A brilliant story and an amazing guy, similar in a lot of ways to Joseph, faithfulness through hardship and rising in a foreign nation. So chapter 1:

A great opening verse not worried about too much detail just letting you know that King Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. I like the way the following sentence reminds us that God is in control; “the Lord delivered…” This opening chapter really show us that God is involved in big nation type events, as well as the individual. In several places God is obviously at work to help Daniel in the predicament he finds himself in (v9,17).

Nebuchadnezzar then ordered the best of the best Israelites to be selected to work in his palace. Daniel along with 3 of his friend where among the men chosen, so was obviously young, hunky and intelligent. This might seem a strange request but the king wanted to remove any potential leaders from among the Israelites and get them onto his brain washing 3 year training camp; maybe a bit like the Starbucks training programme?? They were trying to re-programme them religiously by changing their customs and practices e.g. food, literature, language and names.

Changing each of their names was a lot more significant that I often considered. Names carried a huge amount of meaning for Israelites, Daniel meaning “Judged by God”. Replacing it with Belteshazzar (part of one of their gods) was a constant reminder of their new identity and destiny in Babylon.

The Chapter then moves on to the new food changes. For us the idea of wine and meat sounds great but the food they ate carried a lot more meaning for the Israelites. Wine however was not really restricted so it is thought that Daniels protest was simply a way of saying no and standing out. I find the manor in his protest interesting, he “asked” for different food and then requested “please test us.” Daniel remains humble and respectful. So we all know that they eat the veggie food for 10 days and benefited from it so were allowed to continue.

I think this is where we can get some learning for our own lives. Here Daniel finds himself truly in different surroundings where people worship different gods. He is surrounded by people doing things that he knows does not glorify God. Sound much like us today? Daniel does not fight them, he takes the name change and the training but where he can make a stand he does. Very much in their world but not part of it. This is a reminder to me, how do I act in this world? What do I have control over and how can I stand out? I’m not going to go into all the ways we can stand out today, think it’s quite obvious for our generation, drink, sex, drugs, money etc. I want to just leave it as a challenge to us.

Daniel is an amazing example to us and as a result of his humility and integrity the chapter ends by God giving them all kind of wisdom and knowledge. Nebuchadnezzar found none equal to Daniel in all his land.