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wisdom no trace can anywhere be found. What Ezekiel says of Daniel in both places agrees perfectly with the Daniel of this book. When he (Eze 28:3) says of the king of Tyre, “Thou regardest thyself as wiser than Daniel, there is nothing secret that is hidden from thee,” the reference to Daniel cannot be denied, to whom God granted an insight into all manner of visions and dreams, so that he excelled ten times all the wise men of Babylon in wisdom (Dan 1:17-20); and therefore Nebuchadnezzar (Dan 4:6 9) and the queen (Dan 5:11) regarded him as endowed with the spirit and the wisdom of the gods, which the ruler of Tyre in vain self-idolatry attributed to himself. The opinion pronounced regarding Daniel in Eze 14:14, Eze 14:20, refers without a doubt also to the Daniel of this book. Ezekiel names Noah, Daniel, and Job as pious men, who by their righteousness before God in the midst of severe judgments saved their souls, i.e., their lives. If his discourse was intended to make any impression on his hearers, then the facts regarding this saving of their lives must have been well known. Record of this was found in the Holy Scriptures in the case of Noah and Job, but of a Daniel of antiquity nothing was at all communicated. On the contrary, Ezekiel's audience could not but at once think of Daniel, who not only refused, from reverence for the law of God, to eat of the food from the king's table, thereby exposing his life to danger, and who was therefore blessed of God with both bodily and mental health, but who also, when the decree had gone forth that the wise men who could not show to Nebuchadnezzar his dream should be put to death, in the firm faith that God would by prayer reveal to him the king's dream, saved his won life and that of his fellows, and in consequence of his interpretation of the dream revealed to him by God, was appointed ruler over the whole province of Babylon and chief over all the wise men of Babylon, so that his name was known in all the kingdom, and his fidelity to the law of God and his righteousness were praised by all the captives of Judah in Chaldea.
Thus it stands with respect to the external evidences against the genuineness of the book of Daniel. Its place in the canon among the Kethubîm corresponds with the place which Daniel occupied in the kingdom of God under the Old Testament; the alleged want of references to the book and its prophecies in Zechariah and in the book of Jesus Sirach is, when closely examined, not really the case: not only Jesus Sirach and Zechariah knew and understood