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Then these men said to themselves, “We shall find no grounds for accusation against this Daniel except in connection with the law of his God.” So these ministers and satraps stormed in to the king and said to him, “King Darius, live forever! [a](A)All the ministers of the kingdom, the prefects, satraps, counselors, and governors agree that the following prohibition ought to be put in force by royal decree: for thirty days, whoever makes a petition to anyone, divine or human, except to you, O king, shall be thrown into a den of lions. Now, O king, let the prohibition be issued over your signature, immutable and irrevocable[b] according to the law of the Medes and Persians.” 10 So King Darius signed the prohibition into law.

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Footnotes

  1. 6:8–11 The Jews of the second century B.C. could relate the king’s attempt to force upon them, under pain of death, the worship of a foreign deity to the decrees of Antiochus IV; cf. 1 Mc 1:41–50.
  2. 6:9 Immutable and irrevocable: Est 1:19 and 8:8 also refer to the immutability of Medo-Persian laws. The same idea is found in the historian Diodorus Siculus with reference to the time of Darius III (335–331 B.C.), the last of the Persian kings. Cf. Dn 6:13, 16.