Under Which Tree?

There are two more stories about Daniel, and they are not about kings or furnaces at all. They are about a young man being clever, twice. The first one happened when Daniel was still young. In Babylon there was a rich and respected Jewish man named Joakim, and his wife was called Susanna. Her mother and father had brought her up carefully in the law of Moses, and she loved God, and she was beautiful. Their house had a big walled garden, and because Joakim was the most respected man among the Jews there, people came to his house all day with their arguments to be settled. That year two old men had been made judges over the people. They were at Joakim’s house every day. And they used to watch Susanna walking in her garden when everybody had gone home at midday — and both of them wanted her, and both of them were ashamed to say so, and both of them kept coming back to watch. And one hot afternoon they hid in the garden and caught her there alone, and told her that she must do wrong with them — and that if she refused, they would swear in court that they had caught her with a young man, and everybody would believe them, because they were the judges. And Susanna stood there and worked out exactly what it meant, and said so out loud: “I am caught either way. If I do this thing, it is death for me. And if I do not, I shall not escape out of your hands. But it is better for me to fall into your hands and not do it, than to sin in front of the Lord.” And then she screamed as loudly as she could. And the two old men shouted too — and one of them ran and opened the garden door, so that when the servants came running it looked as though somebody had just escaped that way.

So the next day there was a trial, in her own husband’s house, with everybody there. And the two judges stood up in front of the whole assembly and told their story: we were walking in the garden, and this woman was there with a young man, and we tried to catch him and he was too strong for us and ran out through the door. And the people believed them, because they were the elders of the people and the judges. And they condemned Susanna to death. And she cried out with a loud voice and said, “Everlasting God, you know the secret things; you know all things before they happen. You know that these men have lied about me. And here I am, to die — when I have done nothing of what they have wickedly said against me.” And as she was being led away to be killed, God stirred up the holy spirit of a young man there whose name was Daniel. And he shouted out over the crowd, “I am clean of this woman’s blood!” And everybody turned round and said, what do you mean? And Daniel stood in the middle of them and said, “Are you such fools, children of Israel? You have condemned a daughter of Israel without examining anything and without finding out the truth. Go back to the court — these men have lied about her.”

So back they all went. And Daniel did something nobody in that courtroom had thought of doing. He said: separate these two men, and keep them well apart from each other, and I will question them. And he called the first one in on his own and said: you have grown old in wickedness, and today your sins have caught up with you. You have given crooked judgments and condemned innocent people. Now then — “If you really saw her, tell me: under which tree did you see them?” And the old man said, “Under a mastic tree.” And Daniel had him taken out, and the other one brought in. And he asked him exactly the same question: “Now you tell me: under which tree did you catch them?” And the second old man said, “Under a holm oak.” A mastic is a little bush of a tree. A holm oak is enormous. The two men had not agreed on their story, because nobody had ever thought to ask them anything at all. And the whole assembly shouted out and blessed God, who saves those who hope in him. And Susanna went home alive with her mother and her father and her husband, because there was nothing shameful found in her. And it went hard with the two old men. Under the law of Moses, whoever swore a lie in court to get somebody killed had that same punishment turned back on himself — and that is what happened to them. And from that day on, everybody in Babylon listened to what young Daniel said.

The other story happened when Daniel was old, in the days of King Cyrus. The Babylonians had a great idol called Bel, and the king went every day to bow down to it. And every day the priests set out a colossal dinner in front of it: barrels of fine flour, forty sheep, and gallons and gallons of wine. And every morning it was all gone. And the king said to Daniel, “Why do you not bow down to Bel? Do you not think he is a living god? Look how much he eats and drinks every day!” And Daniel laughed and said, “Do not be fooled, O king. That thing is clay on the inside and bronze on the outside, and it has never eaten or drunk anything in its life.” And the king was angry, and called in the priests of Bel — there were seventy of them, besides their wives and children — and said: tell me who is eating this food, or you die; and if you can show me that Bel eats it, then Daniel dies for insulting him. And the priests were not worried in the least. They said: fine. Set out the food yourself, O king. Mix the wine yourself. Then shut the door and seal it with your own ring, and come back in the morning — and if Bel has not eaten every scrap, we will die for it. What they had not mentioned was the trapdoor under the table, which they and their families used every night.

So the king set out the dinner. And when the priests had all gone out, Daniel told his servants to bring ashes — and they scattered fine ash all over the floor of that temple, with only the king watching. And then they went out, and shut the door, and sealed it with the king’s ring. And in the night the priests came in through the trapdoor as usual, with their wives and their children, and ate the whole dinner and drank the wine. And the king got up early and came with Daniel, and looked at the seals: unbroken. And they opened the doors, and the table was bare, and the king shouted out, “Great are you, Bel! There is no trickery in you at all!” And Daniel laughed, and caught hold of the king before he could step inside, and said, “Look at the floor. Whose footprints are those?” And the king looked. And the whole floor of the temple, all through the ash, was covered with footprints — men’s and women’s and children’s, going to and from the table. And that was the end of Bel, and of his priests.

But the Babylonians also kept a great serpent — a dragon — in a temple, and worshiped that. And the king said to Daniel: you cannot tell me this one is not alive. Bow down to it. And Daniel said, “I will bow down to the Lord my God, because he is the living God. But give me your permission, O king, and I will kill that dragon without a sword and without a stick.” And the king said, you have it. So Daniel took pitch and fat and hair and boiled them together and rolled them into cakes, and fed the cakes to the dragon — and the dragon swelled up and burst. And Daniel said, “There — look at the thing you were worshiping.” And when the Babylonians heard about it they were furious, and came in a mob to the palace and said: the king has turned Jew — he has smashed Bel and killed the dragon and put the priests to death. Hand Daniel over to us, or we will kill you and your whole household. And the king could not hold out against them. So Daniel went into the lions’ den a second time — and this time there were seven lions in it, and this time they were not fed at all, and this time he was left there six whole days.

And now the strangest part of it. Hundreds of miles away in Judea there was a prophet named Habakkuk, who had made a stew and broken bread into a bowl and was carrying it out to the men working in his field. And a messenger of the Lord said to him, “Take that dinner you are carrying to Daniel, in Babylon, in the lions’ den.” And Habakkuk said, quite reasonably, “Lord — I have never seen Babylon in my life, and I have no idea where the den is.” So the messenger of the Lord took him by the top of his head, and carried him along by the hair, and set him down over the lions’ den in Babylon with his bowl of stew still in his hands. And Habakkuk called out, “Daniel! Daniel! Take the dinner God has sent you!” And Daniel said, “You have remembered me, God. You never leave the people who love you.” And he got up and ate; and the messenger of God put Habakkuk straight back in his own field. And on the seventh day the king came to the den to mourn for Daniel — and looked in, and there was Daniel, sitting among the lions. And the king cried out, “Great are you, Lord God of Daniel! And there is no other but you!” And he pulled him out; and the men who had done it were thrown in instead, and the lions, who had been hungry for a week, did not wait.