Daniel 6:6-9 “The Battle”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

⁶Then the administrators and the governors these conspired upon the king and thus ones saying to him, “Darius, O king, live to ages, ⁷the all of the administrators of the kingdom, the prefects and the governors, the royal officials and the rulers took counsel together to establish the statute of the royalty and make strong a ban that whoever asks a request from all of a god and a man upon thirty days except from you, O king, should be cast into the pit of lions. ⁸Now, O king, cause to establish the ban and sign the writing so that not to change according to the law of the Medes and Persians which cannot pass away.” ⁹Consequently, the king Darius signed the writing and the ban.

I want to learn as much as I can from Daniel, so I find myself once again parked on this passage. What Daniel is facing is nothing more than what we all face every day. We may not get thrown in a lions’ den, but we live and work in a world that is constantly threatening us. We cannot make that reality go away. The only questions is how you and I will respond to it all. “How shall we then live?”

What’s going on? This is nothing less than the ancient battle right out of the Garden of Eden. The Lord told Satan there, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will crush your head, and you will strike His heel.” The Seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. At war since the Garden of Eden. Of course, in its largest sense, this prophecy concerns Jesus and the promise to us that one day the Messiah would come conquer the serpent and redeem our fallen world. He of course did exactly that and now the world only awaits the victorious Jesus returning to finally accomplish that redemption.

However, what the Lord set in motion became a fractal of our very existence. That battle—between the Seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent—is precisely the battle we are facing every day. It explains why it would seem the very universe around us is trying to kill us. It is. Satan was a murderer from the beginning and, if he could have his way, he would in the very next moment wipe out the entire human race. He hates us as God’s creation and that hatred intensifies exponentially when he finds us as redeemed people who worship God, not him.

That is precisely what Daniel is facing. The fractal of this enmity is clearly expressed in Psalm 2, where it says, “Why do the nations rage, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth rise up, and the rulers band together against the Lord and against His Anointed One…” Interestingly, the passage goes on to say, “He who sits in the heavens shall laugh…” and the Lord’s advice to this rebellious world is “Kiss the Son.” In this Psalm, we see first of all that He isn’t worried and second, His solution is always the same: Make sure you’re on the side of the Seed of the woman! That is precisely the battle raging around us and the battle that finds Daniel in the passage before us.

For whatever it’s worth and only because I can’t resist, I would suggest this fractal finds its way all the way down to our natural aversion to snakes. I hate snakes. I would suggest it is any human being’s natural disposition to despise those evil, loathsome, disgusting creatures. I’ve always said, “The only good snake is a dead snake…and I still don’t want to see it!” I’m amused to see the synonyms the Merriam-Webster dictionary offers for the adjective loathsome:  

“abhorrent, abominable, appalling, awful, contemptible, despicable, detestable, disgusting, distasteful, dreadful, evil, foul, fulsome, gross, hideous, horrendous, horrible, horrid, nasty, nauseating, nauseous, noisome, noxious, obnoxious, obscene, odious, offensive, rancid, repellent, repugnant, repulsive, revolting, scandalous, shocking, sickening, ugly…”

That pretty well sums it up for me. Couldn’t have said it better. In all seriousness, I realize there are people who overcome this aversion and actually develop an affection for the ghastly creatures, and there really is a tiny corner in my heart where I’m willing to respect them for it. However, I still hate snakes and will to the day I die. I’ll kill every snake I can, and then console myself that my hatred is not psychotic but rather very natural. It goes all the way back to the Garden.

Gosh, that was fun to type!

Back to seriousness, we not only see the battle here in the book of Daniel, we see it throughout the Bible, from cover to cover. What shall we say of Joseph and his brothers? Of Haman and his plot against Mordecai, Esther, and the Jewish people? Of the opposition Nehemiah faced? Of Herod’s murder of the babies of Bethlehem? Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead and what was the Jewish leaders’ response? “So the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus…” (John 12:9). And of course there was Jesus Himself, the very Son of God who came here only to do us good, who never did anything but love us, and what was the response to Him? “Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin…from that day on they plotted to take His life” (John 11:47-53).

All of this is precisely the battle in which Daniel found himself, and it is precisely the battle we see every day. It may come in momentous, horrible tragedies like the Jewish Holocaust, or it may be as simple as the little fears I face just driving to work.

Big or small, it all calls you and me to answer that question, “How shall we then live?” Daniel would teach us to lay hold of faith and set our face like flint to be found servants of the Most High God. Daniel lived out Peter’s admonition: “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing evil, they may see your good works…for it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men…” (I Pet. 2:12-15), and Paul’s admonition, “Be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. Put on the full armor of God…” (Eph. 6:10,11).

Daniel would also teach us that the battle is much larger than the particular people who would happen to threaten us today. Interestingly, this sinister bunch of back-stabbers remain nameless in our passage. Perhaps the Lord did that on purpose knowing that, on any given day and in any given generation, the names simply change. As I’ve said before, I would have no trouble putting names to many of the people I believe are but the serpent’s pawns in our present world, but this passage helps me realize every single one of them could die today and tomorrow they’d only be replaced by more of the serpent’s seed.

I think it actually helps me to see that. I can get pretty negative and discouraged if I think too much about all the evil going on in our world. It feels like it helps to step back and see it is really nothing more than the age old battle, the seed of the serpent against the Seed of the woman. We need to keep our focus on the Lord and what He’s doing, not get too discouraged by what the serpent is up to. We already know the outcome of the battle. The Lord wins!