Son of the gods. We should note that the bound phrase (bar-ʾĕlāhîn) is indefinite and that the
second noun is plural. Aramaic bar,
like its Hebrew equivalent (ben) and
its Akkadian equivalent (mār), can
refer to a member of a group. In Dan 3:28 the king refers to the fourth as an
“angel” (malʾāk, used similarly in
Dan 6:22[23]), which is used to refer to a legitimate representative agent of a
deity, a deputy. In Mesopotamia, the messengers of the gods were themselves
divine, though of lower rank. Combining these insights, we draw the conclusion
that the king considers the fourth individual to be a member of the class of
deity who has been dispatched as an agent of a deity to effect a rescue
operation. Nevertheless, these are his impressions, not an affirmation
resulting from divine revelation.
By 3:28, it is clear that the
king understands the messenger to be the agent of the god of the three friends
sent to deliver them. It is not difficult to imagine that the king would be
astonished at the appearance of a fourth individual and that it would confuse
him (“What’s going on?”). His fright
can be further explained through an understanding of how the Babylonians would
have thought concerning messengers of the gods.
Akkadian šipru is the word for messenger or envoy (comparable to Heb./Aram. malʾāk), and is sometimes coupled with mār (mār
šipri, “son of a messenger,” i.e., someone in the class of messenger). When
such messengers were sent from either a king or a god, they often came with the
purpose of rectifying a situation that was unsuitable or calling a vassal to
account. A messenger from a god would be identified as a “son of the gods”
because the messengers were often lower-level deities. If a messenger from the
gods has arrived to release and deliver the friends, the king has reason to be
terrified. He could easily conclude that he has somehow offended a deity, who
is reversing the king’s verdict and undoing the sentence he has passed. The
gods were interested in justice and doing justice was one of the main
responsibilities for which the gods sponsored a king. A king who is not
enacting justice is a king who risks losing the support of his god. For
example, when the god Sîn (the very god whom this ceremony might be focused on)
is displeased, his punishment is the feared skin disease or epilepsy (“the hand
of Sîn”).183 Sîn has a “deputy” (Akk. šanû), a šēdu (spirit
that can either protect or attack as a demon), designated bennu, which refers to “seizures of infectious origin” but also
includes such diseases as viral encephalitis.
Given what we know about
Babylonian thinking and their gods, it would be entirely plausible that the
king’s first reaction might be to interpret the fourth individual as a
messenger (malʾāk, 3:28, Akk. mār šipri, deputy [šanû], sent as a šēdu,
specifically bennu), a divine being
(suitable to all the named categories) who has been sent by a god, who is, for
some reason, unknown to the king (as is usual for the gods in general) and is
offended by something that the king has done. In this scenario, his act of deliverance
of the three friends is just the beginning of the purpose of his visit. He is
ultimately there to bring some sort of horrible plague on the king. Marten Stol
offers some examples of the kind of diseases that one god, the god Sîn,
associated with the moon, might send:
When the moon is full, man is exposed to its rays and,
when unprotected, he is in great danger of contracting an abhorrent skin
disease like leprosy; blindness is also possible. When the moon is new, or rather during the moonless
nights at the end of the month, an epileptic fit caused by demonic powers
threatens him. Here the connection with the moon is indirect: the moon is not
visible and the spirits of the dead are active at this juncture. Superstitions
known to Hippocrates and the novelist Xenophon of Ephesus have it that these
spirits or “heroes” inflict epilepsy. The Babylonian demon of epilepsy, the
deified Bennu, is named “deputy of
Sin” which seems to illustrate the indirectness: the Moon-god, not being
present himself, sends his messenger.
This scenario would easily
explain his terror. Nevertheless, and importantly, he quickly frames an
alternative explanation that the protective deputy has been dispatched by the
god of the three friends, and from the king’s decree in the next verses, it appears
that he chooses to adopt that interpretation. Such an interpretation could
easily explain his attempt to try to appease this obviously powerful deity. The
move from “agent of Sîn” to “agent of the friends’ god” would align with a
general inclination in the ancient Near East to find a positive spin on a
potentially devastating sign (the same sort of thing that happened in Dan 2
when a dream that could have been interpreted as portending an overthrow of the
king was interpreted, much to the king’s relief, as referring to the unfolding
of events in the far future). (Aubrey E. Buster and John H. Walton, The Book of Daniel, Chapters 1–6 [New
International Commentary on the Old and New Testament; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans,
2025], 463-65)
