Four Friends in Babylon

Yeshua named the greatest agape ἀγάπη ag-ah'-pay as laying down one’s soul for one’s friends, and He defined His friends as those who do what He commands. Long before He said it, the Old Testament had already shown it, in a place where keeping God’s commandments could cost a man his life: Babylon.

Four young men from Judah were carried there as captives in the days of King Jehoiakim (Daniel 1:1-6). Babylon gave them new names, a new education and a place at the king’s table, and they kept the commandments of their God there together.

Companions

Daniel 2:17 Then Daniel went to his house, and made the matter known to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, his companions,

“His companions.” The Aramaic word is chavar, an associate, a companion, a friend. Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah were friends, and from the first chapter their friendship stood on a commandment.

Daniel 1:8 And Daniel set upon his heart that he would not defile himself with the king's food, nor with the wine of his drinking; and he sought from the chief of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself.

The verb for defile is gaal גָּאַל gaw-al', and the king’s food is pat-bag, the portion from the royal table. His three friends stood with him, and the reason was the Torah’s law of what defiles, for the table of a pagan king set before him what the Torah does not call food (Leviticus 11), meat with its blood (Leviticus 17), and meat and wine offered to idols (Exodus 34:15; Deuteronomy 32:38). So the first test these friends faced in Babylon was about what goes into the mouth, and they kept the commandment.

Bow Down and Serve

Then came the furnace: Nebuchadnezzar commanded every people to fall down before his image of gold, on pain of the fire. That command ran straight against the opening words of the Ten Commandments.

Exodus 20:3-5 You shall have no other gods before My face. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, nor any likeness of what is in the heavens above, or what is in the earth beneath, or what is in the waters under the earth. You shall not bow down to them, and you shall not serve them (avad עָבַד aw-bad'); for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God (El), visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons, upon the third and upon the fourth generation of those who hate Me,

The commandment forbids two things, to bow down, shachah, and to serve, avad, and the three friends answered the king in the same two terms.

Daniel 3:17-18 If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and from your hand, O king, He will deliver. But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods, nor do homage to the image of gold which you have set up."

In Aramaic their two verbs are pelach, serve, and segid, bow down: the Aramaic counterparts of the two verbs of the second commandment, in the king’s own language. The friends did not reason that they could love God in their hearts and bow outwardly to save their lives. Love for God, as Scripture defines it, is kept with the body as well as the heart. With the words “But if not” they kept the commandment whether or not they would be rescued, ready to die, and even the king saw it.

Daniel 3:28 Nebuchadnezzar answered and said, "Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, who has sent His angel and delivered His servants who trusted in Him, and changed the king's word, and gave up their bodies, that they might not serve nor do homage to any god, except their own God.

They “gave up their bodies,” and that is the greatest agape of John 15, shown in the Old Testament: friends who keep the commandments together, ready to lay down their lives.

The Daily Offering Is a Moed

Daniel also kept the foundation on which all the appointed times of God stand. That foundation is the tamid תָּמִיד taw-meed', the continual burnt offering of every morning and every evening, and the Torah itself calls it a moed מוֹעֵד mo-ade'.

Numbers 28:2-4 "Command (tzivvah צָוָה tsaw-vaw') the sons of Israel, and you shall say to them: My offering, my bread for my fire-offerings, my aroma of soothing, you shall take heed to offer to me in its appointed time (moed). And you shall say to them: This is the fire-offering which you shall bring to the LORD: lambs, sons of a year, without blemish, two for the day, a continual burnt-offering. The one lamb you shall offer in the morning, and the second lamb you shall offer between the evenings;

“In its appointed time (moed)” is bemo’ado in Hebrew, and the next words name what is offered: two lambs a day, “a continual burnt-offering,” morning and between the evenings. The list of appointed times in Numbers 28 and 29 begins here, with the daily tamid, and only then goes on to the Sabbath, the new moons, Passover and the rest. Every moed of the year is built on top of the daily one.

The Torah also says what happens at that offering.

Exodus 29:42 A continual burnt offering throughout your generations, at the opening of the tent (ohel אֹהֶל o'-hel) of appointed time (moed) before the LORD, where I will meet with you, to speak there to you.

“Where I will meet with you.” The verb for meet is yaad, the root from which moed itself comes. The offering at the door of the tent of moed is where God meets His people every day, at the times He appointed. Prayer rose at those times.

Psalm 141:2 Let my prayer be set as incense before you, the lifting up of my palms as the evening offering.

Psalm 55:18 Evening and morning and noon I complain and moan, and He hears my voice.

(YLV Psalm 55:18, Masoretic verse order) David names three times of prayer: evening, morning and noon.

The Open Window

Babylon forbade that prayer.

Daniel 6:8 All the presidents of the kingdom, the prefects and the satraps, the counselors and the governors, have consulted together to establish a royal statute, and to make strong an interdict, that whoever shall ask a petition of any god or man for thirty days, except of you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions.

Daniel 6:11-12 And Daniel, when he knew that the writing was signed, went into his house; now his windows were open in his upper chamber toward Jerusalem; and three times in the day he knelt upon his knees, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, just as he had done before this. Then these men came thronging and found Daniel making petition and supplication before his God.

(YLV Daniel 6, Masoretic verse order) In Aramaic “three times” is zimnin זִמְנִין zem-awn' telatah, and zimnin is the word for appointed times. Daniel kept his times of prayer when the empire forbade them. He could have shut himself in and prayed silently where no one would see. He did not hide; the men found him through the open window, and he was thrown to the lions. He faced Jerusalem just as Solomon had asked God to hear captives who would pray in the land of their enemies “toward their land … the city which you have chosen, and the house which I have built for your name” (1 Kings 8:48).

The text even records the hour of an answer.

Daniel 9:21 while I was still speaking in the prayer, the man (ish אִישׁ eesh) Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the first, being caused to fly swiftly, touched me about the time of the evening offering.

The Hebrew is ke’et minchat erev, at the time of the evening minchah מִנחָה min-khaw'. The temple lay in ruins and no lamb was offered. Daniel could bring no lamb to an altar, but he could still keep the appointed hour, and he was praying at that hour when Gabriel came.

The Same Hours

Peter kept the same hours. At Pentecost he spoke at “the third hora ὥρα ho'-rah(that-hour) of the day” (Acts 2:15), in the morning hours of prayer that began with the morning offering at first light. He went up to pray on a housetop “about the sixth hora(that-hour)” (Acts 10:9), at noon. And with John he went up to the temple at the hour of the evening offering:

Acts 3:1 Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hora(that-hour) of prayer, the ninth hour,

In the first century the evening tamid was offered at about the ninth hour, and Luke calls that hour simply the hour of prayer.

The Torah calls the daily offering a moed, offered “in its appointed time.” David prayed evening, morning and noon. Daniel prayed three times a day and was answered at the time of the evening offering, with no altar standing. Peter went up at the hour of the evening offering, the hour of prayer. So the point stands firmly: the three daily times of prayer rest on the tamid, whose morning and evening offerings mark the two ends of the day of prayer, with the noon prayer standing between them. To keep them is to keep the daily moed that God appointed for meeting with His people.

In Secret, or at the Open Window?

Someone may ask whether Yeshua did not tell us to pray in an inner room with the door shut (Matthew 6:6). He did, and the verse before shows whom He was correcting: those who pray “so that they may be seen by people” (Matthew 6:5).

The difference was never the window but the heart, and the Torah.

Babylon and the Mount of the Moed

The Babylon where Daniel prayed set itself against God’s appointed times. Isaiah’s proverb “against the king of Babylon” (Isaiah 14:4) says this:

Isaiah 14:13-14 And you said in your heart: "I will ascend to the heavens, above the stars of God I will raise my throne, and I will sit on the mountain of appointed time (moed), in the uttermost parts of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the cloud; I will make myself like the Most High (Elyon)."

The king of Babylon wanted to sit on the mount of the moed and be like the Most High. And Daniel saw a horn that would “think to change times (zimnin, Aramaic) and decree (dat)” (Daniel 7:25), the same word, zimnin, that counts Daniel’s three times of prayer in Daniel 6:11. To change the times and the law that God appointed is anomia ἀνομία an-om-ee'-ah. In the middle of that Babylon, ready to die, Daniel and his three friends kept the Ten Commandments and the daily moed on which all the appointed times stand, and they overcame.

Revelation 12:11 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the logos λόγος log'-os(word, message) of their testimony, and they did not agapao ἀγαπάω ag-ap-ah'-o(love) their psyche ψυχή psoo-khay'(soul) even unto death.

Paul’s chapter on love, 1 Corinthians 13, speaks of giving the body to be burned, and the three friends in the furnace stand very close to it.