The focus of the story moves away from Daniel to his three friends, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, a.k.a. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. The King erected a massive golden idol in what had to have been the equivalent of Millennium Park in Chicago and issued an order that whenever his orchestra started to play, everyone within earshot had to drop to their knees and worship the image. If anyone refused to bow in this manner, they faced immediate execution by being “thrown into a blazing furnace.”

The narrative story of Chapter 2 is incredibly significant as a follow up to Chapter 1, in it shows how Daniel and his three friends were sustained by God and established by God as influencers in Babylonian society.

The King has a dream that so disturbed him, he calls upon all his “magicians, enchanters, sorcerers and astrologers to tell him what he had dreamed.”

The prophecies against God’s people that we have just been reading about in the book of Ezekiel, and earlier in Jeremiah and Isaiah, have become reality. Babylon has defeated Judah, and we get the details of the insidious but ingenious plan of the victors to subjugate the conquered people.