Page 79 - The Prophet-statesman a Drama of Daniel

the Psalms, and his prophets. These writings were translated from the Hebrew to the
Babylonian, by some of the Chaldean scholars, in order to be read to the queen. But the
Queen was not satisfied to accept the translations of the Babylonian scholars until their

accuracy was confirmed or the translations revised by Daniel. So in addition to his
onerous official responsibilities, the Prime Minister spent much of his leisure-time in
carefully reviewing these translations. He was not content even to pass them after he
had read them, but insisted that his three friends should each read them and make what

corrections they saw fit. Such was the concern that these faithful Hebrews that “sang
the songs of Zion in a strange land,” had for the Word of the Lord committed to their
fathers. They remembered the words of the Psalmist: “The words of the Lord are pure
words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.”

The king sat in himself on a goodly part of the reading and listened with enough
interest that Rhea was inwardly jubilant with the hope that he was coming to a living
faith in the Jahveh of the Hebrews, under whose wings she had come to take refuge,

especially in view of the gentleness and sobriety she had noted in his conduct of late.
He had never breathed a word to her of the interpretation of his second dream as
delivered to him by Daniel.

But during the excitement attending the birth of the royal child, all this was
interrupted. The hoped for son turned out to be a daughter, but the festivities in the
palace and throughout the empire in celebration of the event were in no sense abated. A
great feast was given in the palace for the official naming of the young princess. At the

request of her mother she was given a name with a distinctly Hebrew flavor and
containing a recognition of the one true God, Elohim, and not of the Babylonian deity,
Bel. So she was called Princess Hanniel, meaning―grace of God.

After the birth of the Princess, the king began to return more to the conduct of the
affairs of state, and his manner began to take on some of its former severity. He even
began to conceive a certain amount of hostility to the Prime Minister, whose efficiency
and popularity were apparent to all.

The king ignored him on certain occasions and rebuffed him on others. The divine
sentence upon the king was delayed and his heart began to be “set in him to do evil.”

The old pride of his heart began to well up again and his old tendency to boastfulness
and self-glorification to come to the fore.

He almost forgot his dream and the interpretation Daniel had given him of it. Not
one person in the realm beside the king himself and Daniel and his three friends (to

whom Daniel confided everything) knew of the interpretation of the dream of the great
tree which was to be hewn to earth, only a stump remaining.