I don’t know why encounters with angels,1 and God, aren’t all alike.
Sometimes, like Abraham’s meeting with the Almighty and two angels, described in Genesis 18:2, or Habakkuk’s getting airlifted in Daniel 14:33–37, it’s apparently much like meeting another human.
Other times, like Daniel’s interview with Gabriel, it takes days to recover. I suspect that it depends on the personalities involved, and on just how much unshielded power we’re exposed to.
It comes from a reality check Belshazzar experienced.
The chap in the center is Belshazzar, as imagined by Rembrandt. The picture isn’t Babylonian, Neo- or otherwise.
That, I think, wasn’t a big deal. Local and regional leaders had been raiding each other for at least a dozen centuries by then, and this was a big party.
That, in 20-20 hindsight, was a very bad idea.
Belshazzar should have known better, as Daniel said in Daniel 5:18–23.
The Catholic view of responsibility isn’t as stupidly inflexible as it may sound.
If I didn’t know that an action is wrong, like walking off a cliff — I know, unrealistically extreme example, but I’m writing this in a hurry — there would still be consequences: more or less serious, depending on how high the cliff is and what’s at the bottom.
I think George Washington — bear with me, this makes sense, at least to me — really lived, despite the cherry tree tale.
I’m a trifle less certain about Daniel.
More accurately, I’m not convinced that every anecdote in Daniel is literally true down to the last detail.
But I emphatically don’t have to believe that someone with an American viewpoint wrote the Bible.
We don’t know the name of Daniel’s author.
It’s not, strictly speaking, prophetic writing. It’s an early example of “apocalyptic” literature, and that’s another yet another topic.
I do not sift through Daniel, looking for verses that’ll support a nifty new End Times Bible Prophecy. That kind of trouble I don’t need.
Daniel and others getting their names changed probably made keeping track of them in Chaldean records harder.
On top of that, Cyrus the Great rolled over that part of the world around 539 BC.
While Chaldeans were still running Babylon, Daniel was among top-drawer young Israelites picked to be in the king’s court.
Like the footnote says, they’re “given Babylonian names as a sign of their adoption by the king.” I suspect the Babylonian names were also easier for the locals to pronounce.
The lesson here isn’t that worshiping God makes a person fireproof, or that bad things don’t happen to good people.
2 Maccabees 7:1–41 describes eight folks being tortured to death because they wouldn’t “eat pork in violation of God’s law.” Pork isn’t the issue here. It’s keeping God’s law, or not.
I think they made the right choice. Taking the long view isn’t always easy, but I think it makes sense.
“Slay me though he might, I will wait for him; I will defend my conduct before him.
It’s over-the-top imagery appeals to me, and I’ll get back to that.
I like mystery stories, so Daniel 14:1–22 also appeals to me. You know how it goes: Daniel sprinkles ash on the floor in Bel’s temple, and has the door sealed.
Next morning, he and the king examine the seal and take a look around.
What happens next isn’t so appealing, but I was born in the 20th century and am living in the 21st. We’ve made some headway since Daniel’s time.
Daniel’s experience with lions reminds me of St. Francis of Assisi and the Wolf of Gubbio, and that’s yet again another topic.
I think it’s true, in the sense that we can learn something by reading and studying it.
Some of what’s there is a prediction of what would happen: and has happened, by now. Let’s remember that roughly two dozen centuries have gone by since Daniel’s day.
Some of Daniel’s visions tie in with what’s in Revelation: which is why the lion with eagle’s wings, the bear, the critter with iron teeth, and all the rest, sounded so familiar.
Radio preachers and folks selling the latest thing in End Times Bible Prophecies were full of that stuff in my youth.
Daniel had another vision, couldn’t make head or tail of it, which gets me to Gabriel. I’ll skip over the flying goat, assorted horns, and why I don’t try to second-guess God the Father. I take all that seriously: it’s wannabe prophets that I’m not keen on.
Like I said, I suspect that outcomes of angel-human meetings depend on who meets the angel, who the angel is, and how headquarters defines the mission.
Apparently at least some scholars think Belshazzar really existed, and so did the Neo-Babylonian or Chaldean Empire: but that Daniel didn’t.
They’ve got a point, sort of. Daniel lived during the 6th century BC, after 538, more or less.
Someone, obviously not Daniel, wrote the book of Daniel while Antiochus IV Epiphanes was throwing his weight around, in 167 BC. give or take a few years.
When the book of Daniel was written, Nebuchadnezzar II may have had better name-recognition value than Nabonidus.
My guess is that none of them were Americans, and didn’t have our obsession with “just the facts, ma’am” writing.
4 These days, the Walt Disney Productions two-reel “Ben and Me” may be better-known.
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