The last two years have been tumultuous years and I would never have got through them without Yahweh, the only mighty, living God.  My name, ‘Daniel’, acknowledges God in its last syllable, ‘El’, and this reminder has been a great help as my world has fallen apart around me.

Just two years ago, I was living a relatively comfortable life with my family in Jerusalem, but now, here I am in Babylon at the beck and call of my “supervisors” and always in danger.  In danger, that is, if I forget that God is in control.

I could make this a very emotional tale, because I have seen many horrific things during those years, but it is probably best to be as dispassionate as possible.

Judah is a small kingdom and liable to be caught in the middle when powerful nations collide.  And that is what happened to one of the best kings we ever had, Josiah.  About five years ago, he was killed in a battle with Pharaoh Neco[1], who had been on his way to fight the Babylonians.  Josiah was a good and righteous king, and his death was a tragedy for the nation.  I was only thirteen years old at the time, but I remember the outpouring of grief it provoked.  Jeremiah the prophet even wrote a very moving psalm recalling Josiah’s exemplary work as a king.  If only his sons had followed his example.

The people of the land immediately made his son Jehoahaz king, but only three months later, Pharaoh Neco returned and took him away to Egypt.  No great loss, as he was nothing like his father and was not a good king.

Neco made Jehoahaz’s older brother Eliakim king instead and renamed him “Jehoiakim”.  Now names don’t mean much to most people, and those two names mean much the same thing anyway, but Jehoiakim would have been a bad king whatever his name.

Then two years ago, Nebuchadnezzar became king of Babylon, and one of the first things he did after he was crowned king was to come to Judah.  His army surrounded Jerusalem and entered the city after a short siege, killing, maiming and mutilating.  Many were taken away into captivity.

At one stage, Jehoiakim himself was in chains ready to be transported to Babylon, but he woke up to the seriousness of his situation and acted with abject humility.  He promised to serve King Nebuchadnezzar faithfully, and his obsequious submissiveness won him a reprieve.  But only him.  The rest of us were led away bound with heavy chains, suffering as many beatings as it took to convince us to obey whatever instructions we were given.

I don’t know whether it’s true or not, but some of the older men have said that Nebuchadnezzar picked out all the people he thought would be most likely to cause trouble and took them into captivity: nobles, princes, leaders, the intelligentsia and anyone capable of organising others.  I’m told he even demanded the schooling results from across the country and took all the top students with him back to Babylon.  An army with no leadership is dangerous only to its own side.

Then he made sure that none of these young men would ever raise any children to rebel against Babylon.  It was just as God had predicted to an earlier king, Hezekiah, about a hundred years ago[2].  Hezekiah hadn’t worried much about the prediction because he knew it wouldn’t be in his time, but we were the targets of the prophecy and couldn’t dismiss it quite so blithely.

But life is what you make of it once you’ve been given the clay to work with, and no task is never beyond us when God is with us.

All Babylon turned out to welcome King Nebuchadnezzar and his army, celebrating a well-deserved victory over inferior foreigners.  The throng of soldiery had paused outside the city to make sure that all the victorious fighters were cool, clean and splendidly presented, and the magnificent streets we passed through were lined with cheering men, women and children welcoming the returning heroes.

We were the centrepiece of the parade, presented to be ridiculed in our chains and accumulated dirt.  The cream of Judah’s nobility and youth – the filthy representatives of a subjugated nation.

Bitterness is easy to cultivate, but never leads to a better life.  God wants higher things from us and shows us what he expects through people like Joseph, my own personal hero from among all the patriarchs our scriptures describe.  I have always wanted to be like Joseph, and that is a tall order indeed.  He was seventeen, just my own age, when he was taken into Egypt as a captive, so it’s an obvious link to grasp at and be inspired by.

The king’s plan was to teach all the young captives from Judah to be good Chaldeans.  Our teachers were to tell us hesitantly that we were probably clever enough to learn Modern Science, then spoil us rotten with food and dazzle us with science.  At the end of the process, we should have a healthy regard for the brilliance of Babylon and its gods and a scornful disdain for the God of our fathers.

Of course, what they didn’t realise was that most of the lads already had a scornful disdain for the God of their fathers, while the few of us who didn’t weren’t going to learn it any time soon.

The first step was to take away our names that acknowledged El Shaddai, or Yahweh, the God of our fathers.  For me, that meant my name Daniel was to be replaced by the name Belteshazzar, a name which acknowledged Bel, the god of King Nebuchadnezzar[3].  In some ways, a name is unimportant, but in this case I was being given the name just to make the point that the king’s gods were more powerful than the God of Judah.  So I prayed to the true God and asked for his protection.  I didn’t look for a confrontation about it, but I never used the Babylonian name, nor did I respond when it was used to me.  For me, it could never have been right to accept the new name, and God answered my prayers – I never got into trouble over it.  My friends were also given new names, but they decided that it didn’t really matter what names they were called and that they would prefer to make a stand for God on more important matters, which we were all sure would come soon enough.  As a result, they are known by the names Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego most of the time, although I still prefer their Hebrew names Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah.

Sure enough, the king’s menu brought on the confrontation we had expected.  King Nebuchadnezzar is a rich, pagan king, and his tastes in food reflect this.  He wanted us to share the food, but as Jews, we are bound by God’s rules regarding clean and unclean food, and must not eat any blood.  Exotic and fascinating the king’s food might have been, but I was utterly convinced that it would include food that God would not want me to eat.  The four of us discussed it and agreed that I should talk to Ashpenaz and seek an exemption.  After praying, I made an appointment to see him in his office, since it was going to be easiest if there was no-one else around.

First I had to convince Ashpenaz that I was serious.  He couldn’t believe that anyone could fail to appreciate the gracious compliment of being singled out by the king to share his rich food!  Multitudes would be willing to kill for such an honour.  God helped me to explain it effectively, and that led to the next complication.  Ashpenaz wanted to know why I and my friends cared so much about this when the other young Jews from Jerusalem all seemed very eager to eat the king’s food.  Now that was a more difficult question to answer honestly without the answer reflecting too critically on my fellow Jews.  Taking a young man away from his family and encouraging him to abandon all familiar restraints will lead most to abandon their religious commitments, assuming that they had any in the first place, but the truth was that most of my fellow Jews had little interest in Yahweh anyway.  Eventually Ashpenaz was able to be convinced that we had a commitment which we must keep whether others did so or not.  This led to the most difficult part of all: would he permit us to eat food that Yahweh would be happy with rather than the food the king wanted us to eat?  Ashpenaz was very doubtful.  He was certain that the king’s food was better; well, of course!  His mind could not even begin to consider the idea that eating vegetables would make us healthier and stronger.  Without God’s blessing, there is no way I could ever have convinced him, but with it, we were able to agree to a 10-day trial.

Those were interesting days.  I was sure that we would do very well on a diet that pleased God, but would the difference be great enough, and would it show quickly enough?  Of course, I couldn’t be sure, but I did have a lot of confidence that God would make sure we looked much better very quickly if he wanted us to be able to obey his commands.  We had not been fed very well on the forced march to Babylon and were not in very good condition, but sure enough, after just a few days, we four were looking and feeling much better, while the others were still looking much the same.

We were examined first by Ashpenaz, and then by the chief cook, a doctor, a food scientist, a religious expert and the king’s dietician.  I’ve never felt more examined in my life!  They even gave us some memory and mathematics tests to make sure, and seemed rather surprised by the results.

In the end, they all concluded that we were very healthy, which we already knew.  But the next step made us exceedingly unpopular with the other students: all their rich food was taken away from them and instead they were given vegetables and other foods that Yahweh has told us are clean.

The El that my name declares to be my judge won the health competition.  It shouldn’t really be a surprise that he knows what is best for the human body – after all, he designed it!

No doubt our schooling would bring more dangerous conflicts, but for the time being, we were safe.

[To be continued…]

[1] Also spelled “Necho” and “Nechoh”.
[2] Isaiah 39:5-8
[3] Daniel 4:8