You may know about Daniel, the guy noted for spending the night with a bunch of hungry lions and emerging the next morning unscathed.
The bigger story is that as a youth he was captured by an invading army, forcibly relocated to Babylon, stripped of his culture, indoctrinated with new philosophies, and forced to work for the king.
Through all this, he put God first and acquitted himself well, serving four kings from two kingdoms.
There’s a curious verse about Daniel: “Daniel remained there until the first year of King Cyrus.”
If he’s not there, where is he?
A clue is that also occur during the first year of Cyrus’s reign, some of the exiles are permitted to return to their homeland. Daniel would have been in his eighties at the time, but he could have made the journey. In fact, both Ezra and Nehemiah list a “Daniel” making the return trip.
Perhaps after years of faithful service to both God and king, Daniel is finally able to go home.
[See Daniel 1:21, 2 Chronicles 36:22-23, Ezra 1:1-2, Ezra 8:2, and Nehemiah 10:6.]
A lifelong student of the Bible, Peter DeHaan, PhD, wrote the 1,000-page website ABibleADay.com to encourage people to explore the Bible. His main blog and many books urge Christians to push past the status quo and reconsider how they practice their faith in every area of their lives.
