Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego

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This section describes the characters Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego, from the Book of Daniel, as historical figures. The historicity of Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego, which is a subject of dispute, is discussed at Book of Daniel. This section describes them within the setting of the history that the Bible describes.

Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego were three friends of the prophet Daniel in the Bible. Like him they were youths from the Jewish nobility. At the first deportation of the Jews by Nebuchadnezzar (the kingdom of Israel had come to an end nearly a century before at the hands of the Assyrians), or immediately after his victory over the Egyptians at the second battle of Carchemish, in the fourth year of the reign of Jehoiakim (B.C. 606), these three and Daniel were among the Jewish young nobility carried off to Babylon (probably as hostages to ensure the loyalty of Judah's king and advisors), along with some of the vessels of the temple. They were subsequently evaluated and chosen for their intellect and beauty, to be trained as Chaldeans (members of the class of the magi: astrologers, sorcerers, enchanters and magicians), who constituted the ranks of the advisors to the Babylonian court.

At one point early on in their training, they were assigned a daily amount of food and wine from the king's own table. Following Daniel's lead, they asked for permission not to eat the food, which had been offered to idols and was therefor unclean according to their laws. But the official in charge of them feared that if the king saw them looking ill, he might face execution. So they asked for a ten-day test: they would be given nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. At the end of the ten days, they would be compared with the young men who ate the royal food and treated accordingly. The test was conducted, and at the end of ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food.

Some time later, King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold and set it up in Babylon. He ordered that whenever the people heard the sound of the "horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, pipes, and all kinds of music," they would bow down and worship the image or else be thrown into a blazing furnace.

But Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego would not bow down or worship the image. Some of the king's astrologers told him so, and he ordered that they be brought before them. He questioned them and repeated his threat, but the three men insisted that they would not worship the idol, faithful that their God would save them. Angry, the king ordered that the furnace be made seven times hotter than usual and that the three men be tied up and thrown in.

The flames were so hot that the soldiers who threw them in were killed on the spot. But when King Nebuchadnezzar looked in he saw Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego walking around unbound and unharmed, along with a fourth man whom the king said looked "like a son of the gods." (Daniel 3:25) (The fourth man is believed to have been either an angel or a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus Christ).

The king called to them to come out, and they did so completely unharmed, not even smelling of smoke or fire. So the king lauded their faith and decreed that anyone who spoke against the God of Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego would be "cut to pieces and their houses turned to piles of rubble."