There follows a series of prophetic dreams and apocalyptic visions. Once again, God intervenes, and the lions do not harm Daniel. The remainder of the Book of Daniel includes the incident in which Daniel is thrown into the lions’ den for praying to God when an edict prohibited it (since Darius set himself up as godlike and wanted no competition). Sure enough, Darius and his Persian army invade, and Belshazzar dies. This cryptic inscription is thought to mean something along the lines of ‘Babylon has been weighed in the balance and found wanting’, prophesying (again) that the Babylonian empire will be swallowed up by a much mightier one (the Persians). Daniel is now an old man, and is called upon to interpret the mysterious ‘writing on the wall’ that appears during Belshazzar’s feast: ‘MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN’. The story of the ruler becoming like an ox is thought to derive from Assyrian worship of bulls as representatives of good-luck deities. In ancient writings, this strange story is first attached to the ruler Nabodinus (as the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1940s revealed), suggesting that the author of Daniel substituted Nebuchadnezzar for Nabodinus in the events described. Sure enough, before the year is out he is ‘driven from men’ and retreats outside to eat grass with the oxen.

The next event also concerns Nebuchadnezzar, who has a dream that he will lose his mind and end up eating grass like an ox, unless he repents his sins.

We have analysed this story in more detail here. God intervenes and the men are spared from the flames, emerging unscathed.

The next key event in Daniel is the famous incident of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego – Daniel’s fellow Jews in exile in Babylon – being thrown into the ‘burning fiery furnace’ for refusing to pay homage to an idol of Nebuchadnezzar. (This detail proves that the Book of Daniel was written later on.) The dream Daniel interprets represents the different empires and kingdoms of the day, while prophesying that Alexander the Great’s Macedonian empire would rise up and swallow the rest. Unfortunately, Nebuchadnezzar can’t remember the dream, so Daniel has to remember it for him and then divine its significance, otherwise he and his fellow ‘magicians’ or wise men will be put to death. We are told that the Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar (probably really Nabodinus, who was a later ruler) has a dream and calls upon the wise men of his court (who included Daniel) to interpret its meaning for him. The Jews are living in exile in Babylon, some time in the sixth century BC.

Susanna in the book of daniel