The king answered unto Daniel, and said, Of a truth it is, that your God is a God of gods, and a Lord of kings, and a Revealer of secrets, seeing thou couldest reveal this secret. The versions do not exhibit any important variation from the Massoretic text. We must observe the plural form of the pronoun "your," implying the Hebrew nation as a whole, or at all events the three youths along with Daniel. It must be noted that the titles are not in the emphatic state, but are simply absolute, implying that Nebuchadnezzar simply placed the God of heaven, the God of Daniel, in his pantheon, as one of the superior gods. The historical difficulty that some have seen in Nebuchadnezzar making this confession to God, and yet straightway framing a golden image, is due to a failure to understand the attitude of a polytheist to his gods. To the heathen his god is a person he is afraid of, much more powerful than he is himself, able to do him much ill, or, on the other hand, able to bestow upon him much good, but able to be deceived, cajoled, and flattered. In worshipping his deities the heathen feels that any breach of sacred etiquette in regard to any deity is far more certain of bringing down the vengeance of the aggrieved power than any crime, however heinous. He would be most potent in prayer who could go over all the deities of the pantheon, and give to each his or her appropriate title. Thus the Hindus tell tales of fakirs whose power over the gods was due to this. One of the forms of this religious etiquette was to address each deity as if he were the supreme god who alone deserved worship. Lenormant ('Los Premieres Civilizations,' 2:159) gives an address to the god Hourki, or Sin, in which he is called "prince of the gods of heaven and earth, the good god, the great god, lather of gods and men, the lord who extends his power over heaven and earth" In the same work there is an address to Marduk (Merodach), the favourite deity of Nebuchadnezzar, in which he is called "god of gods, king of heaven and earth." A little further on in the same work Nebu is called "the supreme intelligence, scribe of the universe, who bears the supreme sceptre, the interpreter of the celestial spheres." In p. 189 Nergal is addressed as "great prince of the greatest gods, who has brought up the greatest gods." In his ' La Magie,' p. 175, he gives an address to Silik-mulu-ki, regarded as an Accadian name of Marduk, in which he is called "god of gods." In his ' Hibbert Lecture,' pp. 97-104, Professor Sayce, on the contrast between the religion of Babylon and that of Persia in this respect, says that Nebuchadnezzar calls Merodach "lord of all," yet declares him the "son of the gods." The same titles are given to Merodach and to Samas, and yet Samas is distinct from Merodach—he is his comrade in the struggle with the assailants of Otis, the moon-god.£ At the same time, we must observe the limitations of Nebuchadnezzar's praise—it is simply as the Revealer of secrets that he praises and honours the God of Daniel.
Then the king made Daniel a great man, and gave him many great gifts, and made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon, and chief of the governors over all the wise men of Babylon. Then Daniel requested of the king, and he set Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, over the affairs of the province of Babylon: but Daniel sat in the gate of the king. In the Greek versions there is not much to be observed. The Septuagint renders the last clause of verse 48 "chief and ruler ( ἄρχοντα καὶ ἡγούμενον) of all the wise men of Babylon," reading ūs gan instead of signeen. Theodotion's is a fairly accurate rendering of the Massoretic text, as is also Jerome. The Peshitta renders this clause, "He made Daniel head over all the mighty men (rabiḥeela), and over all the wise men of Babylon." The translator must have inserted, or found before him inserted, the preposition על (‛el), "over," between tab and signeen, evidently a false reading, due to ignorance of the form Babylonianand Assyrian titles assumed. The word סָגָן, or סְגַן:, was originally maintained to be Persian. Hitzig connects it with an Arabic root, sajan, but the true derivation is now found to be shokun (Assyrian), "governor." It appears in Hebrew in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the deutero-Isaiah, as well as in Ezra and Nehemiah, showing the unlikelihood of any Persian derivation. Hitzig appears to regard Daniel as made the king's regent over the whole empire of Babylon; but this is not at all the meaning of the words. We must not be led away to believe that all this promotion befell Daniel at once; the statement here is summary, and includes many steps, and perhaps several years. Even at the utmost of his exaltation, he is not represented here as being made the regent of Nebuchadnezzar. as Hitzig would maintain. It is really only the province of Babylon, if we may not restrict the meaning of the word medeena even further, and regard it as equivalent to "city." We admit that this restriction of significance is not supported by the versions, but the fact that in so many cases we have traces of Syriac influences in Daniel, and that medeena means in Syriac "a city," renders this supposition not an impossible one. The precise limits of the province of Babylon in the days of Nebuchadnezzar cannot be settled. In later times it consisted mainly of the territory between the Tigris and the Euphrates, south of the murus Medius, with some territory between the latter river and the desert (Professor Rawlinson). It may be that the satrapy of Babylon was of considerably less extent. The word hashleet means "to cause to rule." This would be made true by making Daniel overseer in any department of the government of the province. It is not necessary to maintain that Nebuchadnezzar made Daniel satrap of Babylonia; at the same time, shalet is the title given to the satrap of Babylon. M. Lenormant thinks there must be an interpolation when Daniel is said to be set over all the governors of the wise men in Babylon. His arguments are founded mainly on the belief that the castes of astrologers, soothsayers, and magians—all that were included in the class of hakmeen—were hereditary, a thing which has not been proved. A difficulty has been urged by Lenormant that Daniel, as a zealous Jew, could not become head of a college of idolatrous priests. While there may be some force in this, one must beware of testing the actions of a Jew of the sixth century B.C. by criteria and principles applicable to one of later times. At all events, this militates strongly against the idea that the Book of Daniel was written in the age of the Maccabees. When we see Daniel thus, a youth of probably two or three and twenty, promoted ultimately to be over the province of Babylon, and to be one of the king's most trusted councillors, Ezekiel's saying, which places him between Noah and Job (Ezekiel 14:14), becomes natural. Daniel had already been some years in the king's privy council before Ezekiel was carried into captivity. We do not know how long after the beginning of his prophetic work we are to date the prophecy of the fourteenth chapter—it may have been eight or nine years after. But even if it were only six years, Daniel would by this time have been for eleven years a member of the privy council of the Babylonian monarch, and possibly for a considerable portion of that period governor of the province of Babylon. At any rate, Daniel would bulk very large in the eyes of the poor Jewish captives. Though contemporary, he was so far removed from his fellow-countrymen in social position, that his goodness and greatness would be subject to similar exaggeration to that which happens to heroes of a long-past age. A better argument may be drawn from the fact that sagan is always a civil title. The insertion of the word ḥakmeen might easily be due to some scribe who thought that as Daniel was one of the wise men, head of them would be more likely than head of the civil governors of the province, and placed it as a suggestion of what ought to take the place of signeen; a copyist following, inserted it in the text. If we compare this chapter with the sixth, we find Daniel one of three who were to receive the accounts of the various governors. Daniel was thus, if we may apply to his office a title drawn from our own political usage, secretary of state for Babylonia. It is characteristic of Daniel, that having been made rich and great by the king, and having received many gifts at the hand of the king, does not satisfy him; he entreats favour for his friends also. Hitzig's objection that Daniel would have the appointment of his subordinates, would only be valid if Daniel had been made satrap If his shaletship extended merely to some one department of governmental work—and that seems to follow from the last clause of this verse—it is unlikely that he would have this power. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are set over the "business" (‛ebeedta') of the province of Babylon. This word, in Targumic Aramaic, is very generally used of constructions where labour is employed. We may regard their position as one something like being members of a labour bureau. Nebuchadezzar was a very great builder, so much so that almost all the bricks that have been got in Babylon are stamped with his name. While his Ninevite predecessors record in their inscriptions their campaigns, the kings they conquered, and the cities they sacked, the inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar are almost entirely occupied with the various structures—temples, palaces, ramparts, and canals—which he had caused to be made. These buildings would need perpetual surveying. Further, as a great military genius, roads and canals would also be. important objects, in the carrying out of which captives would be employed. And the products of this enforced labour would have to be surveyed carefully. This seems more probable than that Daniel got these three friends appointed to do the work he himself was appointed to. The only plausible suggestion against this would be that Daniel desired that his friends be set jointly over the province of Babylon instead of himself, and, for his own part, he preferred to remain in the gate of the king. We know that those who wished to undermine a favourite in an Eastern court, frequently intrigued to get him promoted to a governorship, and then poisoned the mind of the king against him. On the other hand. the fact that Daniel had his province in Babylon, and would always be near the king when he was in his capital, rendered the implied precaution needless. But Daniel sat in the gate of the king. The gate of the king was the gate of his palace or the entrance to the central court from which all the apartments branched off. In the gate the kings of the East acted as judges over their people; in the gate the king held councils. Hence to sit in the gate of the king conveyed the twofold idea of being the king's representative on the throne of judgment, and of being the counsellor of the king—member of the privy council, to employ a modem term.
HOMILETICS