Daniel 6:5 Commentary and Bible Study

The presidents and princes realise that they cannot find any occasion against Daniel except in the practice of his faith. They have one thing in common: they hated the Jews among them, men such as Daniel and three others named in this Book of Daniel in the narrative passages. They hated them – at least the faithful and believing Jews who held office – because they regarded them as arrogant. They were not arrogant, but they seemed arrogant to these polytheists, the pagans of the other nations, because they would not recognise any other gods. Their God was an exclusive God, the only living true God. All other gods were idols and inventions and myths and absurdities, and however graciously they tried to win people to the one true God, their whole deportment and their attitude would have been regarded as arrogant. They hated them because of their standards, and because of the Ten Commandments, and the things to which they cleaved, and the things they propagated. The devil's great aim is to destroy the line of the promised Messiah, to get rid of these faithful Jews and put them under persecution and destroy them. There have already been former attempts at genocide. So we are not talking about the nation as a whole; we are talking about the faithful, and from them would come the Messiah.