GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
DANIEL 2:17-18
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17 Then Daniel returned to his house and explained the matter to his friends Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. 18 He urged them to pray for mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery, so that Daniel and his companions might not be executed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon.
Since Daniel was able to quickly return to his house, we can say with complete confidence he and his companions were living in the capital city of Babylon itself (which was also called Babylon). The word I have translated “pray” can also mean “seek” or “request,” but it comes to the same thing. The four men understood what to do, and they did it.
Daniel does not just assume that God will do what had to be done. God wants us to pray to him, to reach out to him, and to show our faith with faithful and trusting petitions of prayer. Although the Greek translation adds “fasted” to verse 18, there is no evidence for this in the Hebrew original. Fasting may help to focus one’s attention in prayer, but it is not required. Fasting is more often employed with prayers of repentance in the Scriptures (1 Samuel 7:6; 2 Samuel 12:22-23; Jonah 3:5) or with grieving for the dead (1 Samuel 31:11; Luke 5:35).
The prayers began. The four young men spent the night in prayer. Perhaps they prayed silently for a while, all together. Perhaps they took it in turns to pray, each man for a while, while the others listened and added their Amens (this is how we usually pray for our members, week by week, in the staff where I serve).
What is prayer? Prayer is one of the least-defined doctrines or subjects in the Bible. It is so familiar to most Christians that they do not study it, consider its boundaries, or think much about it. But thankfully, they still do it, with a minimum regularity of mealtimes, bedtime, and in church on Sunday.
Prayer is communication that mankind makes to God. It is how we tell him, aloud or silently in our hearts, what our requests and needs are. Doesn’t he already know these things? Of course he does, but he wants us to show our faith by actually doing it. He does not hear the prayers of unbelievers, as he declares many times (Isaiah 1:15; Romans 10:14). I describe this to my catechism students this way: God does not open other people’s mail. A prayer that is not addressed to him, or that is not spoken in faith, is simply not for him to listen to, and he will not hear it.
God invites us to pray about our decisions, and about our concerns and anxieties. “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7). But we should remember that when we pray, we are not asking God to make his will known to us apart from the Scriptures. It is through the Bible that he communicates with us, and through prayer that we communicate with him.
For example, when we have a decision to make, we weigh our options, and bring our requests to God. We also think about how this decision will have an effect on our family, our work, our finances, and other concerns. As Professor Deutschlander says, “The decision often will not be between good and evil, but between good and good. Whichever choice we make, we seek the honor of God and the well-being of those around us. We commend our choice to God and ask his blessing on it; but we do not torment ourselves trying to guess what lies hidden in the mind of God. God has revealed his mind in the Scriptures. The Scriptures are sufficient” (Grace Abounds: The Splendor of Christian Doctrine, NPH: 2015, p. 58).
There is an account from Luther’s Table Talk that teaches an excellent lesson about prayer. It seems that when Luther’s puppy was with the family at the table, he kept looking at his master as Dr. Luther ate, obviously hoping for a morsel. The puppy watched with open mouth and motionless eyes, and Luther finally said, “Oh, if I could only pray the way this dog watches the meat! All his thoughts are concentrated on the piece of meat. Otherwise he has no thought, wish, or hope” (LW 34, p. 38).
One last observation. Daniel uses the term “the God of heaven” in a private setting, not with the king, but with his own Jewish companions. While this title appears in Genesis 24:7, it is otherwise unused until the time of the exile and afterward in Scripture. It’s possible that Daniel spoke this way because of the way the astrologers spoke about the divinities of the zodiac, or rather of the planets (Marduk for Jupiter, Shamash for the sun, Sin for the moon, Ishtar for Venus, and so on). Daniel and the others wanted to publicly acknowledge that the true God is God over all, the way that Jonah did when he was questioned by the Phoenician sailors (Jonah 1:9). In this sense, Jonah’s name for God was a creed, a confession of faith, to counter false doctrine and to proclaim the truth. And so it was with Daniel’s name for God here. This is what we do in our creeds as well, such as in the first article of Nicene Creed: “We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things seen and unseen.” We use these words to renounce polytheism of every kind, and the rest of the creed counters all those religions that reject Christ as the Savior of the world, as we declare: “For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate. He suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures.” For there are people who may doubt or who misunderstand the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of mankind’s salvation, but “to set my opinion over against the Word of God and the Holy Spirit is insupportable.”
Let us proclaim our faith not only to the world, but to support and to build one another up by proclaiming it to each other.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Archives at St Paul’s Lutheran Church https://splnewulm.org/daily-devotions/ and Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: www.wlchapel.org/connect-grow/ministries/adults/daily-devotions/gwfy-archive/2025
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – Daniel 2:17-18 Prayer