That I may Know HIM - A Devotional

Day 22: 1 out of 10, 000+

Day 22:  1 out of 10, 000+

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According to historical and Biblical records, Daniel was among the several who were exiled into Babylon in the third year of the eleven-year reign of King Jehoiakim of Judah (Daniel 1:1; 2 Kings 23:36-37). That forced exile, about nineteen years before the eventual fall of the kingdom during the reign of King Zedekiah, was the first of such deportations that were later to follow, not to talk of the devastation, at last, of what used to be the kingdom of Judah, especially 1 Jerusalem its capita! (2 Chronicles 36:11-20, 2 Kings 24:1-4).

Jehoiakim the king during whose reign those deportations started, is recorded to have done that which was evil in the sight of the LORD” (2Chronicles 36:5). When he died, he was given "the burial of a donkey (Jeremiah 22:19, NIV), in great contrast to Hezekiah his great-great grandfather, who was "bur­ied in the chiefest of the sepulchres of the sons of David"(2 Chronicles 32:33). In spite of the several sins of Judah and those of Jehoiakim the king at the time, that first phase of Judah's judgment is attrib­uted by God directly to the evils of Manasseh, the king who, as many as four regimes before (that is, over thirty-six years back in history) had “filled Jeru­salem with INNOCENT BLOOD; which the LORD would NOT pardon." This judgment (by means of exile) was apart from the other troubles that God had had to send upon the kingdom, through several in­vading bands" of Syrians, Moabites, Chaldeans, Am­monites and so on, who pillaged Judah (2 Kings 24:2-4). (Is that a parable for a land being now wasted by economic and commercial bands of foreigners? -Lebanese, Indians, Chadians, Arabians, Europeans?) Daniel the holy man was part of that first ‘fruit’ of ex­iles that got carried away from Judah into Babylon (Daniel 1:1-4).

Jehoiachin the son of Jehoiakim was appointed to the throne of his father, after Babylon had overcome and terminated the latter's reign. Jehoiachin the son ruled for only three months and ten days (2 Chroni­cles 36:9). His was the shortest reign on the throne of Judah. In spite of the shortness of his regime, how­ever, he also "did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, according to all that his father had done" (2 Kings 24:9). In other words, by renewing the old ways of sin, he opened up the old 'Manassehic’ wounds which had been lying dormant, thus hastening the judgment that had long been waiting impatiently in the wings for an opportune time. His government came to an abrupt end with another trouble from Babylon, courtesy of an offended God.

Jehoiachin, along with his household and the nobility of Judah, were taken captives into Babylon. That marked the second phase of the deportations into Babylon; the first having been a few month earlier under his father. Ezekiel, then a young man, was among the several thousands who were forced into this exile (Ezekiel 1:2). Mordecai was also carried away in this second batch of captives (Esther2:5-6); but whereas Daniel ended up in Babylon the capital city of the kingdom of Babylon, Mordecai was taken to Shushan one of the principal cities, which also became the capital of the Persian empire that arose on the ruins of the Babylonian empire. It was in the fifth year of this exile that Ezekiel's prophetic ministry began. His was a message directed essentially at the Jews with him in captivity, a message generally about Judah and her many sins, particularly sins of idolatry (Ezekiel 1:1 -3).

The sad statistics of what Judah lost to Babylon in the second depor­tation is given in 2 Kings 24:8-16:

8          Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months....

9          And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, according to all that his father had done.

10        And at that time, the servants of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up against Jerusalem, and the

city was besieged.

12        And Jehoiachin the king of Judah went out to the king of Babylon, he, and his mother, and his servants, and his princes, and his officers: and the king of Babylon took him....

13        And he carried out thence all the treasures of the house of the LORD, [which were eventually abused in Belshazzar's idolatrous party in Daniel 5] and the treasures of the king's house, and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold which Solomon king of Israel had made in the temple of the ORD, as the LORD had said.

14        And he carried away all Jerusalem, and all the princes, and all the mighty men of valour, even TEN THOUSAND captives, and all the craftsmen and smiths: none remained, save the poorest sort of the people of the land.

15        And he carried away Jehoiachin into Babyton, and the king's mother, and the king's wives, and his officers, and the mighty of the land, those carried he into captivity from Jerusalem to Babylon.

16        And all the men of might, even SEVEN THOUSAND, and craftsmen and smiths A THOUSAND, all that were strong and apt for war, even them the king of Babylon brought captive to Babylon.

Apart from “all” the vessels of the house of God and “all” the vessels of the king's palace, Nebuchadnezzar also carried away 10,000 people, 7,000 of whom were "men of might, "plus a thousand "craftsmen and smiths," the other two thousand being the nobility, the princes, the mighty men of valour and others who were "strong and apt for war." Although the number that went in Daniel's batch of captives is not given, at least the second batch is esti­mated at about 10,000 persons.

As  told in the book of Daniel, four youths initially stood out of the mass of ten thousand plus deportees in Babylon; they were Dani-EL (which means "God will judge," or "God is my Judge"), Hanan-IAH ("Jehovah is gracious" or "Jehovah has  favoured"), Misha-EL (meaning “prayer,” and is also translated as "who is what God is!"), and Azar-IAH (meaning, "Jehovah aids," "Whom Jehovah helps" or "Jehovah has helped"). As in Ezeki-EL, Beth-EL, Isra-EL (where the particle "-el" is derived from God}, as in Isa-IAH, Nehem-IAH, Jerem-IAH (where the particle "-iah" is de­rived from Jehovah the Lord), the Almighty God had His name in the names of those four. In Babvlon, however, they were given heathen names. Daniel became Belteshazzar, meaning "may Bel protect his life," Bel being the supreme god of the Babylonians; the god of justice and fire, etc. Thus Daniel was to lose his identity in God through his name, and to receive, instead (as in Be/snazzar:aBe\'s prince"), an idolatrous identity. Instead of being identified by his Judge, the God of Israel, he was, curiously, to be identified by the Babylonian god of justice. Hananiah be­came Shadrach ("Command of Aku" [Aku was the moon god];or, according to other sources, "Illumined by the sun-god"). Mishael became Meshach^(\Q is as Aku?" or according to some authorities, "Who is as Ishtar?"); and Azariah was to begin to be known as Abednego (meaning "servant of Nego," or "servant of Nebo"). "Nego? The Babylonian god of science and learn­ing, was also sometimes rendered as "Nebu (es­pecially in Assyrian), as in Nebuchadnezzar, means "Nebo, protect the servant" (Daniel 1:1-7).

Although all four were friends (Daniel 2:17) and shared similar religious persuasions, Daniel stood out as the one who "purposed in his heart not to defile himself with the king's abominable ration (1:8). Of those four, only Daniel remained relevant to the end of the book. The other three expired in chapter 3, after their last great battle against idola­try and their experience of God's dramatic deliver­ance from fire. As we find in chapter 3, they had already accepted and had begun to be addressed by their ascribed idolatrous Babylonian identities.  They had become Shadrach, Meshack and Abednego. Their Jehovah-identity had already died in Babylon.

Of the 10,000 plus who got sent into Babylon in the first and second batches of exiles, it appears that not many resisted for long the strong forces of Babylonization at work in their society. Daniel did not become Betshazzar; he remained Daniel, "God is my Judge" He continued to stand out for God.

This perspective may explain why, when the time eventually came for the Jews to return to Jerusalem at the end of their seventy years of Babylonia captivity, several chose to remain in their new land?

If you had been Daniel, would you have purpose godliness in your heart, and maintained your integrity in as untoward a place as Babylon? or would you have used the opportunity of your ‘liberty’ in far away Babylon, far from pestering prophets and priests, to indulge excusably in the abominations of Babylon?