This is a fun book, as opposed to the last several in a row that were just plain difficult to get through. It also should be mentioned, that I’m not leaving out a whole lot, because this book is fucking awesome. You get the almost full “my version of the book of Daniel”
It begins with Nebuchadnezzar fucking up and sacking Jerusalem. One of the things the previous books left out, is that Nebuchadnezzar took most of the ruling class under his wing and taught them how to be Babylonian nobility. They ate from that came from his table, learned the language, and got drunk. After three years of this shit, they were finally welcomed into the prestige Babylonian society. Nebuchadnezzar also decided that their names were stupid. He was like, “Daniel, fuck your stupid name. Now I’m calling you Beltashazar. I like long ridiculous names. So fuck you.” He also renamed Hannaniah, Mishael, and Azaria: Shadrach, Meshak, and Abendego.
This whole time Daniel was being a pain in the ass. He kept saying, “I’m not eating this shitty Babylonian food! I’m sticking with my traditional food that my god told me to eat. Also… I don’t drink.” His caretaker was like, “Dude. You’re going to get me decapitated. If you refuse to eat this food and start looking malnourished, my boss with literally chop my fucking head off.”
Daniel told him just to feed him, Shadrach, Meshack, and Abendego vegetables and water. The caretaker begrudgingly agreed and within ten days, they looked way healthier than they rest of the people that were just getting fucked up all the time. Also, god got happy for once in his fucking life and decided to make them way smarter. He also made Daniel be able to interpret dreams. So after three years, the four of them started serving under Nebuchadnezzar and he thought they were all pretty great. Better than his own magicians even. Good for them.
So another year passed and Nebuchadnezzar started having fucked up dreams. He tried to get his magicians, enchanters, sorcerers, and astrologers to interpret them. The magicians couldn’t do it, because their job is to perform magic tricks. The enchanters and sorcerers couldn’t do it , because their job is to enchant and sorcer. And the astrologers couldn’t do it, because their job is to look at the fucking stars and try and figure out patterns. So basically, Nebuchadnezzar hired a bunch of people to try and do something that none of their titles claimed they could do and they couldn’t do it right. So he was upset.
He was so upset, as a matter of fact, that he decided the best course of action was to slaughter every wise man in the whole fucking kingdom. This is probably the worst idea you can possibly have for a good healthy empire. This next part is verbatim. “When Arioch, the commander of the kings guard went out to kill the wise men of Babylon, Daniel spoke to him with wisdom and tact.” What did Daniel say that was so wise and tactful? He said, “Arioch, why the fuck did Nebuchadnezzar decide to kill all the wise men?” Arioch explained and Daniel was like, “I can interpret dreams. Probably should’ve asked me before killing everyone in your fucking empire that could potentially be of use to you. You fucking dipshit.” (That last part wasn’t exactly what he said, but it’s not too far off, I’m sure.)
So, Arioch begrudgingly agreed to let Daniel interpret Nebuchadnezzar’s dream and Daniel went home and told Shadrach, Meshak, and Abendago all about this shit. They were super pumped and broke into a praise and worship song.
Daniel went to Nebuchadnezzar (with his new friend Arioch) and told him he could translate his dream. Nebuchadnezzar didn’t trust him and told him he had to describe his own dream to him and interpret it. Also he kept calling him Beltashazar instead of Daniel, but Daniel didn’t let this get to him.
Daniel described Nebuchadnezzar’s dream to him, “You dreamt that you saw a giant fucking statue of yourself. Because you’re the kind of asshole who dreams of shit like that. The head on this statue was solid gold, the chest and arms were made of silver, the belly and thighs were made of bronze, the calves were made of iron, and the feet were made out of some ungodly concoction of iron and clay. Clearly whoever made this statue had no idea what the fuck they were doing. A giant rock came out of nowhere and smashed the fuck out of this statue. The whole thing crumbled into nothingness and blew away. Then the rock turned into a mountain.”
Nebuchadnezzar was pretty impressed with this. That was a weird dream and it would be pretty fucking hard to guess it. Daniel described to him what that shit meant, “The big gold head represents you and your kingdom. Once your time is up, another shittier kingdom will come, that’s the silver. Once their time is up, another even shittier kingdom will come, that’s the bronze. And so on and forth. You get the fucking idea. Also, the iron mixed with clay is a metaphor about how there’s going to be a kingdom that can’t be united. Just like iron and clay don’t mix together. But god is the rock that smashed all that and turns into a mountain.”
Nebuchadnezzar was so impressed that he “fell prostrate” in front of them. I giggled when I read this, but apparently it just means that he bowed down. He called off his unnecessary slaughter of all the wise men and appointed those four into really high up positions. Then, because he totally missed the whole fucking point of that dream, decided to build a statue of himself 90 fucking feet tall out of solid gold. It was 90 feet tall and 9 feet wide. I don’t know who the hell measured that, but that doesn’t really seem like it would stay up. At all. Like I feel like that would fall over pretty much right away.
Once this completely inaccurate statue of Nebuchadnezzar was finished, a huge party broke out. People were playing instruments I’ve never heard of and getting drunk, and Nebuchadnezzar got super full of himself. He said, “I built this fucking statue and anyone who doesn’t bow down to it, I will throw into a fucking furnace because I am a goddamn lunatic.”
Well Daniel, Shadrach, Meshak, and Abendego were too religious to bow down to any statue. So word spread to Nebuchadnezzar. He decided, “Well, a law’s a law.” He confronted Shadrach, Meshak, and Abendego and told them to bow down to his statue, but they kept refusing. They were just like, “Dude, We’ll serve under you. But we are not bowing down to a golden statue or worshipping any of your shitty gods.” This pissed Nebuchadnezzar off.
It pissed him off so much that he demanded that the furnace get made extra hot, just in case a regular furnace wouldn’t burn them enough, and tied them up with rope. Rope does not last very long in fire. So Shadrach, Meshak, and Abendago got shoved into the furnace and Nebuchadnezzar stayed and watched them. They really got to him.
The fire was so hot that it killed all of the guards who got even remotely close to it. But Shadrach, Meshak, and Abendago just hung out inside the furnace not dying or burning alive. Even their clothes were okay. Nebuchadnezzar found this really impressive. He decided that their god was pretty rad and put them in charge of a bunch of stuff again.
The book kind of takes a weird turn here for a few paragraphs and it’s written in the first person by Nebuchadnezzar, but I’m not going to read it that way because it’s confusing. Anyways, Nebuchadnezzar had another dream. This time he dreamt that there was a giant tree and god told him to chop it down. Daniel was not too happy about interpreting this one, because he knew it was going to piss him off. After getting prodded and pushed into interpreting it, Daniel finally said, “That tree is you. You’re going to lose your fucking mind and go live like a wild animal for 7 years, because god loves the number 7. If you accept my god instead of yours and burn animals and repent of your many many sins, this probably won’t happen.”
Well Nebuchadnezzar didn’t do any of that shit and 12 months later he was hanging out on his roof looking at his kingdom. He said to himself, “Holy shit. Look at all this. I built this. I built all of this and I built it to glorify me!” Well this pissed god off, so he just straight up came out and said, “Fuck you Nebuchadnezzar. I let you have this shit. And now I hate you. For seven years, you’re gonna go eat grass and roam around like a fucking animal.” Sure enough that’s exactly what happened.
After 7 years, he came to, and surprisingly nobody had usurped him. Babylon was still in place. Nebuchadnezzar started following the god of Daniel. Then he, apparently, died. Because that’s the last time they fucking talk about him.
So his kid, Belshazar was king now. He threw an epic party with dancers and wine and he drank out of gold cups with his wives and sex slaves. All of a sudden a disembodied human hand came out of nowhere and wrote some weird script that nobody could understand on the wall. Everyone, rightfully, freaked the fuck out, started calling on astrologers and magicians to come do what they never claimed they could do, and after they couldn’t figure it out, he summoned Daniel.
Somehow, Daniel knew exactly what this shit said. It said, “Mene mene tekel parsin” Daniel was like, “Basically, the wall is saying that your days are numbered like money, you don’t weigh up, and Medes and Persians are gonna come fuck your shit right up.” Belshazar was pretty pleased about this for some reason and dressed Daniel up like a pimp in a purple robe and a gold chain. Later that night, Darius the Mede took the city and killed Balshazar.
Darius decided to appoint Daniel to a high up position. This, by the way, is the third fucking kingdom that Daniel served a high-up position to in his lifetime. Fucking ridiculous. So Darius liked Daniel and this pissed some people off. They convinced Darius to pass a law that for a solid month, everyone in the kingdom had to pray to him and him alone under penalty of being lion fodder. Daniel, of course, broke the fuck out of this law. He’d pray to the Hebrew god, Jehovah, right in his window cill for everyone to see. Daniel plainly did not fucking care who saw. Darius had no choice but to enforce his ridiculous law.
So, Darius threw Daniel into this den full of lions that they kept around only for this occasion. He wasn’t happy about it, either. He told Daniel that he hopes everything works out for him. Which seems pretty dickish except that it totally did. The lions refused to eat Daniel, but the poor guy still had to hang out in their den and lions smell terrible. When Darius found Daniel hanging out totally fine, he was so happy to find Daniel doing okay that he threw everyone who stood against him into the den instead.
So Daniel prospered all throughout Darius’ reign. Then he had a dream about a bunch of mythological beasts: A flying lion with a man’s heart, a bear that was eating ribs and told him to eat some too, a four headed flying leopard, and some weird fourth one with iron teeth and ten horns. Then he watched them all die. This was another one of those, “Empires come and go, but god’s kingdom rules forever” type dream.
Then he had a vision of a Ram being beat up by a Goat. That represented the Persians and the Medes being conquered by the Greeks. Which happened later. Then he prayed and made a prediction about 70 weeks. The first 62 weeks were good, then everything goes to hell in the last 8 weeks. Then he makes a bunch of vague claims about the future.
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