Daniel 2:2

2. The magicians This is a “good Babylonian word” (Fr. Delitzsch) and is found in connection with several other good Babylonian terms. Hommel adds to Delitzsch’s references to the Babylonian magicians ( kardamu) this passage: “They [certain deities?] break the kardami if they give not a right decision.” Babylonian and Persian magic seems to be of Median origin (Noldeke). The Magi, so famous in classical times, were already so powerful in the sixth century B.C. that king Nabonidus gives to himself as one of his greatest titles “Chief Magus,” if that indeed is the meaning of Rab-mag (Jeremiah 39:3). On the death of Cyrus one of these Magi (Gaumata) actually seized the throne, and so strong was the fear of these magicians upon the people that the whole empire was shaken by the insurrection. The magic formulas which have come down to us are positively innumerable. I suppose in the British Museum alone there must be a thousand tablets which give warnings concerning the old woman or the black cat or the black dog. As Budge has said, the ancient Babylonian passed his entire life in perpetual terror of evil spirits and demons and the wizards who could control them. The following fragments of texts from King’s great work ( Babylonian Magic, 1896) show the constant supplications of king and people:

O merciful goddess, I beseech thee to stand and harken to my cries.

I am afraid; I tremble and am cast down with fear.

O Marduk, lord of lords, thou art compassionate; I am weak… may they never

approach me, the magic of the sorcerer or the sorceress. May there never

approach me the evil of dreams; of powers and portents of heaven and earth.

The incantations of the wizards, and magical charms to be used against these, are given in great detail. Lenormant believed that the different classes of magic workers mentioned in this verse corresponded exactly to the different orders among the Babylonian magicians. Other Assyriologists do not recognize this similarity, yet it cannot be doubted that there were wonder-workers corresponding, at least generally, to each class named here: magicians ( khartummim), probably wise men in general, astrologers, or “enchanters” ( assaphim); sorcerers, perhaps “horoscopists” (Prince), that is, drawers of horoscopes or prognosticators (Bevan), etc. Assurbanipal, in one text, mentions the interpretation of dream visions as the special business of the mahe ( magha, magi). The Assyrian generals were always accompanied in every campaign by the asipu, who is mentioned here, that is, the “dreamer,” or “mutterer,” on whose interpretation of the signs of heaven the movement of the troops depended. The Chaldeans are named here and in Daniel 2:10 as if they merely constituted one division of these magicians. They were really not an order of magicians, but the ruling race in Babylon at this time; though the fact that the wise men of the court would naturally come from this race points to the easy possibility of all the literati being called, by the conglomerate alien races with which Babylon was populated, by the name Chaldean, “doer of great deeds.” (See Introduction, II, 8.) One Greek version, which many scholars believe to represent the original text of the LXX., in this verse speaks of the Chaldeans properly as a race: “The magicians, astrologers, and sorcerers of the Chaldeans.” In Daniel 2:27, where the list is given again, the Chaldeans are omitted.