![]() The story thus offers a moral lesson to both Jews living under tyrannical imperial regimes and those rulers who would attempt to set themselves up as higher than God. And the theological meaning of the story of the fiery furnace is clear: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refuse to worship a graven image of the Babylonian king, because God forbids it and for their faith and loyalty, they are saved from the fires of the ‘furnace’ or oven.īut because of the striking visual nature of the spectacle, with the men emerging unharmed from the flames, the story also has the effect of revealing God’s power directly to Nebuchadnezzar himself. It is the first of these stories that concerns us here, of course. ![]() By the time we reach the end of the fifth chapter of the Book of Daniel, we have encountered Nebuchadnezzar throwing Shadrach and the two other men into the fiery furnace, the writing on the wall at Belshazzar’s feast, and Daniel himself being thrown into the lions’ den. Perhaps no other book of the Old Testament, with the exception of the Book of Genesis, contains such a dense collection of famous stories within its first five chapters. Nebuchadnezzar doesn’t just take back his words, but he actually promotes the three Jewish men to higher office:ģ:30 Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, in the province of Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar has witnessed a miracle, which proves that the Jewish men spoke truth when they told the king that their God would ‘deliver’ them from death in the fiery furnace:ģ:28 Then Nebuchadnezzar spake, and said, Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who hath sent his angel, and delivered his servants that trusted in him, and have changed the king’s word, and yielded their bodies, that they might not serve nor worship any god, except their own God. The men are all unharmed, as are their clothes, when they step out of the fiery furnace. Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, came forth of the midst of the fire. Instead, ‘the Son of God’ (as it’s rendered in the King James translation) means something closer to ‘a son of the gods’, i.e., an angel:ģ:26 Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the mouth of the burning fiery furnace, and spake, and said, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, ye servants of the most high God, come forth, and come hither. This reference to the fourth man being ‘like the Son of God’ has been retrospectively read as a reference to Jesus, but Daniel is an Old Testament book and it is not concerned either with the events of the New Testament or even, here, with the idea of prophesying the coming of the Messiah. And there is a fourth figure with them:ģ:25 He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God. The three Jewish men are bound in their clothes and then thrown into the furnace:ģ:21 Then these men were bound in their coats, their hosen, and their hats, and their other garments, and were cast into the midst of the burning fiery furnace.īut Nebuchadnezzar is amazed to find that the three men are not consumed by the flames, but walk through the fire, unharmed. ![]() 3:19 Then was Nebuchadnezzar full of fury, and the form of his visage was changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego: therefore he spake, and commanded that they should heat the furnace one seven times more than it was wont to be heated.
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