Did Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego know they would be delivered from the furnace?

An image had been shown to this king once before, in a dream: a figure of many metals, and he was told he was its head of gold and that kingdoms of baser metal would rise after him. The one he put up himself he made gold all the way down. It stood ninety feet high on a plain in the province of Babylon, and every official in the empire had been ordered there to dedicate it — the governors, the judges, the treasurers, the captains, and every other man who ran a province. A herald read the terms out. There was no exception for anyone's nation or language: when the music played, every person present was to fall down and worship the image, and anyone who did not would be thrown that same hour into a burning furnace. The horns and the pipes and the harps sounded, and the plain went down.

Three of the officials there were Jewish captives the king had promoted himself — Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, set over the affairs of the province of Babylon. They had been summoned like every other official, to the dedication of an image, and they came — obeying the king as far as they honestly could. Absence would have kept them from bowing; holding office, they took themselves to be obliged to refuse in the open. When the plain went down, they did not.

Some of the Chaldeans came forward and accused them — perhaps the astrologers who went by that name, perhaps men who wanted their offices for themselves. They opened with O king, live for ever, reminded him of his own decree and its penalty, and then named the three. They made a point of the promotion. Here were foreigners and captives whom the king had set over the province of Babylon himself, which made the disobedience look like ingratitude and made it a bad example besides. Nebuchadnezzar sent for them in a rage. Then he did something his own decree did not oblige him to do: he offered them a second chance. If they would worship the image when the music played, their earlier failure would be pardoned; if not, the furnace, with no reprieve at all. And he put a challenge under the offer — and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?

Their accusers had opened with a compliment. The three did not. O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter, they said, which sounds like sullenness and is not. They meant that they had no need of time — they were not casting about for the right words. The king had made his mind up and so had they, and there was nothing left in it to argue about.

Then they answered the challenge. If it be so — if it comes to the furnace — our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace. Able: the claim is about what he can do, and it is aimed straight at the question the king had just asked. He could keep them out of the fire, or keep them unhurt inside it, or bring them out of it afterwards. How they pictured it going is not recorded. What they had to reason from was what he had done before — the Red sea opening for their own people while the enemy army behind them drowned.

The sentence does not stop at able. It goes on: and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. Deliverance is one word there covering two distances: the near one was coming out of that furnace alive, and the far one was being out of the king's hand altogether — and only the far one was certain. The near one was a hope rather than a forecast, and the hope had grounds — what he had done in cases like theirs before, the honour it would do his name in front of a plain full of idolaters, and chiefly the king's open defiance and blasphemy, which they had reason to think would not be allowed to pass. But it was a hope and no more than that: no foresight of a certain rescue, no secret word from God promising one, no assurance of it. The far one held whatever happened, because a king's hand only reaches so far — he can torment a body and kill it, and after that there is nothing further he can do, and they are out of his reach. Deliverance from death, or deliverance in death: at that distance, either way it is deliverance.

And the next sentence out of their mouths cut the hope loose from the refusal. They had just finished saying he could bring them out of the fire. But if not, they said — if the rescue they hoped for should not come, if he should not choose to bring them out — be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up. Whether he brought them out or not, they would not bow. The rescue they were content to leave with God; the bowing they were not leaving open at all. Their refusal rested on two things. One was God's power and his providence over them. The other was the cause itself — his glory, and bearing witness to the true faith with their lives.

The terror of the furnace did not change their purpose, and the furnace was not the only thing pulling at it. There was a case to be made for bowing, and had they reasoned it out on ordinary human terms, much could have been said. They were not being asked to deny their own God, or to say out loud that the image was a god. Only to bow — and a man can bow with his heart held back and privately reserved for the God of Israel. It was one action, it would be over in a minute, and then the danger would be gone. They were under an absolute king and were captives besides, so plainly they would be acting under duress. And they were young men and rising men: bow, and they keep their positions, and stay in a position to do their people in Babylon a great deal of good for a long time.

They knew they must obey God rather than man, and suffer rather than sin. They must not do evil so that good might come of it. And all of it runs up against the second of the ten commandments, which says not to bow down to images and not to worship them. The bowing was the whole of what was being asked, and they would not give idolatry even that much outward consent.

The king ordered the furnace made as hot as it could be made. The mightiest men in his army bound the three and threw them in, coats and turbans and all. The flame killed the soldiers who threw them. Then the king rose up in haste and went to look. He had watched three men go in tied, and he counted four; he asked his counsellors whether he had the number wrong, and they told him he did not. The men were loose — they had gone in bound. They were walking about in the middle of the fire and in no hurry to come out of it, the way a man takes a walk in a garden. And the form of the fourth, the king said, was like a son of the gods.

Then the man who had asked who that God was went to the mouth of the furnace himself and called them out as servants of the most high God. They walked out with nothing burnt. The princes and the governors and every great man who had been summoned to that plain to bow gathered round and inspected them — men with no reason to favour them — and found not a hair of their heads singed, their clothes unchanged, not even the smell of the fire on them.

Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, the king said — theirs, not his. God had sent his angel, he said, and delivered the men who trusted him; the angel is what he now called the fourth figure in the fire. They had changed the king's word and yielded their bodies rather than serve any god but their own. He made a decree that no one in the empire was to speak against that God, because there was no other god able to deliver after this sort — not even the golden image he had set up himself. And he promoted the three in the province of Babylon. It was not a conversion. He did not call their God his own and he did not give up his own gods; the confession was forced out of him by what he had just seen. God can get that much out of a man who had been ready to curse him to his face.

Nothing they said put God under any obligation to bring them out. They knew what he was able to do; they hoped that he would bring them out; and the one part of it that was theirs to settle they had settled themselves. Fire burns people, and they came out of it alive: that was a miracle of one kind. Being held back from that single bow was as great a miracle of another kind, and it was the grace of God that carried them through that refusal. That miracle did not begin in front of the furnace. Their minds were made up before the music ever played, and everything they said and did after that was the one decision holding.

The king had asked who that God was that could deliver them out of his hands. They answered him before they knew how it would end: our God is able, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. By the time it was over he was saying it himself — that there is no other God that can deliver after this sort.