Daniel 3:24 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Daniel 3:24

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The king’s throne was so positioned that he could see right into the furnace, and what he saw astonished him, startled him. He trembled; he shook; he blanched; he was alarmed, and he arose, involuntarily, suddenly, in haste. He was undoubtedly seeing a supernatural event, and he was afraid. It would take such an extraordinary event to quell the fired-up fury of such a proud king and to bring him up short, but that is what happened. He knew what he had commanded, and he knew his command had been carried out. He could see the three young Jewish men no longer bound but loosed and walking about in the fire, and there was something else that amazed him. There was a fourth person with them, and he could see that this person was no ordinary person; this was more than a mere man, one who he was ready to say was like ‘a son of god’, or ‘a son of the gods’. The KJV renders this: ‘Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.’ The word ‘son’ should not be given a capital ‘s’. Don’t forget we are looking at this through the eyes of a pagan king; it is what he sees in his estimation, ‘one like a son of a god.’ Nebuchadnezzar believed it was some form of deity and concluded it was an angel; the translators of the KJV have run ahead of themselves. Calvin understands the king to say that he was looking not at Christ, but at an angel there in the furnace alongside these three men. All the violence of his anger had been neutralised and he could see it. He had tried to destroy them in the most spectacular way available to him, but he could see from his throne that they were free, walking and unhurt. His mind worked quickly, and he was ready to see this as a divine rebuke to what he had commanded. So startling was what he saw, that he asked others present to confirm that his own eyes were not deceiving him. Yes, they too saw the same thing; this was real, and they were all experiencing this together. He had come face to face with the power of God contradicting his own power, and the whole court saw it and could not deny it. This realisation alone was capable of humbling him in that moment.

Application

How easily and quickly God is able to subdue the proudest of men on earth! What terror will strike the hearts of his enemies when Christ returns at the end of the world. That too will be a supernatural event, and those who have resisted God right up to the last possible moment will know that they are without excuse. They told themselves they were battling with flesh and blood, but in an instant they will see that really they have been fighting against the Son of God all along.

Was this in fact the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ who appeared to his people at other times in the Old Testament record before he was incarnate? Very possibly it was a theophany to those three suffering men, a reward to them of the highest degree because they had not loved their lives unto the death. This miracle is Christ’s promise that he will be with all his people in the furnace of affliction.

Nebuchadnezzar saw Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego no longer bound but walking in the midst of the fire. The power of God had enabled them to prevail over the elements. God had by his power changed the nature of their bodies for that brief instant, so that the flames were unable to hurt them. He will work with similar power when he reverses the effect of death and raises us up from the grave. We look at the corpse of one we have loved, and nothing visible tells us that life can ever be restored to it, but the arm of the Lord is not shortened. They had gone down into the furnace bound, but now they were loosed. The flames had not hurt their bodies in the least, but they had consumed their bonds and enabled them to walk without restriction. They were more free in the furnace than they had been out of it. This real deliverance was surely intended by God as a metaphor for the way he works in all trials of his people, which is why Scripture draws our attention to it. Our trials teach us to value what really matters and to let go of things that are passing away. They may destroy things that we should not love, so that we value what will endure forever. They give us opportunity to prove to ourselves and to the Lord that we do not love our lives more than we love him. They consume our doubts and fears when we see that God does not desert us in the time of crisis. What can hurt us if God is for us? This miracle is not repeated every time a child of God suffers persecution, but Christ means us to understand that. although unseen, he is with us.

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Daniel 3:24 Commentary and Bible Study