Daniel 6

Darius the Mede or King Darius the Great? Medes were from the Midian Empire in what is now northern Iran. Darius the Mede, reported here, takes over at the death of Belshazzar. King Darius the Mede hasn’t shown up in history outside the Bible. And on the timeline of most scholars, it seems, there’s no room for him. The Book of Daniel says he was the king of Babylon after Belshazzar but before Cyrus the Great. Yet ancient documents say Cyrus took over when his army invaded, and Belshazzar was executed. In histories outside the Bible, the first Darius to rule the Persian Empire was Darius the Great, third emperor of the Achaemenid Dynasty. He reigned over the Persian Empire from 522-486 BC. He started about 83 years after Daniel was taken from Jerusalem to Babylon.

The word satrap means “guardian” or “guardian of the kingdom.” Satrap governors served the king of the Persian Empire, but they generally seemed to have a lot freedom to make big decisions.

The writer doesn’t say why the other officials objected to Daniel, a man with a welcoming spirit. One guess, Daniel wasn’t native to the region of Babylon, Media, or Persia. He was a Jew from the defunct nation of Judah and the leveled ruins of its capital city of Jerusalem.

Jewish people generally prayed standing (1 Chronicles 23:30; Nehemiah 9; Matthew 6:5). Bowing down on knees seems like the thing a person would do when they are deeply troubled. Also, Daniel would have been over 80 years old by this time. He was taken captive to Babylon in 605 BC. He faced the lions in 522 BC or later.

Jews in the tribe of Levi, a tribe of priests, reportedly prayed twice a day: morning and evening (1 Chronicles 23:30). There’s no indication that Daniel’s prayer habits came from Jewish tradition. One songwriter in the Bible talked about praying seven times a day, but that may be a metaphor about staying in a constant state of connection with God (Psalm 119:164).

A Bible writer who reported Solomon building the first Jewish Temple mentioned that people faced the Temple when they prayed (1 Kings 8:44). But it’s rare to find that anywhere else in the Jewish Bible, which Christians usually call the Old Testament.

There’s irony in Daniel’s prayer “for God’s help.” If he hadn’t prayed it, he wouldn’t have needed it. Yet, he would get what he prayed for.

It wasn’t a lion’s den, which sounds like a scenic hangout. It was more likely a big hole in the ground, possibly a cistern originally dug to collect rainwater. The Aramaic word is gob. It can mean pit, den, or an excavated hole in the ground. But the most important word in the sentence is “lions.”

No one could get inside the lion’s den without breaking the clay seal that had an impression of the king’s signet ring. The impression from the ring acted as the king’s signature. The seal might have been as simple as a rope set on top of the rock and sealed to the ground with a small clay plug stamped with the king’s ring.

Cyrus ruled the Persian Empire from 539-530 BC. He was the first ruler, the one who defeated the Babylonians. Cambyses II came next, ruling from 530-522 BC. Then came Darius. After him came Xerxes, famous for invading Greece and defeating Spartans in a narrow seaside passage at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. That battle inspired the blockbuster film, “300.”