God’s Word for You
Daniel 3:1 An image of gold
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Friday, September 19, 2025
3:1 King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold, ninety feet high and nine feet wide. He set it up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon.
Following Daniel’s promotion to chief prefect over the wise men of Babylon, he and his companions faced a spiritual crisis regarding the First Commandment. Their king made a huge idol, so tall that it was impossible to miss or avoid. Was it a human image? There are some things to consider here:
1, The ratio of the dimensions is 60:6, or 10:1. An ordinary human being, whether a statue or a living person, is about 5:1 or 6:1 (height to width). If this were a statue only of a human body, it would be absurdly narrow and tall.
2, It is possible that this was a human statue, six cubits wide and therefore about 36 cubits tall (that is, about 54 feet tall) on top of a pedestal that was perhaps 24 cubits (36 feet) tall. It would be proportional, and still incredibly impressive, a golden statue on a tall golden pedestal.
3, It is equally possible that it was not a human form, or a complete human form, at all. The Aramaic noun tselem can also mean “obelisk.” This would be a tall, rectangular or tapering structure, which might have a human form carved or set upon its side, or simply a face or head on top of a tall obelisk. For comparison, the most famous American obelisk is the Washington Monument, which is a little more than 555 feet tall, or about six times taller than Nebuchadnezzar’s idol.
4, Another comparison: The historian Diodorus Siculas reports that on top of a temple in Babylon (the Belus temple) there were three statues, the largest of which was forty feet tall. This was a few decades before Christ’s birth.
5, A further comparison: The Wonder of the Ancient World known as the Colossus at Rhodes was a statue in the harbor that stood seventy cubits (105 feet) tall, some 15 feet taller than Nebuchadnezzar’s statue at Dura. Dura’s location is not definitely known, but there is a place called Tulul Dura about six miles southeast of the city of Babylon.
Why did the king do this? It was a temptation from Satan, mocking the image God gave in the vision of chapter 2. None of Nebuchadnezzar’s great conquests came in the earliest years of his reign, when the vision had taken place. But a decade or two later would see the king’s fame and power leading him to just this sort of arrogance. Luther says: “When tyrants are firmly entrenched, and have wealth and honor in abundance, and possess strong and beautiful homes, they are still not satisfied with all of this but soon grow arrogant and insolent and resort to all kinds of violence and mischief. They will not yield, and they will not listen. And when things do not come out as they wish, they rave and rage” (LW 19:218).
A heathen king has no concept of sins against the true God. What does the First Commandment mean to someone who bows down to dozens of gods? What did this idol in the plain of Dura mean? It was not a thing for the king to worship, but a way to draw the people into unified reverence for their king. But it was meaningless. “It was a lot of good and useless gold that those people owned. This was due to the fact that the empire was so large and so rich and that it had appropriated the wealth of all the countries.”
The sin Nebuchadnezzar was guilty of was beyond his understanding, although it was already revealed to him in the interpretation of the dream in chapter 2. The rock that smashed the statue was Christ. There is no separating God and Christ; the Father and the Son are unified and One God, along with the Holy Spirit (Deuteronomy 6:4; 2 Corinthians 13:14). As we confess in the Creed: “So the Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, the Holy Spirit is Lord; yet they are not three Lords, but one Lord.”
So we put our faith in Jesus and proclaim Jesus, because as Jesus himself said: “This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things. This passage proclaims the law in the sin of the king of Babylon. But it also warns us not to set up idols for ourselves, either out in the open that nobody can mistake, or secretly hidden in our hearts. If we have sinned against this commandment, even in our hearts and our unspoken thoughts, there is forgiveness in Christ. “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace” (Ephesians 1:7).
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.