Daniel In Babylon

7. Historical Interlude

Three years after Nebuchadnezzar’s recovery from his seven years’ insanity, his long reign of forty‑three years reached its end. He died at probably about seventy‑five years of age, and with his death came the change in Daniel’s circumstances which marks the division in the narrative. Up to Chapter 4 the story is set entirely in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, during which time Daniel was Chief man in the kingdom. Now, at about sixty‑three years of age, Daniel stood by while his royal master’s son, Avil‑Marduk, ascended the throne, and from that point until the accession of Belshazzar, the last king of Babylon, the Book of Daniel is silent. When the narrative is resumed, in the first year of Belshazzar, with Daniel’s dream of the four great beasts and the coming of the Ancient of Days in Judgment (Daniel Chap.7) the prophet is no longer chief political Minister of State. He is a private citizen and, as evidenced by the story of Belshazzar’s feast, practically unknown to the king and probably to the leading men of the realm. Daniel spent forty years in the limelight, ruling the affairs of the empire of Babylon; then he spent nearly forty years more in measurable obscurity, his good works for the nation forgotten, his wisdom and counsel ignored. But it was during that latter forty years that he had those wonderful revelations from on high which have given the book which bears his name the title of "the Revelation of the Old Testament.” The second half of Daniel’s life, spent in obscurity, has meant far more to succeeding generations than the first half, stirring though the events of those earlier days are to us as we read them.

In order to fill in this gap in the Biblical narrative we turn for a moment to the records of the tablets. So many thousands of these tablets have been unearthed, many of them dated, that the history of Daniel’s Babylon is better known to scholars than that of England in the days of King Alfred. There are dated tablets in the British Museum for every year of the reigns of every king from Nebuchadnezzar to Belshazzar so that the chronology of the period is no longer a matter of dispute.

The great king’s son, Avil‑Marduk, by all accounts a weak‑willed man of no principles, reigned only two years, his reign being characterised by lawlessness and impiety. Jeremiah mentions him once, when in Jer.52:31‑34 he says in the thirty‑seventh year of King Jehoiachin’s captivity, "Evil‑Merodach (the Hebrew form of Avil‑Marduk) king of Babylon in the first year of his reign” released him from prison and dealt kindly with him. But at the end of two years, one of Nebuchadnezzar’s military commanders, Neriglissar, husband of Nebuchadnezzar’s eldest daughter, murdered Avil‑Marduk and on the basis of his own royal marriage ascended the throne.

Neriglissar (a Greek form of the name) is mentioned in Jer.39 under the native spelling, Nergal‑Sharezer, (v.13) as having been present at the siege and destruction of Jerusalem in the days of Zedekiah. At that time, according to the Jeremiah account, he occupied the position of Rab‑Mag, or master of the magicians, a title which the Book of Daniel indicates afterwards passed to Daniel. Neriglissar reigned three years only, was not particularly conspicuous, and died peacefully at Babylon. He left one daughter, Gigitum, whose marriage contract to a high Court official, Nabushum‑ukin, now reposes at the British Museum, and a youthful son, Labashi‑Marduk, who succeeded him on the throne and after nine months was killed in a palace insurrection.

By this time it is probable that Jehoiachin was dead, but somewhere in Babylon there must have lived his grandson Zerubbabel, the child who at the time of the Return from Exile, now only about twenty years distant, was destined to be the officially appointed Governor of the new Judean state. Zerubbabel figures prominently in the books of Ezra and Zechariah. He was the man who wielded civil power among the people re‑gathered to Zion without a king. And somewhere in Babylon there played also another child, Joshua the son of Jehozadek, the legal High Priest of Israel during the captivity, a High Priest without sacrifices, for the sacrifices could be offered only at Jerusalem. Joshua became the first High Priest of regathered Israel, and he too figures prominently in the books of Ezra and Zechariah. So in the time of obscurity which lies between the early and the latter parts of the Captivity, between Daniel the Stateman and Daniel the Seer, we discern dim shadows of those who were to lead God’s people after Daniel and all his generation had passed away. That of itself ought to be a sobering thought to us. We experience our own day of service for God and serve with our might while we have strength and opportunity, and then sometimes make frantic efforts to perpetuate the work we have commenced. All the time there is no need; God makes his own arrangements for the continuation of his work, and while our own generation is beginning to lower the torch He is already preparing, perhaps in another place that we wot not of, those who are to do his work in the next generation.

That of itself does not justify our relaxing our efforts in the vineyard we have tended maybe all our lives. Sometimes the new work and old work must progress side by side for a space. "He must increase, but I must decrease” said John the Baptist, (John 3:30) speaking of Jesus and the new, greater work he was to do. A goodly company of God’s stalwarts have seen their sphere of activity diminish as life draws on, and happy are those who can continue in unabated certainty and confidence despite the decreasing response, all the time that they can find a hearing ear or reverent heart anywhere. Daniel stayed in Babylon and saw visions which have enlightened every generation of the Church, even whilst his younger compatriots, Zerubbabel and Joshua, were actively engaged, away in Jerusalem, laying the foundations of the restored Jewish state.

Returning to Babylon and its Palace intrigues, so like those of any court in any country, then or since; the death of Labashi‑Marduk left the way to the throne open to Nabonidus the husband of Nebuchadnezzar’s younger daughter Nitocris. Nabonidus was a son of the High Priest of the Moon‑god at Haran, the city in the north to which Terah emigrated with his family from Ur of the Chaldees, and from which Abraham set out "not knowing whither he went” (Heb.11:8) to go to Canaan. Nabonidus as a youth had been brought to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar at about the same time as Daniel himself and was one of those with Daniel intended to be trained in the wisdom of the Chaldeans. As such he would be included in the young men mentioned in the first chapter of Daniel. The two must have been well acquainted at the start and must have been well known to each other throughout life. When one remembers the high favour in which Daniel had stood with the great king, the fact that his fellow‑exile Nabonidus married into the king’s family evokes the surmise that Daniel himself might quite likely have had the opportunity, in earlier years, of becoming joined to the royal family by marriage and so eventually ascending the throne of Babylon. He would obviously have been the king’s first choice in preference to Nabonidus. If such a proposal ever was made in fact, another evidence of Daniel’s sterling allegiance to God is afforded. He would serve faithfully in the place where God had placed him but he would make no alliance with the "people of the land.” We can well imagine that to be his attitude.

Nabonidus was a better archaeologist than king; his devouring passion was the collecting of relics of the civilisations that were so much older than his own time as his time is older than ours. After reigning five years, the growing aggressiveness of the Persians under Cyrus demanded a younger man—Nabonidus, like Daniel, was about seventy‑five years old by now—and that led him to associate with himself his son Belshazzar as joint king. This event marks what the Book of Daniel calls "first year of Belshazzar the King.” Nabonidus retired to his museums and archaeologist studies, his daughter Bel‑shaltinannar (Ennigaldi‑Nanna) was appointed High Priestess of the Moon‑god’s Temple at Ur of the Chaldees, Abraham’s birthplace, and Belshazzar, at probably little more than twenty years of age, became the real ruler of Babylon. At this point the Book of Daniel takes up the story again, after a silence of some twenty‑five years.

No longer, though, do we see the stage set with the glory and pomp of the royal court, Daniel, the statesman, the king’s right‑hand man, administering and ruling the kingdom. No longer do we hear of mighty acts of faith and noteworthy miracles attesting to all beholders the all‑powerful sovereignty of God. There is a difference. We see a darkened stage, the serene light of the moon shining through a window on the form of an old man, head buried in prayer, eyes poring over books, a recumbent form in the quietude of sleep seeing visions of God. We hear messages from another world telling of great events yet to transpire. We glimpse angels coming and going, bearing revelations and mysteries which that same old man is to be the means of leaving on record for all those who in after days would know the things which God is planning to do in the world of men. So it came about that in the first year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon, fifty‑six years after Daniel first entered the city in which he was to spend his lifetime of exile, this faithful servant of God, who had walked step‑by‑step with God during all those fifty‑six years, began to experience the series of revelations which crowned his life’s work. Like John on Patmos a half a millennium later, he saw and recorded "things which must shortly come to pass” to the abiding blessing of all who were to come after.

AOH
(To be continued)