Chapter 65

¹ Now the Babylonians, seeing the three young men hymning in the furnace, did not cease burning naphtha and pitch, tow and brushwood, and the flame poured out above the furnace forty-nine cubits, themselves too by their power fighting against God;

² “and the fire spread,” it says, “and burned up those of the Chaldeans whom it found about the furnace.”

³ Do you see how the fire itself is intelligent, recognizing and punishing the guilty? For it did not touch the servants of God, but consumed in flame the unbelieving and godless among the Chaldeans; and those who were inside in the furnace were bedewed by the angel, while those who seemed to stand outside the furnace untroubled were themselves destroyed by the fire.

⁴ And as the Scripture says: “And the angel of God came down together with those around Azarias into the furnace, and shook off the flame of the fire of the furnace, and made the midst of the furnace as a whistling breath of dew, and the fire did not touch them at all, nor pain them, nor trouble them.”