Sárospataki Füzetek 20. (2016)
2016 / 2. szám - MISCELLANEOUS / SONSTIGES - Imre Tokics: Daniel's Worship int he City of Babylon
Imre Tokics Scholars have pointed to a number of similarities between Daniel and story of Joseph.23 • Daniel and his companions represent the godly remnant of Israel which preserved the testimony of God even in the dark time of apostasy and divine judgment.24 Daniel and his friends’ lives were a lifelong worship in the foreign land. Their wisdom came from God. In the Bible, wisdom is a spiritual and ethical virtue, not just a natural outcome of one’s hard work. This is because wisdom is a gift from heaven. True wisdom is not blended with mere intellectual curiosity but with deep trust in God’s leading.25 The Hebrew young men, demonstrated a kind of wisdom that was much superior to that of all the Babylonian and non-Babylonian wise men. Worship was most important for them through their lives because they understand God in all times and all places. • King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream and the Jews The second year in Dan. 2:1 changed everything: The king had dreams. The Hebrew noun plural form means it was a series of dreams. The second year of the king was very important. In Babylon dream books were commonly used to explain and treat dream-related problems. The experts were supposed to consult the books, explain the symbols and meanings of the dream, and also conduct appropriate rituals to do away with the evil powers that were behind the dream.26 The spokesmen for the group were the Chaldeans, members of the ruling class in Neo-Babylon. Their commencement greeting: “O king, live forever!” contains a tone of irony here because the story’s conclusion is that only the Hebrew God lives forever. The dream was unsettling in the extreme.27 The king’s verdict: all the wise man in the city of Babylon must die! Scholars have rightly called this moment the lowest point in Babylon’s history for it demonstrated the bankruptcy of its astrological system. Daniel refers to the wise men’s inability to help the king, but in doing so he does not specifically mention the term “Chaldean”. At this point, the focus of Daniel is “worship of God”. • For this reason Daniel arranges a second visit to the king. This time he follows the traditional protocol at the palace and defers to Arioch, the commander of the king’s guard, appointed by the king to put the wise men of Babylon to death. Dan. 2:14. Daniel says that no wise man, 23 STEFANOVIC, Zdravko: Ibid 86. 24 WALVOORD, John F. Daniel: Ibid 43. 25 STEFANOVIC, Zdravko: Ibid 72. 26 OPPENFIEIM, Alfred Leo: The Interpretation of Dreams in the Ancient Near East, Philadelphia, American Philosophical Society, 1956, 219. 27 BERRIGAN, Daniel: Ibid 55. 92 Sárospataki Füzetek 20. évfolyam 2016-2
