Stephen
Terry, Director
From
Jerusalem to Babylon
Commentary
for the January 11, 2020 Sabbath School Lesson
But Daniel resolved
not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief
official for permission not to defile himself this way. Daniel 1:8, NIV
The early 6th century BC was a period of decline for the
Kingdom of Judah. Struggling along since the Kingdom of Israel had been carried
away by the Assyrians into a captivity that they would never return from, those
in Judah had not learned the lessons to refrain from walking in their own
desires and had followed the path their northern brothers had walked. The
results were foretold many times by the prophets, but even a blind man should have
known that they could not keep doing the same thing Israel had done and expect
to end up with a different result. Perhaps this is a lesson we would do well to
heed today.
Judah was a kingdom that had rejected worship of the God that
had brought their forefathers out of Egypt, the God that had called Abraham
from the Chaldees many generations before. This was highly unusual for a nation
to reject their own gods and replace them with the gods of others. Yet, this is
what Judah had done. They had chosen to reject the God who had revealed Himself
through countless miracles done on their behalf for unhearing, unseeing, and
unmoving idols manufactured by human hands.
Some date the beginning of this downfall from when King
Solomon allowed his many wives to worship the gods of their own countries in
Jerusalem. Citing the well-known proverb that "The fish stinks from the head,"
they feel that this started the downward course that spread through Jerusalem
and the rest of Judah. However, there had always been those who compromised the
worship of God with the worship of idols. At Mount Sinai, there had been the
golden calf fashioned by Aaron that the people worshipped and stumbled over.
But this was not an isolated indiscretion. Even the bronze serpent fashioned by
Moses became a stumbling block and was worshipped for hundreds of years until
King Hezekiah finally destroyed it. With such spiritual rebellion, rebellion
against the Babylonians who had subjugated them was perhaps to be expected.
Many times the prophets warned that the conquering horde was coming, and most
ignored those warnings, even considering them traitorous proclamations that
were undermining the peoples' will to resist the invaders. But in spite of
being ill-treated by the Jewish leaders, the prophets continued to claim that
the invaders had been sent by God and should not be resisted.
To the man in the street in Jerusalem, the Babylonians were
considered an evil foe that did not respect god or man. But nationalistic pride
and self-righteousness mixed together into a heady brew that prevented many
from seeing their own sorry state. The horrors of King Manasseh's reign were
recent history and with the exception of Josiah, his successors were little
better. The Biblical account tells us that Manasseh filled Jerusalem with
innocent blood from one end to the other. Even with all the wickedness that the
Bible writers like to attribute to Babylon, none of them accuses the
Babylonians of evil on the level of Manasseh. Sadly, Judah had become more evil
than the nations around them. For these reasons and more, circa 605 BCE, four
young men connected to the royal household of Judah were taken as hostages to
Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar. As members of the royal household, they were
held to ensure Jehoiakim's co-operation. This proved a futile hope as Jehoiakim
rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar after only three years. This was not because he
suddenly decided to trust in God. Rather it was because he tried to ally
himself with whichever wind was blowing the strongest at the moment.
After his father, King Josiah's death, the people of Judah
had chosen not to place him on the throne in Jerusalem, favoring his younger
brother, Jehoahaz, instead. No doubt, Jehoiakim would have been deeply hurt by
this rejection. Perhaps he was hurt enough to betray Jehoahaz to Pharaoh in
order to secure the throne for himself. In any event, Pharaoh took Jehoahaz
with him to Egypt and left the older brother, Jehoiakim on the throne. In
return for usurping his brother and giving him the throne, he surely expected
Jehoiakim's loyalty in dealing with the Babylonians. However, even though
Pharaoh Necho had placed him on his throne, after the Babylonians defeated the
Egyptians at Carchemish, Jehoiakim allied himself with Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel
and his three companions apparently traveled to Babylon as part of that
alliance. The winds soon changed after the Egyptians inflicted a heavy defeat
on the Babylonians only a few years later, and Jehoiakim again changed sides.
This time, Nebuchadnezzar was not so accommodating with the vacillating Judean
king and began the war of attrition that eventually brought Judah and Jerusalem
to their knees.
Surprisingly, the four hostages, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego, were apparently faithful worshippers of the true God. Being of
royal blood, they were probably more deserving of sitting on the throne in
Jerusalem than were those who wore the crown. Perhaps like their ancestor Jacob
at Bethel, they pledged themselves to God on the way to Babylon if God would
only watch over and prosper them in that great city. God hears prayers like
that, and He heard theirs. With their willing hearts, great things were about
to happen.
This is what God asks of each of us today. He asks only that
we be willing to enter into a heart relationship with Him. If we do, great
things will happen in our lives as well. Often we resist giving ourselves to a
relationship with God until we are well on our way to Babylon. But God will
still be an awesome God to us. He can take a life that to everyone else appears
destined to be forgotten and give it a future and raise it to the highest
places, just as He did for Joseph in Egypt and as He was now about to do for
these four young Hebrews.
The position of hostages in the ancient world was not like
that of captives or slaves. They were treated favorably, often like other
members of the royal household. They would eat at the King's table and be given
advantages to learn and make important friendships in their host country. If
they returned to their home country under favorable conditions, they might
become ambassadors between the two kingdoms.There was a downside, however. As
hostages they might be killed in retribution if their king broke faith with the
hosting king. This could have happened to these four when Jehoiakim rebelled,
but it didn't. There were three years between the alliance and when it ended.
Some remarkable things happened during those three years. Those remarkable
events are where the book of Daniel begins.
Like typical hostages, Daniel and his friends were offered
every advantage and educational opportunity and were to be fed from the king's
own table. However, Daniel asked that they not be fed like this but instead be
given only vegetables to eat and water to drink. Some feel that Daniel was
setting an example to all to live a vegetarian lifestyle like Adam and Eve in
the Garden of Eden. But was that the case? If Daniel was promoting a vegetarian
lifestyle as preferable, then one would think that Jesus, who extolled Daniel
as a prophet, would follow that guidance, but the Bible makes it clear that
Jesus was not vegetarian. More likely what happened was that Daniel wanted to
observe the Jewish dietary laws regarding clean and unclean foods. Explaining
what today is called "kosher" to his hosts would be difficult. Rather than
instruct the royal kitchen in how to prepare a special kosher diet for the four
of them, it would be easier to simply request vegetables and water. People
often still do this today. Pork has become so ubiquitous in restaurants, those
who avoid it will ask for items from the vegetarian portion of the menu and
avoid concerns about what meat is in the food altogether. This is far easier
than trying to explain things to a waitress who may not even understand that
bacon is pork.
In any event, after testing the vegetarian diet on Daniel and
his friends and seeing no resulting feebleness, they were granted their
requested diet. With this anxiety off their shoulders, they prospered and
blossomed under Babylonian tutelage. With God guiding their hearts and the
Babylonians educating their minds they found every advantage for their
development and even found favor with the king. They were a success story well
on its way, but they were not out of the woods yet. They were still hostages
and still expendably dependent on the actions of King Jehoiakim. Their
transition from expendable hostages to vital subjects of King Nebuchadnezzar
would happen in their second year of captivity.
The first chapter of Daniel is important for our
understanding of culture and how it relates to our faith. Culture can be seen
as a threat to our faith or as an adjunct to faith. Those who see it as a
threat often choose to see the walls of the church as a wall to keep the world
out. They will guard every door and window in their attempt to withdraw from
the baleful influences of the world. They will do all they can to avoid contact
with "the world." How the church expects to fulfill its commission to reach the
world with the message of Jesus Christ while shutting out the world is unclear.
It would be a mixed message for Jesus to say, "Come to me," and then do
everything He could to avoid contact with the world. It is difficult enough to
get people to step out of the fast pace of modern life to spend a few moments
reflecting on their spiritual condition without erecting barriers to prevent
that contact.
Part of this isolation is maintained with a separate
parochial school system, sometimes all the way through graduate school. If
school tuition is expensive, it is deemed cheaper than the spiritual cost of
exposure to "worldly" ideas. However, in the end, the young man or woman enters
a professional career with little idea of how to relate to those outside the
culture of his or her own faith. The problem is exacerbated when they choose to
work for denominational institutions where they can continue their cultural
isolation. Regular trips to the grocery store may be the only cross cultural
forays for some. Even then if they live in a denominational "ghetto" the foray
may still be in a protected environment.
In the parochial colleges and universities, the young
collegians often find their marital partners, ones that their own parents would
approve of as "safe." Depending on the size of the denomination, this results
in an inbreeding that through common genetics produces certain physical
characteristics that become identified with the denomination. While members of the faith community may not
realize it, outsiders may be able to identify them simply through these
physical characteristics. While these characteristics may be neither negative
nor positive, the longer the denomination exists as a separate cultural
community, the more pronounced these attributes become. Subconsciously, the
members of the faith community may even begin selecting for these attributes
without realizing it by deeming these features as more normal within the
denomination and therefore more desirable in a potential spouse but not
understanding why.
The alternative is illustrated in the first chapter of
Daniel. Rather than isolate himself from Babylonian culture, Daniel chose to
embrace it without compromising his faith. In this, He demonstrated that God is
the God of every culture and not only able to work within the culture of Judah.
His example was a precursor to the cultural adaptations Christianity underwent
with the missionary activities of Paul. Daniel's openness eventually brought
the kings of Babylon to honor and revere God. Had Daniel chosen to live his
life behind a Jewish cultural wall, that wall would have precluded any
opportunity to have the widespread influence he later achieved. He would have
been perceived as just another Jew, sitting in his own little world and
irrelevant to what everyone else might be doing. He might find a measure of
success within his own cultural community, but his influence beyond that circle
would be limited by his lack of engagement.
Too many denominations are doing exactly that today. They are
so inwardly focused that they have lost all relevance for the rest of the
world. They struggle for new members and either promptly lose them or entrap
them in the same isolation. Those who
leave don't usually do so because of the doctrines but because of the culture
that they cannot integrate into their lives for one reason or another. Having
left, no one goes after them. Instead they are usually considered "inadequately
grounded" in the new doctrines and promptly forgotten. When anyone actually
bothered to check, the problem was often differences with other members over
cultural issues. These issues may be regarding how to celebrate certain
holidays, what should be worn to church, or even positions for prayer. While
there are many more cultural flash points, the message of Daniel is that none
of them should be areas of conflict.
The surprising thing is that while some may get from Daniel,
chapter 1, a message about diet that it does not teach, they have a hard time
seeing the message about cultural adaptability that it does teach. Once the
cultural "scales" fall from their eyes, a whole new world of possibilities for
sharing the good news of a loving God opens up. Then, like Daniel, God can lift
them up to greater responsibilities.
