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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Daniel 3:24 - 3:24
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The king, who sat watching the issue of the matter, looked through the door into the furnace, and observed that the three who had been cast into it bound, walked about freed from their bonds and unhurt; and, in truth, he saw not the three only, but also a fourth, “like to a son of the gods,” beside them. At this sight he was astonished and terrified. He hastily stood up; and having assured himself by a consultation with his counsellors that three men had indeed been cast bound into the furnace, while he saw four walking in the midst of it, he approached the mouth of the furnace and cried to the three to come forth. They immediately came out, and were inspected by the assembled officers of state, and found to be wholly uninjured as to their bodies, their clothes being unharmed also, and without even the smell of fire upon them. הַדּבְרִין refers, without doubt, to the officers of the kingdom, ministers or counselors of state standing very near the king, since they are named in Dan 3:27 and Daniel 6:8 (Dan 6:7) along with the first three ranks of officers, and (Dan 4:23 [26]) during Nebuchadnezzar's madness they conducted the affairs of government. The literal meaning of the word, however, is not quite obvious. Its derivation from the Chald. דָּבְרִין, duces, with the Hebr. article (Gesen.), which can only be supported by מְדַבְרָא, Pro 11:14 (Targ.), is decidedly opposed by the absence of all analogies of the blending into one word of the article with a noun in the Semitic language. The Alkoran offers no corresponding analogues, since this word with the article is found only in the more modern dialects. But the meaning which P. v. Bohlen (Symbolae ad interp. s. Codicis ex ling. pers. p. 26) has sought from the Persian word which is translated by simul judex, i.e., socius in judicio, is opposed not only by the fact that the compensation of the Mim by the Dagesch, but also the composition and the meaning, has very little probability.
The fourth whom Nebuchadnezzar saw in the furnace was like in his appearance, i.e., as commanding veneration, to a son of the gods, i.e., to one of the race of the gods. In Dan 3:28 the same personage is called an angel of God, Nebuchadnezzar there following the religious conceptions of the Jews, in consequence of the conversation which no doubt he had with the three who were saved. Here, on the other hand, he speaks in the spirit and meaning of the Babylonian doctrine of the gods, according to the theogonic representation of the συζυγία of the gods peculiar to all Oriental religions, whose existence among the Babylonians the female divinity Mylitta associated with Bel places beyond a doubt; cf. Hgst. Beitr. i. p. 159, and Häv., Kran., and Klief. in loc.
Acting on this assumption, which did not call in question the deliverance of the accused by the miraculous interposition of the Deity, Nebuchadnezzar approached the door of the furnace and cried to the three men to come out, addressing them as the servants (worshippers) of the most high God. This address does not go beyond the circle of heathen ideas. He does not call the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego the only true God, but only the most high God, the chief of the gods, just as the Greeks called their Zeus ὁ ὕψιστος θεός. The Kethiv עִלָּיָא (in Syr. ̀elāyā̀, to preserve) is here and everywhere in Daniel (v. 32; Dan 4:14, Dan 4:21, etc.) pointed by the Masoretes according to the form עִילָאָה (with )ה prevailing in the Targg. The forms גְשֵׁם, גִּשְׁמָא, are peculiar to Daniel (v. 27f., Dan 4:30; Dan 5:21; Dan 7:11). The Targg. have גּוּשְׁמָא instead of it.