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Context No. 945 of 4322 · Daniel (Greek)

Context · Reflection

Daniel (Greek) 3:90-97: in context

90O all you who worship the Lord, bless the God of gods, praise him, and give him thanks; for his mercy is forever!” 91Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astonished and rose up in haste. He spoke and said to his counselors, “Didn’t we cast three men bound into the middle of the fire?” They answered the king, “True, O king.” 92He answered, “Look, I see four men loose, walking in the middle of the fire, and they are unharmed. The appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods.” 93Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the mouth of the burning fiery furnace. He spoke and said, “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, you servants of the Most High God, come out, and come here!” Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came out of the middle of the fire. 94The local governors, the deputies, and the governors, and the king’s counselors, being gathered together, saw these men, that the fire had no power on their bodies. The hair of their head wasn’t singed. Their pants weren’t changed. The smell of fire wasn’t even on them. 95Nebuchadnezzar spoke and said, “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants who trusted in him, and have changed the king’s word, and have yielded their bodies, that they might not serve nor worship any god, except their own God. 96Therefore I make a decree, that every people, nation, and language, who speak anything evil against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, shall be cut in pieces, and their houses shall be made a dunghill, because there is no other god who is able to deliver like this.” 97Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the province of Babylon.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego have been thrown into the blazing furnace for refusing to worship Nebuchadnezzar's golden image. Now the king, watching, leaps up astonished: did we not throw three men in? But I see four, walking around unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods. He calls them out, and they emerge without a hair singed, without even the smell of smoke on them. Nebuchadnezzar blesses their God, who sent his angel to deliver the servants who trusted him and would not worship any god but their own, and decrees that no one may speak against this God.

The center of the scene is the fourth figure in the fire. God did not spare the three men the furnace; he met them in it. They still had to be bound and thrown into the flames, and only there, inside the fire, did the fourth appear, walking with them. This is not deliverance from the trial but presence within it, which is often the deliverance God actually gives. Notice too what the fire did and did not burn: it consumed the ropes that bound them, so they walked free inside the furnace, but it left the men themselves untouched, not even the smell of smoke. The only thing the fire destroyed was their chains. And the watching pagan king is the one changed by it. He came to enforce worship of his image and ends up blessing the God who overruled his own command. The faithfulness of three men in a furnace preached to an empire more than any sermon could.

When I am facing a fire I have not been spared, do I look for the fourth figure who walks in it with me, and trust him to burn only my chains?

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