Daniel "worshippped" by Nabuchodonosor

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MarcoPG

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Hello,
I wondered for days after reading:

46Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell on his face and worshipped Daniel, and gave orders to present to him an offering and fragrant incense.

Not all translations render “worship”, but in any case, why didn’t Daniel say anything about the undue honour reserved to him and not to God, unlike the angel in the Apocalypse and Peter in Acts? Why, in your opinion, Daniel doesn’t stop the king and tell him not to offer anything to anyone but to God - if we omit the worshipping part?

Is the offering meant to be “to God through Daniel”?

Thank you
 
MarcoPG said:
Hello,
I wondered for days after reading:

46Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell on his face and worshipped Daniel, and gave orders to present to him an offering and fragrant incense.

Not all translations render “worship”, but in any case, why didn’t Daniel say anything about the undue honour reserved to him and not to God, unlike the angel in the Apocalypse and Peter in Acts? Why, in your opinion, Daniel doesn’t stop the king and tell him not to offer anything to anyone but to God - if we omit the worshipping part?

Is the offering meant to be “to God through Daniel”?

Thank you
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What chapter is this?
 
adf417 said:
What chapter is this?
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Seems to be Daniel 2:46

Indeed the OP’s question is interesting. Though I will say only 2 of my 3 bibles use the term worship. One of them renders the passage thus:

46 Then King Nebuchadnezzar bowed to the ground and gave orders for sacrifices and offerings to be made to Daniel. 47 The king said, “Your God is the greatest of all gods, the Lord over kings, and the one who reveals mysteries. I know this because you have been able to explain this mystery.”

Also I think the passage is better understood if you read it along with verse 47 where Nebuchadnezzer specifically mentions he’s bowing or worshiping Daniel because of his God, not necessarily because of Daniel himself.
 
See also 2Kings 4:37. After Elisha saved her son’s life, she “paid him homage” Some translations say, “fell at his feet and bowed”, some say “prostrated herself”, some say “worshipped him”.

The word “worship” does not always mean “adoration”, which we owe to God, and God alone. Historically, it has carried a varying degree of meanings. Here, and likely in the instance you noted (chapter and verse, and version you are reading??) it mean “dulia” or “veneration/honor”, which we owe to authority figures, our parents, the Saints who have lived lives worthy of imitation, etc.

37 She came in, fell at his feet and bowed to the ground. Then she took her son and went out. (NIV)

37 Then she went in, and fell at his feet, and bowed herself to the ground, and took up her son, and went out. (KJV)

37 She came and fell at his feet, and worshipped upon the ground: and took up her son, and went out. (DR)

biblegateway.com/verse/en/2%20Kings%204:37
 
And Daniel fell down at the Angel 's feet; John’s action is a reference to that, although the response is not the same.
 
Scripture does not comment on Daniel’s response to Nebuchadnezzar. For all we know Daniel could have refused it just like Paul and Barnabas refused when the pagans mistook them for gods and offered sacrifice to them.
 
My Bible doesn’t say that. Does anyone knows what the original text says?
 
I noticed this word (cegid H5457) is only used in the book of Danial. I havent found it anywhere else in the OT. Does that have any significance?

Peace!!!
 
MarcoPG said:
Hello,
I wondered for days after reading:

46Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell on his face and worshipped Daniel, and gave orders to present to him an offering and fragrant incense.

Not all translations render “worship”, but in any case, why didn’t Daniel say anything about the undue honour reserved to him and not to God, unlike the angel in the Apocalypse and Peter in Acts? Why, in your opinion, Daniel doesn’t stop the king and tell him not to offer anything to anyone but to God - if we omit the worshipping part?

Is the offering meant to be “to God through Daniel”?

Thank you
Click to expand...
On one level, I guess the differences in culture might be a factor.

In Persian and Babylonian cultures, the act of prostration was usually something a social inferior offered towards a superior. It wasn’t specifically an act of worship or a gesture reserved for a god. Within the Bible itself, Abraham prostrates before the Hittites (Genesis 23:7; Abraham is the inferior in the negotiation) and courtiers prostrate before the higher-ranking Haman at the king’s command (Esther 3:2; Haman is offended at Mordecai’s refusal to prostrate because Mordecai is denying Haman the honor that was due to him as his social better).

You might say that Nebuchadnezzar here is not so much ‘worshiping’ Daniel as he was offering him the ultimate gesture of respect. (Which itself is quite interesting since it is usually the king who receives these prostrations - here he’s the one doing the prostrating.)

However, in Greek and Roman cultures, prostration or proskynesis was something else. Bowing, kneeling, or prostrating was only reserved for the gods. Alexander the Great’s decision to copy Persian court manners (which includes proskynesis) when he conquered the Achaemenid Empire was controversial among his Greek courtiers. The Greeks were bemused and offended when they saw Persians offering full-body prostrations towards the king. They thought that the Persians considered their king as a kind of god. (If you’ve ever read or watched 300, it’s the whole idea of Persians considering their king as a ‘god-king’ - which actual Persians (who were Zoroastrian and thus, monotheistic/dualistic) did not BTW.)

The Lycaonians’ prostration towards Paul and Barnabas carried with it a connotation of worship: “And they called Barnabas, Zeus; and Paul, Hermes.” That’s why in the New Testament, prostration is no longer a mundane gesture as it is in the OT: it already had a different meaning in the culture at that time.

In other words: same gesture, different meanings.
 
adf417 said:
I noticed this word (cegid H5457) is only used in the book of Danial. I havent found it anywhere else in the OT. Does that have any significance?

Peace!!!
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Segid is just the Aramaic word for paying homage. The word was eventually borrowed in Hebrew as sagad, which only appears in a few verses in Isaiah, in the part that’s usually called the ‘Deutero-Isaiah’ (44:15, 17, 19; 46:6), where it is applied to the ‘worship’ of idols.

The same word is used in chapter 3, when Nebuchadnezzar makes the golden idol that everyone should ‘prostrate’ / ‘pay homage’ to.
 
adf417 said:
I noticed this word (cegid H5457) is only used in the book of Danial. I havent found it anywhere else in the OT. Does that have any significance?

Peace!!!
Click to expand...
Thanks for prompting a deeper look. 🙂

The ISA program shows the (Aramaic) H5457 as used 12 times in 11 verses (all in Daniel). But the ‘form’ of “he worshipped” (sgd) only occurs once. Others are: we shall worship (nsgd), ones worshipping (sgdin), etc.

Why Daniel is written in Aramaic:

hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/5217/why-is-daniel-chapter-24-728-written-in-aramaic

Aramaic in the Bible; (Further down the page gives other places Aramaic is used.)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_Aramaic

Significance of Bible words occurring once:

ministers-best-friend.com/Bible-Word-Studies–Original-Meaning-Unknown.html

EDIT: Just found this - a full list of Hapax Legomena: (now I just need to add the Strong’s #s…heh.)

jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/7236-hapax-legomena
 
ahs said:
See also 2Kings 4:37. After Elisha saved her son’s life, she “paid him homage” Some translations say, “fell at his feet and bowed”, some say “prostrated herself”, some say “worshipped him”.

The word “worship” does not always mean “adoration”, which we owe to God, and God alone. Historically, it has carried a varying degree of meanings. Here, and likely in the instance you noted (chapter and verse, and version you are reading??) it mean “dulia” or “veneration/honor”, which we owe to authority figures, our parents, the Saints who have lived lives worthy of imitation, etc.

37 She came in, fell at his feet and bowed to the ground. Then she took her son and went out. (NIV)

37 Then she went in, and fell at his feet, and bowed herself to the ground, and took up her son, and went out. (KJV)

37 She came and fell at his feet, and worshipped upon the ground: and took up her son, and went out. (DR)

biblegateway.com/verse/en/2%20Kings%204:37
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Thank you.
I think most of us are aware that worship did not always meean to adore. But my question then is also about the offering. Is offering incense and other sacrifices not problematic? It is true that we don’t know what Daniel thought of this, but I think the Bible would have shown here that only God is to be offered sacrifice.
 
MarcoPG said:
Thank you.
I think most of us are aware that worship did not always meean to adore. But my question then is also about the offering. Is offering incense and other sacrifices not problematic? It is true that we don’t know what Daniel thought of this, but I think the Bible would have shown here that only God is to be offered sacrifice.
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Dan. 2:46 Then the king Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face, and worshipped Daniel, and commanded that they should offer an oblation and sweet odours unto him.

47 The king answered unto Daniel, and said, Of a truth it is, **that your God is a God of gods, and a Lord of kings, **and a revealer of secrets, seeing thou couldest reveal this secret.

Initially, I wasn’t concerned about the part you brought up because the king made it clear in the following verse that he understood about Daniel’s God.

But then it began to bug me, too. The Pulpit commentary ‘fits the bill’, for me.

biblehub.com/commentaries/daniel/2-46.htm
…Daniel does not refuse the homage (contrast Acts 14:13-18): in the view of the writer, he is (cf. Daniel 2:47) the representative of the God of gods to Nebuchadnezzar. Compare the story in Jos. Ant. xi. viii. 5, according to which Alexander the Great prostrated himself before the Jewish high-priest, and when asked by his astonished general, Parmenio, why he did so, replied,
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“I do not worship the high-priest, but the God with whose high-priesthood he has been honoured.”
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Jeanne1184 said:
Dan. 2:46 Then the king Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face, and worshipped Daniel, and commanded that they should offer an oblation and sweet odours unto him.

47 The king answered unto Daniel, and said, Of a truth it is, **that your God is a God of gods, and a Lord of kings, **and a revealer of secrets, seeing thou couldest reveal this secret.

Initially, I wasn’t concerned about the part you brought up because the king made it clear in the following verse that he understood about Daniel’s God.

But then it began to bug me, too. The Pulpit commentary ‘fits the bill’, for me.

biblehub.com/commentaries/daniel/2-46.htm
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So, it would be as I said: God is worshipped through his prophet.
 
MarcoPG said:
So, it would be as I said: God is worshipped through his prophet.
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Yes, but I would still like to have read something like, “And Daniel knew the king’s heart was in the right place as he worshipped not-really-Daniel.” 😉
 
Correction - Post #14

biblehub.com/commentaries/daniel/2-46.htm
The Pulpit commentary’ fits the bill’, for me.
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Should read: Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, not Pulpit.
I had left the webpage up last night to finish reading what other commentaries had to say. (Something was still nagging a bit.) First thing that caught my eye this morning was:

Pulpit Commentary:
*Verse 46. - Then the king Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face, and worshipped Daniel, and commanded that they should offer an oblation and sweet odours unto him. *
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The Greek versions render in such a way that we are almost obliged to recognize an act of idolatrous worship.
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What If: Daniel was telling us by the use of Aramaic and by his not correcting Nebuchadnezzar, that Daniel is an incarnation of the Son of God/Jesus - and worthy of the worship being given him/Him?

Thoughts?
 
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