Bible Study: Daniel Chapter 6

Cyrus decides to do some delegation of authority. There will be 120 middle managers and 3 presidents over them. Daniel is one of these three and, in fact, he is preferred because of his wisdom.

This of course makes the other princes and presidents jealous so they conspire against him. They convince the king to sign an edict that says no one can pray to any god except for him (Cyrus) for the next thirty days. (You have to wonder how good a king he was if he doesn't even ask why). Of course the princes immediately go and find Daniel doing 3 times daily prayers.

The king realizes that he is powerless since of course his word is binding. So into the lions den Daniel goes. The stone door is sealed (literally with the kings seal) and the king spends the night upset.

The next morning they open it up and out Daniel comes. The king rounds up the rascals they got Daniel put in there and he feed them and their wives and their children to the lions.

Cyrus signs a law requiring respect for Daniels god. Life is now good for Daniel.

Thoughts:

- Daniel is on his 3rd king. I wonder if we are to assume that he is *very* old or they are just having a big turn over problem with rulers.
- I wonder how often these family wide punishments were really executed. Were these just scary stories to keep people in line, or did they really do this?
- When you are a kid these are the interesting stories that they always talk about in sunday school. But reading it again as an adult you can't help be horrified by innocent people being thrown to lions. (Probably this is one of the parts that is typically left out, like how every other women in the OT is a prostitute).
- Sort of suspicious having all these kings talk about how great god is all the time. Sort of has an odor of propaganda.

[atheism] [bible]