James Quiggle
I recently got into a FB discussion over a post claiming “God put Jesus in the fire” with the three Hebrew men, Daniel chapter 3.
Let’s set aside the obvious historical and scripture facts that Jesus was born 600 plus years after Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were put into the fire. Some people simply cannot grasp that Jesus is not eternal, but he was conceived and born. God the Son who joined to Jesus in the act of incarnation is eternal, but Jesus had a beginning. We must as passionately maintain the genuine humanity of the God-man as we do the genuine deity of the God-man.
So, not Jesus, but we might allow that God the Son joined Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fire. We might, except, for what Nebuchadnezzar said at Daniel 3:25. Now, the KJV (and the NKJV, being faithful to its parent) has Nebuchadnezzar saying, “the form of the fourth is like the son of God.”
But that *is not* what Nebuchadnezzar said. He said, in Akkadian, “like a son of the gods.” We know that is what he said because Daniel translated the Akkadian word for “gods” using the Hebrew word ’ělāh, in the plural form, which translates to “gods” (Harris, “Theological Wordbook OT,” s. v. 2576). I believe we can trust Daniel’s translation.
Nebuchadnezzar’s meaning is, a “son of deity, i.e., a divine person, one of the race of the gods, a supernatural person” [Young, “Daniel,” 94]. Nebuchadnezzar spoke within the meaning of the Babylonian doctrines of the gods, not in the meaning of NT revelation of the Son of God, 600 plus years later. There is no room here for alternate meanings, if we stand fast in the Literal hermeneutic, which analyses the historical-cultural context as well as the lexical-syntactical context.
That is why almost every version after the KJV (except the every-faithful NKJV), translates 3:25, “a son of the gods.” (The NLT takes liberties with, “looks like a god.”)
Could the fourth man have been God the Son. If so, it would have been in his consistent OT manifestation as the angel of YHWH (angel of the Lord). But that does not fit into the Book of Daniel. Everywhere else in Daniel God sends an angel. Let’s look at Daniel himself in similar peril of death in the lions’ den. At 6:22 Daniel tells Darius “My God sent his angel and shut the lions’ mouths.”
So the fourth man in the fire with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego was definitely not Jesus. Might have been God the Son as the angel of YHWH. But in agreement with the rest of the Book of Daniel the fourth man in the fire was an ordinary angel God sent to protect the three men.
If we are going to use the Literal hermeneutic, then we must use all the analyses of that interpretive method. And we must accept the facts and conclusions discovered by the consistent application of that method, even if they do not agree with past traditional interpretations.