The Prayer of Azariah 1,1-7 Confession

During devotions on Daniel 3, I will include some thoughts on the apocryphal book, “The Prayer of Azariah” (also known as “The Song of the Three Children”). The intention is that this poem represents the prayers of the three companions of Daniel between Daniel 3:23 and 3:24.

1 They walked around in the midst of the flames, singing hymns to God and blessing the Lord.  2 Then Azariah stood still in the fire and prayed aloud:  3 "Blessed are you, O Lord, God of our ancestors, and worthy of praise; and glorious is your name forever!  4 For you are just in all you have done; all your works are true and your ways right, and all your judgments are true.  5 You have executed true judgments in all you have brought upon us and upon Jerusalem, the holy city of our ancestors; by a true judgment you have brought all this upon us because of our sins.  6 For we have sinned and broken your law in turning away from you; in all matters we have sinned grievously.  7 We have not obeyed your commandments, we have not kept them or done what you have commanded us for our own good.

This poem was written in Greek, perhaps in the second or first century BC. It is not found in any Hebrew manuscripts and it is not a part of the canon of the Scriptures. But of all the apocryphal books, it is the best, especially in its theology. Its non-Hebrew source is most evident in the poetic structure. It is good Greek poetry, but it is not written in any kind of parallelism apart from what might generously be called synthetic. But it not true parallelism at all. Some of the lines come close to an epigrammatic style except that there is no humor, but only praise. 

This first portion, verses 1-7, is a general confession of sins. The poem describes the true condition of the exiles in Babylon: “You have brought all this upon us because of our sins” (verse 5). A few of the verses and phrases have quotes of the Scriptures: 

“God of our ancestors” = Deuteronomy 26:7
“You are just in all you have done”  = Psalm 145:17
“We have sinned grievously” = Lamentations 1:8
 Also, “Your judgments are true” recalls Tobit 3:5.

Verse 7 proclaims, “We have not obeyed your commandments, we have not kept them or done what you have commanded us for our own good.” The last phrase, “for our own good,” reflects Deuteronomy 6:24. God gave his law so that “it will go well with us, and so that we may enjoy long life on the earth.” This is the promise from the Fourth Commandment (Exodus 20:12; Ephesians 6:2). This is not incongruous, because the three men in the furnace were obeying the commandment to its only exception: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). They knew that “whoever keeps this commandment (that is, the fourth) will enjoy good days, happiness, and prosperity. On the other hand, the penalty for him who disobeys it is that he will perish sooner and never be happy in life” (Luther, Large Catechism §134).

The implication in the poem is that even when the end of life comes barking like a savage wild dog, God’s people trust in their Lord in all things, and above all things.