God’s Word for You
Daniel 3:26-27 Unharmed, unsinged, unscorched
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Tuesday, September 30, 2025
26 Then Nebuchadnezzar went to the door of the blazing fiery furnace and said, “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out! Come!” Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came out from the fire. 27 And the satraps, the prefects, the governors, and the king’s counselors gathered together and looked at these men. They saw that the fire had not had any power over their bodies. The hair of their heads was not singed, their cloaks were not scorched, and there was no smell of fire on them.
It is at about this point, or between verses 23-25, that a pair of poems were inserted into the Greek translation of Daniel with hymns of praise that were said to have been sung by the three men. The first and shorter poem is called the Prayer of Azariah. The longer one is the Song of the Three Children (or of the Three Young Men). They are some of the best things in all of the apocryphal books. One of our older hymnals included them as one of the chanted songs (Canticles). These poems are not part of the inspired word of God; they were not written in Hebrew nor are they in a Hebrew style of poetry. But they can be useful and uplifting to read.
The men came out of the fire. Daniel uses a participle, what many of us were taught in grade school to be an ‘-ing’ word, to paint a mental picture of the scene. He says, “And there are Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, coming out from the middle of the blazing fire!” The language sets the moment in our mind’s eye so that this is how we see them: “There they are, coming out from the middle of the fire.” You can just imagine the roaring flames, curving and swirling around in the extra-hot furnace. Someone, perhaps another group of (terrified) soldiers, using hooks or some mechanism that is not described for us, pulling or pushing open what was apparently an access door which could not be opened from the inside, and as the door stood open and the fire roared and the flames swirled all around, the people and their king would have had to shield their eyes and faces from the heat, the way I often forget to do when I take a pizza out of the oven and get my glasses steamed up. But then, out of the flames, there are the three men walking out, not bound anymore, but also unharmed. Was Shadrach singing? Was Meshach smiling? Was Abednego waving? Those things we don’t know, but we do know that they were saved.
This was witnessed by many of the king’s advisors, too many to be denied by anyone. It is to the king’s credit that he won’t even try to hush it all up, but more about that when we hear the final verses of the chapter.
They were unsinged. This is one of the proofs that the flames had not even touched them:
1, Their bodies were not harmed at all. Not burned, not reddened or scorched. Their bodies were no different now than they were before they were thrown into the furnace.
2, Their hair was not singed. Usually hair or eyebrows are the first things to curl up and vanish when a man approaches fire too closely, but there they were, with their young brown, black, blond or red hair (there is of course no telling the color) just fine and intact. Perhaps they had, as we sing in the German original of “Silent Night,” “lockigen haar,” which means curly hair, but once again, there is no telling.
3, Their cloaks were not scorched. Not even the fringe of their robes had any trace of their having been near a fire. Not only had God protected the bodies of the men with his holy angel, but even their clothes were untouched.
4, There was no smell of fire on them. No one would know that they had passed through the flames unhurt unless they had seen it with their own eyes. And Nebuchadnezzar and his advisors had all seen it; every one of them.
In this way, the young Jews were very much like the children of Israel who passed through the Red Sea without getting wet. They were brought through by a miracle. God showed his omnipotent power. Which is more dangerous, water, or fire? As we heard the quotation from Professor Gerhard in the last section, we should repeat once again: “God never does something so great that he cannot do something still greater.”
Therefore if he can rescue his people from certain doom and destruction in the depths of the sea, or from the agonizing flames of a blazing fiery furnace, he is also pleased to rescue his people from the terrors of punishment in the flames and depths of hell. This is his greatest rescue, and he has reserved it for you, personally. How wonderful the Israelites felt after they escaped from Pharaoh’s chariots and horsemen! How wonderful Shadrach and his companions felt after they passed unhurt through the flames of Babylon! But you and I will also escape the inescapable torments of hell because the Son of God himself leapt down from heaven to set aside divine glory, to pick up frail humanity, and then to supply us with what we need: the perfection of his holy and sinless life, and the atoning sacrifice of his innocent suffering and death. And just as he rose from the grave, so also we shall rise, to live with him, unharmed, unsinged, unscorched, and without even the scent of fire on our clothing, as we laugh and sing and praise forevermore in heaven. Put your trust in Jesus, for all this is yours through faith.
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.