Daniel 6:7

All. Doubtless a lie, for it is questionable that all were consulted.

Whosoever shall ask a petition. A decree of this nature would be entirely alien to the Persians, who won the reputation of being largehearted in matters of religious tolerance.

It is unthinkable that a man like Cyrus would have signed such a decree. However, Darius the Mede evidently had a different background. We know little of the thinking of the Medes with respect to religious tolerance. Cyrus, the Persian king, rebuilt temples of nations destroyed by the Babylonians, and thereby showed his spirit of tolerance with regard to other peoples’ religious feelings and practices. On the other hand Darius I claimed that the False Smerdis, his predecessor, a Magian from Media who ruled for about half a year in 522 B.C., showed his spirit of intolerance by destroying temples. Although generalizations are subject to error, we must reckon with the possibility that the Medes, or at least some of their rulers, showed less religious tolerance than the Persians.

It has also been observed that the command to pray for one month to none but the king, though in this instance especially aimed at Daniel, may have been suggested by a national religious custom of earlier date among the Medes, according to which divine honors were rendered to the king. Herodotus (i. 199) remarks that Deioces, one of the earliest known kings of the Medes, had made his person the object of reverential awe in the eyes of his subjects by removing himself from the observation of the common man, in order to convince his people that he was different from them. That even Persian kings were willing occasionally to accept divine honors is evident from the fact that in Egypt they allowed divine attributes to be added to their names. Hieroglyphic inscriptions refer to Cambyses as the “son of Re” the sun-god, and to Darius as “the son of god.” Hence it is not necessary to go down in history to the Roman emperors to find the first historical parallels to the command referred to in Dan. 6:7, as some critical scholars have claimed.

Den of lions. Contemporary literature and works of art frequently depict kings of antiquity, such as those of Egypt, Assyria, and Persia, engaged in the sport of hunting wild animals. Game consisted chiefly of lions, but included also panthers, wild bulls, and elephants. Reports tell of vassal kings sending captured wild animals to their royal lords in Mesopotamia as tribute. There they were kept in menageries, as symbols of the monarch’s world power and for the amusement of the king and his friends. Although no examples of capital punishment by throwing the culprit before wild animals are known from contemporary records in Persian times, these sources speak of extraordinarily barbaric forms of capital punishment ordered by otherwise humane Persian kings.