Daniel 3 is one of the more memorable stories in the book of Daniel. Again, I use the word “stories” not because these are myths or fables, but rather because they are real-life events in narrative literature that have all the qualifies of a good story. It has compelling characters, a strong plot, conflict and tension and universality and relevance (in other words, we can relate to it).
Now in their 40s, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were well established in their careers as Babylonian officials. Now they were offered a simple alternative: bow or burn. Caught in the web of global politics, they were called to choose between their commitment to God and their allegiance to Nebuchadnezzar. With no other options—short of compromising their faith—they chose to be faithful to God and suffer the consequences.
Who hasn’t heard the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego, the three brave Hebrew youths who refused to bow down to Nebuchadnezzar’s idol and were thrown into the fiery furnace?
After dreaming about an image (2:31-45), Nebuchadnezzar constructs an image and commands everyone to worship it (3:1-5). Defiance would mean swift destruction in a fiery furnace (v. 6). Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to worship the image (vv. 8-12) and declared their confidence in God (vv. 13-18). When the king has them thrown into the fiery furnace, but their God delivers them (vv. 19-27). Nebuchadnezzar acknowledges this divine deliverance and warns that anyone who speaks against the God of these Jewish men will be destroyed (vv. 28-29). Having escaped fiery death, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are promoted once again (v. 30).
This chapter raises a number of important questions:
- When Nebuchadnezzar issues a decree contradicting God’s law regarding the worship of idols (Ex. 20:4-5; Lev. 26:1), how are the Jews to respond?
- What risks must the Jews be willing to face to remain faithful to God?
- Will God always intervene to rescue His people from their plight, as He does in this chapter for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego?
Structure
Like many chapters in Daniel, this chapter is structured as a chiasm.
Divine Deliverance from Death (3:1-30)
- The Herald Proclaims a Royal Decree (3:1-7)
- Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego Are Accused (3:8-12)
- Nebuchadnezzar Is Enraged and Gives Orders (3:13-15)
- Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego Declare Resolve (3:16-18)
3′. Nebuchadnezzar Is Enraged and Gives Orders (3:19-23)
2′. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego Are Delivered (3:24-27)
1′. Nebuchadnezzar Proclaims a Royal Decree (3:28-30)
Daniel 3 is framed by different commands (1 and 1′). In the first, the king’s herald announces the obligation to worship the image, and in the second the king decrees that anyone who speaks against God will be destroyed. This is a divine reversal.
The main drama of the story occurs in verses 8-27, where Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are accused of defying the king (2) but are delivered from the fiery furnace without harm 2′).
In the penultimate sections of the chiasm (3 and 3′), Nebuchadnezzar gives commands. When he hears that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refuse to worship the golden image, he commands that they be brought to him and he questions their allegiance (3). Part of this section includes the warning about death in the fiery furnace. Then, in 3′, Nebuchadnezzar orders the furnace to be made hotter than usual and the three young men to be cast in.
Central to the story of chapter 3 is the resolve of three young men. Like Daniel in chapter 1, they knew that there was a line that they could not cross and they had already decided not to bow down to a graven image. In verses 16-18 they declare their trust in God to deliver them but also their intent to be faithful to him no matter what the cost, even if he chooses not to spare them from death.
Date
The setting up of Nebuchadnezzar’s giant golden graven image on the plains of Dura did not happen right on the heels of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in chapter 2. Rather, some 23 years had passed, time enough for the king to have amassed several more military victories. He was indeed that “head of gold” and now his success seems to have gone to his head! Had he desired, he likely could have gone on to conquer a greater part of the known world. The potential was present, but pride threw up an obstacle.
Back in Jerusalem, the wicked king Jehoiakim had died. Perhaps Nebuchadnezzar had heard about this vassal king, sitting on his puppet throne, being given “the burial of an ass.” The kings of Judah came and went at Nebuchadnezzar’s whim. By this time Nebuchadnezzar had taken another group of captives in 597 B.C., among whom was Ezekiel. A third invasion of Judah resulted not only in the final fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple but also the monarchy itself. Egypt had been conquered and a 13-year siege of Tyre had finally been won. And all of this went to Nebuchadnezzar’s head.
Since ancient cultures considered their fortune in war as an indication of power of their patron deities, it may be that Nebuchadnezzar’s amazement of the Jewish God, as recorded in chapter 2, had eroded in the subsequent events leading to Babylon’s final destruction of Jerusalem. Having destroyed God’s house (the temple) and burned the city, Nebuchadnezzar may have interpreted his overthrow of Jerusalem as an indication of the weakness of Israel’s God. (https://www.spiritandtruth.org/teaching/Book_of_Daniel/commentary/htm/chapters/03.html#3.3)
Daniel’s Friends Would Not Bow (Daniel 3:1-12)
Verse 1 records for us: “King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold, whose height was sixty cubits and its breadth six cubits. He set it up on the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon.”
The plain of Dura is just southeast of Babylon, constructed near the city so the largest number of people possible could see the magnificent golden image and participate in public worship of the king. Professor George Rawlinson noted in an article in Smith’s Bible Dictionary that an archaeological explorer named M. Oppert discovered remains of an enormous “pedestal of a colossal statue” in the plain of Dura.
Ninety feet high and nine feet wide. It is likely that Nebuchadnezzar had seen the pyramids, the sphinxes, the colossal temples and the giant statue of Rameses the Great when he conquered Egypt. The sheer size of these monuments left an indelible image on Nebuchadnezzar’s imagination and the great size of this statue matched Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, which was of a “mighty” image (2:31).
“Before I die, I must have a gigantic monument built for me to impress future generations of my greatness, wealth and power.”
Here in the U. S. we now have a 90-foot statue of an Indian god. After housing the temple with the tallest gopuram (87-feet) in North Carolina and the world’s second largest Hindu temple in New Jersey, America unveiled the tallest standing statue of Lord Hanuman on 18 August following a three-day prana pratishtha ceremony in the south coast. Remarkably, the 90-feet tall Hanuman sculpture is the third tallest statue in the United States, next to the Statue of Liberty in New York, and the Pegasus & Dragon in Florida.
And, of course, while Egypt’s monuments were made of bricks Nile mud and chopped straw, but Nebuchadnezzar would construct his out of gold! After all, he had amassed plenty of gold from the peoples that he had conquered over the last 20+ years, likely most of it from Egypt.
Some wonder whether it was solid gold, or just plated with gold. Amir Tsirfati, in his book Discovering Daniel, calculates that a statue of this size had a volume of 7,290 feet. A cubic foot of gold weighs 1,188.6 pounds. That would be a total weight of 8,664,894 pounds! And because you are dying to know, based on the current price of gold at $3,344.70 [6.10.25] per ounce. That’s nearly 464 trillion dollars!
That’s a lot of money, even for the king of Babylon! I opt for it being plated with gold, which would still be very expensive and very gaudy. “Jewish tradition holds that the Babylonian king used gold from the treasures taken from Solmon’s Temple to cover the surface of the man-shaped statue” (Grant R. Jeffrey, Countdown to the Apocalypse, p. 66).
Another thing to notice is that although only the head of gold in chapter 2 represented Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon, here he makes the whole image of gold. Was this expressive of a desire to live forever, or to have his legacy never forgotten?
No silver, bronze, iron, or iron/clay were included in his statue. From head to toe, the golden statue symbolized the king’s hubris and defiance of what the God of heaven had revealed to Daniel. It is as if the king thought he could stop the vision from coming true. This was an apparent attempt to try to counteract the dream. It was a definite statement asserting that there would be no end or “after this” with respect to his kingdom, but rather that his glory would continue forever (E. A. Lucas, Daniel, p. 93).
“Nebuchadnezzar was a flawed man. Chief among those faults was pride, as we’ll see even more clearly in the next chapter. Whether this image was of the king of a god, or simply a giant obelisk, it was still a tangible representation of Nebuchadnezzar’s power and majesty” (Amir Tsarfati, Discovering Daniel, p. 62). “This not only indicates the superficial nature of his earlier confession of Yahweh as ‘God of gods and Lord of kings’ (2:47), but it also suggests an egotism tending toward megalomania” (Gleason Archer, Jr., “Daniel” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, p. 50).
So Nebuchadnezzar would make an image and it would be the focal point of worship , something he believed would unite the empire. “In ancient times it was common for kings who conquered nations that held diverse beliefs and religious practices to attempt to create political and religious unity by imposing a new national religion. Such religion usually was based on worship of the emperor as a god” (Grant R. Jeffrey, Countdown to the Apocalypse, p. 67)
It also seems to be Nebuchadnezzar’s declaration of independence from God. Unlike the golden head in the image in chapter 2 which was superseded by the arms and chest of silver, Nebuchadnezzar believed himself to be undefeated and deserving an eternal kingdom. James Montgomery Boice writes: “In this way he defied God and said in effect, ‘I will not allow the God of Deaniel to set my kingdom aside. My rule will endure’” (Daniel: An Expositional Commentary, p. 42).
What did this image represent?
If, as we suppose, the image is Nebuchadnezzar’s response to the revelation provided by Daniel’s interpretation of the dream in the previous chapter, it would be natural for the image to resemble that of chapter 2: the form of a man. “According to a number of patristic authors, the image represented a deification of Nebuchadnezzar himself.” (Stephen R. Miller, “Daniel,” in E. Ray Clendenen, Kenneth A. Mathews, and David S. Dockery, eds., The New American Commentary (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 1994), Dan. 3:1)
David Jeremiah comments: “It is no coincidence that the designers of this bizarre statue made it sixty cubits high and six cubits wide. In Revelation 13:19, the number of the beast of the Antichrist was the number of man, 666 The Bible gives the number six to mankind; seven is the number of perfection. We fall short; we never come up to the standard.
The image is a good picture of mankind; it was made of wood overlaid with gold. That’s the way our projects are outwardly [impressive], but inwardly inferior. Man is always setting up his gigantic projects, but when you get down to the core of them, there’s not much there” (David Jeremiah, The Handwriting on the Wall, p. 73).
Others suggest that this was not a deification of Nebuchadnezzar, but rather an image of Nebuchadnezzar’s patron god, Nebo (or Nabu). Prostration before Nebo would amount to a pledge of allegiance to his viceroy, Nebuchadnezzar. The dimensions are not that of a human, except maybe former NBA player Manute Bol. It is extremely tall and skinny. He was 7’7” and weighed only 201 pounds!
Leonardo da Vinci, an artistic genius, saw God’s artistry in the way He has designed the human body. He called it the Vitruvian Man and it shows the mathematical proportions of the human body.
The drawing represents Leonardo’s conception of ideal body proportions, originally derived from Vitruvius but influenced by his own measurements, the drawings of his contemporaries, and the De pictura treatise by Leon Battista Alberti. Nebuchadnezzar’s image was nothing like this.
Some posit that it is a human placed upon a pedestal so that the dimensions would be more human-like. Some see in the dimensions a reference to the number 666 (Rev. 13:13) the number of man in all his glory. This would reinforce that Nebuchadnezzar was merely a man, no match for God.
Heslop writes: “On the plains of Dura there stands today, a rectilinear mound, about twenty feet high, an exact square of about forty-six feet at the base, resembling the pedestal of a colossal statue.”
Others suggest that the image more exactly appears like the Asherah, the Hebrew tzelem, denoting something shaped by cutting or carving, more like a pole (Ezekiel 16:17; 23:14). But even if this statue represented a god, no one was left in any doubt as to whose power lay behind its existence. In contrast to Daniel’s confession that it was the God of heaven who set up kings and deposed them (2:21), the statue was Nebuchadnezzar’s defiant declaration that as king he could set up gods for his people to worship.
Regardless of what it may have symbolized, it was erected on a plain so that everyone could see it and worship it. The plain of Dura was the same Babylonian plain upon which the Tower of Babel had been erected (Gen. 11:2). In like manner, Nebuchadnezzar had erected this statue to communicate the dominance of his legacy, making a name for himself, and seeking that this image would unite the empire.
Throughout history egomaniacs have used religion to solidly their own praise and power. In the late 1930s it was written:
“One cannot be a good German and at the same time deny God. But an avowal of faith in the eternal Germany is an avowal of faith in the eternal God. Whoever serves Adolf Hitler the Fuhrer serves Germany, and whoever serves Germany serves God.”
Later on, in 1942, this was written:
“There is a lot of talk in Germany about Hitler’s Messianic characteristics. The thesis that Hitler is a miraculous being sent by a Supreme Power, and that he is capable of mystic communion with the German masses is gaining greater currency. Consequently, the attack on Christian religion becomes more severe. In Germany, no attempt is made to stamp out the faith in the supernatural. The policy is more blasphemous. It is to replace Christ. Religion is now counterfeited than dismissed. This extraordinary tendency is perhaps without parallel during the last two thousand years. The Nazis are trying to create an anti-type of Christianity. They have made their leader God.”
[These last two quotes are unattributed, but found in David Jeremiah’s Handwriting on the Wall, p. 74).
“When put in these terms, it becomes evident that our culture places the same pressure on each one of us to put our Godi second place, albeit in more subtle ways. We too find ourselves constantly pressed to keep our beliefs private, and therefore secondary. We are told that the public sphere must be kept untainted by any religion, for any other opinion threatens the unifying dogma of the separation of church and state. We can believe whatever we want, by all means. However, we are strongly discouraged from talking about it or trying to influence the beliefs of others” (Iain Duguid, Daniel in The Reformed Expository Commentary, p. 48).
Of course, this is exactly what the Antichrist will do during the tribulation, to try to win the allegiance of the whole world, including Jews.
The LXX renders צְלֵם [ṣelēm] as εἰκόνα [eikona], the same word used in the Greek NT for the image of the beast from the sea, the Antichrist, which all the world is forced to worship at the time of the end (Rev. 13:14-17). So this image foreshadows that equally idolatrous event.
The beast whose image is referred to is the same Antichrist. A statue of him is made animated and empowered by the second beast, the false prophet. The world’s population will then be forced to worship the man behind the image. The penalty will be the same as in this chapter in Daniel: death.
Man’s desire to be worshiped is as old as Adam. Nebuchadnezzar’s ceremony illustrates the well-worn path of totalitarian leaders who prostitute religion in the service of egotistical personal or political aspirations. He is one of many in the line extending from Nimrod (Gen. 10:8-9) to Antichrist (Rev. 13:15). And is represented in recent years by images of Saddam Hussein, portraits of Kim Il-Sung, King Jong-Il, Kin Jong-Un and Kim Jong-Suk. This dictatorial self-exaltation is not surprising. After all, pride is the sin that caused the fall of the great enemy himself (1 Tim. 3:6) and illustrated in the fall of the kings of Babylon (Isaiah 14:12-14) and Tyre (Ezekiel 28:13-14). Whether these passages refer implicitly to Satan or to Adam, they still reflect the inclination of the Evil One to desire all worship and to encourage us to worship ourselves.
Robert Bellah, in his 1996 book Habits of the Heart, describes an interview with a young lady named Sheila Larson, who described her own faith as “Sheilaism.” In defining what she calls ‘my own Sheilaism,’ she said: ‘It’s just try to love yourself and be gentle with yourself. You know, I guess, take care of each other. I think God would want us to take care of each other.’”
Today, so many people believe that their own desires are sovereign, so that it defines who they are, but this is just another expression of idolatry—holding the self up to be worshiped as in control of our lives, our identity and our destiny.
Why did Nebuchadnezzar have this statue built? Was it because of his dream and his desire that his dynasty would last forever? Or was it motivated by the wise men of Babylon who were trying to trap the faithful Hebrew young men into a compromising position or die for their beliefs?
Throughout history rulers have mixed politics with religion to try to strengthen their grip over their citizens. An example of this was displayed in 1936 when Herr Baldur von Schirach, head of the youth program for Nazi Germany, said: “If we act as true Germans we act according to the laws of God. Whoever serves Adolf Hitler, the führer, serves Germany, and whoever serves Germany serves God.”
This is the spirit of Babylon, self-worship, self-actualization and expressive individualism. It has crept into our society and churches here in the U. S. as well. Let us humble ourselves before the Most High God.
Grace Still Amazes 