Just as a stone had
been placed and sealed over what was to be Daniel’s tomb, so too was a stone
placed and sealed over the tomb of Jesus. If Daniel had indeed spoken the
twenty-second Psalm in the ears of all who were there to hear him, which is a
reasonable proposition to believe, then Daniel spoke of something akin to a
resurrection---and Daniel did is said to have indeed come out of that which had
been intended to be his tomb, unscathed by the lions.
Jesus’ reference to
the same Psalm, coupled with His own talk of rising again, together with His
references to Daniel and the “Son of Man” tradition that it contained, can be
presumed to have caused a bit of worry. The main difference, however, was
that nobody was able to witness the events inside the lion’s den, whereas all
and sundry were able to be witnesses of Jesus’ horrific death. Therefore,
in the minds of the bringers of death, the only way that Jesus could be said to
have risen again was for His disciples to come and steal His body, and simply
lie about why the body had gone missing and why the tomb was now empty.
This is what precipitated the sealing of the tomb. In the case of Darius
and Daniel and the sealing of that tomb, it was likely to have been sealed at
the insistence of the nobles, so that Darius himself, since he had been quite
desperate to spare Daniel, would not come and attempt to retrieve Daniel from
the den.
Is there really a
good reason to believe that Psalm 22 was spoken by Daniel? The Gospels
report that Jesus spoke the words of the Psalm, but could one presume that Daniel
did the same? Is there any evidence that such a thing took place? To
that end, it is to be noted that, following from his suffering and his
vindication and his declaration of praises, the Psalmist goes on to say “Let
all the people of the earth acknowledge the Lord and turn to Him! Let all
the nations worship You! For the Lord is king and rules over the
nations. All of the thriving people of the earth will join the
celebration and worship; all those who are descending into the grave will bow
before Him, including those who cannot preserve their lives. A whole
generation will serve Him; they will tell the next generation about the
sovereign Lord. They will come and tell about His saving deeds; they will
tell a future generation what He has accomplished” (22:27-31). These words
follow talk of help, deliverance, and rescue.
Turning back to
Daniel then, and skipping over the events that are reported (though there shall
be a return to them), it is reported that “King Darius wrote to all the
peoples, nations, and language groups who were living in all the land: ‘Peace
and prosperity! I have issued an edict that throughout all the dominion
of my kingdom people are to revere and fear the God of Daniel. “For He is
the living God; He endures forever. His kingdom will not be destroyed;
His authority is forever. He rescues and delivers and performs signs and
wonders in the heavens and on the earth. He has rescued Daniel from the
power of lions!”’” (6:25-27) Here, the words of the Psalmist and of
Darius are astonishingly
similar.
For all practical
purposes, when Daniel was placed in the den of lions, death was his lot.
There was to be no escape. In reality,
there could be no escape. His fate was to be the same as that of
Jesus---and that fate was death. Though Daniel did not succumb to the
limits of mortality, as did Jesus, and though a hopefulness for deliverance was
expressed by Darius, it is appropriate to suggest that Daniel, when sealed into
the lion’s den, had been overtaken by death. One can be assured that his
opponents celebrated a great victory, confident that they had done away with
one that had been oh so troubling to their plans for power and authority.
Certainly, Jesus’ opponents celebrated in a similar fashion and for similar
reasons.
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