It’s a classic campfire story – the mighty Babylonian king, and the humble Hebrew prophet. The high spirits of the lavish banquet at the royal court which turn to horror as a mysterious hand appears from thin air and writes a strange message on the wall. The entry of the simpering Magi who are pathetically unable to interpret it’s meaning, and ultimately the arrival of the reluctant but perspicacious hero.
Daniel, the legendary underdog hero, the man who will go on to be the survivor of the infamous Lions’ Den, he whose friends miraculously withstood the excoriating heat of the furnace, uses a fiendishly clever cryptic code breaking technique to decipher the strange message, and having done so delivers the dire warning – ‘your days are numbered, you’ve been weighed and found wanting, your kingdom will be divided up and handed to your enemies’. Later that night, the King is toppled, but not before Daniel is richly rewarded.
There has always been the need for people to speak truth to power, to point out when there is a problem, whether its popular to do so or not. The stories of those with the guts to decipher the writing on the wall (however reluctantly) don’t usually end with them being promoted to ‘third in the kingdom’ though, it’s more likely that they will find themselves in a metaphorical Lions’ Den. The message of the myth however, is not one which should comfort kingdoms.
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