The Pulpit Commentary — Daniel — Section 92

this distinction ie only B mnlter of ortho- imagine the king allowing these wise men icraphy. Are we to dC'duce th&t Professor who had refused to answer his q11estion, to IleYau has B cockney disregard for h's? go out of hie presence in sl\foty and unbound. The writer now drops reference to epeoie.l It would seem more natural to imagine that daseee of "·ise men, and ne.mee them they were carried off to prison, and that all genernlly~al<eemin. Thekingisunoonvinood the soothsaying cle.ss were intended to be nf the truth or iheee wise men (~in). or gathered together in prison, in order that rnt.her he is convinced that they are tmitor1 the vengeance of the king might be more Rnd deceivers. They e.re either eonoee.ling appallingly m-inifest. The sentence looks from him the 1..-nowledge they have, and at first eight to us as too savage to be true, are, therefore, traiton to him; or the gods but j11st as savage proofs of vengeanoe have withdrawn from them, and therefore were given by Aeshurbe.nipal And they they must have been untrue to the gods, sought Daniel and h1I fellowa to he slain. On both these grounds Nebuchadnezzar The Septuagint translation of this clause is thinks them worthy of death. He at once somewhe.t paraphrastio, "And Daniel was iBBuee the deoree that all the wise men in sought for and nil those with him in order the city of Babylon should be ale.in. If to be put to death." The want of an the LXX. reading of oh. ii. 2 be oorroot, antecedent to fix the nominative of the he had only summoned the Chaldean wise verb probably led to the sentence e.ssuming men. If all the wise men of Be.bylon were ihl present mould: but "all" seems to he.ve ordered to be slain, the punishment is ex• no word to occasion it. Theodotion follows tended beyond the offence. Possibly he the Massoretio text closely : eo also does the argued, .. If even my fellow-countrymen, Peshitta. It is clear from this that Daniel the Ohaldeans, are traitors, much more will and his companions had not been summoned the Babylonians be so." So fe.r as words into the royal presence when the question go, it is doubtful whether this decree ap- concerning the dream was put to the wise plies to the province of Be.bylonia., u the men. This would seem to contradict the Septaagint translator thinks, or merely statement of oh. i.19, "Therefore stood they" to those in the city. But cruel and furious -to wit these Hebrew youths-" before the as wlli! the young oonqueror, he was king." Their position was probably like scarcely likely to order the wholesale those who had passed the examination for massacre of those who, in Sippara and the Indian Civil Service-they are ac- Borsippa, had neither refused to do what cepted, but they have still a see.son of he wisbed, nor by implication called him study, and then, after they go oat to an unreasonable tyrant, as had the wise India, they occupy only subordinat.e sitna- men in Babylon. tions at first. While permitted to enter Ver. 13.-Alld the decree went forth that the ranks of the soothsayers and e.stro- the wise men ahould be sl&in. As the logers to the court, they were plaoed at first Aramaic stands, it might be tra.DBlated as only in the lower grades, and would have to does Professor Fuller, "And the decree rise by degrees, and in ordinary ciroum- went forth, e.nd the wise men were being etances a long time would elapse before Blain;" the 1 of co-ordination may be re- they would be summoned into the imme- garded as here used of subordination. diate presence of the sovereign. On the Further, the use of the participle for the reading of the LXX ., Daniel and his friends preterite is not by any means uncommon would not, because they were Jews, and not in Daniel, certainly me.inly in the principal Chaldeans. One has only to turn to the clause, e.s in ver. 5 of the present chapter. Talumdio tales to see how unlike this rea- Noldeke, in I.tie 'Syriao Grammar,' 278a, sonable position is to the ordinary Jewish gives examples of tbe passive pe.rtioiple fictitious narrative. The Book of Daniel is being used as here in the subordinate not nearly prodigal enough in wonders to cl.e.use. The Septuagint is very condensed, be a representative of the Jewieh Midrash, but possibly drawn from a similar text, only It is further clear tha.t the decree of the such extreme condensation is unlike the king went beyond those who had actue.lly translator elsewhere. It is poBBible that been in his council-chamber on that memor- 11ome part of the ,j?~ (JJ'qad), "to decree," able day. The idea of the king probably we.s used, perhaps the participle hithpael, was that the treason which he had found It is possible tbat the verb q'tal was in the in the heads of the various classes of Chal- infinitive. Theodotion renders," And tbe dee.n soothsayers would have permeated all decree went forth, and the wise men were the members, Babylonian and foreign, 118 Elain." Tbi.B, though a possible translation, well ; therefore he orders them all to suffer does not fit what we find represented to be a common fate. Wieseler's hypothesis, tha.t thEo circum,iances, a.s vcr. 24 &eeme to assume this event took place close to the end of that tl.ie wise men were not yet destroyed. On the three years of study which had been tl.tc o(U(;r Laud, it would 1,c l,ardly po,sible tq assie-ued to these youths, would Sllit tho ell. II. 1-1!J.] 'I'Irn BOOK O[l' DANII•:L. 63