Daniel 2:46

Then the king Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face, and worshipped Daniel, and commanded that they should offer an oblation and sweet odours unto him. The Greek versions render in such a way that we are almost obliged to recognize an act of idolatrous worship. Jerome, too, distinctly says, " Nebuchodonoser … Danielem adoravit et hostias et incensnm praecepit ut sacrificarent ." The same idea is conveyed by the Peshitta, but less definitely, from the fact that qorban means a "gift" as well as an "oblation;" though the gift is usually a consecrated gift. In the Aramaic of the Bible we have certain phrases used for "sacrifice;" several of these are here employed: it is true all of them have the possibility of being used in a somewhat lower meaning. The mere "falling down before Daniel upon his face," when the person who did it was Nebuchadnezzar, is extraordinary, and can only be explained by the idea of worship. When we find the word סְגַד ( segad ) used immediately after, it is very difficult to refuse to believe that the Greek Version and Jerome are right when they translate the latter word προσεκύνησε . The word occurs repeatedly in the following chapter, invariably as "worship." The corresponding Hebrew word occurs in the second chapter of Isaiah, in the sense of "idolatrous worship" ( Isaiah 2:20 ). It certainly does mean "to bend." Had the word thus stood alone, we could not have been certain that it meant "worship;" but when it follows the extreme act of prostration to the earth, "worship' must be meant. The separate terms, minḥah , n ı ̄ḥoḥ ı ̄n , lenassakah laĥ might, taken separately, mean "gifts" and the "bestowment of gifts;" but, taken together, it is impossible not to regard the action as one of sacrificial offering. It is true minḥah means "a present," as when Jacob sends a present to Esau ( Genesis 32:13 ); but, in that connection, nāsak is not used. It is quite true that the burning of sweet odours was a common enough thing in entertaining guests whom it was desired to honour, but the term neeḥoḥeen was not given to the aromatic woods so used. People sometimes, even at present, scent their rooms by burning aromatic woods, but they never in such cases call them incense. But from the fact that the old Greek version and Jerome read θυσίας , hostias , the doubt seems forced upon us that the reading here has been altered, and that the true reading was deebḥeen— not neeḥoḥeen—this is a change that could with difficulty be imagined as occurring accidentally, but readily enough might happen from the desire to defend Daniel from the charge of allowing idolatrous worship to be offered to him. The instance referred to as parallel—the homage which Josephus relates Alexander the Great gave to Jaddua—is not quite on all fours with the present case. We are, in the first place, expressly told that it was " the name" of Jehovah, engraved on the petalon on the front of the priest's mitre, that Alexander worshipped ( προσεκύνησε τό ὄνομα ). In the next place, we have no notice of sacrifice or incense being ordered to be offered to the high priest. It is not correct to say that nasak of necessity means "pour out an oblation," to the exclusion of the more general meaning of " offer sacrifice. " The corresponding word in Arabic means "to sacrifice" (Behrmann). Behrmann says, in regard to this, truly, "As to Porphyry later, so to the author and to the first readers of this book, it would have seemed indecent if Daniel had allowed himself to be honoured as a god." This would have been true had the author been a contemporary of the Maccabees. The tide of feeling that led Peter to refuse the prostration of Cornelius, and Paul and Barnabas the sacrifices at Lystra, would have prevented any one inventing such a scene. It is perfectly true the worship was probably directed to the Divine Spirit as resident in Daniel, rather than to Daniel himself; few except the lowest and most degraded of heathen worshipped idols in any other way—the divine spirit, the deity, was the real object of worship, whose sign they were, and who resided in them. We must bear in mind that Daniel had been brought up in an idolatrous court, perhaps, also, he had to submit, on pain of suffering the fate that befell Paul and Barnabas when they refused the worship of the people of Lystra. We must lay stress on the very different relationship to idolatry and its worship implied in Daniel thus suffering sacrifice and incense to be offered to him, from that subsisting in the time of the Maccabees. No writer of that period would have written a sacred romance in which he represented a servant of God receiving idolatrous honours. The attitude of later Judaism is exemplified by Jephet-ibn-Ali, who says that though "Nebuchadnezzar commanded that sacrifices be brought to him as to a god, he (Daniel) does not say that he brought them to him. Most probably Daniel prohibited him from doing so."