Justice and righteousness

When Daniel appears before Nebuchadnezzar to interpret the dream of the tree, he says this: “break away now from your sins by doing righteousness and from your iniquities by showing mercy to the poor” (Daniel 4:27). This is interesting on several levels.

First, Daniel isn’t just interpreting dreams for the emperor. He’s not an imperial toady. Though he is in the imperial administration, he also calls the emperor to repentance.

Second, the call to repentance takes the same form as the prophetic call to the kings of Israel and Judah – do righteousness, protect the vulnerable.

Third, prior to the exile, prophets typically don’t stand before Gentile kings saying things like this. They pronounce oracles against Gentile nations, but they don’t do it to their face.

That might seem fairly obvious, but, fourth: Israel’s pre-exilic prophets do call some kings to repentance to their faces, Jeremiah speaks directly to the latter-day kings of Judah, as Isaiah had done to Ahaz before. That suggests this analogy: In the pre-exilic situation, the prophet calls Israel’s kings to righteousness; in the exilic (and to a lesser degree, post-exilic) situation, they call Gentile emperors to repentance. And that suggests a further analogy: In the exilic and post-exilic period, the Gentile emperors have take over some of the role of the Davidic kings.

Finally, it’s worth noting that Daniel’s call to repentance parallels “righteousness” and “mercy.” And, interestingly, demands both of an emperor. Obviously, Daniel doesn’t consider “mercy” a “private” virtue. It is a political virtue, one that Nebuchadnezzar has failed to exhibit.