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Bel and the Dragon 1: What the Passage Says

143 claims across 42 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Bel and the Dragon 1 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

King Astyages dies and Cyrus of Persia takes his kingdom, and Daniel is honored by the king. Daniel refuses to worship the idol Bel, and by scattering ashes on the temple floor he shows the king that Bel's priests, with their wives and children, eat the offerings through a secret door; the king kills the priests and hands Bel over to Daniel, who destroys it and its temple. Daniel then kills a great dragon that the people of Babylon worshiped, and the people force the king to hand Daniel over to a lions' den, where he stays six days and is fed by the prophet Habakkuk, whom an angel carries from Judea. On the seventh day the king finds Daniel alive, declares the God of Daniel great, pulls him out, and throws those who had caused his destruction into the den.

Claim by Claim

  1. 1:1
    • King Astyages was gathered to his fathers.
    • Cyrus of Persia received Astyages' kingdom.
  2. 1:2
    • Daniel was a companion of the king.
    • Daniel was honored above all the king's friends.
  3. 1:3
    • The Babylonians had an idol called Bel.
    • Every day twelve great measures of fine flour were spent on Bel.
    • Every day forty sheep were spent on Bel.
    • Every day six vessels of wine were spent on Bel.
  4. 1:4
    • The king worshipped Bel.
    • The king went daily to adore Bel.
    • Daniel worshipped his own God.
    • The king asked Daniel why he did not worship Bel.
  5. 1:5
    • Daniel answered that he may not worship idols made with hands.
    • Daniel said he worships the living God.
    • Daniel said the living God created the heaven and the earth.
    • Daniel said the living God has sovereignty over all flesh.
  6. 1:6
    • The king asked Daniel whether he did not think Bel was a living god.
    • The king asked Daniel whether he did not see how much Bel eats and drinks every day.
  7. 1:7
    • Daniel laughed.
    • Daniel told the king not to be deceived.
    • Daniel said the idol is clay within.
    • Daniel said the idol is brass without.
    • Daniel said the idol never ate or drank anything.
  8. 1:8
    • The king was angry.
    • The king called for his priests.
    • The king said to the priests that if they did not tell him who devoured these expenses, they would die.
  9. 1:9
    • The king said that if the priests could prove to him that Bel devoured the expenses, Daniel would die.
    • The king said Daniel had spoken blasphemy against Bel.
    • Daniel told the king to let it be according to the king's word.
  10. 1:10
    • The priests of Bel were seventy in number.
    • The seventy did not count their wives and children.
    • The king went with Daniel into the temple of Bel.
  11. 1:11
    • The priests of Bel said they would go out.
    • The priests told the king to set on the food.
    • The priests told the king to make the wine ready.
    • The priests told the king to shut the door fast.
    • The priests told the king to seal the door with his own signet.
  12. 1:12
    • The priests said that when the king came in the next morning, if he did not find that Bel had eaten everything, they would suffer death.
    • The priests said that otherwise Daniel would suffer death.
    • The priests said Daniel spoke falsely against them.
  13. 1:13
    • The priests were unconcerned.
    • The priests had made a secret entrance under the table.
    • The priests entered continually by that entrance.
    • The priests consumed the offerings.
  14. 1:14
    • When the priests had gone out, the king set the food before Bel.
    • Daniel had commanded his servants to bring ashes.
    • The servants strewed the ashes throughout all the temple.
    • Only the king was present when the ashes were strewn.
    • The servants then went out.
    • They shut the door.
    • They sealed the door with the king's signet.
    • They departed.
  15. 1:15
    • In the night the priests came with their wives and children.
    • The priests came as they were accustomed to do.
    • The priests ate and drank it all.
  16. 1:16
    • The king arose early in the morning.
    • Daniel arose with the king.
  17. 1:17
    • The king asked Daniel whether the seals were whole.
    • Daniel said the seals were whole.
  18. 1:18
    • The king opened the door.
    • The king looked at the table.
    • The king cried with a loud voice that Bel is great.
    • The king cried that with Bel is no deceit at all.
  19. 1:19
    • Daniel laughed.
    • Daniel held the king back so that he should not go in.
    • Daniel told the king to look at the pavement.
    • Daniel told the king to mark whose footsteps these were.
  20. 1:20
    • The king said he saw the footsteps of men, women, and children.
    • The king was angry.
  21. 1:21
    • The king seized the priests with their wives and children.
    • The priests showed the king the secret doors.
    • The priests came in by those doors.
    • The priests consumed the things that were on the table.
  22. 1:22
    • The king killed the priests.
    • The king delivered Bel into Daniel's power.
    • Daniel destroyed Bel.
    • Daniel destroyed Bel's temple.
  23. 1:23
    • In that same place there was a great dragon.
    • The Babylonians worshipped the dragon.
  24. 1:24
    • The king asked Daniel whether he would also say that this dragon was of brass.
    • The king said the dragon lives.
    • The king said the dragon eats and drinks.
    • The king said Daniel could not say the dragon is no living god.
    • The king told Daniel to worship the dragon.
  25. 1:25
    • Daniel said he would worship the Lord his God.
    • Daniel said the Lord his God is the living God.
  26. 1:26
    • Daniel asked the king's leave.
    • Daniel said he would kill the dragon without sword or staff.
    • The king granted Daniel leave.
  27. 1:27
    • Daniel took pitch, fat, and hair.
    • Daniel boiled them together.
    • Daniel made lumps of the mixture.
    • Daniel put the lumps in the dragon's mouth.
    • The dragon burst apart.
    • Daniel said these are the gods you worship.
  28. 1:28
    • The Babylonians heard what happened.
    • The Babylonians took great indignation.
    • The Babylonians conspired against the king.
    • The Babylonians said the king had become a Jew.
    • The Babylonians said the king had destroyed Bel.
    • The Babylonians said the king had slain the dragon.
    • The Babylonians said the king had put the priests to death.
  29. 1:29
    • The Babylonians came to the king.
    • The Babylonians demanded that the king deliver Daniel to them.
    • The Babylonians threatened to destroy the king and his house otherwise.
  30. 1:30
    • The king saw that they pressed him hard.
    • The king was constrained.
    • The king delivered Daniel to them.
  31. 1:31
    • They cast Daniel into the lions' den.
    • Daniel was in the den six days.
  32. 1:32
    • There were seven lions in the den.
    • The lions had been given two carcasses and two sheep every day.
    • The lions were not given their food during those days.
    • The food was withheld so that the lions would devour Daniel.
  33. 1:33
    • There was a prophet in Jewry called Habakkuk.
    • Habakkuk had made pottage.
    • Habakkuk had broken bread into a bowl.
    • Habakkuk was going into the field to bring the food to the reapers.
  34. 1:34
    • The angel of the Lord spoke to Habakkuk.
    • The angel told Habakkuk to carry the dinner he had into Babylon to Daniel.
    • The angel said Daniel was in the lions' den.
  35. 1:35
    • Habakkuk said he had never seen Babylon.
    • Habakkuk said he did not know where the den was.
  36. 1:36
    • The angel of the Lord took Habakkuk by the crown of his head.
    • The angel carried him by the hair of his head.
    • The angel set him in Babylon over the den by the force of his spirit.
  37. 1:37
    • Habakkuk cried out to Daniel.
    • Habakkuk told Daniel to take the dinner that God had sent him.
  38. 1:38
    • Daniel said God had remembered him.
    • Daniel said God had not forsaken those who seek him and love him.
  39. 1:39
    • Daniel arose.
    • Daniel ate.
    • The angel of the Lord set Habakkuk in his own place again immediately.
  40. 1:40
    • On the seventh day the king went to bewail Daniel.
    • The king came to the den.
    • The king looked in.
    • Daniel was sitting there.
  41. 1:41
    • The king cried with a loud voice.
    • The king said the Lord God of Daniel is great.
    • The king said there is no other beside him.
  42. 1:42
    • The king drew Daniel out of the den.
    • The king cast those who had caused Daniel's destruction into the den.
    • They were devoured in a moment before the king's face.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

1:1
Astyages was the last king of the Medes; Cyrus of Persia took his throne around 550 BC. "Gathered to his fathers" is a standard biblical way of saying a man died and joined his ancestors in the grave. This story survives only in the Greek versions of Daniel, not in the Hebrew and Aramaic text; some Bibles print it as Daniel chapter 14.
1:2
"Friends" here is close to a job title. At the Persian court, and at the Greek courts that followed, the King's Friends were a recognized rank of courtiers and advisers. Being honored above all of them is a statement about Daniel's standing in the government, not about his social life.
1:3
Bel means "lord," and was the title of Marduk, the chief god of Babylon. The "great measures" are artabas, a Persian dry measure of roughly ten to fifteen gallons each, so the flour amounts to well over a hundred gallons; the wine containers are a Greek liquid measure of about ten gallons each. Laying out a daily meal in front of a god's image was ordinary practice in Babylonian temples, and the size of the allowance was a measure of the god's importance.
1:4
To worship means to bow down and honor someone as God. People brought gifts and food to show it.
1:5
"The living God" means a God who is really alive. A statue cannot move or eat or hear.
1:7
"Brass" in the English of 1611 covers bronze, an alloy of copper and tin; brass proper was barely known in the ancient world. The image is a hollow shell: a clay body with metal plating over it.
1:8
A priest was a man whose job was serving a god at his temple. He carried in the food and looked after the statue.
1:9
Blasphemy here means speaking contemptuously of a god. In Babylon, as generally in the ancient world, that was a capital charge, which is why the king can set Daniel's life against the priests' lives on the same terms.
1:10
A temple was a big building where people came to worship a god. The statue stood inside it.
1:11
A signet is a ring or small cylinder carved with the owner's personal mark. A door was sealed by tying it shut with cord, pressing soft clay over the knot, and stamping the clay with the signet. The impression cannot be lifted and put back, so a seal still intact in the morning proves nobody opened the door in the night.
1:14
The detail that only the king is watching matters: no servant or official is present who could carry word of the ash test to the priests.
1:22
"Delivered Bel into Daniel's power" means the king let Daniel do what he liked with the statue.
1:23
The Greek word is drakon, meaning a large serpent, not the winged, fire breathing dragon of later European stories. Babylonian art did feature a serpent like creature, the mushhushshu, shown on the Ishtar Gate and linked with the god Marduk.
1:27
Pitch is bitumen, the thick black tar that seeps out of the ground in Babylonia and was used there as mortar and waterproofing. Boiled together with fat and hair it sets into a dense, sticky mass.
1:28
"The king has become a Jew" means he has gone over to the Jews' religion and abandoned the gods of his own city. It is a charge of disloyalty to Babylon and its temples, not a remark about his ancestry.
1:29
"Thine house" means your family and everyone living with you.
1:31
This is a separate visit to the lions from the better known one in Daniel chapter 6. The two stories are told independently of each other, with different kings and different circumstances.
1:32
The word behind "carcases" means human bodies, presumably of executed criminals; the lions' usual daily ration was two of these plus two sheep. Withholding the ration was meant to make sure the animals were hungry.
1:33
Habakkuk is the prophet whose short book stands among the twelve Minor Prophets; that book says nothing about this episode. "Jewry" is older English for Judea, the region around Jerusalem, several hundred miles from Babylon, which is the point of his objection in verse 35. Breaking bread into a bowl of stew was the ordinary way of carrying a hot meal out to workers in the fields.
1:34
An angel is a messenger sent by God.
1:36
"The crown" is the top of the head. "The vehemency of his spirit" uses spirit in its older sense of breath or wind: it is the rushing force of the angel's breath that moves Habakkuk, not an emotional state.
1:41
The King James line "Great art Lord God of Daniel" is defective as printed; words have dropped out of the sentence. The sense is "Great are you, Lord God of Daniel."
1:42
"Those that were the cause of his destruction" means the men who had tried to destroy Daniel. The "his" refers to Daniel, not to the king.

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