Chapter 60

¹ But why at all, since the king knew that Daniel was a Jew, was he not pricked to ask him, “Why do you not worship the image?” Surely he would have said to the king: “Because I do not revere works made by hands, but the living God who made heaven and earth and has lordship over all flesh,” just as he answered Cyrus in the matter of Bel. Carried away, the king said to him […]

² […] Bel, except according to the counsel of the satraps: that for thirty days, if anyone should make a petition to any god or man other than to the king, he should be cast into the den of the lions.

³ But since in the furnace the three young men alone were to be glorified, and in the matter of Bel, while Cyrus was reigning, Daniel alone was to be cast into the den of the lions, each one of them was reserved by his own ordering and at his own appointed time, so that both Nebuchadnezzar the king of the Babylonians, seeing the three young men in no way destroyed by the fire, might glorify God, and Cyrus the Persian, seeing Daniel not devoured by the lions, might be taught that the God of heaven is the only God.

⁴ In this way, then, God, ordering affairs in their seasons through his servants the prophets, persuades all people to come to the knowledge of himself.