From Daniel 2

Cast: King, Astrologer, Daniel, Narrator

Narrator:1 In the second year of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams; his mind was troubled and he could not sleep.  So the king summoned the magicians, enchanters, sorcerers and astrologers to tell him what he had dreamed. When they came in and stood before the king,  he said to them,

King: I have had a dream that troubles me and I want to know what it means.

Astrologer: O king, live forever! Tell your servants the dream, and we will interpret it.

King: This is what I have firmly decided: If you do not tell me what my dream was and interpret it, I will have you cut into pieces and your houses turned into piles of rubble. But if you tell me the dream and explain it, you will receive from me gifts and rewards and great honor. So tell me the dream and interpret it for me.

Astrologer: Uhhhh…..Let the king tell his servants the dream, and we will interpret it.

King: You’re just trying to gain time, because you realize that this is what I have firmly decided:  If you do not tell me the dream, there is just one penalty for you. You have conspired to tell me misleading and wicked things, hoping the situation will change. So then, tell me the dream, and I will know that you can interpret it for me.

Astrologer: There is not a man on earth who can do what the king asks! No king, however great and mighty, has ever asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or astrologer.  What the king asks is too difficult. No one can reveal it to the king except the gods, and they do not live among men.”

King: That does it! I’m ordering the execution of every last one of you magicians, astrologers, wise men and scholars.

Narrator: So the decree was issued to put the wise men to death, and men were sent to look for Daniel and his friends too.  When Arioch, the commander of the king’s guard, had gone out to put to death the wise men of Babylon, Daniel spoke to him with wisdom and tact.

Daniel:  “Why did the king issue such a harsh decree?”

Narrator:  Arioch then explained the matter to Daniel. At this, Daniel went in to the king and asked for time, so that he might interpret the dream for him. Then Daniel returned to his house and explained the matter to his friends Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah.  He urged them to plead for mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery, so that he and his friends might not be executed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon. During the night the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision. Then Daniel praised the God of heaven and said:

Unison:
“Praise be to the name of God for ever and ever;
wisdom and power are his.

 21 He changes times and seasons;
he sets up kings and deposes them.
He gives wisdom to the wise
and knowledge to the discerning.

 22 He reveals deep and hidden things;
he knows what lies in darkness,
and light dwells with him.

 23 I thank and praise you, O God of my ancestors:
You have given me wisdom and power,
you have made known to me what we asked of you,
you have made known to us the dream of the king.”

Narrator:  Then Daniel went to Arioch, whom the king had appointed to execute the wise men of Babylon, and said to him,

Daniel: Do not execute the wise men of Babylon. Take me to the king, and I will interpret his dream for him.”

Narrator: Arioch took Daniel to the king at once and said, “I have found a man among the exiles from Judah who can tell the king what his dream means”….And Daniel said:

Daniel: No wise man, enchanter, magician or diviner can explain to the king the mystery he has asked about,  but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries. He has shown King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen in days to come….  As you were lying there, O king, your mind turned to things to come, and the revealer of mysteries showed you what is going to happen.  As for me, this mystery has been revealed to me, not because I have greater wisdom than other living men, but so that you, O king, may know the interpretation and that you may understand what went through your mind.  “You looked, O king, and there before you stood a large statue—an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance.  The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze,  its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were broken to pieces at the same time and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.

Narrator: Daniel explained to the king what the first symbols meant for his kingdom and the kingdoms to follow. But then Daniel went on to say, about the rock that became a mountain:

Daniel: The God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.  This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands—a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to pieces.”
Narrator: Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell prostrate before Daniel and paid him honor and ordered that an offering and incense be presented to him. The king said to Daniel,

King: Surely your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries, for you were able to reveal this mystery.

Narrator: Then the king placed Daniel in a high position and lavished many gifts on him. He made him ruler over the entire province of Babylon and placed him in charge of all its wise men.  Moreover, at Daniel’s request the king appointed Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego administrators over the province of Babylon, while Daniel himself remained at the royal court. And though the following dialog is not in the Bible, someone must surely have asked Daniel:

Astrologer: “So, tell us again: Whose kingdom is the fourth one, the one that will replace all earthly kingdoms without ever being replaced itself?

Daniel: The kingdom of the supreme God over all the earth, the God whom I serve.

Astrologer: You told the king that? That his kingdom was only temporary, and that all kingdoms will give way to another, final one? And he didn’t have you executed then and there for treason?

Daniel: As soon as I recounted his dream for him, I could tell by his reaction that my God had revealed it to me, correctly. The king was obviously so blown away that he couldn’t touch me.

Astrologer: But an eternal kingdom for your God, the God of you captive Jews, ruling forever? The God whose armies were defeated in Judea by the armies of our gods?

Daniel: The way your gods fight is not the way Israel’s God fights. You’ll see.

Astrologer: We see plenty already, in the stars, in the way that smoke ascends to heaven…

Daniel: –in the livers of sacrificial animals….

Astrologer: Of course, that too. And it must be working, because we’re tops in the Middle East. We’ve even beaten Egypt!

Daniel: But you didn’t see what the king had dreamed.

Astrologer: We were working on it. It was only a matter of time. We nearly had the feet part down, anyway. So, what was your secret for getting it so fast?

Daniel: No secret. Just prayer in a life and death situation. You don’t always have to be so clever to be wise.

Astrologer: No animal sacrifices, no examining livers or kidneys, no drugs, no chanting, no trances nor dances; you just pray, and then all this secret knowledge comes? So tell me, Mr. Smarty-sandals, what did I dream last night?

Daniel: Is that a matter of life and death now, too?

Astrologer: Nah. Just kidding.

Daniel: God revealing such detailed information as the king’s dream is the exception that proves the rule.

Astrologer: Oh? What rule is that?

Daniel: That you don’t have to know what all the future holds as long as you know the One who holds the future.

Astrologer: Profound. By which you mean your God, right? What’s this God’s name? You called him, “The Revealer of Mysteries?”

Daniel: The king himself called him that.

Astrologer: We Babylonians just love mysteries. But that only has me all the more concerned.

Daniel: Oh? What about?

Astrologer: You’ve heard about the Trojan horse?

Daniel: Sure. From Homer’s Iliad, the epic poem about the war between the Greeks and the Trojans, right?

Astrologer: Right.

Daniel: Why wouldn’t I remember it? You and I were in the same Contemporary Literature class in the king’s academy. What about it, by the way?

Astrologer: I wonder if your God hasn’t done to Babylon something like what the Greeks did to the Trojans, by leaving them a gift that they took inside their gates….

Daniel: …the giant wooden horse that turned out to be full of Greek soldiers. They snuck out at night, opened the gates and let their comrades into the city.

Astrologer: Thus the famous words, “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.”

Daniel: So, what’s your point?

Astrologer: The Trojans took the giant wooden horse it into their city, because they were so cocksure that they had won the war. Just like Babylon won the war against Judah and Jerusalem. And we took you guys home with us as trophies. Now I’m not so sure who’s the winner, who’s the invader, and who’s the invaded anymore. We should have been just as leery of your God bearing us gifts of captured Hebrews as the Trojans should have been about that giant wooden horse.

Daniel: And now you’re worried that us Hebrews are sort of a Trojan horse…..

Astrologer:….for your God. That’s right. I know I should be grateful, and not so perturbed. You did save our lives, after all. And thanks, by the way.

Daniel: You’re welcome.

Astrologer: And we all know why the king really set up that impossibly hard test at the risk of our lives, expecting us to tell him what he dreamt, as well as what it meant. How ridiculous!

Daniel: He likes to rule by sowing chaos, conflict and fear among his servants and subjects. It’s the oldest trick in the book.

Astrologer: Right. He likes to shake things up before anyone else around him gets too comfortable, powerful, or ambitious, to keep us forever off balance, rocking back on our heels. He probably had other advisers in mind already to replace us.

Daniel: Won’t they be disappointed!

Astrologer: But I still feel out of sorts.

Daniel: Oh?

Astrologer: Now I’m starting to wonder which gods really have the most power here. Your “Revealer of Mysteries” did his amazing work on our god, Marduk’s, turf. The gods aren’t supposed to do that! They’re supposed to respect each other’s turf, until they go to war with each other, that is.

Daniel: Revealing the king’s dream, you have to admit, that was pretty powerful. But “the Revealer of Mysteries” has shown up here before, when he called my ancestors, Abraham and Sarah, and told them to head west, perhaps at this very place where we’re standing. This is familiar turf for him.

Astrologer: That’s mind-boggling enough. But that’s not the worst of it, for us Babylonians at least. A God who can accomplish his purposes and reveal his power even through powerlessness and defeat, that’s a kind of power for which I was never taught nor trained. I can’t quite get my mind around it. And yet it chills my blood, because it turns Babylon’s very religion and politics on their heads. And that’s how the kingdom of your God, the kingdom of unhewn stone that Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream, will come and replace empires like ours, in a way of weakness and powerlessness that we don’t know how to fight. Our weapons and power don’t avail against that kind of power.

Daniel: You’ve been reading our prophets, have you?

Astrologer: No. But I suppose I should, so that I know what we’re up against. A God who fights and wins in ways that we take for defeat and powerlessness, that’s another mystery that’s starting to be revealed now. And you’ve known that all along, haven’t you?

Daniel: Of course. And that makes us captive Hebrews….

Astrologer:….a Trojan horse for your God.

Daniel: What are you so afraid of? It’s not like we want to kill or conquer anyone. We only mean you well.

Astrologer: That’s the other thing I don’t get! After all the terrible things we did to your people, you “mean us well.” You’re willing to serve the very people who did you such great wrong? I wasn’t trained nor taught for that kind of power, either. We’re going to have to watch you guys all the more closely.

Daniel: I welcome the scrutiny. I have nothing to hide, and so much to share.

Astrologer: And much yet to reveal, I suspect.

Daniel: I don’t do that. Our God does.

Astrologer: You’re scaring me all the more! Because I still don’t get this God of yours and his kingdom of captives and conquered people replacing our most powerful and victorious empires.

Daniel: Like I said, you really don’t have to be so clever to be wise.

Astrologer: How long do I have left to enjoy being the royal astrologer before your God’s giant rock comes down and replaces all kingdoms like ours?

Daniel: Like I said, again, you don’t have to know what all the future holds as long as you know the One who holds the future.

 

The End