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From: Daniel 3:14-20, 91-92, 95 (New American Bible)
Daniel 3:14-20, 24-25, 28 (Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate)

Condemnation For Those Who Will Not Worship the Golden Image (Continuation)

[14] Nebuchadnezzar said to them, “Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-
nego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the golden image which I have
set up? [15] Now if you are ready when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre,
trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, to fall down and I have made, well
and good; but if you do not worship, you shall immediately be cast into a burning
fiery furnace; and who is the god that will deliver you out of my hands?”

[16] Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar,
we have no need to answer you in this matter. [17] If it be so, our God whom we
serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace; and he will deliver us out
of your hand, O king. [18] But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not
serve your gods or worship the golden image which you have set up.”

[19] Then Nebuchadnezzar was full of fury, and the expression of his face was
changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He ordered the furnace
heated seven times more than it was wont to be heated. [20] And he ordered cer-
tain mighty men of his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and to
cast them into the burning fiery furnace.

The King Acknowledges the God of the Jews

[24] Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished and rose up in haste. He said
to his counsellors, “Did we not cast three men bound into the fire?” They an-
swered the king, “True, O king?” [25] He answered, “But I see four men loose,
walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt; and the appearance of the
fourth is like a son of the gods.”

[28] Nebuchadnezzar said, “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and
Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants, who trusted in
him, and set at naught the king’s command, and yielded up their bodies rather
than serve and worship any god except their own God.”

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Commentary:

3:1-4:3 This story has a very different tone to that of the previous ones, though
the scene is still the court of Babylon. It has to do with a confrontation between
Jews, worshipers of the one true God, and Gentiles, who worship idols; a simi-
lar situation arises in chapter 6. Following the Greek version (which is what the
Catholic Church follows and which is used in modern Catholic translations [in-
cluding the RSVCE]), the passage can be divided into three parts: the first tells
about the young men’s refusal to worship the statue set up by the king; for this
they are condemned to the fiery furnace (3:1-23); the second part, which does
not exist in the Aramaic text, records the prayers that the young men say in the
furnace (3:1:68: notice the italic verse-numbering in chap. 3); the third tells about
the king’s discovering that they are unscathed; as a result, he praises the God
of Israel (3:24-4:3). The RSVCE notes to the book of Daniel on page 886 of this
volume provide a concordance of verse numbers for this passage.

The entire passage shows that God can save from death those who are ready to
die rather than worship idols. Early on, the king asks: “Who is the God that will
deliver you out of my hands?” (3:15); he provides the answer himself when he
says at the end: “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego,
who has sent his angel and delivered his servants” (3:28).

3:16-18. The young men’s answer is a model of what people’s attitude to God
should be when tragedy strikes and particularly when martyrdom beckons: they
should hope that God will come to their rescue, but even if he takes no action,
they should stay true to him. “Because of their faith, they believe that they can
escape death, but they say “if he does not deliver us out of your hand” so that
the king will know that they may also die in the arms of the God they love” (St
Cyprian, “Epistolae”, 58, 5). They do not seek to “compel” God to save them;
they want to show that they obey his will, not the king’s. That is the attitude our
Lord had when his passion loomed: “Father, if thou art willing, remove this cup
from me; nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Lk 22:42).

3:24-4:3. At 3:24 the RSV in roman type links up again with the Aramaic text.
The Greek translations introduce these verses by saying that the king heard the
young men singing in the fiery furnace: hence his amazement; the Aramaic text
simply says that he was astonished that they were alive (v. 24). Their delive-
rance reaches them in their place of torment, with the arrival of the angel to pro-
tect them. Nebuchadnezzar, looking down on the furnace, is able to see that
they are safe. To someone like the king, a believer in all sorts of gods, the fourth
person who looks like “a son of the gods” (v. 25) must have seemed a divine be-
ing; but the author makes it clear that he is simply an angel (v. 28). It is through
the angel that God manifests his providence. The divine help given to the three
young men, Novatian comments, “will not allow even their clothes to be singed
by flame.

This is just and right, for God sustains everything in the world in being and has
power over all, each and every thing; therefore, he can furnish any thing or per-
son with his help, since he is Lord of all” (”De Trinitate”, 8, 43).

The Fathers saw this “son of the gods” as meaning Christ. Daniel knew the Son
of God and saw the works of God. He saw the Son of God who cooled the fires
of the furnace with dew. But when he says “Bless the Lord, all works of the Lord”,
he does not include the Son among them, because he knows that He is not a
creature, but the One through whom all creatures were made, and who should
be praised and exalted in the Father” (St Athanasius, “Epistulae Ad Serapionem”,
2, 6).

There is not a little irony in what the text says about the king’s reaction: he prai-
ses the very fact that the young men disobeyed his orders, risking their lives in
the process, and he rewards them for doing so. The very people that the king or-
dered to worship the statue set up by himself, now benefit from a decree that
commands that the God of the Jews is to be respected. The young men’s hero-
ism (their readiness to accept martyrdom) and their miraculous deliverance have
completely changed the king’s attitude.

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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.