Daniel 3:25

25. The construction of the Babylonian furnace in which there is monumental evidence that high criminals were sometimes executed is not well understood. There seems to have been a side door into which the king could look. Within the fires the astonished king sees not only three men walking unharmed, but another with them, “and the aspect of the fourth is like a son of the gods.” Was this fourth Gibil-Nusku, the god of fire and the “messenger” of Bel, who thus expresses the good will of the Babylonian god toward these men? No; the king is logical enough to see, at least for the moment, that this is the messenger of Jehovah (Daniel 3:28), and therefore that this supreme lord of fire is a greater deity than even Marduk himself. This deliverance of the three Hebrew children has stimulated the imagination of a multitude of artists and poets; so even Caedman sang:

Then was it in the oven

When the angel came

Windy and winsome to the weather likest

when there in summer’s tide,

is sent a falling of drops in the day’s span

a warm shower of the clouds.

So Samuel Wesley (1724) paraphrased the narrative:

Praise we forever thy all-glorious Name,

O Son of God, descending from the Skies

In Form of Man to quell the raging Flame,

Whose Presence makes of Hell a Paradise.