Daniel 6:7-9 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

All the presidents, &c., have consulted to make a firm decree As Daniel's adversaries could have no advantage against him by any law now in being, they therefore contrive a new law, by which they hope to insnare him, and in such a matter as they knew they would be sure of doing it. They pretended that this law, which they wished to have enacted, was the result of mature deliberation; that all the presidents of the kingdom, the governors, princes, &c., had consulted together about it, and that they not only agreed to it, but advised it, for divers good causes and considerations; nay, they intimate to the king that it was carried nemine contradicente. All the presidents, say they, are of this mind, and yet we are sure that Daniel, the chief of the three presidents, did not agree to it; and we have reason to think that many more excepted against it, as absurd and unreasonable. Observe, reader, it is no new thing for that to be represented, and with great assurance too, as the sense of the nation, which is far from being so; and that which few approve of, is sometimes confidently said to be that which all agree to! These designing men, under colour of doing honour to the king, but really intending the ruin of his favourite, urge him to make one of the most absurd decrees that can well be imagined; a decree which would not only suspend by law all the exercise of every kind of religion through that vast empire, for the space of a month, (except any chose to worship the king, who thus inconsiderately, or impiously, suffered himself to be regarded as the only deity of his subjects,) but would prohibit under pain of death, to be inflicted in the most barbarous manner, any request being made from one man to another: “nay, the edict was so framed, that a child might have been condemned for asking bread of his father, or a starving beggar for craving relief.” Scott. And now, O king, say they, establish the decree, &c., according to the law of the Medes and Persians There was a law in this monarchy, that no ordinance or edict, made with the necessary formalities, and with the consent of the king's counsellors, could be revoked: the king himself had no power in this case. Diodorus Siculus tells us, lib. 4., that Darius, the last king of Persia, would have pardoned Charidemus after he was condemned to death, but could not reverse the law that had passed against him. We may observe the difference of style between this text and that of Esther 1:19. Here the words are, the law of the Medes and Persians, out of regard to the king, who was a Mede; there it is styled, the law of the Persians and Medes, the king being a Persian at that time: see Calmet and Lowth. Chardin says, that in Persia, when the king has condemned a person, it is no longer lawful to mention his name, or to intercede in his favour. Though the king were drunk, or beside himself, yet the decree must be executed; otherwise he would contradict himself, and the law admits of no contradiction. Wherefore King Darius signed the writing It is not much to be wondered at that Darius, who seems to have been a weak man, should sign the decree, as it appeared to be proposed in order to do him the highest honour, and to set him, as it were, upon an equality with the gods.