A prayer and a hymn from inside the furnace · Greek addition to Daniel, c. 2nd century BC
Song of the Three
Three men are thrown into a fire, and the Greek Daniel lets us hear what they sang there.
- 1Chapter
- 68Verses
- c. 200-100 BCEWritten
Original language: Greek (Susanna and Bel originally); Hebrew/Aramaic substrate for Prayer of Azariah
King James Version Apocrypha (1769 standardized text) · public domain
Read Song of the Three
King James Version + Apocrypha (standardized 1769 text), eBible.org USFX edition of the Crosswire/eBible KJV — Public Domain — One of the three Additions to Daniel; in the Greek Daniel it stands inside chapter 3.
Featured studies on this book
— the deep dives, each its own page
Plain answers first
What this book is
This short piece belongs inside the story of Daniel 3. In the Hebrew and Aramaic Daniel, the three young men go into the furnace and come out again with nothing said in between. In the Greek Daniel, sixty-eight verses fill that silence.
First Azariah, the man the Babylonians renamed Abednego, prays. He does not protest that the punishment is unfair. He confesses the sins of his people, admits the exile was just, and offers the only sacrifice he has left: a broken spirit and a humbled heart.
A short narrator's section follows. The servants pile on fuel until the flame shoots far above the furnace and kills the men standing outside, while an angel comes down and makes the inside of the furnace like a damp, whistling wind.
Then the three sing together. The hymn calls on everything that exists to bless the Lord, one line at a time: angels, sun and moon, rain and dew, frost and fire, whales, birds, cattle, and finally the people of God. The church has sung it for centuries under the name Benedicite, meaning bless ye, in morning prayer.
The piece is usually dated to the second century BC and survives in Greek, though a Hebrew or Aramaic original for the prayer is possible.
Why a student of the 66 should still open it
Why read it: and how
As a devotional text it is one of the great ones. The Benedicite has been sung in Christian worship since at least the fourth century, and it stands in the Book of Common Prayer as an option at Morning Prayer to this day. Read it beside Psalm 148, which does the same work in fewer words, and beside the three young men's actual answer in Daniel 3:17-18. It also shows something important about Jewish faith under persecution: the first move is repentance, not complaint.
Read Daniel 3:19-23 in your Bible, then stop, read this piece, then read Daniel 3:24 onward. It is one chapter of one book, so read it in a single sitting. Read the hymn out loud if you can; it was made for voices, not eyes.
The canon question, honestly
Why it stands outside the 66
This section is not in the Hebrew and Aramaic Daniel that Jewish tradition preserved. It appears only in the Greek versions of Daniel. Jerome kept the addition in his Latin Bible but marked it with a symbol to warn readers that it was not in the Hebrew, and he said so in his preface. The Reformers, holding to the Hebrew text of Daniel, moved it out to the apocrypha. Rome affirmed it at Trent as part of Daniel, and Orthodox churches read it too. Notice that the disagreement is not about whether the story of Daniel 3 happened, but about which edition of Daniel the church received.
Doors into the text
Key moments
Verses 1-10. In the middle of the fire he confesses his nation's sin rather than pleading his own innocence.
Verses 15-17. With no temple and no sacrifice, he offers a contrite heart, the same logic as Psalm 51:17.
Verses 23-27. The flames kill the men outside while the inside is made like a moist, whistling wind.
Verses 28-34. The hymn opens, the Benedicite that the church has sung at morning prayer for centuries.
Verses 35-59. Sun, moon, frost, fire, whales, birds, and every green thing are summoned to praise, line after line.
Verses 66-68. The three finally name themselves, thanking God for pulling them out of the fire.
Plainly told
The story it tells
The silence Daniel left
In the Hebrew and Aramaic Daniel, the three young men go into the furnace at the end of chapter 3, verse 23, and come out again at verse 24 with nothing recorded in between. The Greek Daniel fills that gap with sixty-eight verses.
Azariah prays in the fire
Azariah (the man the Babylonians renamed Abednego) prays first, and he does not protest that the sentence is unfair. He confesses his people's sins, calls the exile deserved judgment, and, with no temple or sacrifice left to offer, gives God "a contrite heart and an humble spirit" instead.
A wind in the furnace
The Babylonians pile on more fuel until the flame shoots far above the furnace and kills the men standing outside it, while inside, an angel of the Lord comes down and makes the furnace like a moist, whistling wind. The three walk in the fire unharmed.
Bless ye the Lord
Once they are safe, the three sing together, calling on everything that exists (angels, sun and moon, rain and dew, frost and fire, whales, birds, cattle, and finally the people of God) to bless the Lord, one line at a time. The church has sung this hymn for centuries under the name Benedicite.
Three names at last
Only at the very end do the three finally speak their own names: Ananias, Azarias, and Misael, thanking God for pulling them out of the fire and out of the hand of death.
Dates hedged where scholarship hedges
Where it sits in history
- c. 2nd century BC
The piece is composed in Greek as an addition to Daniel; a Hebrew or Aramaic original behind the prayer is debated.
- 3rd century AD
Julius Africanus writes to Origen questioning the authenticity of the Greek Daniel additions; Origen defends them in reply.
- c. AD 407
Jerome's Vulgate preface to Daniel notes the material is absent from the Hebrew and marks it with an obelus.
- 1546
The Council of Trent affirms the addition as canonical Scripture, printed as Daniel 3:24-90.
- ongoing
The hymn portion, the Benedicite, is retained as a Morning Prayer canticle in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.
The disagreement is old: here it is plainly
Where the traditions stand
This piece is missing from the Hebrew and Aramaic Daniel that Jewish tradition preserved: the Masoretic text moves straight from verse 23 to verse 24 of chapter 3 with nothing between them. It appears only in the Greek versions of Daniel, both the Old Greek and the later Theodotion text.
Because the early church's Old Testament was the Greek Septuagint, Christians received this material as part of Daniel from the very start, without a moment of decision about adding it in. Jerome, translating from the Hebrew, knew the difference and said so directly in his preface to Daniel: the Hebrews have neither this material nor the other Greek additions. He marked it with an obelus in his Vulgate to flag what the Hebrew did not contain, while still including it because it was, in his words, spread through the whole world.
The question of whether these additions were original was already being argued by Christians centuries before the Reformation: Julius Africanus challenged Origen on the Greek Daniel material in the third century, and Origen defended it.
The Reformers, holding to the Hebrew text of Daniel, moved this piece to the Apocrypha; it stands in the KJV Apocrypha as the Song of the Three Holy Children. Rome affirmed it as Scripture at Trent, printed as part of Daniel chapter 3, and Orthodox churches read it the same way. The disagreement is not about whether the events of Daniel 3 happened (every tradition agrees they did) but about which edition of the book of Daniel each church received.
| Tradition | Where this book stands |
|---|---|
| jewish | not canonical; Hebrew original (if any) lost |
| anglican | apocryphal — read for example of life and instruction of manners |
| catholic | canonical (deuterocanonical; Daniel 3, 13, 14 in Vulgate) |
| protestant | non-canonical; retained in Luther's 1534 Apocrypha |
| eastern orthodox | canonical (anagignoskomena) |
| oriental orthodox | canonical |
2 threads into the 66
Its connections into Scripture
The Song of the Three Young Men — a responsive creation hymn sung from within the furnace ("Bless the Lord, all works of the Lord") — structurally and thematically parallels Psalm 148's universal call to creation to praise the Creator. The Song's refrain-based structure and its expansion of the furnace narrative into a liturgical theology of creation made it one of the earliest Christian canticles (the Benedicite).
Susanna's vindication turns on Daniel's separate cross-examination of the two witnesses, who contradict each other on which tree the alleged offense occurred under. The principle — careful testing of two or three witnesses — is Torah (Deut 19:15) sharpened into forensic wisdom narrative, and it surfaces in Jesus' church-discipline instruction: "every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses" (Matt 18:16).
Reception history, never our confession
What the church has made of it
The hymn from verse 28 onward, known as the Benedicite, has been sung in Christian worship since at least the fourth century and remains a canticle option at Morning Prayer in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer to this day: one of the clearest cases anywhere of apocryphal material still in active Protestant liturgical use.
Azariah's prayer, offering a contrite heart in place of a sacrifice he cannot bring, has been read as a model of penitential prayer, echoing the same logic as Psalm 51:17.
The furnace scene, with its angel and its "moist whistling wind," has long been a subject of Christian art depicting the three young men, often blended visually with the plain narrative of Daniel 3 itself.
The voices
What the teachers have said
“Daniel, which among the Hebrews has neither the history of Susanna, nor the hymn of the three young men, nor the fables of Bel and the dragon.”
Every claim above rests on these
Where this comes from
- Bruce M. Metzger, An Introduction to the Apocrypha (Oxford, 1957)
- David A. deSilva, Introducing the Apocrypha: Message, Context, and Significance (Baker Academic)
- R. H. Charles, ed., The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, vol. 1: Apocrypha (Oxford, 1913)