I am
mostly reading from my New King James Version – leather bound – for this
exercise. It is so lovely to hold!
Chapter
3: An image of gold about 90 feet tall! My goodness! That was a lot of gold.
Surely not solid gold.
The NKJV uses the phrase “in symphony with all kinds of music” in verses 5, 7, 10 and 15, while the NRSV
uses “musical ensemble.” A nice touch for musicians, I feel, having just
yesterday been trying to recall the young musicians who made up the Queensland Secondary Schools Orchestra which formed in 1966 and which developed into the
Queensland Youth Orchestra. This organisation has a record of 50 years of
making youthful music under the one Musical Director. That 1966 orchestra
certainly had French horns and flutes, and many stringed instruments, but no
harps, lyres, or psalteries. I suppose the general term “horns” could include
trumpets.
I think
of the communication in those days (it reminds me of the language of Esther) - not quite the instant communication of our day. I would like to have a mental
picture of how the king's messages were dispersed on Nebuchadnezzar's day – and
how long it took. And, how was the king's order to be carried out? It feels like a
case of neighbour informing on neighbour. In Daniel's case, it was “certain
Chaldeans” who “dobbed him in” when he disobeyed the order to fall down and
worship the golden image when the music played. What a lot of work this
created, all those musicians throughout the country, for one.
The four
boys would not even yield to the king's demand that they worship the golden
image. They were willing to be “cast into the midst of a burning fiery
furnace.” They knew God would deliver
them.
The king's anger seems to be reflected in the fiery furnace. However, he later came to acknowledge God's power in saving the boys from destruction in
the fire. He said “there is no God who can deliver like this.”
The
chapter ends on a similar note to chapter 2 in that we again see promotion,
this time for the boys, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego.
Joyce Voysey
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