I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Daniel 1-2.

    Today’s passage contains two stories, each with their own message. The first story is about how Daniel and his three friends became officials in the Babylonian Empire. The four of them were brought to Babylon as part of a group of young men from Jerusalem. We would probably have thought of them as boys since they were almost certainly no older than 18, and possibly as young as 12. However, when these four when they started their training were determined to be faithful to God. Part of that was keeping a kosher diet. Daniel requested a diet of vegetables for himself and his friends because none of the meat available to them was killed and prepared according to the laws laid out by God. Daniel did not request a diet of all vegetables because meat in itself was a problem but because the meat available to them would not have been killed and prepared according to the Law of Moses. The Law of Moses laid out few requirements concerning the harvesting and preparation of vegetables.
    The passage tells us that Daniel and his three friends were the only ones among the group they were trained with who chose a kosher diet. We often think of them as being trained among a group of young men (really just boys) from all over the Babylonian Empire. However, the passage only mentions that they were among a group of young men brought back from Jerusalem. So, we have to conclude that the young men to whom Daniel and his friends were compared were also from the nobility of Jerusalem. All of these young men had been taught God’s Law, but only these four chose to attempt to follow it. Even after these four pointed the way by taking a stand, none of the others followed their lead. They did not allow the failure of their peers to follow their lead discourage them from doing what God had commanded.

    The second story is the story of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. The king had a dream which struck him as very portentous and he wanted to know what it meant. So, he called all of his various soothsayers, those who claimed supernatural ability to tell the future from various signs (one of which was dreams). They asked the king to tell them what the dream was and then they would tell him what it meant. However, Nebuchadnezzar demanded that they tell him what the dream was and what it meant without him telling them what he had dreamed. My suspicion is that the reason he asked them to tell him what he had dreamed was because he could not really remember the dream. Perhaps he had even previously told them about a dream, received an explanation of its meaning, and then later remembered other parts of the dream which made the meaning they had told him nonsense. In any event, none of these men could tell him what he had dreamed.
    In response to their failure, Nebuchadnezzar ordered the execution of all the “wise men of Babylon”. I am speculating here, but I believe that Nebuchadnezzar ordered this because he believed that his soothsayers had been scamming him all along and that the other “wise men” were complicit in the scam. In any event, the execution order included Daniel and his three friends even though they had not been part of the group summoned to interpret Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. Daniel immediately went to the king and requested time to find the answer. Daniel and his friends then prayed to God for aid. God revealed to Daniel Nebuchadnezzar’s dream and its interpretation. When Daniel went to the king with the answer God had given him, he stressed that he did not obtain this information because he was particularly talented. I think this is the most important part of this story. The other men who offered to interpret Nebuchadnezzar’s dream all claimed a special skill and/or power which would allow them to do so. Daniel claimed that anyone could have obtained the answer because it came from God, not human agency.