The Bovine Shrines

Dang, if that crazy old guy with the torn-up coat wasn't right after all.

The prophet Ahijah had prophesied that Jeroboam would someday rule over ten of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Sure enough, when Solomon's jerk of a son, Rehoboam, managed to piss off most of the nation, these break-away northern tribes chose Jeroboam to be their new king.

Ahijah also promised that God would bless Jeroboam with a dynasty as great and as enduring as that of David. With just one caveat:

If you do whatever I command you and walk in my ways and do what is right in my eyes by keeping my statures and commands, as David my servant did, I will be with you. (1 Kings 11:38 NIV)

Yeah, there's always a catch.

When King David conquered the city of Jerusalem, he did more than just make it the political capital of the tribes of Israel. By bringing the Ark of the Covenant into the city, he also made Jerusalem the religious center as well. David originally intended to build a temple to house the Ark, but that task fell to his son, Solomon.

This presented Jeroboam with a problem. Yes, the Northern Tribes had declared their independence from the House of David, and no, Rehoboam did not have the military strength to re-take them; but if Jeroboam's people had to keep going to Jerusalem in order to worship and to perform sacrifices, they'd wind up under Jerusalem's thumb after all.

I sometimes wonder if it was a bad idea for King David to bring the Ark to Jerusalem in the first place. Yes, it consolidated the religious and political centers of the nation in the same place; but it also brought the priesthood under the direct control of the King. You could even see this as an argument in favor of the Separation of Church and State.

For Jeroboam, the solution was obvious. To keep his subjects from worshiping in an enemy nation, he set up mega-churches of his own.

After seeking advice, the king made two golden calves. He said to the people, “It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” One he set up in Bethel. And the other in Dan. And this thing became a sin; the people went even as far as Dan to worship the one there. (1 Kings 12:28-30)

Bethel was already a religious site; it's name means “House of God.” It was located in the Tribe of Benjamin, near the border between the Jeroboam's Northern Kingdom, and the Southern Kingdom of Judah. According to Genesis 28:19, this was the place where Jacob had his dream of angels ascending and descending a Stairway to Heaven, providing later inspiration for Led Zeppelin. Dan was located clear on the other side of Israel, up in the northern reaches near the headwaters of the Jordan River.

But what jumps out at the reader is the fact that Jeroboam made golden calves to represent God. Didn't the Israelites try that once before at Mount Sinai? Didn't that incident teach them not to worship gilded livestock?

One cynical answer could be that the author of Kings inserted the calves into the story in order to remind the readers of the sinful Golden Calf in Exodus. And the words of Jeroboam here do seem to be deliberate echoes of Aaron's words in Exodus 32:4. Or perhaps that the Golden Calf story from Exodus was a bit of retroactive continuity intended to foreshadow Jeroboam's idols.

But the two incidents could have arisen independently. I strongly suspect that the worship practices of the Hebrews was not nearly as standardized as the author of Deuteronomy would like us to think. Even if we follow Tradition and accept that the Law of Moses was written by Moses himself; considering how loosely-knit the tribes were before the monarchical period and how frequently the Israelites slid into adopting the religions of their neighbors, I wouldn't be surprised if there were a great deal of variation in how the individual tribes practiced the worship of the God of Abraham.

In an agrarian culture, worshiping a deity who takes the form of livestock makes a certain amount of sense. The Egyptians worshiped a bull-god named Apis; and when the Israelites at Sinai asked Aaron to make a statue to represent the God who had delivered them from bondage, in Exodus chapter 32, Apis was probably the first thing that came to mind. The Cretans worshiped bulls, as did the Canaanites; and art of the Assyrians, Israel's neighbor to the north, is noted for its winged bulls.

So Jeroboam, wishing to present his people with an alternative to the Temple cult of Jerusalem, and lacking an Ark to represent the Presence of the Almighty, followed the examples of his neighbors and made these cows as stand-ins.

I can't help but wonder, if Jeroboam had just established places of worship without the idols, things might have gone better. Perhaps he could have made arrangements with the High Priest of the Temple to have officially sanctioned priests perform sacrifices in the other places. Perhaps they might have developed a decentralized religion, as the Jews were forced to later with the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple.

Or maybe it would have made no difference and Israel's break with the House of David would have resulted in apostasy no matter what they did.

From here the story gets weird.

A certain Man of God shows up at Bethel on one of Jeroboam's holy festivals. Not only did Jeroboam set up bovine idols at his new shrines, he also established his own holiday on the fifteenth day of the eighth month. This seems to have been to replace the Feast of Tabernacles, (Sukkot) established by Moses and held a month earlier. This might not seem like such a big deal, but Jeroboam also performed the sacrifices at Bethel personally. Having the king perform religious ceremonies was a common practice among Israel's neighbors, but Moses had established a kind of separation of Church and State in the Law: the priesthood and the secular leadership were separate entities, and the religious rituals were the sole provenance of the priests. A couple generations earlier, King Saul had gotten in trouble for presuming to offer a sacrifice by himself. (1 Samuel 13:5-14)

But back to this Man of God. The text does not name him; it only says that he came from Judah to deliver a message.

By the word of the LORD a man of God came from Judah to Bethel, as Jeroboam was standing by the altar to make an offering. He cried out against the altar by the word of the LORD: “O altar, altar! This is what the LORD says: 'A son named Josiah will be born to the house of David. On you he will sacrifice the priests of the high places who now make offering here, and human bones will be burned on you.'” That same day the man of God gave a sign: “This is the sign the LORD has declared: The altar will be split apart and the ashes on it will be poured out.” (1 Kings 13:1-3)

Josiah was a later king of Judah, whose reign saw religious reforms and a revival of the Temple worship. It is believed by many Bible scholars that the Book of Deuteronomy was written during the time of Josiah, and possibly much of the Books of Kings as well.

The king reached out intending to grab this holy heckler, but when he did so his hand shriveled up so that he could not withdraw it; and just as the man of God had prophesied, Jeroboam's altar cracked and split asunder.

This really frightened Jeroboam. He asked the Man of God to intercede with the LORD and heal him. The Man of God did so, and Jeroboam's hand was restored to health. (1 Kings 13:4-6)

The king invites the Man of God back to the palace for something to eat and to give him a little “thank-you” present, but the MoG is also a Man with a Mission. “Even if you were to give me half your possessions, I would not go with you, nor would I eat bread or drink water here.” God told him to go to Bethel, deliver the message and come back. He was not to eat or drink anything while in Jeroboam's territory; he was not to Pass GO; he was not to collect $200. He was not even to go back by the same route came. And so he turned around and headed back to Judea. Snap. Jeroboam, you have been burned.

But there was also a prophet who lived in Bethel at that time. We don't get his name either. Hearing about what happened at the shrine, the prophet saddled up his donkey and rode after the man of Man of God back to his place for

a couple cold ones and maybe a quick nosh or something.

The MoG explained that he couldn't do this, for the same reasons he gave to the king. The prophet replied that it was okay because he was a prophet too and an angel had told him to give the man of God some refreshments.

Well, if a prophet said that an angel had told him, then it must be all right, right? I mean, a prophet wouldn't lie about something like that, would he?

I suppose that's what the Man of God thought. He thought wrong. (v.11-19)

Why did the jerk do that? Why did he lie to the man of God? I don't think he was deliberately trying to wreck the MoG's mission. I wonder if he might have just wanted the prestige of being able to say, “Oh yeah, that prophet from Judea? Yeah, I know him. Had him over for dinner once.” He was an old man, the text tells us, and perhaps his better days of prophecy were behind him. Maybe he hoped latching onto this new guy would make him seem more relevant. Or maybe he was just too gregarious for his own good.

He was a legitimate prophet, though, because in the middle of dinner with his guest the word of the Lord came to him.

While they were sitting at the table the word of the LORD came to the old prophet who had brought him back. He cried out to the man of God who had come from Judah, “This is what the LORD says: 'You have defiled the word of the LORD and have not kept the command the LORD your God gave you. You came be back and ate bread and drank water in the place where he told you not to eat or drink. Therefore your body will not be buried in the tomb of your fathers.'” (1 Kings 13:20-22)

Bummer.

At this point, the I think the reader can be forgiven for thinking that God is being kind of a jerk here. The man of God, after all, was acting in good faith. He didn't know the prophet was lying; for all he knew God had changed his mind about the Not-Eating-or-Drinking thing. If anything, the skeevy prophet was to blame. Wasn't God coming down hard on the guy?

Maybe. The best I can say is that the reason the Man of God was prohibited from accepting hospitality while in Jeroboram's territory was to emphasize God's displeasure with the king's idolatry. By accepting the prophet's dinner, after telling the king he wouldn't, he was undercutting the message God sent him to deliver. And he really should have known better than to accept the guy's invitation, even if the guy was a prophet.

I would imagine the rest of the meal was rather strained. The Man of God finishes his dinner; that's only polite and at this point he might as well; and the prophet saddles up his donkey for him. And on his way down the road, he is attacked and killed by a lion. But that's not the freaky part.

The lion does not devour the MoG, or maul him further, or go after the donkey, or even just wander away. For that matter, the donkey doesn't bolt either. Both animals just remain standing there, beside the MoG's body, as a mute testimonial to the man's death.

When the smarmy prophet hears about this, he goes with his sons to the scene of the tragedy. The man's death was partly his fault – okay, largely his fault – and so he tries to make amends the only way he can. He has his sons bring the MoG's body home with him, (carefully, no doubt, under the watchful glare of the lion), gives the body proper funeral rites, mourning over him and burying him in the prophet's own tomb. And he told everybody about the Man of God's prophecies against the shrines of Jeroboam.

Even after this, Jeroboam did not change his evil ways, but once more appointed priests for the high places from all sorts of people. Anyone who wanted to be a priest he consecrated for the high places. This was the sin of the house of Jeroboam that led to his downfall and to its destruction from the face of the earth. (Ch.13 v.33-34)

“High Places” is how the Books of Kings refer to any of the shrines to other gods, although it's not entirely fair. The Temple of Solomon wasn't exactly built in a valley either. I suspect it's a logical impulse to locate places of worship on hill and mountain tops. If the gods dwell in the heavens, it makes sense to climb to a high elevation in order to worship them. And so the shrines to the Canaanite and other gods get tagged in the Bible under the general name of “high places.”

But note what else this passage says: it's a new accusation against Jeroboam. IT was briefly touched on before, but this passage emphasizes it. Jeroboam did not just set up his own rival temples, or have his people worship idols, or even invent his own religious holidays. He'd give out priestly appointments to anyone who asked.

Under the Mosaic tradition, only descendants of the Priestly Line of Aaron were permitted to become priests; (and only members of the Tribe of Levi, to which Aaron belonged, were permitted to serve in the Tabernacle, and after that the Temple). Because of this privilege, the Tribe of Levi was not allocated tribal lands, the way the other Tribes of Israel were; instead, they were given a handful of cities distributed throughout Israel. Not every Levite worked in the Temple, but in a sense the entire tribe was dedicated to God.

On the surface, Jeroboam's decision to open his priesthood to all-comers seems egalitarian and wholly a good thing. (As well as being a practical necessity, seeing as the Tribe of Levi had remained loyal to the House of David). But I get a hint of something else in this passage. Yes, the king is permitting applicants from other tribes into the priesthood; but more significantly, the king is making the decisions. The priesthood becomes no longer just a religious office, but a political appointment, serving at the whim of the king. I'll bet that bothered the Jerusalem Temple Establishment even more than the gold cows did.

The story has one more sequel. About the same time as his confrontation with the Man of God from Judah, Jeroboam's son Abijah fell sick with a severe illness. With no one else to turn to, Jeroboam remembered Ahijah, the prophet who had given him the scraps of his cloak and prophesied his rise to kingship.

Jeroboam knows that Ahijah is likely to be disapproving of the whole cow thing, and so tells his wife to visit the prophet in disguise, and ask him what will happen to the boy. He's not asking for a miracle here, or even a blessing. He just wants to know the child's future, and perhaps to reassure himself.

It's been many years since Ahijah gave Jeroboam the tatters of destiny, and the prophet has grown old and blind. But the Lord has given him advance notice of the visit. “Come in, wife of Jeroboam,” he says. “Why the pretense?” He has a message for Jerry and it's not good news. The Lord God of Israel raised Jeroboam up as king of Israel, but Jeroboam has not lived up to his end of the bargain. For this reason, God is going to bring disaster on Jeroboam's house.

“I will cut off from Jeroboam every last male in Israel – slave or free. I will burn up the house of Jeroboam as one burns dung, until it is all gone.” (1 Kings 14:10)

Ahijah also tells the woman that her son will die “When you set foot in the city”. Is it fair that the boy be punished for the sins of his father? No, Ahijah says, the kid is getting off easy. Jeroboam's son will die mourned and loved by all of Israel and given a respectful burial precisely because is is the only member of the family in whom God has found anything good. The rest of Jeroboam's household will meet with ignominious deaths and dogs will eat their carcasses.

Things come to pass just as Ahijah predicted. The boy dies as soon as his mother crosses the threshold of their house. He is buried and mourned by all of Israel. Jeroboam continues to reign for some years more, and is succeeded by his other son, Nadab. The son of Jeroboam reigned for only two years before he was assassinated on the battlefield by one of his own generals, Baasha, who siezes the throne and sets about killing the rest of Jeroboam's family.

This pretty much sets the pattern for the rest of the Northern Kingdom's history. Short dynasties lasting only a generation or two at most and ending with violence. The line which was to have been as enduring as the House of David, ended in blood.

The Revised Standard Virgin

When I was very young, I remember once hearing a bit of a conversation my Dad, who was a Lutheran pastor, had with someone regarding Bible Translations.  This would have been around 1970, I think.  About that time, the Revised Standard Version of the Bible was the common translation used in a lot of churches, but there were a lot of traditionalists who insisted that if the King James Version was good enough for Moses, St. Paul and Martin Luther then by God it was good enough for them too.

I don’t remember much about that conversation, except for one little factoid:  That the KJV translated the famous passage in Isaiah often cited at Christmas as “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son…” but the RSV rendered it: “a young woman shall conceive…”

As much as it irritates the traditionalists, the RSV translation really is the more accurate.  So why is there this discrepancy in the first place?  How did the young girl become a virgin?  (Well, yeah, that is how they start out; but still.)  And why do many modern translations follow the KJV?

The answer gets a bit complicated.  Let’s start by jumping ahead to the Gospel of Matthew.

I like to think that the writer of Matthew had a mind like mine.  I have a tendency to collect weird little factoids, and to connect them with other bits of trivia.  It’s a quirk which has both amused and I’m sure aggravated more than one pastor of mine, and it’s one of the driving forces behind this series.  I think Matthew did too, because he was always making connections between the events of his narrative and earlier passages from Scriptures.

One of these is the passage that frequently gets quoted during the Christmas season: 

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet:  “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” – which means, “God with us.” (Matthew 1:22-23 NIV)

I like to envision Matthew recording the story of Christ’s Virgin Birth and thinking, “Holy cats!  Isn’t there a prophecy in Isaiah like this?”  And then citing the verse in his narrative.  (Well, I doubt he said “holy cats”, but the rest of it sounds reasonable).

Now, a cynical mind might suggest that Matthew invented the story of the Virgin Birth in order to fit the prophecy, but I don’t think that’s the case.  I’m not sure that the Isaiah prophecy was even regarded as a Messianic one until Matthew made that connection; but we’ll get there later.

Matthew was writing in Greek, and when he quoted from Scriptures he used the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures that had been made in the Third Century BC.  In the Septuagint, the word in question is “parthenos”, meaning “virgin”.

In the original Hebrew, however, the word is “almah”, meaning “a young woman of marriageable age”, which is not necessarily the same thing.

Traditionalists will tell you that such a young woman usually would be a virgin in that culture, so it’s the same diff; and that in most other places in the Old Testament where the word “almah” occurs it’s understood that the girl is still a virgin.  And, for what it’s worth, the Jewish scholars of the Septuagint chose “parthenos” to translate the word.

(In researching this piece, I came across one translation that tries to split the difference.  It reads:  “Watch for this:  A girl who is presently a virgin will get pregnant…”  Meaning she was a virgin… up to the point where she got preggers.)

Later translations, such as the Vulgate, Jerome’s Latin translation of the Middle Ages, and King Jim followed the Septuagint, partially because that was the best version of the Hebrew Scriptures they had available, but mainly, I think, to keep the Isaiah passage consistent with the way Matthew quotes it.  And, as someone I know once observed, a young woman who wasn’t a virgin getting knocked up isn’t that remarkable a prophecy, now is it?

But then again, we’re used to hearing the verse lifted out of its context and uttered by cherubic-faced children too young to know what a virgin is in Sunday School Christmas pageants.  Let’s go back to Isaiah.

Isaiah chapter 7 starts out with King Ahaz of Judah facing an imminent threat from Pekah, the king of Israel to the north, and Rezin or Aram, in what we now call Syria.  Pekah and Rezin were trying to pressure Ahaz in to joining them in a coalition against Assyria to the northeast.

The Lord sends Isaiah to King Ahaz with a prophecy, telling him not to panic, and to remain calm and resolute, because both Israel and Aram were “smoldering stubs of firewood”.  They intended to invade Judah and divide it between themselves, but they would never get the chance.  Assyria was going to crush both of them.

Then we get to the meat of the passage.

Again the LORD spoke to Ahaz, “Ask the LORD your God for a sign, whether in the deepest depths or in the highest heights.” But Ahaz said, “I will not ask; I will not put the LORD to the test,” Then Isaiah said, “Hear now, you house of David!  Is it not enough to try the patience of men?  Will you try the patience of God also?”  (Isaiah 7:10-13 NIV)

I like this bit.  It’s irrelevant to the story, but I can just picture Isaiah coming to the king all ready to lay some spectacular Signs and Wonders on him, only for Ahaz to say, “Nah, don’t bother.”  Isaiah gets pissed and says that the king is going to get his sign whether he wants it or not.  “The Lord himself will give you a sign…” and then we get the familiar verse quoted by Matthew.  But the prophecy does not stop there:

“…He will eat curds and honey when he knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right.  But before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste.” (Isaiah 7:15-16)

And then Isaiah goes on to describe what will happen when Assyria comes in to kick everybody’s butt.  But the child is not the significant part of the prophecy; at least not the prophecy as Ahaz hears it.  And the prophecy says nothing about the Messiah, whenever he might come. Instead, it tells Ahaz what will happen to his kingdom and to the kingdoms of his enemies in the near future.

The kid in the prophecy is used to give Ahaz an idea of a timeframe. By the time the kid knows right from wrong – this could refer to the age of his bar-mitzvah, when a boy is officially regarded as an adult, or maybe a younger age when he has learned enough to be halfway responsible – he will be eating curds and honey.  Later on in the prophecy, Isaiah expands on this, explaining that war will ravage the countryside and destroy the fields and vineyards, forcing people to rely more on the dairy products from what livestock they can save for their diet.  And even before that, both Israel and Aram will be destroyed.

So the kid in the prophecy gives us a timeline.  Twelve or thirteen years tops, or maybe only two or three, depending on what Isaiah meant by knowing right from wrong, until these things come to pass.

Some Hebrew scholars have suggested that this child was Ahaz’s own son, Hezekiah; but another possibility comes up in a parallel prophecy in the very next chapter.

The LORD said to me, “Take a large scroll and write on it with an ordinary pen:  Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz [“quick to the plunder, swift to the spoil”] And I will call in Uriah the priest and Zechariah son of Jeberekiah as reliable witnesses for me.”
 Then I went to the prophetess, and she conceived and gave birth to a son.  And the Lord said to me, “Name him Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz.  Before the boy knows how to say ‘My father’ or ‘My mother,’ the wealth of Damascus and the plunder of Samaria will be carried off by the king of Assyria.”  (Isaiah 8:1-4)

So perhaps the child spoken of in the Isaiah 7:14 prophecy was Isaiah’s own.  I’d hate to be named “Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz”, though.  If nothing else, it would be hell to have to fill in the bubbles on those standardized tests in school.

Isaiah’s reference to his wife as “the prophetess” is also interesting.  Was it because the woman he married was also a prophet, or was she just called that the same way some pastor’s wives might sometimes be informally called “Mrs. Pastor”?  Frustratingly, Isaiah tells us very little of his family life, other than that she evidently permitted him to give their kids some really weird names.

But whether the kid of Isaiah 7:14 is Hezekiah, or Isaiah’s kid, or some purely hypothetical infant; his mother doesn’t have to be a virgin for the prophecy to work; at least not the prophecy regarding Assyria that Ahaz was most interested in.

Then does that mean that Isaiah’s prophecy had nothing to do with the Messiah after all?  Well, Matthew obviously thought it did.  And possibly he was connecting it in his mind with the prophecy in Isaiah chapter 9, (“For to us a child is born…” Isaiah 9:6) which definitely does look forward to an anticipated Messianic age.

But I think that we Christians often make the mistake of assuming that the Bible is a Code and that each verse has exactly One Meaning and One Meaning Only.  This is obviously not the case, or else clergymen would have a much harder time coming up with new sermons every week. The Bible is richer than that, and a single passage may hold many facets and inspire many thoughts.

I don’t have a problem with considering that God might have given multiple-purpose prophecies with meanings that reverberate beyond the immediate occasion of their delivery.  Heck, most of the End Times prophecies are like that.

Matthew found a particular meaning in this verse.  The Chucrch has latched on to his interpretation as The Interpretation of what Isaiah was saying; but I think that other interpretations have their validity too.  Still, I can’t say that the meaning he found is wrong.

The Statue Got Me High

The prophet Daniel has a lot in common with Joseph from the book of Genesis.  Both were exiles who found success working as civil servants for a foreign king; both became important administrators in their new homes; and most importantly, both were skilled at interpreting dreams.

We last left Daniel and his friends at the end of Daniel chapter 1 studying at the University of Babylon where they are being trained to serve in the court of King Nebuchadnezzar. The king was impressed by their wisdom and understanding, which greatly surpassed that of any of the magicians and enchanters in his kingdom.

Which brings up a curious side question:  What exactly was Daniel and his friends studying?  The implication I see is that they were studying Astrology and Divination, disciplines which our modern age would call superstition and which the Babylonians would call science and which many Christians would call Satanic. 

Now the text is scrupulous about always crediting Daniel’s wisdom and insights to God; but it still seems highly likely to me that if they Babylonians were going to be teaching him stuff, they would have been teaching him their cutting-edge science.  It may seem strange to call the study of horoscopes Science, but in defense of the Babylonians, the underlying premises of Astrology may be faulty, but they took it damn seriously, and the data they compiled in their study of the stars became useful and important as their system of Astrology developed into the science of Astronomy. 

(I once read an economist remark that many of our sciences started out as superstition; that Astrology became Astronomy and that Alchemy became Chemistry; and that someday we might find out what science will come out of Economics.)

But the point of this that I see is that those who fret that secular learning is dangerous because it isn’t rooted in the Bible forget that Daniel managed to emerge from a thoroughly non-Jewish course of study with his faith in God intact.  I know that my own interests in history, science and fantastic literature has given me perspectives that have, I think, deepened my understanding of my own beliefs. I dare say that gaining an understanding of Babylonian history, culture and laws, as well as Babylonian religion and science, gave him insights which enabled him to better relate to the king and to the members of his court.

But back to the story.  In the second year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, the king became troubled by dreams and unable to sleep.  And here we have a discrepancy.

In chapter 1, we are told that Daniel and his friends came to Babylon in the first year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign and underwent three years of study, entering the king’s service after graduation.  But now this story is taking place during the king’s second year.  What’s the deal with that?  Some critics have tried to explain the discrepancy by saying that the second year mentioned here is dating from the consolidation of his empire after Nebuchadnezzar conquered the Egyptians a couple years after he ascended to the throne.  Or it could be that this story took place while Daniel was still an undergrad.  Or it could be sloppy editing of individual stories which originally came from diverse sources.

Nebuchadnezzar calls together all his magicians, enchanters, sorecerors and astrologers, (“Chaldeans” in the original text; the region of Chaldea in southern Mesopotamia was so identified with the development of astrology that the name became synonymous with “guys who study the stars”).  He commands them to explain his dream.

Then the astrologers answered the king in Aramaic, “O king, live forever!  Tell your servants the dream, and we will interpret it.”  (Daniel 2:4 NIV)

Why does the text make a point of mentioning that the astrologers were speaking in Aramaic?  Well, there’s a reason.  Because at that point, the narrative switches from Hebrew to Aramaic, and continues in that language for the rest of the story and for much of the rest of the whole book.

Aramaic was a language related to both Hebrew and Phoenician, spoken in the region of present-day Syria.  Abraham lived for a time in that land, which is why it is said in the book of Deuteronomy, “My father was a wandering Aramean…” (Deut.26:5).  Aramaic was the language spoken in Assyria, which was a dominant political force through much of the Old Testament period, and the language was important even after Assyria became absorbed into the Babylonian Empire and when Babylon was in turn conquered by the Persian.  It’s generally believed that during the Babylonian Captivity, the Jewish exiles adopted Aramaic, the lingua franca of the empire, for their everyday speech, even after they returned to Judea. They continued using Hebrew in their Scriptures, but had become a language of lore and of religious ritual rather than one of every day conversation.  Although the Gospels were written in Greek, Jesus did most if not all of his teaching in Aramaic, and some of the Gospel writers quote snatches of that language in their narrative.

It is believed that the narrative portion of the Book of Daniel consists of stories written during this Post-Exilic period, and for some reason, the author of the book left them as is, rather than translating them into Hebrew.  The last half of the book, consisting of a series of prophetic visions, shifts back into Hebrew again; perhaps because Aramaic was just to mundane a tongue to do justice to the full weirdity of Daniel’s visions.  But back to the story.

The magicians and professional wonder-workers ask the king to tell him his dream so that they may interpret it, but Nebuchadnezzar isn’t having any of that.  He seems quite testy with his staff seers; perhaps he doesn’t really trust them; perhaps it has occurred to him that if his psychic friends are all that hot, he shouldn’t have to tell them what he dreamed.  Or perhaps, according to some interpretations, he can’t remember what the dream was about and it’s driving him crazy.

The king replied to the astrologers, “This is what I have firmly decided:  If you do not tell me what my dream was and interpret it, I will have you cut into pieces and your houses turned into piled of rubble.  But if you tell me the dream and explain it, you will receive form me gifts and rewards and great honor.  So tell me the dream and interpret it for me.”  (Daniel 2:5-6)

Ouch.  And I thought the James Randi Challenge was tough.  The astrologers admit that what the king asks is impossible.  “What the king asks is too difficult.  No one can reveal it to the king except the gods, and they do not live among men.” (Daniel 2:11)

This angers Nebuchadnezzar, and he orders the execution not just of his court astrologers, but also of all the wise men of Babylon.  This includes Daniel and his friend.

Daniel has the opportunity to speak with Arioch, the commander of the king’s guard, who has been tasked with the responsibility of gathering up all these wise guys.  He speaks to Arioch “with wisdom and tact” and learns the whole story.  Daniel asks for a little more time so that he can try interpreting the dream himself.

Daniel goes back to his friends Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, (better known as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego) and they pray asking God for mercy and enlightenment so that they can answer the king’s riddle and save their own lives as well as the lives of the other magi.

In the night, Daniel also has a dream and in it the mystery is revealed.  The ghost is actually the shady banker in disguise.  Wait.  Wrong mystery.

The narrative pauses here for a moment as Daniel utters a psalm praising God as the source of wisdom and power, who reveals deep and hidden mysteries.

Although in this story, Daniel receives the solution to a mystery by Divine Revelation, there are other stories involving Daniel, the canonicity of which are disputed, in which Daniel actually employs deductive reasoning to uncover crimes, making Daniel the only detective in the Bible.  I hope to tell some of these other stories another time.

Daniel is brought before Nebuchadnezzar to explain it all.

“No wise man, enchanter, magician or diviner can explain to the king the mystery he has asked about, but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries.  He has shown King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen in the days to come.”  (Daniel 2:27-28)

The king’s dream was of a tremendous statue, the head of which was made of gold, the chest and arms of silver, the belly and thighs of bronze, the legs of iron and the feet and toes of iron mixed with clay.  As the king observed the statue in his dream, a large rock was cut out, not by human hand.  The rock struck the feet of the statue, causing them to crumble and the entire statue to collapse in a ruin.  The rock then grew to the size of a mountain encompassing the whole earth.

That was the dream; but what did it mean?

The golden head of the statue, Daniel said, represented Nebuchadnezzar himself and his glorious kingdom, given to him by the God of heaven.  The silver torso represented the kingdom which would succeed him, spiffy, but not quite as impressive as his own.  Then a third kingdom, one of bronze, which would rule over the whole earth, and finally a fourth one, as strong as iron, but not wholly so; a mixture of strength and weakness which would not remain united. (And yes, this is where the expression “Feet of Clay” comes from, meaning an underlying character flaw in an otherwise admired figure).

Finally, the rock cut out of a mountain but not by human hands represented a kingdom which God would someday establish which would not be destroyed but would endure forever.

Nebuchadnezzar was impressed by Daniel’s revelation of his dream and by the interpretation of it.  “Surely your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries, for you were able to reveal this mystery” (Daniel 2:47)  The king gave Daniel a high position in his court in charge of his staff magi, and appointed his friends to posts as administrators.

But looking back with historical hindsight, did Daniel’s prophecy come true?

The traditional interpretation of both Jewish and Christian scholars is that Four Kingdoms of the statue represent (1) the Babylonian Empire of Nebuchadnezzar; (2) the Empire of the Medes and the Persians which conquered Babylon after Nebuchadnezzar’s death; (3) the Greek Empire of Alexander the Great, who conquered the known world, and of his successors, specifically the Seleucid Dynasty which ruled over the former Babylonian territories and which squabbled with the Ptolemies of Egypt for control of Palestine; (4) Rome, the mightiest empire of all, but one which eventually fell to internal weakness and division.

Christians like to interpret the carved by no human hand as the Christian Church, established by God and outlasting the kingdoms of men and growing to fill the whole earth.  Some later Christian groups with a more eschatological bent, interpret the mixed feet of the statue as representing a later successor to the Roman Empire and the rock as the Millennial Kingdom to be established once Christ Comes Again.

More modern scholars have been skeptical of Daniel’s prescient visions, and assume that the kingdoms described in the dream are ones the writer would have been familiar with.  Because much of Daniel is written in Aramaic, and because some of the later prophecies in the book seem to specifically refer to the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, the Seleucid ruler who incited the Maccabean Revolt, it’s generally thought that the Book of Daniel was written, or at least compiled in its final form, during the time of the Maccabees.  Under this interpretation, the golden head remains Babylon, but the silver torso becomes the kingdom of the Medes, and the brass belly that of the Persians.  The iron legs then become the succeeding period of Greek rulers.  Except that the Medes and the Persians did not rule one after the other; they were ethnic divisions within the same Empire.  I don’t know how this interpretation regards the rock; perhaps as a hopeful anticipation of a Messianic Age.

These two interpretations are based on the assumptions that either (A) Daniel was writing about future events revealed by Divine Revelation, or (B) Daniel was written later using 20/20 hindsight and pretending to make predictions about things that had already happened.  Another possibility occurs to me.

It doesn’t take either divine foreknowledge or historical hindsight to know that Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom wouldn’t last forever.  Eventually it would pass and be superseded by something else, and that this new kingdom too would fade away.  So how do Daniel’s predictions about these future kingdoms compare to what really happened?

In some ways, the historical record of Empire in the Middle East is the exact opposite of that predicted in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream.  He dreamt of four kingdoms, each succeeding one inferior to the one before.  As it turned out, the Persian Empire was larger and lasted longer than the Babylonian; the Greek Empire, (if we count the Seleucid Dynasty) lasted even longer, and Rome longest of all.

True, the Empire of Alexander covered pretty much the entire world that Nebuchadnezzar knew about; and the Roman Empire was renowned for its strength, yet ultimately became divided, so those points match… sort of… if we squint at them in just the right light.

Or perhaps Daniel was framing his interpretation in such a way to make Nebuchadnezzar look good.  “Here are the kingdoms which will succeed your own; but none of them will be as glorious as yours.”

And what about the Rock?  I have to admit, I like the interpretation that the Rock is Christ and the kingdom which he told Pilate was “not of this world.”

In the latter part of the book, Daniel revisits this prophecy; recounting a vision of four beasts, once again symbolizing four kingdoms to come, and here he gets even more apocalyptic; but that is another vision for another time.