GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
DANIEL 3:5-6
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5 When you hear the sound of the horn, the flute, the lyre, the harp, the little harp, the drum, and all kinds of other musical instruments, you must fall down and you must worship the golden statue that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up. 6 Whoever does not fall down to worship will be thrown immediately into the blazing fiery furnace.
In these words from the Holy Spirit through the pen of Daniel, we find the horror of Nebuchadnezzar’s threat and the strange, flashy detail of the list of musical instruments, which would cause the threat to be comical if it were not so frightening. The key word in the verse is the word “worship.” It is a case of the secular government forcing its people to perform a religious act whether it was compatible with their beliefs or not– on pain of death. And more than that, on pain of a particularly painful and agonizing death; to be burned alive in a container or chamber from which there could be no escape. This chamber was an ‘atun, a furnace (undoubtedly made of layers of brick and reinforced in places with bronze). It was probably shaped like a tall, wide chimney, built for a single purpose: to kill the king’s enemies in the most dramatic and terrifying way.
In one sense, this is all that matters about this passage: a heathen king concocted a way to persecute the people of God. The details are not as important as that main fact. Yet we also have this list of musical instruments to deal with. Why bother with the list? Why would Nebuchadnezzar make this a part of his orders? Tyrants often make strange, even bizarre, statements alongside their commands to confuse people and to create a distraction about their true intentions. In this case, such an unmistakable signal to engage in idolatry was perhaps this very unpleasant noise.
In the case of these instruments, there is almost as much to say about what they were not as about what they were.
The horn (qarna, Aramaic) was a hollowed-out animal horn used to make a loud blasting noise. The King James “cornet” might be an attempt to bring the Latin cornus (horn) into the name, although the Latin Vulgate uses the noun tuba here, literally a “straight-tube trumpet.”
The flute here (mishroqita, Aramaic) may have been a multiple-reed pipe (fistula or sirynx), like a pan pipe.
The lyre here is spelled qitharos, which is just the Greek word kithara, a large hand-held harp with seven strings, often producing a deep tone.
Harp is in this case a smaller stringed instrument. The older English translation “sackbut” is based on the Aramaic word subcat, except that a “sackbut” is the old word for a trombone (literally a “push-pull”) and hilarious for Middle schoolers to read aloud. Such a translation is a good example of superimposing one’s own vocabulary upon an unrelated language.
The little harp was a three-sided harp with a high pitch. The Aramaic word is a transliteration of the Greek word psalterion. If that is the correct instrument, then this “little harp” may have been played with a bow (like a violin).
The drum seems like an obvious instrument, but the Aramaic term is once again a transliteration of a Greek word, “symphonia.” Some translations try to equate it was a primitive bagpipe, although that instrument would not be invented for about a hundred years after Daniel’s time. The “drum” translation is on account of seeing a connection between the Aramaic “symph” and the Greek “tymp,” or tympani.
The details about these instruments do not really help us in this passage, but since they can aid our understanding of certain portions of the Psalms (such as Psalm 150:2-5) the study here is worthwhile. It might also help the curious to answer some questions about the furnace.
A similar fiery furnace is described with some detail in the apocryphal book 2 Maccabees. “There is a tower in that place, fifty cubits (75 feet) high, full of ashes, and it has a rim running around it which on all sides slants steeply into the ashes. There they all push to destruction any man guilty of sacrilege or notorious for other crimes” (2 Maccabees 13:5-6). Thus lawbreakers were put to death “without even a burial in the earth” (13:7). There are other examples in ancient history of similar punishments of burning, including one in Herodotus (Histories, 1.86) of King Cyrus of Persia burning captives to death.
But more trustworthy than any of these (as historically accurate as they probably are) is this report from Jeremiah the prophet, who said: “All the exiles from Judah who are in Babylon will use this curse…: ‘May the LORD treat you like Zedekiah and like Ahab, whom the king of Babylon roasted in the fire’” (Jeremiah 29:22, EHV). The Word of the Holy Spirit is confirmation of what the secular writers say (not the other way around). Nebuchadnezzar was doing what other kings did, using fear and terror as a way of trapping his people– and God’s people– into committing idolatry.
May God preserve us from the weapons of the ungodly as they attack us. “For look, the wicked bend their bows; they set their arrows against the strings to shoot from the shadows at the upright in heart” (Psalm 11:2). When we refuse to conform with sin, we may face a temporal penalty, and we may have a cross to bear, but we ask God’s help as we bear it.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – Daniel 3:5-6 The music and the fire