Daniel in the Lions' Den

Babylon fell in a single night. At his feast Belshazzar had the golden vessels from the Temple brought in to drink from—and fingers appeared on the wall opposite the lampstand: mene mene tekel upharsin. No one could read it. Daniel was summoned: your kingdom is numbered, you are weighed and found wanting, your kingdom is divided. That same night Belshazzar was killed and Darius the Mede took power.

Under the new king Daniel rose above all the officials. His rivals could find no fault in him—"no error was found, because he was trustworthy"—so they set a trap in his faith. They persuaded the king to sign an irrevocable decree: for thirty days no one may petition any god or man except the king, on pain of the lions' den.

Daniel learned that the decree was signed, went home, "his windows open in his upper chamber facing Jerusalem," and three times a day, as he had always done, knelt and prayed.

He was thrown into the den and a stone was sealed over it with the king's ring. Darius neither ate nor slept, and at dawn ran and cried: "Daniel, servant of the living God, was your God able to save you?" And he heard: "My God sent His angel and shut the lions' mouths."

The figure given is the place this event would occupy in the academic chronology of the Persian period, shifted by 165 years relative to Seder Olam. Something else must be said as well: academic biblical scholarship dates the composition of the Book of Daniel to the second century BCE and does not treat this account as a datable event. Both things are true at once, and the reader should know both.