Chapter 61

¹ So then the young men, bound together with their garments and their trousers, were cast into the burning fiery furnace, according to the king’s command.

² Tell me, Nebuchadnezzar, on what reasoning do you order these men to be thrown bound into the fire? Is it so that they may not flee? Or so that, if loosed, they may stamp out the fire with their feet? But it is not you who do these things; rather it is another working them in you.

³ And for this reason the Scripture says: “Then the form of the king was changed”; for he was one man and became another. For the king had at the first been a man who feared God; then, exalted against Him, he was changed, imitating the works of the devil.

⁴ And for this reason the Scripture rightly proclaimed beforehand, saying: “I am God, and I have not changed,” so that it might be shown that God is unchangeable and unalterable. The form of the king was changed, so that he might readily be understood to be a man, and the deceiver working in him might easily be recognized—he who is forever imitating the works of God and seeking by various means to deceive man.

⁵ “For in the eighteenth year,” it says, “Nebuchadnezzar the king made a golden image, its height sixty cubits and its breadth six cubits, and he set it up in the plain of Deira in the country of Babylon.”

⁶ Now by the eighteen years he imitated Jesus the Son of God, who, being present in the world, raised His own image, man, from the dead, and displayed it to His disciples pure and spotless as gold.

⁷ And by the height of sixty cubits he signified the sixty patriarchs, through whom according to the flesh the image of God, the Word, was formed and fashioned and exalted above all the patriarchs.

⁸ And by the breadth of six cubits he indicated the six days; for on the sixth day man, fashioned from the dust, came into being.

⁹ So then Nebuchadnezzar, having molded gold and made a counterfeit image, set it up in the plain of Deira in the country of Babylon, signifying that the plain is the world, and Babylon the great city.

¹⁰ And at that time Nebuchadnezzar made a single image, but now the deceiver has devised many in the world, so that through the many spectacles he might lead all men astray, one being carried off here and another there—some worshiping the golden, others the silver, others the bronze, some the one composed of ivory, and many revering the earthenware and the stone. And all of them, forsaking the heavenly God, were subjected to empty and lifeless and worthless idols, unwilling to look up on high nor to consider the beauty of heaven, lest, recognizing its God, they should be able to be saved.

¹¹ These are the contrivances of the devil. Not only did he work them long ago in Babylon, but even now he does the like, and ventures to dare worse against the servants of God, preparing for himself a furnace of fire, so that by it he might terrify man—not knowing the eternal punishment by fire prepared for him by God.