To see Daniel 3:1-7 without my comments
click HERE.
The story of the Hebrew children; Shadrach, Meshach, and
Abednego in Daniel Chapter 3, is a direct response to the events in Daniel
Chapter 2. The new positions of Daniel and his friends made the
Babylonian scientists envious, and rather than thanking the Hebrew
children for saving their lives they started to plot against them. It's my
guess that the scientists still saw the Hebrew children as the slaves
they were originally when they first arrived into the
Assyrian captivity. This may be the reason that they plotted against Daniel
and his friends.
About the idol itself...
Meanwhile, there was an attempted
revolt against the Babylonian Empire in 596 B.C. Which set the stage
for a wide scale reaffirmation of allegiance to King Nebuchadnezzar.
King Nebuchadnezzar had a golden idol made for all to bow to in which
they would demonstrate their loyalty to both him and the
Babel/Babylonian Empire. The measurements of this idol was 6 by 60
cubits. The actual height of this idol was based upon a measurement
called a cubit. A cubit is measured from the elbow to the fingertip
on a man and this measurement was somewhere between 14-22 inches,
this made the idol about a hundred feet tall. The most important
thing I want to point out about the measurements isn't necessarily
the height, but rather the base to the height ratio which is
ten.
The reason this ratio is important is
because most people read in the prior chapter about the dream of the image representing the world empires being a man, and they
automatically think that Nebuchadnezzar made a statue of himself or
it was a statue of a man that was in his dream representing the
different coming world empires. Most overlook the words in Chapter
3:1 where it clearly states that the idol was “an image of gold” and the
Bible does not say that the
idol was a statue of a man, or anything specific for that matter. The
Farrar Fenton Bible describes the idol as “a golden column.”
This is a picture of Victory Column in Berlin, Germany. The ratio of the column's base to height including the statue on top is similar to the height/base ratio of Nebuchadnezzar's idol.
A ratio of ten (base times
height) will not produce a recognizable figure of a person. Some also
believe that this idol could have just simply have been an obelisk which was a common
sight in Babylon.
This idol as with all idols, represent
a god of some sort. This is a totally Pagan concept, and of course
it's against the second commandment to not make any graven images;
Exodus 20:4. I want to remind everyone that there is no man that knows
what Yahweh (God) looks like, simply because the Father is spirit and
not visible to the naked eye.
In Verse 4 a herald cry was heard
aloud...
When you hear the sound of all sorts of
musical instruments, you will fall down and worship this idol which
was created by the King. The musical instruments described in this
passage are the coronet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer.
The one instrument I want to focus on in this particular passage is
the psaltery. A psaltery according to early definition is a wine
bladder. The wine bottles during this time were a bladder made of goat
skin. Inflating a goat skin and deflating quickly will not produce
music, but rather will produce a noise that would be similar from a
modern day Whoopie cushion so pipes were attached to produce music. Today we know a
psaltery as bagpipes which are commonly found in Scotland and of
course anyone knowing anything about the Scottish Declaration of
Independence will know that it clearly states that the Scottish are
directly descended from the Israelites of the Bible which sailed to
Scotland through the pillars of Hercules (straits of Gibraltar), so to find bagpipes in Scotland is not surprising.
If you look in Strong's Concordance # 5035 The word psaltry comes from the Hebrew word “nay-bel” meaning; “A skin bag (from collapsing when empty); hence, a vase (as similar in shape when full); also a lyre (as having a body of like form): bottle, picture, psaltry, vessel, viol.”
I praise the Lord for the
Prophet Daniel and his friends which we know by their Babylonian
names of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
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