Discovery BoxDaniel 3:23-27 
Context3:23 But those three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell into the furnace 1 of blazing fire while still securely bound. 2
3:24 Then King Nebuchadnezzar was startled and quickly got up. He said to his ministers, “Wasn’t it three men that we tied up and threw 3 into 4 the fire?” They replied to the king, “For sure, O king.” 3:25 He answered, “But I see four men, untied and walking around in the midst of the fire! No harm has come to them! And the appearance of the fourth is like that of a god!” 5 3:26 Then Nebuchadnezzar approached the door of the furnace of blazing fire. He called out, 6 “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, servants of the most high God, come out! Come here!”
Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego emerged from the fire. 7 3:27 Once the satraps, prefects, governors, and ministers of the king had gathered around, they saw that those men were physically 8 unharmed by the fire. 9 The hair of their heads was not singed, nor were their trousers damaged. Not even the smell of fire was to be found on them!
1 tn Aram “into the midst of the furnace.” For stylistic reasons the words “the midst of” have been left untranslated.
2 sn The deuterocanonical writings known as The Prayer of Azariah and The Song of the Three present at this point a confession and petition for God’s forgiveness and a celebration of God’s grace for the three Jewish youths in the fiery furnace. Though not found in the Hebrew/Aramaic text of Daniel, these compositions do appear in the ancient Greek versions.
3 tn Aram “we threw…bound.”
4 tn Aram “into the midst of.”
5 sn The phrase like that of a god is in Aramaic “like that of a son of the gods.” Many patristic writers understood this phrase in a christological sense (i.e., “the Son of God”). But it should be remembered that these are words spoken by a pagan who is seeking to explain things from his own polytheistic frame of reference; for him the phrase “like a son of the gods” is equivalent to “like a divine being.”
6 tn Aram “answered and said.”
7 tn Aram “from the midst of the fire.” For stylistic reasons the words “the midst of” have been left untranslated.
8 tn Aram “in their bodies.”
9 tn Aram “the fire did not have power.”
