Daniel in Babylon and the Rescue of Susanna

The years of the captivity were made glorious by what the prophets foretold and did, and above all by Daniel’s remarkable firmness in keeping the law, by the rescue of Susanna through the wisdom God gave, and by the other things that wisdom accomplished, which we will now relate in order. Daniel was taken prisoner under King Jehoiakim and brought to Babylon while still a very small child. Later, because of his good looks, he was given a place among the king’s servants, and with him Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. The king ordered that they be supplied with the finer kinds of food, and he made Ashpenaz the eunuch responsible for it. But Daniel remembered the traditions of his fathers, which forbade him to eat food from the table of a Gentile king, and he begged the eunuch to let him live on vegetables alone. Ashpenaz objected that the thinness that would follow might show that the king’s command had been disobeyed. But Daniel, trusting in God, promised that he would look better from living on vegetables than from eating the king’s delicacies. His words came true: the faces of those who were fed at the public expense could not begin to compare with those of Daniel and his friends. So the king raised them to honor and favor, and in a short time their good sense and wise conduct put them ahead of all who stood nearest to the king. [a]

About the same time Susanna, the wife of a man named Joakim, a woman of remarkable beauty, was desired by two elders. When she would not listen to their indecent proposals, they brought a false charge against her. These elders reported that a young man had been found with her in a secluded place, but that he had escaped from their hands with a young man’s quickness, since they were weak with age. The elders were believed, and Susanna was condemned by the verdict of the people. As she was being led away to be punished as the law required, Daniel, who was then twelve years old, rebuked the Jews for handing an innocent woman over to death, and he demanded that she be brought back to trial and her case heard again. The crowd of Jews who were present thought that a boy of an age that commands so little respect would not have dared so bold a step without an impulse from God. So they granted him what he asked and went back into council. The trial began again, and Daniel was allowed to take his place among the elders. He ordered the two accusers to be separated, and he asked each of them in turn under what kind of tree he had caught her in adultery. Their answers differed, and their lie was exposed. Susanna was acquitted, and the elders who had put an innocent woman in danger were condemned to death.