Daniel 6:16
Daniel 6:1616So the king gave the order, and they brought Daniel and threw him into the den of lions. The king said to Daniel, “May your God, whom you serve continually, deliver you!”
Another well-known loyalty narrative — Daniel keeps praying to Jehovah when the law forbids it, and is delivered. The Watchtower applies it to obeying God rather than men, particularly where government restrictions conflict with the preaching work.
Darius describes Daniel as one who serves his God continually, and the Aramaic verb is again pelach — the reserved religious service that runs through this book. Daniel is prepared to be eaten by lions rather than redirect that service, and the king, watching from outside, identifies it as the defining fact about him. By the time we reach chapter 7, the reader has been shown twice, at maximum cost, what this word covers. Which is what makes land. There the son of man receives the same service from all peoples, nations and language groups, permanently. Daniel wrote both chapters. He is not being careless with a word he has just used to define martyrdom. Compare , .