Weekly Overview

Picture yourself as a teenager from Jerusalem in 605 BC. Nebuchadnezzar's army has besieged your city, and you are taken to Babylon with other young nobles chosen because they are healthy, bright, and "skilful in all wisdom" (Daniel 1:4). The plan is to train you for three years in "the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans" so you can serve the king.

Babylon starts by changing who you are. Your names honored the God of Israel: Daniel means "God is my judge," and Hananiah means "the Lord is gracious." The court official gives you new names tied to Babylonian gods, so Daniel becomes Belteshazzar (Daniel 1:7). You are also assigned food and wine from the king's own table.

That food is where Daniel draws a line. He "purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's meat" (Daniel 1:8). The royal menu likely included meat the law of Moses forbade (Leviticus 11), meat not drained of blood, and food and wine already offered to Babylonian gods. So eating it would mean breaking his covenant in small ways every day.

Daniel does not rebel or make a scene. The official is afraid for his own life, so Daniel offers a test: ten days of "pulse to eat, and water to drink" (Daniel 1:12), then compare. At the end of ten days the four young men look healthier than everyone else, and "God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom" (Daniel 1:17). The king finds them "ten times better" than all his wise men (Daniel 1:20).

The Lord made a similar promise in the Word of Wisdom. Those who keep it "shall find wisdom and great treasures of knowledge" and "shall run and not be weary" (D&C 89:19–20). Daniel's choice also prepared him for what came next, because Daniel 2 opens with a crisis that only revelation could solve.

As you read Daniel 1, watch how calm and respectful Daniel is while refusing to bend. Think about one small standard you could keep more carefully this week.

Nebuchadnezzar wakes from a troubling dream and calls his magicians, astrologers, and Chaldeans. Mesopotamians believed dreams carried messages from the gods, and the king's experts had manuals for decoding them. But Nebuchadnezzar demands that they tell him the dream itself as well as its meaning (Daniel 2:5). If they really have access to the gods, they will not need him to describe it. They admit that only "the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh" could do this (Daniel 2:11), and the furious king orders every wise man in Babylon killed, including Daniel and his friends.

Daniel asks for time, gathers his three companions, and they pray for "mercies of the God of heaven concerning this secret" (Daniel 2:18). That night the Lord reveals the dream. Before Daniel goes to the king, he stops to praise God, who "removeth kings, and setteth up kings" and "revealeth the deep and secret things" (Daniel 2:21–22). In front of the king he refuses any credit: "there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets" (Daniel 2:28).

The king had seen a huge statue: a head of gold, chest of silver, belly of brass, legs of iron, and feet of iron mixed with clay. Then "a stone was cut out without hands" struck the feet, the whole image broke into dust, and the stone "became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth" (Daniel 2:34–35). Daniel explains that Nebuchadnezzar is the head of gold and that weaker kingdoms will follow. Then "the God of heaven [shall] set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed" (Daniel 2:44).

Joseph Smith taught that this kingdom is the Lord's restored Church, which will roll forth to fill the earth (D&C 65:2). Elder D. Todd Christofferson called the Church "that prophesied latter-day kingdom, … not created by man but set up by the God of heaven" ("Why the Church," October 2015 general conference).

As you read, look at the order of Daniel's actions: preparation, prayer with friends, revelation, gratitude, and then giving God the credit. Consider how you take part in helping the stone fill the earth.

In Daniel 3, Nebuchadnezzar sets up a golden image sixty cubits high, about ninety feet, on the plain of Dura. Every official in the province must bow when the music plays, or be thrown into "a burning fiery furnace" (Daniel 3:6). Babylon's building projects used millions of baked bricks, so large brick kilns were part of daily life near the city, and the king's threat was very concrete.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego stay standing. The king offers them a second chance and mocks their faith: "who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?" (Daniel 3:15). Their answer is one of the clearest statements of faith in scripture: "our God whom we serve is able to deliver us … But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods" (Daniel 3:17–18). They believe God can save them, and they have already decided to obey whether He does or not.

The furnace is heated seven times hotter, and the soldiers who throw them in are killed by the heat. Then the king sees "four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire," the fourth "like the Son of God" (Daniel 3:25). The three come out without even the smell of smoke on them, and Nebuchadnezzar declares that "there is no other God that can deliver after this sort" (Daniel 3:29).

Daniel 6 repeats the pattern under a Persian king. Jealous officials cannot find any fault in Daniel's work, so they trick King Darius into signing a decree banning prayer to anyone but the king for thirty days. Daniel keeps praying "three times a day," with his windows open toward Jerusalem, "as he did aforetime" (Daniel 6:10). Darius cannot cancel his own decree, so Daniel goes to the lions. In the morning Daniel reports, "My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions' mouths" (Daniel 6:22).

Not every faithful person is rescued this way. In Alma 14:8–13, believers were burned, and Alma explained that the Lord received them to Himself in glory. The "but if not" faith of Daniel 3 holds in both outcomes. As you read, notice that Daniel's prayer in chapter 6 was a habit long before it became a test.

Daniel 4 is written by Nebuchadnezzar himself, as a royal letter to the whole world. He dreams of a great tree that is cut down, leaving only a stump bound with iron and brass. Daniel explains that the tree is the king, who will live like an animal for "seven times" until he knows "that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men" (Daniel 4:25). Daniel urges him to repent by "shewing mercy to the poor" (Daniel 4:27).

A year later the king stands on his palace roof and boasts, "Is not this great Babylon, that I have built … by the might of my power?" (Daniel 4:30). The judgment falls that hour. When his reason returns, he praises the King of heaven and concludes that "those that walk in pride he is able to abase" (Daniel 4:37).

Daniel 5 jumps ahead to 539 BC. Belshazzar, who rules Babylon for his absent father Nabonidus, throws a feast and drinks from the sacred vessels taken from the temple in Jerusalem while praising idols. A hand writes on the plastered palace wall. Daniel reminds Belshazzar that he knew what happened to Nebuchadnezzar and still "hast not humbled thine heart" (Daniel 5:22). The words mean the kingdom has been numbered, weighed, and divided: "Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting" (Daniel 5:27). That night Belshazzar dies and the kingdom passes to the Medes and Persians.

As you read these two chapters together, compare how the two kings respond to the same warning, and consider what humility before God looks like in your own successes.