Daniel 3:22,23 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Because the king's commandment was urgent That they should despatch them quickly, and be sure to do it effectually; and they therefore resolved to go to the very mouth of the furnace, that they might throw them into the midst of it; and were hasty and precipitate in executing their orders, and did not take proper care for themselves against the violence of the heat. The flame of the fire slew those men that took up Shadrach, &c. The apocryphal additions to the book of Daniel say, that the flame ascended forty-nine cubits above the month of the furnace. Probably God ordered it so, that the wind blew the flame directly upon them. Thus did God immediately plead the cause of his injured servants, and take vengeance for them on their persecutors, whom he punished not only in the very act of their sin, but by their sin. But these men were only the instruments of this cruelty: he that commanded them to do this had the greater sin; yet they suffered justly for executing an unjust decree: a decree which, it is very likely, they executed with pleasure. As to Nebuchadnezzar himself, he was referred for a future reckoning. There is a day coming when proud tyrants will be punished, not only for the cruelties they have been guilty of, but for employing those about them in their cruelties, and so exposing them to the judgments of God. It is probable, the noise occasioned by what befell these men drew Nebuchadnezzar to the place where the furnace was, where he beheld what is related in the following verses. These three men fell down bound, &c. All this is expressed with emphasis, to make the power of God more glorious in their preservation; for that flame which slew the executioners, might much more easily have killed them, even before they fell down.