17 To these four young men God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning. And Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds.
18 At the end of the time set by the king to bring them in, the chief official presented them to Nebuchadnezzar. 19 The king talked with them, and he found none equal to Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah; so they entered the king’s service. 20 In every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king questioned them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom.
The Lord gave additional evidence that he was blessing the four young Jewish exiles. We assume that since they had been faithful in the important business of their relationship to God, they had also been faithful in the lesser business of putting in the long hours of study expected of them during their training program. They were gifted students to begin with, and now God blessed his faithful sons with more wisdom than their teachers possessed. Their knowledge and understanding was more than just an accumulation of facts. It was the rare ability to use this information properly, to distinguish between pretense and reality, between truth and error, between treasures and trash.
Because God had special plans for Daniel, he gave Daniel the special ability to understand and interpret dreams and visions of all kinds. We must remember that in ancient Babylon, the king served not only as ruler but also as high priest. To help him determine the will of the gods, he depended on men with special training in interpreting dreams and in practicing astrology. Daniel’s ability to announce what God was saying through dreams or visions would be of great value to the kings who would rule over God’s captive people.
Daniel’s ability to interpret dreams (which normally came to a person during sleep) and visions (which normally came while a person was wide awake) was not the result of his active mind or his lively imagination or his long hours of study. This was a special gift of God, and Daniel recognized it as such. In recording this, Daniel was not patting himself on the back. He was simply emphasizing that this gift, like every good and perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father. God gave Daniel what he could never have had by himself. Later chapters of this book provide examples of how Daniel used his remarkable insight into the will and plan of God in order to predict the future, to bring proud sinners to their knees, and to reassure the people of God.
When the three-year training program was completed, the king himself interviewed the trainees, to see what they had learned and to decide on the particular position in government he would assign to each candidate. Daniel and his three friends had graduated at the head of their class. To appreciate what a remarkable achievement this was, we need only remember that all of the young men in the king’s training program were top-notch students. And yet because of God’s blessing, “the king . . . found none equal to Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah; so they entered the king’s service.”
In view of the difficulties under which they had begun their training program three years earlier, no one could have guessed that these four young men would complete it so successfully. But these were important men in the Lord’s plans. Other Jewish exiles would soon be arriving in Babylon, and by that time the Lord would have his men in key positions in the government. Not only did these four young men enter the king’s service, they held positions of influence—Daniel at the king’s court; the other three as administrators over the province (2:49).
The evaluation that verse 20 gives of the four men seems to refer not only to the day of their graduation but also to the time after they had been assigned to their government positions. “In every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king questioned them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom.” In a world where superstitious kings regularly consulted magicians and astrologers for advice before making major policy decisions, the conclusion Nebuchadnezzar reached about the four young Jews was indeed a significant one. Surely God was with them.
21 And Daniel remained there until the first year of King Cyrus.
The chapter closes on a surprising note. The man who was captured and deported by Babylon outlived the nation that took him captive! Daniel continued to serve at the royal court through all the years of the Babylonian Empire, and even afterward. The words “Daniel remained there until the first year of King Cyrus” are not to be understood as though Daniel did not live beyond that date. The emphasis of the verse is not on when he died but on how long he lived.
Daniel was in a position to speak to God’s people and to use his influence to help God’s people not only during the 70 years of the Babylonian captivity, but even after the Medo-Persians under King Cyrus had toppled the Babylonian Empire and freed the exiles.
Amid all the intrigue that often accompanies change in government, in spite of all the hostility that Daniel faced as a Jewish exile in a foreign land, in the face of all the difficulties that confronted a loyal child of God in a heathen culture, Daniel continued to be God’s man, placed by God in a strategic position to give glory to the one true God and to help God’s people.