Daniel 1 – “This’n’That”

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

¹In the year of third to the reign of Jehoiakim the king of Israel came Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babel [to] Jerusalem and besieged it …²¹And Daniel was until the year of the first to Cyrus the king.

Before I leave chapter 1, there are a few miscellaneous thoughts I’d like to record, mainly just so I remember them in the future.

I was surprised in 1:4 to find that the Hebrew name for the Babylonians was the “Kasdim.” In the OT, that name is always translated into English as “Chaldeans.” Apparently the Hebrew name “Kasdim” is taken from the Assyrian “Kasdu,” while the name Chaldeans is a transliteration from the Babylonian cuneiform “Kaldai.” My question is, how do we know that the “Chaldeans” of Babylon are actually the “Kasdim” which Daniel mentions here? The “Kasdim” here in Daniel are called “Chaldeans” in the Greek Septuagint, implying that at least as early as about 250 BC, Jewish scholars considered the ancient Kasdim and the Chaldeans to be one and the same group. It would make perfect sense if the Hebrews used the Assyrian name Kasdu. Babylon is at the far east end of the Fertile Crescent, while Israel is at the far west end. In order for any news to pass from Babylon to Israel, it had to travel through Assyria. The Jews would likely hear any such information mainly from their Assyrian neighbors, hence their use of the Assyrian “Kasdim” rather than the Babylonian “Kaldai.”

I suppose it also instructive that Daniel continued to use “Kasdim” even when he begins at 2:4 writing in Aramaic, the lingua franca of the ancient world. At the point in time when Daniel writes, Babylon has been ruling the Fertile Crescent for a relatively short time after several centuries of Assyrian rule. At that point, even the area’s lingua franca knew the group as the “Kasdim.” From Daniel’s point on, the Fertile Crescent was ruled by either the Babylonians or their conquerors from the next nation even further east, the Medo-Persians. In either case, the name of the group would be derived from the peoples at the east, not west end of the Fertile Crescent, calling them “Kaldai,” so that when the Greeks conquered the area under Alexander the Great (4^th century BC), they would hear the name as “Kaldai,” which then transliterated into Greek and ultimately to us as “Chaldeans.”

That all makes perfect sense, but I would love to find that somewhere in the ancient world someone clearly equated the Kasdim with the Kaldai. I would personally consider even the Septuagint as a fairly “late” document, not to mention its perennially dubious quality, so its attestation is unconvincing to me. I guess my bottom line is that, in my mind, what we have is a universally accepted assumption -- that Daniel's "Kasdim" are, in fact, "Chaldeans" … and I don’t like assumptions. For now, I will go with it, but I hope to keep that small element of doubt in the back of my mind.

Of course, even if I could answer this question, one is still uncertain exactly who the “Chaldeans” were. Based on my internet research, there are apparently people alive today who still consider themselves Chaldeans. It looks like it was an early name for people who settled near the coast of what we call the Persian Gulf, in the marshy area which is now southern Iraq and Kuwait. Somehow it apparently became the name for the astrologers and magicians of Daniel’s Babylon and even became synonymous with “Babylonians.” Perhaps there are scholars (or the Chaldeans themselves) who feel a level of certainty about all of this, but what I found was a lot of speculation and debate. Perhaps, if I keep my eyes open, I will run across something a little more definitively satisfying.

Another thing I thought was interesting is the Hebrew behind verse 20, where the NIV says “he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his realm.” The Hebrew actually says, “… he found them ten hands upon the all of the magicians and the astrologers which in the all of his kingdom.” “Ten hands.” Up until quite recently, people depended on horses and the way one measured a horse’s height was by “hands.” Seriously. At least in my young lifetime, I heard farm people making such references. They would start at the ground, lay their hand flat against the horses ankle, and measure “hands” up to the top of his shoulder. That is how they communicated to each other how big a horse was. Maybe they did that with oxen, mules, and donkeys too. I don’t know. And maybe horse people still use the term. Just in and of itself, of course, it is a little inaccurate – depending on whose “hand” we’re using. But anyway, if that is the imagery behind this verse, it makes perfect sense. Daniel and his friends were “ten hands” above everyone else. I just think that’s cool.

Another thing I want to say is that I think one has to be very careful not to be too exacting about ancient timelines. For instance, beginning in verse 1, scholars go bonkers because Daniel says it was “in the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim,” while Jeremiah says in 25:1 it was “in the fourth year of Jehoiakim.” “We’ve found an error in the Bible!” they cry. What such antagonists utterly fail to acknowledge is that ancient peoples had a variety of ways in which they kept time. Things were often dated as here from the reign of a particular king. The problem was that, in some cultures, they didn’t count the first year or first portion of a year, while others did. What sort of timeline you get depends on who’s writing and who they’re writing too. Another source of confusion for us is what is called “co-regencies.” Sometimes a son would begin to reign with his father as co-regent and sometimes his rule is dated from that point, not from the time the father is gone and the son himself becomes the sole king. Then again, they might not. Then add too all of this that ancient kings (like today’s media) were not at all above simply re-writing history if they thought it was to their advantage. People of all times have been incorrigibly inclined to fudge data. “Figures lie and liars figure.” Any ancient text, besides the Bible, is at least somewhat suspect regarding its technical accuracy. So … for whatever it’s worth … just be very careful about getting too dogmatic about anyone’s ancient timelines. The Bible itself is true. Timelines are at best approximations and assumptions. Even when ancient events can be dated with certainty, those events get communicated to us in the Bible through the Jewish culture, subject to their way of expressing such things. Just be careful.

All that said, an interesting “timeline” sort of discussion is the Seventy Year captivity. I have seen a considerable amount of debate, exactly when the “70 years” began and when it ended. The most attractive to me is the view that it began in 605 BC with Nebuchadnezzar’s conquering of Jerusalem (and hence Daniel’s deportation) and ended in 536 BC, when the work on the new temple was begun. In 539 BC, Cyrus had issued his decree (Ezra 1:2-4) allowing the Jews to return to their homeland and rebuild the temple, but it took some time for the actual work to begin. That makes reasonable sense but is certainly wide open to debate. Two Biblical observations about this – in 9:1, Daniel says it was during the first year of Darius (who was apparently appointed by Cyrus to rule the Babylonians) he noted the captivity was to last 70 years and began praying about it. If in fact that was 539 BC, then the “end” of the 70 years was yet future and had to be at least that year or later.

The second Biblical observation I’d like to record concerns the exact wording of Jeremiah’s prophecy. He said in 29:10, “When the seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill My gracious promise to bring you back to this place.” Just a “for whatever it’s worth” – notice he says the seventy years are completed “for Babylon.” Perhaps we are all erring trying to tie the 70 years to specifically Jewish events, when in fact the years apply to Babylon? Measuring back from 539 would end us up in 609/608 BC, which doesn’t strike me as anything particularly noteworthy in Babylonian history. Of course, in some sense, it isn’t really important for us anyway. Obviously, it was crystal clear to Daniel, which meant it would have been clear to anyone else who cared to know at the time. It applied to them. They needed to understand it. The plain simple fact is we don’t. Maybe that’s why we don’t. The Lord isn’t usually in the habit of dispensing information to curious people (like me) just to make them smart. So, at any rate, I just think it is notable that the years are completed “for Babylon.” I think we need to at least be open to the possibility that the mileposts for beginning and end might be related to Babylonian events more so than Jewish. Sacrilege, I know, but the text says what it says.

Last of all, looking at the Jer 29:10 passage, I can’t help but notice what is the very next verse. It is our familiar verse of hope, Jer 29:11:

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a future and a hope.”

Just think, there is our friend Daniel, living in 539 BC, now an old man, having lived his whole life in exile in Babylon, and as he reads an old scroll from the prophet Jeremiah and comes to 29:10, he realizes that somehow the whole exile thing had to do with a 70 year period which basically has spanned his life and is about to end. That in itself would be hopeful, but perhaps it would seem impossible. As is so often true with us, perhaps as a man he would sit there after all those years and wonder, “How on earth could this actually take place?” Then his eyes pass on to the very next verse, “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a future and a hope.” The verse gives us tremendous hope. Imagine what it must have meant to elderly old Daniel! Wow.

Well, the 1^st chapter has been really fun. Now on to the next!