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Bible Notes - Tabernacle Commentaries
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Daniel 1:9
Comments
‘Now God had brought Daniel into favour and tender love with the prince of the eunuchs.’ Christian character is often used by God to enrage people, but sometime it also commends you to certain people. A good man will find favour at times and at other times the same man will be hated by men. He may be loved for his goodness, or he may be hated for his goodness. That authoritative and hard man – as he was bound to have been – had a soft spot for Daniel. It was of the Lord. Yes, but the Lord used the deportment of Daniel. These Hebrew young men had a nice spirit. So when they put their case, they did not do it in an angry way; they did it boldly, straightforwardly and with courage. The Lord no doubt had given this official to notice the niceness in Daniel, his character and his honesty, and Daniel approached him and asked if he could be excused the king’s meat. ‘Tender love’. He did not react badly. There was some degree of compassion there, and sympathy for Daniel in being taken forcibly from his home and compelled to live this new life. But he refused to do it. He uses a double argument: ‘The king can be severe and will know if you aren’t eating properly.’ He is extraordinarily frank with Daniel; that wasn't the way of those times. Somebody who held high authority didn't explain himself to those who were under him. He didn't apologise to them: ‘I'm very sorry, my dear chap, I can't do this for this reason.’ You didn’t lower your authority and give explanations, but this man is extraordinarily frank with Daniel. ‘I fear my lord the king, who hath appointed your meat and your drink, for why should he see your faces worse liking, than the children which are of your sort? – the other children from Israel. ‘Then shall ye make me in danger, my head to the king.’ He was impressed by Daniel’s testimony, but he didn't dare do it. So the answer is, no. It couldn't be done. So it was necessary for Daniel to try someone else. It wasn't ‘no’ in the decisive sense that the prince of the eunuchs who is over your instruction course forbids you to ask anymore: ‘No, you must make sure you eat the king’s meat.’ It was only a limited ‘no’. ‘No, because I fear the king’, which left the way open for Daniel to approach another authority of lower rank who had no contact with the king, and who wouldn’t be answering to the king on a daily basis.
Application
This often happens to us. Daniel had to be very determined not to give up in his quest. We are driven forward by the knowledge that God wants to do a certain thing, or he wants us not to do a certain thing, as the case may be. Refusal is somehow harder to deal with when people are friendly to us and bring pressure on us. We have to push on in spite of that and thwart them, and risk upsetting them and turning their friendless into anger. That is hard if we have few on our side, especially if we are of a sensitive disposition.
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