Daniel 6

Remember back in Daniel 2, when Daniel interpreted King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream about the great statue? Do you remember how that statue represented the future? The King in chapter six is the continuation of that prophecy being fulfilled. The chest and arms of silver were to represent the Medo-persian Empire. Darius was the Mede part of this duo. Later Cyrus (Persian) would come in to play as the other silver arm of the statue. I love reading about prophecies being fulfilled in the Bible. Even more, seeing it fulfilled in our days. We can see the authenticity of God’s word in Him following through with His promises.

The thing that catches my attention the most is King Darius himself. I cannot tell exactly where Darius stood with the Lord, but we can see in verse 9 where he stood with himself. How easy is it for us to say “yes” to something without thinking of others? For an example, I am a big planner. My past room-mates could tell you that I just love to plan out my next step all day long. Even worse, I often do it out loud for the surrounding people to hear my plan. I have no idea why I do this, I Just do. Even though this technique helps me in many ways, and drives people crazy in others, I can get carried away and make some mistakes with it. Sometimes a plan will start out with just one person, and then before I know it I have invited more people to join in on the plan and it gets real complicated real fast and leaves the first individual probably feeling less than cared for. I just get caught up in the moment that I do not even stop and think about that first individual and what they would think about all the changes I made without even talking to them about it. I then cringe because it is too late to take it all back. I feel that in a much larger scale this is what King Darius did. He probably did not have a planning problem but a “self” problem. I wonder what was going through his head when the administrators and satraps went to the king with the idea of the edict. Because of his reaction we can see that he did not mind the attention that would be given to him through the edict. We see with Nebuchadnezzar how easy it is to get puffed up with pride. I think Darius experiences the exact same thing. “Yes, let them worship me alone.” Who thinks like that? An unbelieving King does.

King Darius probably did not have a personal relationship with God at this point but we can see that he was aware of God’s power and existence. He tells Daniel that his God will deliver him. There we have the cringe I was talking about earlier. Despite all the labor the king went through to keep Daniel from this fate, he could not take back the edict he had approved. He lost sleep over this one. Because he ran to the den the next morning and yelled at Daniel expecting an answer back makes me think he definitely believed that Daniel’s God was with him. Once again we come to a close with the King praising God. We are still not sure where Darius stood with God. After all we had seen Nebuchadnezzar praising the same God the same way but it still took a lot for him to recognize God’s greatness. Maybe Darius got it the first time. May we learn from their examples instead of learning the hard way.

--Kristi Smith, Summer Camp Manager