God’s Word for You

Daniel 5:31 Darius the Mede

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Saturday, October 25, 2025

31 Then Darius the Mede took over the kingdom, at the age of sixty-two.

There are several accounts of the fall of Babylon. These include the Nabonidus Chronicle and the Cyrus Cylinder, both of these are clay tablets written after the Persian victory. There is also the biography of Cyrus by Xenophon (the Cyropaedia), and also an account written later by Herodotus.

More reliably there are also prophecies about the fall of Babylon in Isaiah 47 and 48, and of course the account before us in the last verse of Daniel 5 (in Hebrew manuscripts, the first verse of chapter 6), written at the time and from within the palace itself. These accounts show that a Persian army set up camp near the city wall in the summer or autumn of 539 BC. The commanding general developed a plan to divert the channel of the Euphrates that flowed into the city. By pretending to build siege works in the form of military-seeming trenches here and there around the walls, he waited for a special night of national celebration of drinking—the one depicted for us by Daniel. Then some of the earthen walls were broken through, the river was diverted, and the soldiers of Persia walked into the city of Babylon with hardly any bloodshed at all. And that October night, Babylon fell to Persia.

King Cyrus of Persia was not there yet, and since there was no one named Darius at this time it was for a long time thought that there was an error here in Daniel, and that “Darius the Mede” in our text was a mistake for King Darius I of Babylon who reigned a few decades later. But Daniel calls a man who ruled as a regent or under-king at this time in Babylon, Darius. Who was this man?

The identity of Darius seems to fit a man named Gobryas (Γoβρύας), but we should also explain that there was another man in the story at this time, who was also called Gobryas. That other man was also known as Ugbaru (Gobryas in Greek). He was the general who was in command when Babylon fell. He died less than a month after the city fell, and it is unlikely, in fact, impossible, that he would be the Darius that Daniel describes.

Gubaru (Greek Gobryas, just like the previous man) was made regent after the death of Ugbaru. Born in 601, this Gobryas would have been 62 years old when he became regent. He is the best candidate to be the Darius that Daniel describes.

In this verse, we have a gospel proclamation, for the Persian king Cyrus was now on his way to becoming the ruler of all of Babylon’s former locations. It would be a few years before Cyrus himself would take over personally in Babylon. But he was the one who would set the Jews free and send them back to Judea. Then, after one last prophecy from Malachi, the Lord would fall silent for four hundred years until the coming of the Savior.

This verse has another very minor note of significance, in that Darius was 62 when he began to rule over Babylon. I myself am less than a year from turning 62, and Martin Luther was 62 when he died. It is a reminder for me and maybe for you, too, that we do not know what the Lord has in mind for us in the future. Maybe someone reading or listening is a very long way from 62; a few may have put 62 behind them already. But whatever we have in store, the Lord is always with us, and therefore we pray that he will use whatever we have to offer in the service of his kingdom.

What though the fragrant breezes
Blow soft o’er distant isles
Though every vista pleases
Yet sin the land defiles
In vain with lavish kindness
The gifts of God are strown
The heathen in their blindness
Bow down to wood and stone.

Can we whose souls are lighted
With wisdom from on high,
Can they to those benighted
The lamp of life deny?
Salvation! O salvation!
The joyful sound proclaim,
Till each remotest nation
Has learned Messiah’s Name.

Reginal Heber (1783-1826)

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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