GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
DANIEL 6:25-26
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25 Then King Darius wrote to all the peoples, nations, and languages that live in all the land: “May your peace increase! 26 I hereby issue a decree that in all my royal dominion, all must tremble and be afraid before the God of Daniel.
For he is the living God, enduring for ever;
his kingdom shall never be destroyed,
and his dominion shall go on to the very end.
Darius makes a decree that people should accept Daniel’s God as a god. This is similar to what we hear from Nebuchadnezzar in this book. Verse 25 and the beginning of verse 26 do not command anything more than fear and awe; they are not gospel passages in any way. So it always is when God is invoked to cause fear or to swear an oath, such as “By the eternal God, whose name and power thou tremblest at…,” or, “Do you swear to tell the truth, so help you God?”
So Daniel and his religion are tolerated; nothing more. You cannot force people to become true believers. You cannot make people into Christians with a hammer, or a sword, or a shoe horn, but many people still try these methods. They want to say, “If only our country will seem more Christian, God will surely love us!” But this is no better than shooting at people with a T-shirt cannon. I cannot give my sons crosses to wear and hope that God will see those crosses as signs of faith. It is the role of a parent to give his children Jesus, to set faith in their hearts through the word of God, and to help them or prepare them to carry crosses, and this will surely be seen by our heavenly Father, who loves them and who will gather them home at just the right time.
Now we come to the second part of verse 26 (in Aramaic, verse 27). Here is truth, and the gospel, and here are the promises of God, all in a poetic setting which will continue on in the next verse. A question we might ask is, was this part of the decree of Darius? Or was this written by Daniel? Truly, it doesn’t matter in the end. It is part of the inspired Scripture, and therefore if it was indeed written by Darius (but I don’t think it was) then Daniel includes it here in his inspired book and elevates the words of a heathen alongside the truths of the rest of the Bible. Paul does things like this when he quotes from pagan authors like Aratus (Acts 17:28), Epimenides (Titus 1:12), and Menander (1 Corinthians 15:33), and which Jude does with his quotation in Jude 1:14-15 which seems to come from a non-Biblical source. But by quoting from them, the Holy Spirit says, “Yes, this is correct and acceptable and true.” Not everything that those poets and playwrights wrote, nor even those entire poems or plays, but those words, quoted by holy men of God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21).
And then again, if it is from the pen of Daniel and not Darius (and I think this is correct), then it is the summary, the devotional thought, added to the account by the prophet, just as he adds an historical thought in the very last verse of the chapter, as we shall see. To support this view, the Greek translation of Daniel (the Septuagint) took pains to present this six-line poem (three in verse 26, three in verse 27) as poetry. Printed editions such as the Hebrew Bible that I use, Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, formats these lines as poetry. So we have scholarship from the second century BC and from the 19th and 20th centuries AD that support this view. But more importantly we have the simple and clear observation that the lines are written in the classic poetic style of Old Testament authors.
“He is the living God, enduring forever” is similar to the poetry of Jeremiah, who wrote, “He is the living God, the eternal King” (Jeremiah 10:10). In fact, those words immediately precede the only verse in Jeremiah that is written in Aramaic (Jeremiah 10:11). Is this an example of one prophet pointing the people going into their exile to another prophet who was already there, waiting for them to preach to them and to give them comfort? It is not the only time one of these prophets holds up the words of the other for all the people of God to see. Daniel quotes Jeremiah in Daniel 9:2.
In the final lines of our verse, Daniel quotes David: “Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures through all generations” (Psalm 145:13). This is a firm declaration that kingdoms like those of the Babylonians and of the Medes and Persians are only temporary kingdoms. They do not go on forever. But God’s holy kingdom is eternal, without end. Even though the world itself will come to an end, and all mankind’s achievements are thrown down and unmade, God’s kingdom, gathered by the Gospel, will go on forever. And praise God that we have been gathered into that kingdom! Baptized and cleansed of all sin, instructed and nurtured in our faith, we have even been used by the Lord God as tools and instruments that have brought more and more people into the number of his elect.
So the gospel message here is the assurance that our place with God our Savior will never come to an end. Through Christ, we will forever be released from all sin (t Timothy 4:6-8), and released from every cause of sin, “throwing off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles” (Hebrews 12:1-2). The consequences of sin will no longer touch us, ever: “Never again will they hunger, never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat down on them, nor will any scorching heat” (Revelation 7:12). We will see God, as a blessing for our bodies and our souls. Jesus promises: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Matthew 5:8). We will also be reunited with believers we knew in life and we will know and mingle and rejoice with all who are there. “We will be with the Lord forever” (1 Thessalonians 4:17).
The very prospect of eternal life fills our hearts with courage and joy and fills us with hope in life and in death. It carries us through trials, and draws our eyes always forward to the day when we will see our God face to face, and when death will be swallowed up in victory.
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 6:25-26 his dominion shall go on