Daniel 3:37-50; Psalm 50/51; 1 Ezra 8:71-87
How sad that so few Christians know the luminous confession of Azariah! In the last episode, we spoke generally of the Readable Books and shorter extended texts, how they have been bequeathed to us by the fathers, how they are found in the Old Greek (Septuagint) versions of the OT but not in the Hebrew manuscripts, and how they were read by early Jewish and Christian communities alike, but eventally not considered holy by those rabbis who were formative for Judaism as we know it today. Some of these texts contain references to the “hot button” issues of the Protestant and Catholic disputes in the sixteenth century. Because these passages were used as “proof-texts” supporting prayers for the dead, and so on, Reformers became suspicious of them. They were first gathered together in a separate section by Luther to signal their dubious character, and then finally discarded almost entirely, except by scholars who used them to “fill in the gap” culturally and historically, between the return from exile and the New Testament. There are some exceptions in “high church” congregations of Anglicans or Lutherans, but basically the texts remain unread and unknown. Whole books were cut, as well as portions of 2 Chronicles, Esther, and Daniel: it is in extended Daniel 3 that the Prayer of Azariah, followed by the Song of the Three Youths, is found. We saw last week that the main theme of Azariah’s prayer is utter honesty before God, as he begs that God’s name not be dishonored because of the faithlessness of His people. The people are, after all, understood to be in Babylonian exile because of their infidelity to the LORD, something that Azariah admits is wholly just—and yet, because of their connection with the true God, because of God’s promises to the patriarchs that the people will thrive, and because of God’s character of lovingkindness, Azariah pleads with God not to turn His back on His needy people.
The second half of the prayer continues in this vein, confessing the utter bankruptcy of Israel, and appealing to God that He will accept the whole-hearted confession of the three young men in lieu of a Temple sacrifice, which is no longer possible. Here is Daniel 3:37-45:
Yet we have been diminished in number, O Master,
more than all the nations,
And we are humbled in all the earth today because of our sins.
At this time, there is no prince, no prophet, and no leader;
There is no whole burnt offering, no sacrifice, no oblation, and no incense;
There is no place to bear fruit before Your face and to find mercy.
Yet with a contrite soul and humbled spirit, may we receive mercy,
As with whole burnt offerings of rams and bulls,
And as with thousands of fatted lambs.
So let this be our sacrifice before You today.
And may it be accomplished for those who follow You
For there is no shame for those who trust in You.
Now we are following You with all our heart,
and we fear You and seek Your face.
Do not put us to shame, but deal with us according to Your kindness
And according to the abundance of Your mercy.
Deliver us by Your wondrous works, and give glory to Your name, O LORD.
May all those who inflict evils upon Your servants be put to shame
and humiliated in their power;
And let their strength be crushed.
Let them know that You, LORD, are the only God
And glorious over all the earth, your habitation.
And yet we are diminished—God had given solemn promises to Abraham, and repeated these to Isaac and Jacob (whose name became Israel), that the people would be brilliant as the stars, and as numerous as the sands along the shore. But that is not what the three young men know: they stand ashamed, representatives of a decimated people, mocked by the pagans. Azariah’s prayer is in harmony with Psalm 43LXX /44MT, which begins by acknowledging God’s greatness in the earth when the people left Egypt and entered Canaan, but then moves on to lament “but now You have rejected and disgraced us…You made us a byword among the nations…You scattered us among the people.” Greatness has been replaced with scorn, because God’s people committed the sin of faithlessness. We can think also about the Jewish leader Ezra, who, when the people returned from exile, also confessed corporate sin: “Our sins abound far above our heads, and our ignorance has risen up to heaven. From the time of our fathers until this day, we are in great sin. Because of our iniquities and those of our fathers, we with our brothers, our kings, and our priests, were handed over to the kings of the earth” (Ezra 8:72-74). Ezra and the people now have the ability to sacrifice again at the Temple, but realize that their sinful state still stands between them and God, and so he prays for forgiveness on behalf of the people, and counsels them to repent. Azariah and his friends do not have even the ability to engage in sacrifice, for the Temple is far away. Yet he shares the shame of the Psalmist and of Ezra, as he has acknowledged in the first part of the prayer that we considered in the last episode: “we sinned and acted lawlessly against you” (Dan 3:29).
Some commentators have been confused at this confession, since it is precisely because Azariah and his friends have not foresworn the true God that they have been put in the furnace. This kind of questioning comes out of our own context, in which we think individualistically. But Azariah and his friends, along with Daniel, consider themselves in solidarity with the rest of their people, justly exiled for abandoning the truth of God, and brought to humility under God’s correcting hand. Azariah is not attempting to shame or strong-arm God when he complains, “you said this to Abraham, but look at what’s happened to us.” After all, he has already acknowledged the righteousness of God and the justice of the exile. Instead, he is saying, “Pity us, Master, because of our utter poverty, as we are now low in numbers, and indeed have no prince, no prophet, and no leader to help us. We find ourselves back in the chaos of the book of Judges, with no one to lean on, except You—and it is even worse than their fate was, for we have known the glory of the Temple, which has been taken away from us!”
The Temple was, for them, the “place” to bring offerings—blood sacrifice, burnt offering, incense, firstfruits—but that is no longer available to the exiles. Yet there is an upside to missing the Temple—they must look above and within, with hope in God’s character of mercy rather than simply in their own religious acts. The language that Azariah uses reminds us of David’s song of confession in Psalm 50/51, where he comes before God in penitence, and speaks about the sacrifice that God loves best –“a broken and contrite heart” (50:19). Outward sacrifices in the Temple are of no use if the heart is not also offered. Azariah and his friends learn this in their need, for they have no Temple available to them, and yet trust that God will be present, and give to them a way to “bear fruit” personally even if they cannot offer firstfruits as their fathers and mothers did in the past.
The prayer is beautifully ambiguous in the line, “We have no place to bear fruit:” we are reminded of the dismal place in which they find themselves, far away from the Temple, but also that God can make those who trust Him to be fruitful anywhere, even in a furnace. So Azariah offers God the fruit of their lips and hearts, pleading, “let this be our sacrifice before You today,” and “may it be accomplished for those who trust in You.”
That is, he offers himself and his friends, who soon will sing praises to God, as gifts to the LORD on behalf of the whole people. They are following God completely, and pray that their fidelity will spill over onto God’s other wayward servants, so that God will “deal with us” (they use the inclusive first person!) according to His lovingkindness. Azariah’s humble recognition of utter emptiness leads to an offering of obedience and faithfulness in that fearful place. In their sacrifice they show more godly fear of the LORD than human fear of the king, and they follow the King of kings, even to their death: “Now we are following You with all our heart, and we fear You and seek Your face.” It is not, of course, that their sacrifice is wholly worthy—as Christians we know that only One can offer Himself in this way. But they throw themselves on God’s lovingkindness, just as Abraham bargained with God in his search for ten righteous men in Sodom. They count on mercy even more than strict justice, for they know the character of this man-loving LORD, who has an “abundance of mercy.” In that place of exile, there is no prophet or leader—but there are these three humble ones, who tell of the merciful and covenant-keeping God!
We might pause for a moment here and think about the time when this story most likely flourished—a time later than the Babylonian exile, when the little nation of Israel was beset all around by superpowers, under the thumb of the Greek Empire, and then the Romans who followed. The faithful of that time, too, had no prophet, no faithful prince, no longstanding formal leader, but still waited for God to act—waited long centuries between the time of Malachi and John the Baptist. Like Azariah, they clung to the God who made promises. Eventually the faithful who watched and waited, like Simeon and Anna, were rewarded. God spoke directly to his people again! In this interim time, though, He continued to speak through tales, historical rehearsals, poetry, and mysterious images, in these books that we receive as “Readable.”
Eventually the people of Judea, Galilee, and even those scattered would come to hear about a new prophet, John, who pointed towards the anointed Deliverer. That anointed One would make it clear that “God is the LORD”—the only God who led Israel out of Egypt, revealed Himself as the “I Am,” and now spoke through the human mouth of the Incarnate One. God is the LORD Jesus, who has revealed Himself to us. At His feet, the Enemy of all, Satan, was crushed, and many, both Jew and Gentile, came to know that He is the LORD, the only God, that He is glorious over all the earth, which is his “Household” or “habitation.”
The Greek word used here is oikumenē, that same word used by Alexander the Great for the “inhabited world,” by which he implied that this extended empire was his “household.” This is the term that gives rise to our word, “ecumenical,” and refers to an extended habitation—which of course only belongs to God Himself, who rules from sea to sea, and from earth to heaven, and even down to despoiled Hades. No emperor has a “household,” an oikumenē like His, for no emperor is also the creator and redeemer of all. Azariah prayed for deliverance, but that deliverance, as we have seen, was even greater than he imagined. But there is a hint of the extent of God’s redemption in the story!
Immediately following Azariah’s prayer, we see the answer of the LORD, as the extended version of Daniel 3 offers us this brief and wondrous intervention:
Now, the king’s servants who cast them in did not cease to stoke the furnace with naphtha, pitch, coarse fiber, and brushwood. The flame shot forty-nine cubits above the furnace, and it broke out and burned those of the Chaldeans that it found around the furnace. But the Angel of the LORD went down into the furnace to join Azariah and his companions, and shook off the fiery flame of the furnace. He made the inside of the furnace to be as though a dew-laden breeze were blowing through it, so the fire did not touch them at all or cause them pain, or trouble them. (Dan 3:46-50).
Here then, is God’s answer—not just a rescue, not just a formal pardon or mercy, not just a message from Gabriel, but His actual presence with the three in the person of the Angel of the LORD. (Let us remember that in the Old Testament narratives, there seems to be a distinction between simple “angels” and the “Angel of the LORD,” who speaks directly for God.) Many fathers considered that this special Angel was a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ, mysteriously pointing forward to the time when God would dwell in the flesh with His people. At any rate, God’s presence is with them. Nothing that godless men could do would harm God’s servants: The living One joins them, shakes off the flame, and creates a dewy environment in the furnace.
Orthodox hymnody has seen, in this paradox of moist air in the furnace, an image of the Theotokos, who contained within her womb the LORD of all, and yet was not consumed. And so we sing these two hymns, among others:
Standing in fire without burning,
the young men of old portrayed thus the womb of the Maiden.
Remaining sealed, supernaturally it gave birth.
Grace with a single miracle-working power did both,
and rouses all the peoples to sing praise.Babylon’s bedewing furnace bore the image of an extraordinary wonder.
For it did not burn the youths it accepted,
nor did the fire of Divinity consume the Virgin’s womb wherein it went.
So let us melodiously chant in praise:
Let all creation bless and extol the Lord,
and let it exalt Him supremely to the ages.
That fiery furnace, made hospitable by God’s intimate and protective presence, was the locale in which Azariah offered his prayer of praise, and so encouraged the Song of the Three, which we will consider in the next episode. The three were not harmed by God’s presence with them, but instead made spiritually fruitful by it. And so in their faithfulness, they give us a shadowy image of our beloved Theotokos, who held within herself the wonder of the Ages, brought forth the All-fruitful One, and taught a song of joy to every creature. And so we join Azariah and his friends in our worship, praying for our day: “Let them know that You, LORD, are the only God and glorious over all the earth, your habitation.”
Edith M. Humphrey 