There is a man in
your kingdom in whom is the spirit of the holy gods. In the days of your
father, light and understanding and wisdom like the wisdom of the gods were
found in him, and King Nebuchadnezzar, your father—your father the king—made
him chief of the magicians, enchanters, Chaldeans, and astrologers, because an
excellent spirit, knowledge, and understanding to interpret dreams, explain
riddles, and solve problems were found in this Daniel, whom the king named
Belteshazzar. Now let Daniel be called, and he will show the interpretation.”
It should be noted that last night of
the Babylonian empire, in stunned deference they revert to calling Belteshazzar
Daniel! But later under the Persian we find that the Belteshazzar name
continued to stick (10:1-2). So why doesn’t Daniel make an issue of it? Was he
really intimidated by his captors? I don’t think so, he had a lot of leverage
in the dream interpretation gig, yet he was respectful. It’s like he knew who
he was in the Lord and nothing else mattered even as “third ruler in the
kingdom”.
While I am not justifying the practice
of naming as a show of power and control, I do ask the question what difference
it makes when we know who we really are…or perhaps whose we are. It didn’t seem
to bother Daniel and company. He was following in the footsteps of Joseph who,
when he was taken from the dungeon and appeared before Pharaoh, was given a new
name (and a hyphenated one at that) Zaphenath-paneah
(Genesis 41:45).
Sometimes we get stuck with a bad name
at the hands of our parents , take Phineas’ son for example, “And she named the child Ichabod,
saying, ‘The glory has departed from Israel!’ because the ark of God had been
captured and because of her father-in-law and her husband.” (1 Samuel 4:21)
He was named “No glory” right from the start—ouch! Or perhaps we could think of
Nabal ” in 1 Samuel 25 whose name means “fool”, as his wife pointed out
to David, “Let not my lord regard this worthless
fellow, Nabal, for as his name is, so is he. Nabal is his name, and folly is
with him…” (v.25) Or what about Jacob the “heel-grabber”? Or Isaac (laughter), Issachar (wages), or Jabez (caused pain)? The possibilities are nearly endless.
So are we doomed to be only what
others have named us to be? No, we have a choice. We can always respond to God's love and live for his glory no matter what our past might suggest. Nabal had an opportunity to
make a wise and diplomatic decision but chose not to. Jacob was concerned about
the things of God, but had to learn to surrender to God’s plan and timing. By
the way, God changed his name to Israel. God is in the business of changing
names, bad names for good and good names for better.
The question facing us is,
will we receive his blessing or insist on our own way?
More on this next time!
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