This was a very unpopular decision (see the Book of Jeremiah or Lamentations to hear some real weeping about it), but Daniel seems to do pretty okay for himself.Īnd that makes Daniel all the more heroic. Why Babylon? Well, Daniel, along with a whole bunch of people who in no way wanted to go, ended up in Babylon because, in 586 BCE, the Babylonian empire sacked Jerusalem, razed Solomon's Temple to the ground, and yoinked a ton of Israelites into exile. The Babylonian kingdom takes the gold, whereas the Medes, Persians, and Greeks need to content themselves with silver, bronze, and iron respectively. It's supposed to be better than the empires that follow it, anyway. But you know what? The Book of Daniel doesn't make it look that bad-we mean, aside from all the getting thrown into furnaces and lions dens. Ah, Babylon-the Biblical city standing for all things corrupt.
