“Bible Week” at The Ambiguities
Friday’s
child is loving and giving. Another story of Daniel.
After Daniel
had dispatched Bel and his priests,# the Babylonians took up worshiping a great
dragon.
And the king
said to Daniel: “Now this is not brass;
it is alive. It eats and it drinks – we have seen it. So, you can’t say it is
no living god. Come and worship with me.”
Daniel refused. “There is only one true
and living God. This thing may be living, but it is no God. Tell you what: I
can kill this dragon without a sword or a spear. The king said, “You can try.”
Daniel took pitch, and fat, and hair, and he
mixed them together, he boiled them together; then he made lumps like loaves of
bread of them. And the dragon (more fool he) ate them. And his stomach swelled
up until it could swell up no more; then it burst. The dragon himself exploded.
This happened in the presence of the king and many of the people.
And Daniel looked at the king and said, “This was your God? You worshiped this?”
The king answered, “I did, more fool I.” And he put himself under Daniel’s
religious instruction.
This did not
sit well with the Babylonian people: “The king is becoming a Jew,” they said. “First
he has Bel destroyed; and now he has slain the dragon; and he has executed the
priests of both,” because he had done that, too. So they came to the king, and
said, “We’re sick of you, but we don’t blame you. It’s that damn Daniel. If you
turn him over to us, we won’t destroy you and your house.
So, the king did. He may have thought, “Let’s
see what Daniel’s god can do – practically,” because all he had so far was
Daniel’s word on that. But he may not have thought that at all. He was a king,
and like most kings, he wanted to remain one. In short, he turned Daniel over
to the people,
Now normally, the seven lions were given
every day two sheep and two human bodies. But these six days they were given
nothing but Daniel.
Far away in
Judea lived the prophet Habakkuk, who made his living as a cook and had just baked
some bread and made a stew to take it to some workers in the field. But the
angel of the Lord interrupted him. He said to Habakkuk, “You need to take this
dinner to Daniel, who is in the lions’ den in Babylon.
Habakkuk said, “I’ve heard of Babylon, but
I have no idea to get there, and surely the food would spoil before I did.” The
angel said, “Well, then, let me show you.” (There was spite in the angel’s
voice, if that can be.) Then, he grabbed Habakkuk by the hair and flew him,
barely hanging on to the bread and the stew, and in an instant dropped him down
beside the lion’s den.
His eyes watering, Habakkuk cried out to
Daniel, “Please take this; it’s bread I baked and stew I simmered. Please!”
Daniel hardly saw the other prophet,
because he was always looking to the heavens, and now he said, “Thou hast
remembered me, O God: neither hast thou forsaken this one that seeks and loves
thee.”
This happened
the first day, and there was enough stew for all the days Daniel was there,
both for Daniel and for the lions. And the angel of the Lord took Habakkuk by
the hair and dropped him home again, then left, leaving him to explain to the
workers in the field why they had nothing to eat that night.
On the seventh day, the king went to mourn
Daniel, but when he came to the lion’s den and looked in, Daniel was alive
among the lions, all sleeping the sleep of the just and well-fed.
But Daniel woke up, when he heard the king
crying out in a loud voice, “Great art thou, the Lord God of Daniel, and there
is none other beside thee.” And the king had two of his servants bring Daniel
out, while the lions continued to sleep.
Then he had 42 of his servants march into
the den the leaders of the people that had called for Daniel’s scalp. That woke
the lions up.
_______________
04.22.16
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