Notes and Questions for January 18, 2009

Notes and Questions for January 18, 2009

We learned last week that Daniel was evidently the leader and chief spokesperson for the four young Hebrew believers (1:8). The record suggests that he was the first to make up his mind (wayyasem al-libbo – lit. “and he placed on his heart”) to refuse food from the king’s table and then to communicate his settled resolve to the other three. What he sought to avoid was being defiled by contact with unclean meats – or even clean meats that had become contaminated with heathen worship.

1) What do you do to steer clear not just of obvious things that would defile yourself but even things that are tainted? Give a specific example to your spouse.

Read Daniel 1:8-16

2) Who is in control in verse 9? What does this mean to you and in your current situation either at work or at home?

It is highly significant that Daniel enjoyed good rapport with his “guard” (melshar, “overseer”) and, according to v 11, even with Ashpenaz himself, the “chief official” (sar hassarisim) who was in charge of the whole academy (v 9). He had found “favor” (hessed implies a love or loyalty based on a relationship of mutal commitment) and “sympathy” (rahmim) with Ashpenaz and felt he could confide in him. Daniel must have shown an attitude of sincere good will and faithfulness to duty toward those over him.

3) Where have you been placed by God (family, employment, friendships)? What do you do with those relationships and how are you a witness for God?

4) What is your priority? Do you see following God and going away from sin as something that you will do anything or risk anything to do? What is an example of where you have done that?

5) Did Daniel ever eat from the King’s table?

Read Daniel 1:17-21

6) When did God give “knowledge and understanding” to them (before or after they believed His laws and followed them)?
7) How long was it between verse 1 and ver 18?
8) Why did the King want to have these guys around? (v 19 and 20)
9) Who gave them what they had (reference v 17)

Verse 17 makes it clear that Daniel and his friends were granted special intellectual ability by the Lord, not because of their diet, but because of his approval of their faith and commitment to His word. Not only did they master ever branch of Akkadian and Sumerian scholarship, but they – or at least Daniel himself – even master oneiromancy (the interpretation of dreams), in which Joseph had excelled in the court of Egypt.
Verses 18 to 20 show us when the time for the final examinations came, Ashpenaz was proud to present his students before Nebuchadnezzar himself, who apparently was in charge of the oral exams. Out of the entire group of brilliant young men, the king found that these were the four highest. He was so impressed with them that he decided to give them responsible posts in his government.

10) Were the four involved in the occult arts?

The term for “magicians” (v 20) is hartummim, a hartom was probably a diviner, one who used some sort of inscribed chart or magical design in oorder to arrive at an answer to the questions put to him. “Enchanters” (assapim) is derived from the Akkadian asipum (“soothsayer). Observe in this connection that the test does not state that the four Hebrews actually engaged in the practice of divination or conjuation themselves, which would, no doubt, have been forbidden them by Deut 18:10-12. It simply states that ehy attained hokmat binah (lit, “the wisdom of understanding”. This implies that the attainment of results, the securing of a knowledge of the future or what would have been the best decision to make on the part of the government in view of unknown future contingencies, or the like, Daniel and his three colleagues far excelled the professional heathen diviners and conjurers.

More examples of Daniel’s superiority appear in Chapter 2, where he alone could reconstruct Nebuchadnezzar’s dream about the fourfold image, Chapter 4, where he alone could interpret the warning dream of the felled tree, etc. In none of these instances is there any indication that Daniel resorted to occult practices; he simply went to God directly in prayer, and God revealed the answer to him. Nevertheless Daniel was at least “ten times better” than all the pagan magicians and conjurers in the realm, who for all their incantations and sorceries could not come up with the answer the king was looking for.

11) How simple is the message from God to unbelievers?
12) What is the message from God to unbelievers?
13) When do you go to God in prayer? Is it for small things or just big? Is it for positive or just for ‘bad’?
14) When your boss or family needs a decision from you or a view forward who do you look to? Do you look to God or to the latest show on t.v. or even horoscope?
15) Are you a “soothsayer” or a “prayer”? Give a specific example.

In verse 21 we see the fact about the length of Daniel’s career in public service. Since Babylon fell before the Persian onslaught in 539B.C. the first year of Cyrus might be computed as 539-538. But since we are informed by verse 31 in chapter five that the rule of Babylonia was at first entrusted to Darius the Mede by King Cyrus, and since Daniel 9 is dates in the “first year” of Darius (9:1), it is fair to assume that Darius remained as titular king till 538 or 537. If so, the “first year” of Cyrus as king of Babylon would have been 537-536B.C., which is probably the year when the forty-two thousand Jews returned to Palestine under Zerubbabel and Jeshua. If Daniel was put into the Royal Academy for three years, his first governmental appointment might have been around 601B.C. Thus his whole term of service (with, apparently, a temporary retirement during the reign of Belshazzar) would have been about sixty-five years (601 to 536B.C.) Daniel’s retirement must have taken place some years before his death, for he spoke of receiving his revelations in “the third year of Cyrus” (10:1), or two years after his retirement.

16) How long will you be on the earth?
17) What will you be doing and who will you be doing it for?
18) What is your number one assignment during that time?