Daniel's Answer to the King

Daniel is alive.

Surrounded by lions that could have destroyed him within moments, he remains untouched. His calm figure contrasts dramatically with the strength and movement of the animals around him. The lions are still dangerous, still powerful, but something greater has restrained them.

Daniel explains that God sent an angel and shut the lions’ mouths because he was found innocent. What was intended as punishment becomes a testimony of faith, courage, and divine protection.

The scene is not simply about surviving danger. It represents the strength required to remain true to your convictions when everything around you demands that you surrender them.

The king expected silence from the den. Instead, he received Daniel’s answer.

And in that moment, a place designed for death became the setting of one of history’s most enduring stories of faith overcoming fear.

Briton Rivière (1840–1920) was a British artist who specialized in painting animals. Rivière meticulously studied wildlife to perfect his compositions. He attended dissections at the London Zoological Gardens and kept the “body of a fine lioness” in his studio. In this work, he paints a scene from the biblical story of Daniel, a Jewish official in the service of the Persian king Darius. Darius had issued an edict that no man should pray to any God or man other Darius himself. Daniel defied the ruling and continued to pray toward Jerusalem, so Darius convicted him and threw him to the lions. The next day Daniel was still alive and unharmed. Rivière shows Daniel with his back turned on the lions in relaxed contemplation, eyes raised in deference to God. Here Daniel prefers to face death rather than forsake God. Excerpted from Bible Odyssey.