Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comAdam Clarke Commentary - Daniel 3:27 - 3:27
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Upon whose bodies the fire had no power - The heathens boasted that their priests could walk on burning coals unhurt; and Virgil mentions this of the priests of Apollo of Soracte: -
Summe Deum, sancti custos Soractis Apollo!
Quem primi colimus, cui pineus ardor acervo
Pascitur; et medium, freti pietate, per ignem
Cultores multa premimus vestigia pruna.
Virg. Aen. 11:785.
O Phoebus, guardian of Soracte’s woods
And shady hills; a god above the gods;
To whom our natives pay the rites divine,
And burn whole crackling groves of hallowed pine;
Walk through the fire in honor of thy name,
Unhurt, unsinged, and sacred from the flame.
Pitts.
But Varro tells us that they anointed the soles of their feet with a species of unguent that preserved them from being burnt. Very lately a female showed many feats of this kind, putting red hot iron upon her arms, breasts, etc., and passing it over her hair without the slightest inconvenience; but in the case of the three Hebrews all was supernatural, and the king and his officers well knew it.