Biblion Bible Commentary
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New Names in Babylon
Daniel 1:3-7
3 The king spoke to Ashpenaz, the master of his eunuchs, that he should bring in some of the children of Israel, even of the royal offspring and of the nobles: · WEB
The empire's method with captured talent was not the whip but the scholarship — three years of Chaldean learning, the king's own table, and a new name for every youth.
The king spoke to Ashpenaz, the master of his eunuchs, that he should bring in some of the children of Israel, even of the royal offspring and of the nobles Daniel 1:3.
Babylon's policy is intelligent, and that is what makes it dangerous. It takes the royal offspring and... the nobles — the class a conquered nation would rally to — and the specification shows what it wants them for: youths in whom was no defect, but well-favored, skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding science, and who had the ability to stand in the king's palace Daniel 1:4. Body, mind, and bearing; the future leadership of Judah, requisitioned. Isaiah had told Hezekiah this would happen in almost these words a century before 2 Kings 20:18 Isaiah 39:7.
The program is an education: that he should teach them the learning and the language of the Chaldeans. Three years of the empire's literature — saturated with omens, astrology, and divination, the arts the law had forbidden Deuteronomy 18:10–12 — with a daily portion of the king's delicacies and of the wine which he drank Daniel 1:5 from the royal kitchen. Not persecution: patronage, and it is the harder test. There is no evidence the four resisted the syllabus; wisdom drawn from Babylon's libraries was not the danger. What they refused was smaller and more personal.
Now among these of the children of Judah were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah Daniel 1:6.
Four Hebrew names, and every one carries God: Daniel — God is my judge; Hananiah — the Lord is gracious; Mishael — who is like God?; Azariah — the Lord has helped. Then: the prince of the eunuchs gave names to them Daniel 1:7, and the replacements carry Babylon's gods instead — Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, in which Bel and Nebo and Aku can be heard where the God of Israel had been. Renaming is what an owner does; Pharaoh did it to Joseph Genesis 41:45. The empire could rewrite what they were called — the book itself uses the Babylonian names throughout, and its last dated line still reports both Daniel 10:1. What it could not reach was the thing the next verse locates: not the name on the register, but the purpose in the heart.
held with reason What this mark means