10The queen, because of the words of the king and his nobles, to the house of the banquet she came. The queen answered and she said, “O king, to ages live! Do not let your thoughts alarm you and do not let your countenance be changed. 11There is a man in your kingdom who [the] spirit of [the] gods [is] in him and, in the days of your father, illumination and insight and wisdom like [the] wisdom of [the] gods was found in him, and the king Nebuchadnezzar your father, your father the king, appointed him [the] master of [the] conjurers, astrologers, Chaldeans, [and] ones divining, 12because an extraordinary spirit and understanding and insight interpreting dreams and explaining puzzles and solving difficult problems was found in him, in Daniel, whom the king named Belteshazzar. Now let Daniel be called and the meaning he will declare.”.
In verse 9, we leave behind the terrified king, his baffled nobles, and his answerless counselors. Suddenly faced with a monumental crisis, these boastful, arrogant men find themselves hopeless. I find it no surprise at all that there appears on the scene a woman, and that that woman points them to hope.
This is one of the great fractals of our created world—that it will be “the seed of the woman” who will “crush the head of the serpent.” Adam, as appointed prince of this world, had pulled down the entire race by his sin and would have left us all hopeless. But God ordained that mankind’s great hope would come through a woman, in that case, of course being Mary and her conception of the Lord Jesus Christ. What I would suggest is that the fractal of that truth (or shall we say its pattern), then became a truth which gets repeated in a million different ways on a million different scales all throughout history and our existence.
I’m never surprised when God steps into some “impossible” situation and uses a woman to lead the way out. As men, we bear enormous responsibilities before God in our families, our communities, our churches, and everywhere else people interact. However, that man is a fool who does not deeply respect, value, and appreciate the advice and inputs and contributions of the women in his life.
It took me twenty years of marriage before I realized just how true this is. Up to that point, I’d made a lot of decisions on my own, without seriously considering Joan’s opinions. Sadly, I have to confess, pretty much across the board, I now regret every one of those decisions I made. They landed me in one hopeless situation after another and inflicted a lot of misery on my family. Finally, I woke up and started valuing her inputs. What amazes me now is, after another almost twenty years, my whole life feels like it’s been since then one good decision after another. We make it a point to do nothing until we’ve talked about it, put our heads together (as the old saying goes), and come to a point where we’re both agreed this is a good idea.
On the one hand, that’s just good management. It can’t be a good idea to have two brains in the same house and only use one of them! I also would assert part of the advantage comes from the fact that a woman simply sees the world through a different lens than a man. She sees everything from a completely different perspective which provides valuable insights into the decision-making process. But my point here looking at Daniel chapter 5 is that I think there is a far grander explanation, and that being the fractal of truth the Lord established when He granted to the woman the honor of being God’s vessel of hope to the world.
All that said, it is no surprise that into this room full of hopeless men walks a woman, who then points the way toward hope. She is introduced in verse 10 as “the queen.” For me, there is no doubt this is actually the woman we would call the queen-mother, who would be Nitocris, the daughter of Nebuchadnezzar and the wife of Nabonidus, Belshazzar’s father. Just to begin with, that could be why she is introduced as “the queen.” She literally is the queen, since her husband is the formal king. Belshazzar’s wives and concubines are with him at this party, so she clearly wasn’t one of them, and it would make sense that none of Belshazzar’s wives would be designated “queen,” because there already is one. Father/son co-regencies, such as we have with Nabonidus and his son Belshazzar, have been common arrangements all through history, but there is always just one queen.
This would explain why she’s not necessarily at the party—she is an older woman now and probably less than impressed with her son’s revelry. This would also explain how she can simply appear in the room and then give advice to a king. She’s his mother. Less then 100 years later, even though she was the queen, Esther will have to risk her life to step uninvited into the presence of the king. (Granted that will be in Persia and this is in Babylon, but I doubt things were much different culturally). The one woman who trumps it all would be his mother.
This would also explain her familiarity with the events of Nebuchadnezzar's life. She was his daughter. She was around to see it all and certainly around to appreciate what Daniel did for the man who was her father.
I want to ponder a lot more on what she says, but, for now, I’ll just assert again that man is a fool who does not deeply respect, value, and appreciate the advice and inputs and contributions of the women in his life. What we see in this passage is just one instance of the fractal truth which has permeated our existence since Eden—that the Lord will often use the women in our lives to be our vessels of hope.
Knowing our Bibles, that should never surprise us!
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