Daniel 1
Nebuchadnezzar captures Judah
During the third year of King Jehoiakim’s reign over Judah, Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem. The Master (God) handed Judah’s King Jehoiakim over to Nebuchadnezzar along with some artifacts from God’s house. Nebuchadnezzar brought them to his god’s house in Shinar and put them in the treasury there.
Nebuchadnezzar orders for captives to be trained
The king ordered his chief official, Ashpenaz, to bring out some of Israelites including some from the royal family and nobles. He wanted them to be flawless younger boys who were good-looking, intelligent in every subject, knowledgeable, and capable of serving in the king’s palace. The king ordered Ashpenaz to teach the boys Chaldean literature and their language. The king appointed rations of his own food and wine for them to eat every day. He also appointed for them to spend three years growing in greatness before finally standing in his presence. Out of all the boys presented, the ones from Judah were: Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, but the chief official gave them new names:
Daniel: Belteshazar
Hananiah: Shadrach
Mishael: Meshach
Azariah: Abed-nego
Daniel asks for different diet during training to follow God’s command
But Daniel inwardly determined not to defile himself with the king’s food and wine, so he asked the chief officer for an exemption. God let the chief official look at Daniel with kindness and compassion. He told Daniel,
“I’m afraid of my superior, the king, and he’s the one who appointed your diets. If he saw your faces looking worse than your peers, that would endanger my own head.”
The chief official had appointed an overseer over the four Israelite boys and Daniel told their overseer:
“Please test your servants for ten days by feeding us vegetables and water, then compare us to our peers who follow the king’s diet. Then you can deal with us according to what you see.”
So he listened to their request and tested them for ten days. At the end of the trial, they looked better and more fit than their peers who followed the king‘s diet. So their overseer continued withholding their rations and giving them vegetables instead.
God gave the four boys knowledge and intelligence in every subject of literature and wisdom. Daniel could even understand all kinds of visions and dreams.
The Israelite boys outperformed their peers
Then at the end of the training, the chief official presented all the boys to Nebuchadnezzar. The king talked with all of them, but none of them compared to Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah so they were allowed to stay in the king’s presence. As the king interviewed them, he found them to be ten times wiser than his own supernatural fortune tellers and necromancers. Daniel continued working for the king until the first year of king Cyrus’s reign.