What Does Daniel 6:13 Mean?
Then they answered and said before the king, Daniel, who is among the children of the exile of Judah, does not set his taste upon you, O king, nor upon the bond you sealed, but seeks his petition three times in the day.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Then answered they and said before the king, That Daniel, which is of the children of the captivity of Judah, regardeth not thee, O king, nor the decree that thou hast signed, but maketh his petition three times a day.THE KEY
The officials frame Daniel’s continued seeking as disloyalty, but the Aramaic shows what their decree cannot stop: his request, he asks.
THE MEANING
This verse shows the pressure to let an authority define loyalty: the officials call Daniel’s repeated petition disregard because it continues beside the king’s decree. You can be named disloyal by a system that treats its command as the measure of all regard. Yet the petition remains visible as an act of seeking, not merely the meaning assigned to it by the accusation.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that an authority’s accusation settles what an act means: the officials call Daniel’s petition disregard, while the verse lets his repeated seeking remain visible in its own terms.
THE ROOT
בָּעוּתֵהּ בָּעֵא
bāʿuteh bāʿē
GROWS FROM
בעא
b-ʿ-ʾ
To ask, seek, or request.
The Aramaic places the request beside the verb for asking: his request, he asks. The wording reveals petition as ongoing seeking, and the three-times-a-day detail makes that seeking a pattern.
ALSO GROWS
bāʿē: He asks or seeks.
בָּעֵא
This is the verb behind the petition: the act is active asking.
bāʿûtā: A request or petition.
בָּעוּתָא
This noun names what is asked, keeping the request and the act of asking together.
לָא שָׂם עֲלָךְ
lā śām ʿălāḵ
GROWS FROM
שים
ś-y-m
To put, set, or place.
“does not set his taste upon” in this verse is lā śām ʿălāḵ. The accusation frames regard as a matter of placement: Daniel does not set the king before him. The next clause reveals what he continues doing, asking, again and again, so the charge is also about where attention is placed.
ALSO GROWS
śām: He puts, sets, or places.
שָׂם
This is the verb in the accusation, beneath the English wording regardeth not.
śîm lēv: Set the heart; attend to.
שִׂים לֵב
This Hebrew expression uses the same root to describe attention as something placed.
אֱסָרָא
ʾĕsārā
GROWS FROM
אסר
ʾ-s-r
To bind or tie; by extension, to prohibit.
The Aramaic word carries the sense of a binding prohibition. Set beside Daniel’s continuing request, the verse places a fixed legal bond beside an act of seeking that the accusation cannot make disappear.
ALSO GROWS
ʾāsar: To bind or tie.
אָסַר
The verb exposes the binding force held in the decree’s name.
ʾāsîr: A bound person; a prisoner.
אֲסִיר
This related word shows the root’s concrete image of someone held by a binding.
THE PATTERN
A ruling power can brand continued allegiance as defiance when it claims the right to define loyalty.
Now when Daniel perceived that the writing had been inscribed, he went into his house, and with his windows open in his upper room toward Jerusalem, he knelt on his knees three times in the day, and prayed, and extended his hands in thanks before his God, as he had done from before.But the midwives stood in awe of God, and did not do as the king of Egypt had spoken to them, but kept the boys alive.Then Peter and the other sent ones answered and said, We must obey God rather than humankind.THE THREAD
Then these men rushed together, and found Daniel seeking and pleading for favor before his God.The Aramaic word translated praying comes from the same root, בעא, meaning ask or seek, as petition in this verse. The accusers’ report echoes the very act they catch: Daniel continues to seek before his God.
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