Daniel 1:6

1:6 As it turned out, ¹  among these young men ²  were some from Judah: ³  Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. ⁴ 

Daniel 4:4

Nebuchadnezzar Dreams of a Tree Chopped Down

4:4 (4:1) ⁵  I, Nebuchadnezzar, was relaxing in my home, ⁶  living luxuriously ⁷  in my palace.

[1:6]  ¹ tn Heb “and it happened that.”

[1:6]  ² tn Heb “among them”; the referent (the young men taken captive from Judah) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[1:6]  ³ tn Heb “the sons of Judah.”

[1:6]  ⁴ sn The names reflect a Jewish heritage. In Hebrew Daniel means “God is my judge”; Hananiah means “the Lord is gracious”; Mishael means “who is what God is?”; Azariah means “the Lord has helped.”

[4:4]  ⁵ sn This verse marks the beginning of chap. 4 in the Aramaic text of Daniel (see the note on 4:1). The Greek OT (LXX) has the following addition: “In the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign he said.” This date would suggest a link to the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. In general, the LXX of chapters 4-6 is very different from the MT, so much so that the following notes will call attention only to selected readings. In Daniel 4 the LXX lacks sizable portions of material in the MT (e.g., vv. 3-6, 31-32), includes sizable portions of material not in the MT (e.g., v. 14a, parts of vv. 16, 28), has a different order of some material (e.g., v. 8 after v. 9), and in some instances is vastly different from the MT (e.g., vv. 30, 34). Whether these differences are due to an excessively paraphrastic translation technique adopted for these chapters in the LXX, or are due to differences in the underlying Vorlage of the LXX, is a disputed matter. The latter seems more likely. There is a growing trend in modern scholarship to take the LXX of chapters 4-6 much more seriously than was the case in most earlier text-critical studies that considered this issue.

[4:4]  ⁶ tn Aram “my house.”

[4:4]  ⁷ tn Aram “happy.”