DANIEL IN THE DEN OF LIONS.
JULY 30.-DAN.
6:10-23.
“The Lord is thy keeper.”-Psa. 121:5.
NOTHING gives us a
higher opinion of the kings of ancient times, their willingness to recognize
character and merit wherever it might be found, than does the record furnished
in the Book of Daniel. If we were surprised at Nebuchadnezzar’s impartial
treatment of his captives, in the selection of Daniel and his companions, and
their education and advancement in the kingdom; if we were surprised that the
king so greatly honored Daniel for the interpretation of a dream; if we were
surprised that, when convinced that Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego were
servants of the true God, Nebuchanezzar gave them still higher positions in the
empire; and if we were surprised that Belshazzar took no offence at Daniel’s
interpretation of the writing on the wall, but highly honored and rewarded him
for his faithful, plain, outspoken words,-we are still more surprised to find
that King Darius of the Medes and Persians, so far from destroying all the
rulers of Babylon, including Daniel, apparently spared all except the king
alive, and gave Daniel a very high position in the empire. We may reasonably
assume that, although God’s providence was in the matter of Daniel’s
preferment, nevertheless there was some creditable generosity in those heathen
kings, as well as some natural ability and good quality manifested by the
Prophet Daniel.
As one of the three presidents of the empire, and having charge over a
hundred and twenty of its provinces, Daniel stood in the way of many who sought
office, and, as a man of unimpeachable character, no doubt he stood in the way
of many schemes for the plundering of the treasury; for such public plundering
and dishonesty, said to be very general throughout Eastern countries to-day,
was probably so then to a large extent. For these selfish reasons, Daniel was
sure to have a host of secret enemies, who sought his downfall. From the
narrative we might suppose that these enemies, many of whom would be prominent
in official life, had watched in vain to find any real cause of complaint, and
that they finally concluded that, if fault would be found at all, it must be on
account of his religion.
How this reminds us of the Apostle’s testimony, “All that will live godly
in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution,” and again, our Lord’s words, “If ye
were of the world, the world would love his own, but because ye are not of the
world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you!”
(2 Tim. 3:12; John 15:19.) Even where there are no selfish motives to impel
the persecution, there is ever present the distinction between “light” and
“darkness:” and the fact noticed by all is mentioned by our Lord,-that all who
are themselves of the darkness hate the light and all who walk in the light.
(John 3:19-21.) Some one has truly said, “Whosoever does well and is faithful
and true, while others are dishonest and false, must expect to be opposed and
hated. Every effort will be made to injure his character, to drag him into the
mire, and to make it appear that he is no better than those who assail him.
Envy is sharper than a serpent’s tooth, and deadlier than the poison of asps.”
Shakespeare has truly said:
“Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow,
Thou shalt not escape calumny.”
“That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect;
For slander’s mark was ever yet the fair;
So thou be good, slander doth yet approve
Thy worth the greater.”
Sometimes we speak of the snares that are laid for the feet of God’s
servants as fixed by Satan, their great Adversary, and this may be so, at least
by supervision, and yet apparently there are some so fully imbued with the
spirit of their “father, the devil,” that his nefarious schemes and plots seem
to come quite naturally to them. And thus it was with Daniel’s enemies, who
sought his ruin. Very skillfully they counseled with the king respecting the
necessity that the people should recognize him as a god, and urged this as
essential to the enforcement of obedience to the king’s commands amongst his
new subjects. The theory of the empire was that the king’s person was
specially possessed by Ormuzd, the deity of the empire, that his word was
therefore representatively the word of that god, and that therefore all of his
decrees were infallible and inviolable, even by himself. Taking advantage of
this law of the Medes and Persians, that no decree could be altered or
abrogated, these plotters succeeded in having the king set apart thirty days in
which it should be a crime to offer a petition or worship to any other person
or god save to Darius himself.
We are not to suppose that the king had so false an idea of his own
personal consequence, nor that these his officers entertained the view that he
was an infallible god: rather, it was a matter which they suggested as a piece
of statecraft, a fraud upon the people, justified, in their perverted
judgments, by the greater peace and security from the prevalence of such a
superstitious reverence for the king and his laws. The false reasoning was of
the Jesuitical sort, which says, An evil or a falsehood is justified if
beneficial results are hoped for;-the same false principle which operates in
the minds of many intelligent preachers who, while thoroughly disbelieving in
the doctrine of eternal torment themselves, countenance and encourage, or at
least do not discourage, a belief in the falsehood on the part of their
hearers; hoping that the prevalent superstition on the subject may prove a
restraint upon the masses.
Having obtained the king’s signature to the new law, the conspirators
exulted in the thought that Daniel at last was in their grasp, and already
practically destroyed. They seem to have known the man’s character so well as
not to doubt that he would be faithful to his religious convictions, and thus
furnish them all the opportunity desired for his apprehension. And it was so.
After the matter was proclaimed as law, as having had the king’s signet, Daniel
worshiped as before, kneeling three times a day before the Lord in prayer,
thanksgiving and supplication-with his windows open toward Jerusalem, his
expectations bright with hope in the Lord’s promises, and especially with the
thought that now the seventy years of Jerusalem’s desolation were about
fulfilled, and that very soon Cyrus, according to the prophecy, would become
king, and send back the covenanted people to the land of promise.
We are not informed why Daniel had adopted a habit of private worship in
so public a manner as to be generally known to the people-a manner so different
from that which the Lord commended to the household of faith of this Gospel
age, saying, “When thou prayest, enter into thy closet [secret apartment], and
when thou hast shut thy door, pray to the Father which is in secret.” (Matt.
6:6.) Quite probably the custom of Babylon was such as to make Daniel’s more
open course the reasonable and proper one. Possibly all worship was more or
less public or visible, and for Daniel to have worshiped in secret might have
been misunderstood to mean that he did not worship at all; while to worship as
he did, not before an idol, but with his face toward Jerusalem, the typical
city of God, the great King, and its Temple, the typical habitation of God, the
great King, would be his standing confession of God before the various
nationalities of Babylon, including his own people, the Jews, who would need
just such an illustration of faithfulness to the true God and separation from
idolatry.
Daniel was not satisfied to merely close his eyes in prayer after he had
retired to rest, as do many people living under the greater light of this
Gospel age, and under greater privileges and opportunities and grander
promises. He had a great God who was worthy of reverence and worship, and he
was great enough as a man to appreciate that it was a privilege to have
intercourse and fellowship with his Creator. He was not only not ashamed to bow
the knee to the Almighty, but was unwilling to assume a less humble position
before God than he and others assumed toward earthly kings. Our judgment is that it is impossible for any Christian to
maintain a proper consistent walk in life, and to build up such a character and
faith structure as are represented by the Apostle as composed of “gold, silver
and precious stones,” without prayer;-more than this, without regularity in
prayer;-we would almost be inclined to say, without kneeling in prayer:
and we believe that the experiences and testimonies of the truest and best of
the Lord’s people who have ever lived will corroborate this.
One of the points of the Adversary’s attack, surest to have a
baneful influence, is along this line. When the Lord’s people become
overcharged with the cares of this life, instead of realizing their danger and
seeking the help of the Lord to order the affairs of life differently, the
suggestion comes that they are too weary to pray, or that another time will be
more favorable: or perhaps they are so fully engrossed that reverence and acknowledgment
to the Lord, from whom cometh every good and perfect gift, is entirely
forgotten: or perhaps sin lieth at the door, and they seek not to think of the
Lord, and therefore avoid the throne of grace: or perhaps coldness has come in
from some other cause, and the Lord seems afar off, and prayer becomes a mere
formality and is by and by abandoned. The child of God who is in a proper
condition of heart-harmony will desire to commune with his Creator,-not only to
hear his Word, but also to offer thanksgiving and worship; as surely as he will
desire natural food and drink for the sustenance of his natural body. Whoever
has not this experience should seek it; and, according to our Lord’s promise,
he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
According to a preconcerted arrangement, the conspirators assembled
themselves at the proper time to be witnesses of Daniel’s devotion to the true
God, and then proceeded to the king to announce that the first one to disobey
his decree, and therefore to come under its punishment, was the aged, honored
and trusted President of a hundred and twenty provinces of the empire, Daniel.
The king was sorely displeased with himself: evidently he had not thought of
Daniel, and of the possibility of such results following his decree. He had
been advised to make it, it had seemed to flatter him, he had yielded to the
urgent representations of the supposedly well-intentioned and wise men; and now
he discerned that he had been deliberately led into a trap for the very purpose
of destroying his most valued counselor, of whom, evidently, he had not thought
to ask advice before signing the decree.
The king sought every possible way to make void the decree or to excuse
Daniel from its penalty; but the conspirators were close at hand with arguments
to prove that such a course would be contrary to the usages of the nation,
would mean the undermining of the authority of the king and the loss of
confidence in his decrees by the people; and he found no escape from his
dilemma: his counselors even seemed to threaten the stability of his throne
themselves, assuring him that “no decree may be changed.” Finally the
king commanded that Daniel be brought and cast into the den of lions;
expressing to Daniel, however, the hope, “May thy God, whom thou servest
continually, deliver thee.” The exemplary conduct of Daniel, previously and at
this time, had its effect upon the king, as expressed by the word, “continually.”
He had confidence that God was with Daniel, and that the God whom Daniel so
sincerely worshiped and so intelligently trusted, must be more powerful than
all other gods. Such should be the lesson of every Christian life, one which
would testify not only to his own character and faithfulness to God, but one also
which would testify to the good character and faithfulness of the God whom he
worships.
The conspirators were bent on having matters thoroughly accomplished, and
hence the stone (which covered the den and was probably fastened to its place
with an iron bar) was doubly sealed with wax, to prove that it was not tampered
with-one seal was the king’s the other that of the lords of the empire, who
were amongst the conspirators, so that there might be no subsequent alteration
of the conditions or delivery of Daniel during the night. If the lions were
not very hungry at the moment Daniel was first cast in, it was reckoned that
they would certainly become so before morning. How the hearts of these evil
men longed for the death of a good man, who had done them no injury-except as
his life may have been a living epistle, contradictory to theirs, or as he may
have thwarted some of their efforts to do evil!
It is very much to the king’s honor that we read that he was so troubled
in mind that he could not sleep, but spent the night fasting, and very early in
the morning made haste to the den to see whether or not Daniel’s God had
delivered him. So amongst the friends and neighbors of a true Christian are
some who know and appreciate God only as they know and appreciate the Christian
character.
The king’s words, as he approached the den, were a wonderful tribute to
Daniel’s faithfulness as a servant of God. “Is thy God whom thou servest
continually able to deliver thee from the lions?” The king here associated,
and that properly, Daniel’s faithful service to God with his hope respecting
God’s faithfulness to Daniel. And this reminds us of the words of the Apostle
(1 John 3:22), “And whatsoever we ask we receive of him, because we keep his
commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.”-Compare John
8:29.
The heart of Darius was glad as he heard Daniel’s voice saluting him,
assuring him of his safety; and he at once caused him to be delivered from the
den. Daniel expressed one reason for the Lord’s deliverance, in the words,
“Before him innocency was found in me-as also before thee, O king, have I done
no hurt.” We note the fact that haughtiness and bravado are wholly lacking in
the prophet’s announcement of the great favor of God manifested on his behalf.
There is a lesson here which many of the Lord’s people need to learn; namely,
that, having done their part, they are not to boast of it, nor to parade their
sanctity, nor to speak exultingly of the results, as though they were of their
own achievement, but are simply, like Daniel, to give the glory to God.
The expression, “God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions’
mouths,” need not be understood literally to signify that an angel was
personally present and literally prevented the lions from opening their mouths;
for though such a course would be entirely possible, we are to understand the
term, angel, in a general way to signify any power or agency which God might
employ, and the expression, “shutting of the lions’ mouths,” would simply
signify that they had been restrained from doing violence to Daniel. Nor would
we question that an angel of the Lord could have been with Daniel, and kept him
company in the den, if such were the will of God; but the presence or absence
of an angel was not essential to the divine protection granted.
Not many of the Lord’s people are cast into dens of literal lions, and yet
at times quite a good many of them have had experiences which strongly resemble
this-as for instance, the Apostle Paul, in recounting his experiences, mentions
perils of waters, perils of robbers, perils by his own countrymen, perils by
the heathen, perils in the city, perils in the wilderness, perils in the sea,
and caps the climax in the specification of “perils amongst false brethren.”
(2 Cor. 11:26.) It is possible for human mouths to do us more harm than the
mouths of brute beasts; the Apostle James points this out when he says:
“Behold, how small a fire enkindles a great forest! And the tongue is a fire
in the world of unrighteousness. The tongue is established among our members
as the one which defiles the whole body and sets on fire the course of life,
and it is enkindled of Gehenna; for every species, both of wild beasts and of
birds and of reptiles and of sea-creatures, is tamable and has been tamed by
the human race; but the tongue of men no man is able to subdue. It is an
irrestrainable evil, full of death-producing poison.”-James 3:6-8.
As God’s providence was over Daniel, permitting him to come under the
power of natural wild beasts, and making this a test of his fidelity to God and
to principles of righteousness, so the Lord’s providence sometimes permits his
faithful ones to be exposed to the venom and malice and hate and
misrepresentation and slander of human tongues, far more vicious and far more
terrible every way than the wild beasts of the jungle, which can harm but for a
moment. Nevertheless, as the Lord was able to deliver Daniel, he is not less
able to send his angel (his providences) to shut the mouths of those who would
do injury to his people. They may gnash upon them with their teeth, as the
lions may have been permitted to do to Daniel, to test his faith in the Lord;
yet we are to remember that all things are subject to him with whom we have to
do, and whose service we have entered through vows of consecration.
In some instances it may please the Lord to grant a wonderful deliverance,
as in the case of Daniel, while in other instances the providential dealings
may result otherwise, as for instance in Stephen’s case: his plain but kind
statement of the truth to his Jewish brethren “cut them to the heart,” and
“they gnashed on him with their teeth, and cried out with a loud
voice and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord and cast him out
of the city, and stoned him....And he kneeled down and cried with a loud voice,
Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.” But even in such a case the victory
was with the Lord’s servant, of whom we read, “But he, being full of the holy
spirit, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God.” And the
record further is that Stephen, in the midst of such persecution, had the peace
of God which passeth all understanding, to such an extent that his face was “as
the face of an angel”-serene, calm, unperturbed. -Acts 6:15; 7:54-60.
The Scriptural record is that after Daniel’s deliverance King Darius
caused all the conspirators to be cast into the den of lions, and that thus
they were all destroyed. Josephus adds something from tradition, to the effect
that, when Daniel was delivered the conspirators claimed that his preservation
was due to the fact that some one had fed the lions before he was cast into the
den, and that the king undertook to demonstrate the matter by having the lions
liberally fed, and then casting into the den those who had conspired against
Daniel, who were speedily devoured.
This reminds us of how Haman was hanged upon the very gallows he had
prepared for Mordecai. The Psalmist seems to speak of it as a principle
associated with the divine government, that those who dig pits for others are
likely to fall therein themselves. (Psa. 7:15,16; 9:15,16.) And who has not
observed that those who gnash upon others with the tongue of scandal and
falsehood, envy and malice, are likely in the end to be injured by the very
falsehood and bitter words wherewith they seek to injure others? There is a
law of retribution at work, in accordance with which a recompense of evil is
dealt out to all evil-doers, either in the present life or in the life to come.