Daniel 6:24 “The Difference”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

²⁴And the king said, and they brought those men who had eaten the bits of Daniel and to the pit of the lions they cast them, their children and their wives, and they reached not the bottom of the pit before the lions overpowered them and the all of their bones they crushed.

The old folks used to say, “My, how the chickens have come home to roost!” They also liked to talk of people getting their “come-uppance.” These guys certainly got theirs! Today people talk about “karma,” and this would certainly be a prime example. What would seem to be a short little passage is worth pausing to consider. It actually calls up a number of significant issues.

I’m sure almost anyone reading these words knows that sweet sense of “justice served.” “Good,” we might say. “Dirty rats. They got exactly what they deserved!” and they did. Here is a case of the Biblical principle, “He who digs a hole and scoops it out falls into the pit he has made. The trouble he causes recoils on himself; his violence comes down on his own head” (Ps. 7:15,16). The simple fact is that our God is a God of justice. We are made in His image, so it is only right we should feel a sense of satisfaction when we see justice served.

It is also an aspect of proper justice for criminals not only to be punished, but to be punished with precisely the same malignity they intended for their victims. God Himself had instructed judges in Israel concerning criminals, “…then do to him as he intended to do to the other man…life for life, eye for eye…” (Deut. 19:18-21), and we are all familiar with the judicial maxim, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” (Ex. 21:24). It was only fitting that Haman should be hung on the same gallows he had built for Mordecai.

Justice should be served. We should find a sense of satisfaction in what we read here. On the other hand, we know the Scriptures warn us not to “rejoice in the calamities of the wicked” (Prov. 24:17,18). Especially as Christians, we often watch people suffer for their sins and think to ourselves, “There, but for the grace of God, go I!” For us, there is always that sense of knowing I’ve been forgiven an infinite debt of my own sins, and that very deep realization my heart should extend that same grace to everyone else. The difference here is whether we are talking about the proper work of an appointed judge, or our personal interactions with the faults of others.

A judge, by the very nature of his job, needs to execute justice. Crime needs to be punished, and it should be. The unrighteous should live in fear of what the righteous will do to them if they’re ever caught. However, when it comes to my personal relationships with other people, I am not a judge. No one appointed me to be judge over anything. It’s not my job to decide my next-door neighbor should somehow be punished. If he comes over and steals my lawn mower, it is not my place to go over and beat him up. I call the police.

I would suggest that, in understanding the difference, we can be glad when justice is done, while, on a personal level, still wishing God’s grace and mercy on the individual(s).  I strongly suspect this distinction was very clear in Daniel’s mind. These guys were vicious criminals and they had done Daniel terribly wrong, yet it wasn’t his place to decide their fate. His answer to the king showed to him only respect and a defense of his own actions. There is no accusation, no demand for justice against the other governors. As we’ve noted before, because Daniel had a God to trust, he could simply “entrust himself to Him who judges justly.” In so doing, he could leave the “justice” up to the king, whose job was, in fact, to be a judge.

Also, it is interesting to note that not only did the crooks end up themselves thrown in the pit, but that we’re told the lions “overpowered them and crushed all their bones before they even reached the floor.” Apparently Josephus wrote that the nobles suggested it was not a miraculous delivery but some other reason, like that someone had already fed the lions and they simply weren’t hungry. That would fit perfectly here. One can imagine some of them standing there watching Daniel pulled up out of the pit and, in their arrogance, immediately scoffing at what everyone else saw as miraculous. I even suspect their accusation would be that the king himself was behind it—that perhaps he had ordered the lions fed the evening before Daniel was thrown in. If they did accuse Darius of that, it would make perfect sense that the already angered king got so enraged he ordered not only them but their entire families thrown into the pit. “Not hungry, eh? We’ll see about that!”

Whether all of that is true or not, what this verse does is to clearly establish for all eternity that the problem was not that the lions weren’t hungry! I would suggest, without this verse, that would have forever been a point upon which unbelievers would scoff. What is interesting then too, is to see that, in this case, God used the scoffers themselves to proclaim His glory. As the psalmist tells us, “Even the wrath of man shall praise God…” God uses the very evil men who accused Daniel to prove that, in fact, his deliverance was miraculous.

Finally, we have this matter that it was not only the men who got fed to the lions but their children and wives as well. Right off the top that strikes us all as shockingly brutal—and it is. In God’s kingdom, He laid down the rule, “Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sins” (Deut. 24:16), which injunction was followed by Amaziah in II Kings 14:5,6. However, we are not in Israel. This is the Middle East and people lived then as they do now under shocking brutality. Their godless culture never did (and still doesn’t) place any value on human life. An honest study of history will show the rest of the human race has been little better. Cruel brutality has been the rule, not the exception, of mankind’s existence here on this planet.

It has been common throughout history for entire families to suffer for the sins of one of their members. Even in the Bible itself, we have Achan in Josh. 7:24-26 and Korah and his followers in Numb. 16:30-33. In both those cases, what happens would seem to us to be a contradiction of the maxim that children should not die for the sins of their fathers. Frankly I don’t know how to explain that except to say first of all, I wasn’t there and I’m not the judge. I’m operating on some pretty sparse evidence to be setting myself up as judge and jury. The other thing I would say—and this subject perhaps goes deeper than my feeble mind can embrace—it simply is true that we seldom sin alone and we seldom suffer for those sins alone.

Esther was wise enough to know that Haman’s sons bore their father’s malignity against the Jewish people and, when given the opportunity, she requested their dead bodies be displayed for all to see (Esther 9:13). The fact the Jews killed them to begin with would seem to have been another violation of the maxim that children shouldn’t die for their father’s sins. However, one can imagine the death of their father would have only further stoked those ten young men’s hatred for Jews. My memory is that Jewish tradition held that, in fact, during the few months between their father’s death and the Days of Purim, that is exactly what the ten boys were doing—organizing and recruiting men to exact revenge on the Jews. That was clearly a case where the sons bore the malignity of their father and a wise administration of justice was for them to die too. One could go so far as to say they were actually dying for their own sins after all.

Then there is simply the effect we all have on our families and everyone else around us. In America, we like to see ourselves as individuals. Throughout human history and in basically every other culture ever known, that was not the case. People have rather seen themselves as very much a part of their larger groups. It is interesting to note how in Daniel 9, Daniel is confessing the sins of the Jewish people. He says over and over, “We have sinned. We have rebelled.” He says, “We are covered with shame—the men of Judah and people of Jerusalem and all Israel, both near and far…we and our kings, our princes and our fathers…” It has always struck me as odd for a man to be confessing other people’s sins. If I were Daniel, I would be quick to say, “I wasn’t part of that. It’s not my fault. It’s not something for me to confess.”

However, what I’m doing is being an American. I’m wanting to be above all else an individual. In some senses, I am, but I suspect it’s true that we overemphasize our individuality and, in so doing, lose our sense of solidarity with those around us. The plain fact is that we do affect each other. Sometimes we profoundly affect each other. How many drunks have ruined the lives of everyone else in their family? How many times has someone’s careless driving caused the death of everyone riding with them? How many times have a boss’s bad decisions caused a company to go out of business and everyone lose their job?

Again, it is true that we are individuals. When it’s all said and done, “Each of us will stand and give an account of himself to God” (Rom. 14:12). However, it is also true that we are all a part of the larger groups to which we belong, our families, our nation, our church, our workplace, etc. That fact has a lot of implications, but I am suggesting that is part of why it’s hard for us to accept this idea of a man’s entire family being punished for his sins. We Americans overemphasize our individuality to the point we’ve lost our sense of solidarity.

On the other hand, this is still shockingly brutal, but then, that’s the way the Middle East has always been and still is today. Their culture places no value on human life. Sometimes I wonder, in such a culture of hate, if brutality is not the only way to maintain order. That may very well be the case. Then my next thought is to fear for my own country. Unless the Lord sends a revival, our now godless nation will eventually devolve to the same depths of hate and disunity until we too return to the same culture of cruel brutality.

So what can we conclude? It is good that justice was served against these evil men. It’s okay that we allow ourselves to enjoy a sense of that justice. At the same time, we can feel compassion for them and wish that rather they had seen Daniel’s life and been drawn to his God. Finally, we can rightly condemn the cruel brutality of feeding their entire families to the lions, while also realizing that brutality itself is simply an expression of a godless world. What the whole world needs (and us too!) is to welcome the Lord Himself into their hearts and lives. Even in a cruel, brutal world, it will always be true, “The Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of trouble, and to reserve the unjust until the day of judgment to be punished” (II Pet. 2:9). The very lions which were supposed to eat Daniel, instead ate the wicked men who plotted his murder. It is the Lord who makes the difference.

What we all need is the Lord in our lives. May each of us welcome Him in!