Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Daniel 1:8 - 1:8

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Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Daniel 1:8 - 1:8


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

The command of the king, that the young men should be fed with the food and wine from the king's table, was to Daniel and his friends a test of their fidelity to the Lord and to His law, like that to which Joseph was subjected in Egypt, corresponding to the circumstances in which he was placed, of his fidelity to God (Gen 39:7.). The partaking of the food brought to them from the king's table was to them contaminating, because forbidden by law; not so much because the food was not prepared according to the Levitical ordinance, or perhaps consisted of the flesh of animals which to the Israelites were unclean, for in this case the youths were not under the necessity of refraining from the wine, but the reason of their rejection of it was, that the heathen at their feasts offered up in sacrifice to their gods a part of the food and the drink, and thus consecrated their meals by a religious rite; whereby not only he who participated in such a meal participated in the worship of idols, but the meat and the wine as a whole were the meat and the wine of an idol sacrifice, partaking of which, according to the saying of the apostle (1Co 10:20.), is the same as sacrificing to devils. Their abstaining from such food and drink betrayed no rigorism going beyond the Mosaic law, a tendency which first showed itself in the time of the Maccabees. What, in this respect, the pious Jews did in those times, however (1 Macc. 1:62f.; 2 Macc. 5:27), stands on the ground of the law; and the aversion to eat anything that was unclean, or to defile themselves at all in heathen lands, did not for the first time spring up in the time of the Maccabees, nor yet in the time of the exile, but is found already existing in these threatenings in Hos 9:3., Amo 7:17. Daniel's resolution to refrain from such unclean food flowed therefore from fidelity to the law, and from stedfastness to the faith that “man lives not by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord” (Deu 8:3), and from the assurance that God would bless the humbler provision which he asks for himself, and would by means of it make him and his friends as strong and vigorous as the other youths who did eat the costly provision from the king's table. Firm in this conviction, he requested the chief chamberlain to free him and his three friends from the use of the food and drink brought from the royal table. And the Lord was favourable to him, so that his request was granted.

Dan 1:9

לְחֶסֶד נָתַן, to procure favour for any one, cf. 1Ki 8:30; Psa 106:46; Neh 1:11. The statement that God gave Daniel favour with the chief chamberlain, refers to the fact that he did not reject the request at once, as one not to be complied with, or as punishable, but, esteeming the religious conviction out of which it sprang, pointed only to the danger into which a disregard of the king's command would bring him, thus revealing the inclination of his heart to grant the request. This willingness of the prince of the eunuchs was the effect of divine grace.

Dan 1:10

The words לָמָּה אֲשֶׁר = שַׂלָּמָּה (Son 1:7), for why should he see? have the force of an emphatic denial, as לָמָּה in Gen 47:15, Gen 47:19; 2Ch 32:4, and as לְמָה דִּי in Ezr 7:23, and are equivalent to “he must not indeed see.” זֹעֲפִים, morose, disagreeable, looking sad, here, a pitiful look in consequence of inferior food, corresponding to σκυθρωπός in Mat 6:16. פְּנֵי is to be understood before הֲיְלָדִים, according to the comparatio decurtata frequently found in Hebrew; cf. Psa 4:8; Psa 18:34, etc. וְחִיַּבְתֶּם with וrelat. depends on לָמָּה: and ye shall bring into danger, so that ye bring into danger. אֶת־רֹאשׁ חִיֵּב, make the head guilty, i.e., make it that one forfeits his head, his life.

Dan 1:11-16

When Daniel knew from the answer of the chief that he would grant the request if he were only free from personal responsibility in the matter, he turned himself to the officer who was under the chief chamberlain, whom they were immediately subject to, and entreated him to make trial for ten days, permitting them to use vegetables and water instead of the costly provision and the wine furnished by the king, and to deal further with them according as the result would be. הַמֶּלְצַר, having the article, is to be regarded as an appellative, expressing the business of the calling of the man. The translation, steward or chief cook, is founded on the explanation of the word as given by Haug (Ewald's bibl. Jahrbb. v. p. 159f.) from the New Persian word mel, spirituous liquors, wine, corresponding to the Zendh. madhu (μεθυ), intoxicating drink, and = צַרçara, Sanscr. çiras, the head; hence overseer over the drink, synonymous with רַבְשָׁקֵה, Isa 36:2. - נַס נָא, try, I beseech thee, thy servants, i.e., try it with us, ten days. Ten, in the decimal system the number of completeness or conclusion, may, according to circumstances, mean a long time or only a proportionally short time. Here it is used in the latter sense, because ten days are sufficient to show the effect of the kind of food on the appearance. זֵרֹעִים, food from the vegetable kingdom, vegetables, leguminous fruit. Dan 1:13. מַרְאֵינוּ is singular, and is used with יֵרָאוּ in the plural because two subjects follow. כַּאֲשֶׁר תִּרְאֵה, as thou shalt see, viz., our appearance, i.e., as thou shalt then find it, act accordingly. In this proposal Daniel trusted in the help of God, and God did not put his confidence to shame.

(Note: The request is perfectly intelligible from the nature of living faith, without our having recourse to Calvin's supposition, that Daniel had received by secret revelation the assurance that such would be the result if he and his companions were permitted to live on vegetables. The confidence of living faith which hopes in the presence and help of God is fundamentally different from the eager expectation of miraculous interference of a Maccabean Jew, which C. v. Lengerke and other deists and atheists wish to find here in Daniel.)

The youths throve so visibly on the vegetables and water, that the steward relieved them wholly from the necessity of eating from the royal table. Dan 1:15. בָּשָׂר בְּרִיאֵי, fat, well nourished in flesh, is grammatically united to the suffix of מַרְאֵיהֶם, from which the pronoun is easily supplied in thought. Dan 1:16. נָשָׂא, took away = no more gave.