Mishael, and Azariah; therefore stood they before the king. 20.  And in all matters of wisdom and understanding, that the king enquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all his realm. 21.  And Daniel continued even unto the first year of king Cyrus.’—­DANIEL i. 8-21.

Daniel was but a boy at the date of the Captivity, and little more at the time of the attempt to make a Chaldean of him.  The last verse says that he ‘continued even unto the first year of king Cyrus,’ the date given elsewhere as the close of the Captivity (2 Chron. xxxvi. 22; Ezra i. 1; vi. 3).  From Daniel x. 1 we learn that he lived on till Cyrus’s third year, if not later; but the date in i. 21 is probably given in order to suggest that Daniel’s career covered the whole period of the Captivity, and burned like a star of hope for the exiles.  The incident in our passage is a noble example of religious principle applied to small details of daily life, and shows how God crowns such conscientious self-restraint with success.  The lessons which it contains are best gathered by following the narrative.

I. The heroic determination of the boyish confessor is first set forth.  The plan of taking leading young men from the newly captured nation and turning them into Babylonians was a stroke of policy as heartless and high-handed as might be expected from a great conqueror.  In some measure, the same thing has been done by all nations who have built up a world-wide dominion.  The new names given to the youths, the attaching of them to the court, their education in Babylonish fashion, all were meant for the same purpose,—­to denationalise them, and strip them of their religion, and thus to make them tools for more easily governing their countrymen.

Most men would yield to the influences, and be so lapped in the comforts of their new position as to become pliable as wax in the conqueror’s hands; but here and there he would come across a bit of stiffer stuff, which would break rather than bend.  Such an obstinate piece of humanity was found in the Hebrew youth, of some fifteen years, whose Hebrew name (’God is my judge’) expressed a truth that ruled him, when the name was exchanged for one that invoked Bel.  It took some firmness for a captive lad, without friends or influence, to take Daniel’s stand; for the motive of his desire to be excused from taking the fare provided can only have been religious.  He was determined, in his brave young heart, not to ‘defile’ himself with the king’s meat.  The phrase points to the pollution incurred by eating things offered to idols, and does not imply scrupulousness like that of Pharisaic times, nor necessarily suggest a late date for the book.  Probably there had been some kind of religious consecration of the food to Babylonian gods, and Daniel, in his solitary faithfulness, was carrying out the same principles which Paul afterwards laid down for Corinthian Christians as to partaking of things offered to idols.  Similar difficulties are sure to emerge in analogous cases, and do so, on many mission fields.