Daniel 1:8 – “Questions”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

⁸And Daniel set upon his heart which he [would] not defile himself with the food of the king and with the wine of his drinking, and he sought from the chief of the court officials which not he [would] defile himself.

In my last post, I admired Daniel’s integrity and noted how we live in the same world, where we sometimes have to make decisions and “draw lines.” I also noted that, at those times, others can question whether our “issues” are really that important. I even find as I think back over my life that I question my own decisions. Maybe it simply wasn’t “that important.” What matters for all of us is that, at the time, if we are convinced we must draw lines, then we simply must. And in the end it really doesn’t matter if others agree with us. It is our own integrity, our own relationship with God, which is at stake.

All that said, I would like to visit the “issues” involved in this passage and record some thoughts I have. In the end what I’ll probably propose is just a bunch of questions. But these are things I often wonder about as I study the Bible and try to live my life. After nearly 40 years of knowing the Lord and studying His Word, there are still some things that make no sense to me at all. I know, if I live long enough, the Lord will explain some of it to me, but for now I just want to record my questions.

My question really boils down to a Jewish person’s relationship to the Law when they’re living outside of Palestine. Notice how the Lord spoke in Deut 6:1: “These are the commands, decrees and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, …” Notice they were to observe them “in the land.” 12:1 is similar: “These are the decrees and laws you must be careful to follow in the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has given you to possess—as long as you live in the land.”

I could multiply examples of this throughout the Pentateuch. In fact, I would suggest the very nature of the Old Covenant required that the people be in Palestine. In Deut 12:4ff, the Lord told them, “You must not worship the Lord your God in their way. But you are to seek the place the Lord your God will choose from among all your tribes to put his Name there for his dwelling. To that place you must go; there bring your burnt offerings and sacrifices, your tithes and special gifts, …”  The entire system of Jewish worship centered around Jerusalem. Three times a year, every Jewish male was to appear before the Lord at Jerusalem. What is my point? My point is that, in order to keep these commands, a Jewish person had to live in Palestine. What if they lived in Alaska or Australia? Today they could perhaps fly there, but at great expense. Certainly throughout history, travel to Jerusalem would be impossible except for those who lived very nearby. My point is that, when or if a Jewish person was to live their life far from Jerusalem, the fact is they simply could not “keep” the Law.

If I could belabor this point, it is also critical to understand that “the Land” is an integral part of the Law itself. Clear back in Genesis 12, what the Lord promised to Abraham were three things: 1) that He would be their God, and they would be His people; 2) that He would greatly multiply their numbers, and 3) that He would give to them the land of Palestine forever. For Abraham’s descendants it was always a bad decision to leave “the Land.” It was the worst judgment of all for the Lord to “spew them out of the land.” The very reason why Daniel is not “in the Land” is because the Lord has brought down judgment on the people. And what is their great hope? That this exile from “the Land” will only last 70 years. And then what will the Lord do? Send them back to “the Land.” My conclusion would be that, for Abraham’s descendants, being “in the Land” is a critical part of the Law itself.

The Mosaic Law is, in reality, a national Constitution. If one reads it carefully, you can’t help but realize it is actually a very complete system of government, of how a nation is to be run. It only “works” if you’re talking about the Jewish people living together in Palestine. Again, I am observing that the very essence of the Law, of the Old Covenant, of Jewish life required that the Jewish people be “in the Land.”

And that brings me back to my question: “What if they’re not?”

Daniel is not “in the Land.” He cannot keep the entire Law. He has no choice but to keep parts of it while not keeping others. But what is it to keep “parts” of the Law and not others? Is that not, by definition, to violate the Law? I’m suggesting that, for a Jewish person to live outside “the Land” is for him to be a law-breaker – unless the stipulations of the Law are only binding when that Jewish person is actually in Palestine. The hard, cold fact is that you simply cannot truly “keep” the Law unless you are actually in Palestine.

Where I’m going with all of this is to ask what would have “defiled” Daniel from the king’s food and wine? We could answer that the food might include unclean meat. But is it “unclean” if Daniel isn’t home in Palestine? Does the “clean/unclean” even matter outside of “the Land?” I’m seriously doubtful that it did. On the  other hand, would a young Jewish man have thought this all through long enough to realize these things? Not very likely. And so, perhaps, that is exactly what he was concerned about.

I wish I could talk to the old Daniel at the end of the book, and ask him if he still thought it had been that important. I strongly suspect he would say something like, “No. As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to realize those are not the important things in my relationship with God. I’ve learned that the kingdom of God is not about food and drink, but about things like faithfulness and kindness and love.” I think he would say at the time, he really did think it was important, and obviously the Lord knew his heart and honored his commitment, but looking back, it simply wasn’t one of those places where he really needed to “draw a line.”

I don’t know. I wish I did know. It’s one of those things I wonder about and never seem to come to any conclusion.

The whole discussion, on the other hand, is not far from your heart and mine. We’re not Jews and there is no insistence at all that we all move to Israel. But we are followers of the Lamb living in an almost totally pagan world. Though we do not have “the Law” bearing down on us, we still have our desire to live lives that are pleasing to our wonderful Lord. And that means, we too have to think through and make decisions about what we will and won’t do. Jesus actually wants us to be “in the world” though not “of it.” He does want us to be in it.  He wants us to go to work. He wants us to live in neighborhoods and buy groceries and mow our grass and go to our daughter’s dance recitals. He wants his people to be “in the world.” But somehow we can’t be “of it,” and that puts us in exactly the same place as Daniel – making decisions how to strike that balance.

So, in the end, I’m still wondering if Daniel needed to draw the line about the king’s food and drink. But then on the other hand, even the question itself is practically instructive to us. It teaches us to expect that, living in a pagan world, we will have to make decisions, that sometimes those decisions may not be as crystal clear as we wish they were, that we simply have to stick to our convictions at the time, that the Lord knows our heart and will probably honor even our immature decisions, that others may question whether it is really “that big a deal,” that we ourselves may later on question whether it was really “that big a deal,” and it’s all simply a part of being a believer, living in a pagan world. It’s part of being “in the world but not of it.”

And may I add one last thought – perhaps if we really realized this and understood it, maybe we wouldn’t be so hard on our fellow believers. They may make decisions that we deem “overly scrupulous and unnecessary,” or we may conclude they’ve “gone liberal!” Maybe we ought to realize it is a difficult quest to sort out exactly where we need to draw our line. And maybe we should let them make their decisions, value them as fellow believers, and then get on with the challenging task of living our own lives in a pagan world?

Lots of questions.

But I suspect Daniel teaches us that’s not all bad. It’s just part of it.