Why Did Daniel Refuse the King’s Food?
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In the book of Daniel, Daniel and his three friends, who are taken into exile, are given food from the king’s table and trained in all of the ways of Babylon. For three years, Daniel and his friends would have been immersed in Babylonian culture. They have been ripped from their homeland, taken from the Promised Land, distanced from the temple, and thrust into a foreign land. How would they respond?
Personally, I think it has more to do with Proverbs 21:1-3 (which Daniel would have known) than anything else.
When you sit down to eat with a ruler,
observe carefully what is before you,
and put a knife to your throat
if you are given to appetite.
Do not desire his delicacies,
for they are deceptive food. (ESV)
Nebuchadnezzar’s food was deceptive food. What does that mean? It means that it came with strings attached. Taking the king's food would have created a dependency. At the end of the three-year period, they’d have been fully Babylonian and dependent upon the king for everything. And it wouldn’t have happened primarily through punishment but through pleasure. It’s a combination of threat and promise. It’d take away memory and identity of belonging to God and instill in them an absolute dependency on Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian Empire for everything.
So, why did they refuse the food?
It’s because this was the one place where they could draw a line in the sand and say, “No, we will depend upon YHWH.” It’s where they could sever that tie and remind themselves and others and eventually show even the Babylonians that YHWH was the one to whom all humanity can (and should) depend.
Daniel asked the chief eunuch (this would be like a schoolmaster of sorts) if they could eat only vegetables. At first, their request was denied. They’d look like poor miserable creatures if they rejected the king’s food, and this would look bad on him. There is no way that he was putting himself in danger of drawing the ire of the powerful king.
They asked for ten days. Just experiment. We’ll look healthier and be in better shape than all those eating at the king’s table. Request granted.
Now, it’s at this point that I think most of us are tempted to impose a Western standard of beauty and strength onto this text. We read this as if the point is something like, “God’s ways are better than the ways of Babylon.” While that’s a true point—that’s not the point of the text here.
Yes, it’s true that eating vegetables and such would be healthier than the fatty foods of Babylon. But that’s making an assumption. We’re assuming that Nebuchadnezzar wanted his wise men and eunuchs to be muscular and fit. That might have been true for the warrior class, but looking better in appearance for a “wise man” would have been much different. As Tremper Longman III notes, “…wise men (like Daniel and his colleagues) are pictured as bald, big-eyed (a symbol of intelligence), and chubby. That is the look that Nebuchadnezzar was going for” (How to Read Daniel, pg. 60).
The miracle here (as verse 15 clues us in to) is that Daniel and his friends were “fatter in the flesh” than his peers. That shouldn’t have happened, but it did because God was providing for Daniel and his friends. They kept their dependence upon God while they became fully entrenched in Babylonian culture. And because they were dependent upon Him, God helped them to excel within that culture. He gave them the ability to excel in Babylon but also to shine forth in Babylon.
Sources:
Tremper Longman III, How to Read Daniel, How to Read Series (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2020), 60.
Photo Credit: ©Unsplash/Caroline Hernandez