Daniel 6:17

17. Literally this den of lions is called a pit, and many critics have depended upon this as one of the best proofs of the absolute unhistoricity of the whole story. So Graf ( Biblical Lexicon) asks how the lions could live in this “hole of a cistern,” and Reuss ( La Bible) ridicules the idea that there was room for the lions and satraps and all the other officials in this “pit” which could be closed with a single paving stone! It is astonishing that these suggestions should have been considered weighty by Farrar and Prince and so many recent writers. While this word “pit” did often mean a dark hole or cistern, yet like our word pit (for example, the pit of a theater) it had a larger meaning, “sometimes even standing for Sheol” (Meinhold). Certainly, as Kuenen acknowledges ( Onderzoek, ii, note 487), this modern notion of what the “den” must have been is quite inconsistent with the writer’s own idea, for he saw no need of a miracle to keep the lions from stifling in this dark vault which, according to these modern critics, was rendered air-tight when a stone was laid on its one small opening at the top! It seems far more reasonable that this “den” was somewhat like those now used in oriental countries. Host (quoted by Urquhart) describes one of these which he saw in Morocco, belonging to the emperor and sometimes used by him as a place of execution for criminals. It was a large square cavern below the level of the ground, open at the top but surrounded with a wall. A door in this wall constituted the mouth of the den from which steps led down to the vault below. A partition and trapdoors very similar to those used in modern and ancient lion cages enabled the keeper to clean the cages or separate the animals at will. That the Assyrian and Babylonian kings did make a specialty of captured lions, and did at times throw criminals to these beasts, is proved over and over again from the inscriptions. Several portable cages of lions, the doors of which are raised by attendants who stand on top protected by an iron screen, are pictured on the monuments. The custom of sealing the king’s treasure chambers and wine cellars with the royal signet was universal in ancient Babylonia. Even many of the clay letters and official documents of the days of Nebuchadnezzar and earlier were placed in clay envelopes and sealed. The seal was worn by every Babylonian except those of the lowest classes. It is stated that the door was sealed not only with the signet of the king but also with that of his nobles, “that nothing might be changed concerning Daniel” (R.V.), that is, in order that no one, not even the king himself, could illegally deliver him without being discovered. Gregorius Bar-Hebraeus (thirteenth century) said it was sealed with the king’s seal that the nobles might not kill him, and with the nobles’ seals that they could not say that the lions had been well fed and therefore no miracle was necessary for Daniel’s deliverance. This does not ill accord with the lesson emphasized all through this chapter (as in chapter iii), which is evidently the antagonism of the world-monarchies to righteousness, and Jehovah’s ability to preserve miraculously all of his true worshipers and bring the heathen to shame.