Bodies in the Book of Daniel

We explore the literary artistry of the Bible, and here we are looking at bodies and body parts in the Book of Daniel.

Daniel frequently talks about bodies and particular body parts: hair, head, nails, knees, feet, bowels. There are dreams about bodies, bodies thrown into furnaces and into lions’ dens, and bodies being resurrected. The more you read about these bodies, the more you realize that the author is trying to do something.

He is doing something similar to Plato in the Republic, where Socrates is trying to understand justice in a city. To do that, Socrates says we must understand what justice is in a person or in a soul. Justice in the soul happens when the three parts of the soul—the rational, the spirited, and the appetitive—are all in harmony. But the important part for us is that there is a connection between the person and the city.

Daniel was written to encourage the Israelites who were exiled in a foreign country, in Babylon. So Daniel presents images of two bodies: a good body and an evil body, or a righteous body and a worldly body. Daniel unfolds the characters and the destinies of these corporate bodies. It is a beautiful literary construction because every time, or many times, there is a body or body parts, those are putting together an image of these two corporate bodies: a righteous one and a wicked one, a righteous nation and a wicked nation. These two bodies are contrasted, providing the Israelites in exile with two options.

The Good Body and the Worldly Statue

The first picture of a body is Daniel’s body, the good body. In chapter 1, Daniel and his friends, if you remember, refuse to eat the king’s food, but their bodies become strong. Unlike Adam in the garden who ate when he shouldn’t have, Daniel refuses to eat, being a good Adam, refusing to receive his life from the worldly kingdom. And he becomes stronger for it.

The next body is the worldly body, and we see this in chapter 2. King Nebuchadnezzar has a dream of a huge body made up of four different materials, and the author describes this body from head to toe in seven parts. It is like the perfect worldly body. Daniel tells Nebuchadnezzar that these four materials and parts symbolize four successive nations, and that Nebuchadnezzar is the first: he is the head of gold of this statue.

The destiny of this body is that it is smashed to pieces by a stone that is cut out from a mountain. So the picture is that, in contrast to Daniel’s strong body in chapter 1, the worldly body, even though it is larger and more impressive, is destined for destruction.

Statues, Fires, and Beasts

In the next chapter, the worldly body continues. Nebuchadnezzar misinterprets the vision of the second chapter and makes a statue of himself, his body made out of gold, and requires everyone to bow down to the statue of his body. Notice he is requiring everyone else’s body to do something: to bow down. And if they don’t, their bodies will be thrown into a fiery furnace.

Daniel’s friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, don’t do it, and their bodies are thrown into a fiery furnace. Then the narrator tells us that the fire had not any power over the bodies of those men; the hair of their heads was not singed, and their cloaks were not harmed.

Remember this: we are told about their hair and their clothing, and we will see these two things again. The nature of these righteous bodies of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego that represent this corporate good body is that even when it is attacked, God protects it. It is interesting that in Isaiah, God describes the exile as a fiery furnace. So the readers themselves are currently in a fiery furnace in exile. In contrast, this worldly body is the kind of body that will burn people alive.

The next chapter opens up with the worldly body again. King Nebuchadnezzar’s head is hurting from a bad dream, and in this dream is a huge tree that is chopped down. He has to understand what it means, so he asks Daniel. Daniel tells him that he, King Nebuchadnezzar, is the tree, and that he will be cut down because he is so prideful. More than that, he is going to become like an animal crawling around.

Notice something will happen to his body: his body will become subhuman. This is the character of worldly empires. They aspire to godlike natures, but will ultimately be cut down, becoming animalistic. In their very attempts to become great, they become less than what they are, transforming into the very opposite. It is like Hitler thinking that he was a superior kind of person, but ending up acting as the most barbaric and subhuman. There is a reversal.

The narrator tells us that Nebuchadnezzar does become like an animal, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew long as eagles’ feathers and his nails were like birds’ claws. Notice the contrast with the righteous bodies of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, whose hair even in the fire was not damaged, while Nebuchadnezzar cannot even do the most basic grooming of his hair.

Notice also that there has been a progression. In the dream in chapter 2, King Nebuchadnezzar had this dream about what would happen in the future, that there would be the succession of kingdoms and that they would eventually be destroyed, but no damage happened then. Here, while his kingdom stays intact, King Nebuchadnezzar’s own body is attacked. We are moving forward.

Bowels, Lions, and Visions of God

In chapter 5, there is a new Babylonian ruler, Belshazzar, and he is having a feast. During this feast, God’s finger writes four words on the wall. When Belshazzar sees this, his bowels give way; he poops himself. Here we get a climactic and comedic moment in this theme of corporate bodies. Notice the worldly body further breaking down, the dirtiest part giving way.

And what is contrasted with this dirty body? God’s own body. The righteous body has thus far in the Book of Daniel been represented by righteous Israelites, but in some mysterious way the righteous body, this big corporate body that has been presented, includes God’s own body—his fingers. This is a theme that will develop into the body of Christ later in our story, but that is for another time. Here, this is almost the lowest the worldly body gets, and it is the highest the righteous body gets.

At the end of this scene, the kingdom is taken away from Belshazzar, and the Babylonians are defeated by the Median king Darius. The story of this body has continued: the bodies of Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar deteriorate, and their corporate body, the kingdom, is taken away.

The next chapter is Daniel in the lions’ den. When Daniel bows down on his knees to God, just like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, his body is thrown into the lions’ den but protected by God. Once again, the prophets describe what happened to Israel in exile as being attacked by lions.

The climax of this bodily theme comes in chapter 7, where Daniel has a dream. Daniel has become like King Nebuchadnezzar, having dreams about nations. But Daniel is different: he is a good, wise king, and so he acts differently when he gets these dreams.

He dreams of four animals who represent four kingdoms. But notice the deterioration. In King Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams, the nations were represented by a statue of a man’s body. Here that human body has become animals in Daniel’s dream: a bear, a lion, and a leopard. These animals are just like what Nebuchadnezzar became; this worldly body has become subhuman. These are composite creatures, not even pure lions or bears, but having multiple features from different kinds of animals. The last beast is so beastly that it is not even called an animal, just a beast.

This beast’s body is destroyed, and its body is burned with fire. This is the destiny and the character of this worldly body in rebellion against God’s good body.

What about the healthy, good body? In this climactic vision, that body is represented by God himself. He is called the Ancient of Days, and we see his body described. We are told two things about his body: we are told about his hair and his clothing. That is an allusion back to the Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego story. In this climactic vision, God chooses to describe himself in the same way as those faithful men, identifying with them at their bodies. It is a beautiful image, and a beautiful conclusion to this theme.

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