Daniel 1:8-16, The Test of Faith

Sometime prior to 1975 I attended Bill Gothard’s Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts, a ministry which has since been discredited by its extreme teachings and its founder’s immorality. But it taught a very valuable lesson from the book of Daniel on submitting to authority. One can submit to authority, not in its particularities, but in its basic intentions, by offering a creative alternative that satisfies the basic intention of the authority. You’ll see what that means in Daniel’s test of faith.

⁸ But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food, or with the wine that he drank. Therefore he asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself. ⁹ And God gave Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the chief of the eunuchs, ¹⁰ and the chief of the eunuchs said to Daniel, “I fear my lord the king, who assigned your food and your drink; for why should he see that you were in worse condition than the youths who are of your own age? So you would endanger my head with the king.” ¹¹ Then Daniel said to the steward whom the chief of the eunuchs had assigned over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, ¹² “Test your servants for ten days; let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink. ¹³ Then let our appearance and the appearance of the youths who eat the king’s food be observed by you, and deal with your servants according to what you see.” ¹⁴ So he listened to them in this matter, and tested them for ten days. ¹⁵ At the end of ten days it was seen that they were better in appearance and fatter in flesh than all the youths who ate the king’s food. ¹⁶ So the steward took away their food and the wine they were to drink, and gave them vegetables.

The food from the king’s table was a diet designed to sustain the health of those who ate. But for the Hebrews, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, it was a diet off limits for their compliance with God’s law, for two reasons: (1) It included foods that were forbidden to Israelites (pork, shellfish, etc.) or that were prepared contrary to kosher (meat cooked in milk, for example), and (2) it was food offered in sacrifice to Babylon’s gods (the wine, for example, which would not have otherwise been off limits to the Hebrews). This latter concern may not have been a concern of Yahweh’s, as Paul is at pains to explain in 1 Corinthians 8-10, where he says that if conscience allows you may eat food sacrificed to idols unless you are doing it in the sacrificial feast itself. For Daniel and his brothers, it was a matter of conscience and so they offered a creative alternative.

God had given favor to Daniel with the chief of the eunuchs, so the chief of the eunuchs did not immediately refuse Daniel’s alternative solution to satisfying his authority’s desire for him to eat healthy food. He allowed the test to see if eating vegetables and drinking water would harm the health of his charges. Daniel made the test for ten days, an ample time to discern whether the diet was helpful or harmful. He came to his “boss” with a solution to the problem rather than simply stating the problem and resisting compliance with his authority’s wishes. The diet passed the test, and so did Daniel’s and his brother’s faith.

Did the diet the Hebrews ate lack something for healthiness, requiring God to do a miracle of sustaining them on poor food. It would not seem so, unless the water might have been something that threatened their health (a major reason for drinking wine, often). Whether it did or didn’t, God was responding to their desire to be in obedience to Him above being in obedience to their human authorities and He was responding to their faith in Him to take care of them or not, as He saw fit, because of their obedience. Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah will face a similar test with different conditions later, but in this instance the creative alternative satisfied both the human authority and God’s authority.

Taking up my cross daily: Today, Lord, I will serve You as my final authority and all the authorities You choose to place in my life.