articles, it says, out of the house of God, beaten out of pure gold and silver. And that's what he takes. Now, when we come to Daniel 5, we were there, you know, in the previous class, but at Belshazzar's feast, they bring these articles out, and they use them in that night of dining when the handwriting of the walk takes place. And it's a sacrilege. It's a desecration. But they actually dine on those. But that's all they could get. But those were not graven images. Those were what had been commanded by God to be created, to be used for the service of the temple. But they were not graven images. And so this is established right up here.

So move on to verse 3.

Daniel 1:3-4 "Then the king instructed Ashpenaz, the master of his eunuchs, to bring some of the children of Israel and some of the king's descendants and some of the nobles, young men in whom there was no blemish, but good-looking, gifted in all wisdom, possessing knowledge, quick to understand, who had ability to serve in the king's palace, and whom they might teach the language and literature of the Chaldeans." 

And so this was the purpose of gathering Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, Abed-Nego, and others that are not mentioned in the story and carting them off to Jerusalem. They were to be then indoctrinated, put through an academy in Babylon to learn the ways of the Chaldeans or the Babylonians.

Chaldea is the region in which Babylon was. So we sometimes say the Chaldeans or the Babylonians, it's the same thing. They were to learn the language and the literature and all of the knowledge. They were smart enough to be able to do that. Now, we would have known that Daniel certainly spoke Hebrew, but likely spoke Aramaic, which was known throughout all the world at that time. He may have had a smattering of other languages, but we could probably guess certainly Hebrew and likely a bit of Aramaic. Now they have to learn the language of the Babylonians and the religion of the Babylonians. They're put through an intense schooling. It's going to be a few years to be trained into what is in essence the civil service of Babylon.

So they're going to become government officials, administering the day-to-day activities of the cities and the empire throughout this whole region of Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar wasn't a dummy. He wasn't going to waste this brain pool that he knew was there among the Jews in Jerusalem. He takes the best. He finds out who's got the highest SAT, PSAT, everything else. And they look it all up. They gather them up probably in the streets of Jerusalem in the main square, and they marched them off to Babylon. He's going to use them. Now, Daniel and his friends are going to be expected to learn not only the language but most certainly the religion of Babylon, which was completely pagan.

The chief god of Babylon was a god named Marduk. There were others, but the number one was a god named Marduk or Marduk. I like to say Marduk just because it's easier to say Marduk. Babylonian religion was also full of superstition, sorcery, the black arts. We'll see that as we get into Chapter 2 with the magicians that are called upon to interpret the dream of Nebuchadnezzar. They are people who read the stars. They will cut open an animal and layout on a table the guts, the entrails of a sheep, a rabbit, whatever other animal. And then these specially trained priests will look at that. And from that they will say, "All right, this is a good day to go to war, good day to die," whatever it might be. Or, "Nope, we better not go. The omens, the signs are not here that are favorable to the king. We don't advise you to go."

And that would be done not only for going to war but for any other major project, the building of a major building within a city or laying out a city. They wouldn't do that without a sacrifice to their god, an animal being killed, everything being laid out to find whether or not it was auspicious or the right time to do it. And there was a system to all of that. This is what Daniel and his friends would have been expected to learn, all right? Imagine yourself being forced to learn the Catholic catechism or the writings of the Bhagavad Gita in some course of learning. And not just an apologetics or a comparative religion class, but a thorough systematic study of everything connected with those. Because you are then going to be called upon to administer affairs based on that religion.

Take the Quran for instance. I mean, the Muslim nations run by what they call Sharia law, they are administering government by the laws interpreted out of the Quran. This is what Daniel would have had to do. This is what they were being trained to do. Only it wasn't the Quran, it hadn't been written yet. It was the laws and the religion of the gods and deities of Babylon. And this is what is setting up this whole confrontation that we're reading about here in Daniel 1 as they are to be taught the language and the literature of the Chaldeans. 

Daniel 1:5-7 It says, "The king appointed to them a daily provision of the king's delicacies and of the wine which he drank and three years of training," so it was a three-year training program, "so that at the end of that time, they might serve before the king. Now, from among those of the sons of Judah were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah." These were their Hebrew names. "To them, the chief of the eunuchs gave names. He gave Daniel the name Belteshazzar, to Hananiah, Shadrach, to Mishael, Meshach, and to Azariah, Abed-Nego." 

And of course, when we typically refer to them, we refer to them by at least those three by their Babylonian names, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego. And so verse 8 tells us, however, that…

Daniel 1:8 “Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with a portion of the king's delicacies, nor with the wine which he drank. Therefore, he requested of the chief of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself." 

So here's where they draw a line. He didn't mind so much... And what we can conclude is he didn't mind learning the knowledge, wisdom, and culture of Babylon. But he drew the line on the matters that would cause him to truly assimilate into the culture. And he drew a line on food.

Now, it's not explicitly cleared from the text that it was clean and unclean food. Some commentators feel that that was part of it. Certainly, the Babylonians would have been eating pig. But they would also be serving food that had been part of an idol worship. Plus, it would have been food that they just weren't used to in a far different richer diet than they were used to. I, personally, come down on the side that no doubt unclean meat was a part of this. And that's where they drew the line. And other commentators will agree with that, even though the commentator may think it's okay to eat pork today because of supposedly what Jesus meant in the Gospels when He commented upon that. But let's just say that the line was on food.

Now, in the Bible, when you study the food laws, the food laws are a part of the holiness code. God says, "Don't eat this. Be you holy." And that's one of the tenets by which we today still do not eat unclean foods, understanding that it's part of a holiness code that God gave specific commandments on. And we could say, I think, carefully and easily with Daniel and his friends that with what they put into their mouth, they were not going to go that far. It's okay to learn the annals of Marduk, but they weren't going to be defiled by food. That's where they drew the line. There's a lot to be thought and said about that. I think I'll wait until the next class. We'll come back and talk a little bit more about that as to how that applies to us today as we look at Daniel, a disciple, and how God is using him here and what we should be learning from that. So in the next class, we'll pick it up here with verse 9 and continue forward.