Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 81 · March 22
Where Daniel Drew It
“But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s meat, nor with the wine which he drank: therefore he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself.”
It is the third year of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, has come against Jerusalem. He carries off some of the holy vessels from God's house and puts them in the treasure house of his own god. He also takes a group of young men from the royal family and the noble families back to Babylon.
Daniel is one of them. He is young, good-looking and quick to learn, and he is placed under the master of the king's eunuchs. For three years he is to be taught "the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans," which means the books and the language of the empire that has just carried him away from home. He is given a new name, Belteshazzar, and a later chapter says it was taken from the name of a Babylonian god. He is being trained to serve the people who took him captive.
And he accepts nearly all of it. The text records no protest about the language, the lessons, the name or the job. He goes on serving that government for the rest of a long life, under more than one empire.
The one line he draws is at the table: "Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's meat, nor with the wine which he drank." He draws that line quietly, too: "he requested of the prince of the eunuchs." The official tells him that his own head is at risk if the young men look worse than the others. So Daniel asks the steward over them for a ten-day test of vegetables and water, which gives everyone a safe way out. And in the middle of all that, the chapter tells us, "God had brought Daniel into favour and tender love with the prince of the eunuchs."
The chapter leaves one thing unexplained, and that is why the food was the line. Perhaps the meat had been offered to idols, or was unclean under the law, or eating at the king's table made you the king's man. Daniel 1 gives no reason, so any confident explanation is somebody filling a gap. What the chapter does show is a line small enough to keep for a lifetime and clear enough to be noticed in the first week. It was drawn by a young man who had already decided which fights he would not pick. A line chosen because it looks brave rarely lasts a month. Daniel's lasted, and God honoured it: at the end of the chapter he is still there, "even unto the first year of king Cyrus."
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 81 is Everything Provided (2 Peter 1:3).