Time and time again, God humiliates the Babylon rulers. It's a wonder that we are all not destroyed. One of the things that caught my attention was that Bel was killed that very night. I'm sure that it wasn't just a surprise that Darius came to rule...Bel must have known about the army that was outside his walls, yet he thought how powerful he was, that he had a party with a thousand of his lords. Which begs the question, if Bel had repented, would Darius have failed in his conquering of the Babylonian kingdom?
The other thing that impressed me was that Daniel, when offered a purple robe and to be the next in line for the kingdom, refused those things. I think most people in the modern age would chalk it up to "hey, I'm doing God's work, and now He is rewarding me for it." They would take the reward and run with it. But here Daniel doesn't. Daniel eschews these rewards and delivers God's message. Should we be the same? A theory is that if we do start to think that God is rewarding us through earthly things for being righteous and spreading his message, then how much are we doing this because of God's reward, rather than because of love for Him? How would our message be compromised however slight if we tie our response to God with what material things He is going to be blessing us with?
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