But Deliver Us from the Evil One

I. The Man with Two Names

His mother called him "YHWH helps". Babylon called him servant of Nebo.

Azariah had been carried off as a boy and renamed at court — Abednego he was to be called, after a god of his conquerors — and under that borrowed name he had risen to administrator over the province of Babylon, together with his two friends.1

It was not his first refusal at this court: as an apprentice he had already turned down the royal table and thrived on vegetables.2 He had been one of the four in the night of the death sentence, when mercy was sought from the God of heaven.3 The king who wanted to kill them then had afterwards appointed them himself.

Now that same king has had an image set up in the valley of Dura, 60 cubits high, of gold.4 Everyone in the empire who holds an office has been summoned; the text lists the functions like a protocol, and then the instruments, in full, again and again — horn, flute, zither, the whole orchestra. The herald has proclaimed the sanction along with it: whoever does not fall down and worship will in that same hour be thrown into the burning fiery furnace.5 Then the music strikes up, and the plain falls flat. One field of bowed backs, from horizon to horizon.

Three men stand.

There are Chaldeans who see it and come to report it, by name and surname and with the rank the king himself gave them: these men, O king, pay no heed to you.6 Azariah is fetched, between his two friends.

II. "But If Not"

The king is furious, but he begins with a question — is it on purpose, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego? — and he gives them one more chance: the music will sound again, and whoever falls down then has nothing to fear. And then, in the middle of his own throne room, he asks the question this whole chapter turns on:

"And who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands?"7

The answer of the three is courteous and unbending at once. To this question we need give you no answer, they say. And then they give it anyway — in two sentences that have never come apart since:

"Our God, whom we revere, is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not — be it known to you, O king: we do not revere your gods, and the golden image that you have set up we do not worship."8

But if not. They do not acquit their God of the power to save, and they do not hang their loyalty on the outcome. Whatever comes out of that furnace, their answer is already settled.

The king's face changes. The furnace is heated seven times hotter than usual; the strongest soldiers of the army bind the three — with cloaks, trousers, caps and all, so hasty is it — and carry them up the steps. The flame leaps out and kills the bearers. And the three fall, bound, into the fire.9

III. The Fourth

Then the king rises in haste.

He asks his counselors, and one hears in the question that he does not trust his eyes: did we not throw three men bound into the fire? Certainly, O king.

"Look, I see four men, loose, walking in the middle of the fire, and there is no harm on them — and the form of the fourth is like a son of the gods."10

Four. Loose. Walking. Every word of that sentence is a small report from a world the furnace knows nothing about: one has been added, the ropes are gone, and inside there is no screaming but walking.

The king goes to the opening and calls the three out, by their names and by a title he did not have for them an hour earlier: servants of the Most High God. They come out, and the grandees of the empire crowd around them: the fire has had no power over their bodies, not a hair of their head is singed, their cloaks are unchanged, there is not even a smell of burning on them.11 The only thing the fire found on them was the ropes.12 About the fourth the story is silent.

And then Nebuchadnezzar answers his own question of that morning, out loud, before his whole court:

"Praised be the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants — who trusted in Him, defied the king's command and yielded up their bodies, because they would not revere any god except their own God."13

Azariah stands outside, in the same clothes in which he was bound. He is delivered — and the fire burned. No one took him out; he was in it, and inside Someone walked beside him.

The empire that wanted to burn him that morning promotes him before evening.14 He goes back to work in Babylon, under his borrowed name, in the province where everyone now knows what his real one means.

IV. The Child's Petition

The child who prays this prayer says at the close: but deliver us from the evil one. Snatch us away — the verb is that of a hand that grabs and pulls away, and the direction is from: away from someone.15

There is a haste in that snatching away that the tidy "deliver" no longer has: it is the verb of the hand that snatches a child off the road because something is coming — first the grip, only then the explanation.

For that is what the petition names: someone. No era, no circumstance, no instructive period to be sat out — a person, with an article. Evil once entered Scripture as half the name of a tree;16 at the close of this prayer it has acquired a face, and the child asks the Father to stand in between.

And this petition is the only one of the prayer of which it is certain that the Son prayed it over the children Himself, in the night before his own fire:

"I do not pray that You take them out of the world, but that You keep them from the evil one."17

Not take away — keep. Whoever comes out of the furnace of Babylon recognizes the form: it is possible to be delivered without being taken away, when Someone goes along. What happened there once, in fire and before an audience, the Son here prays down over everyone who belongs to Him.18

V. The Banner

The petition concerning the evil one has a day in Exodus that tells it in advance, and it begins at a spring that is not there.

Rephidim. No water, a people on the point of stoning the one who brought them here, and under all that shouting one sentence that clings to the place like a name: is YHWH in our midst, or not?19 That same day Amalek comes. No cause is given and no declaration of war; it says that he came and fought against Israel — there, at the place of the question.20

Joshua gets men and the valley. Moses climbs the hill with the staff of God in his hand, and the battle below turns out to be decided above: as long as his hands are raised, Israel prevails; if they drop, Amalek prevails. Toward evening the old man's arms are leaden; two men set him on a stone and hold his hands up, one on each side, until the sun goes down.21

When the field is quiet, Moses builds an altar. He does not name it after the victory and not after Joshua. He names it: YHWH is my Banner.22

That evening something is also said that is honest about the future: the war against Amalek is not over — it is there from generation to generation.23 The banner is not planted because the war is finished, but because it goes on, and because in that going on one thing is settled: which standard flies above it.

To the question of the morning — is He in our midst? — that altar is the answer of the evening. The enemy came down on the place of doubt, and the Father visibly fought along. Moses stands beside the altar with arms still trembling from holding them up.