Daniel Bible stories for kids

Daniel and the Vegetables comes first, from Daniel 1, and runs about six minutes. Daniel and his three friends are taken to a palace school in Babylon, given new names, and sent the king's own food every day. Daniel makes up his mind not to eat it, asks politely instead of making a fuss, and offers a worried officer a ten-day test of vegetables and water. On day ten their faces look better than everyone else's, but the story is careful to say that their wisdom was a gift from God, not from the vegetables.

Daniel Interprets Nebuchadnezzar's Dream is from Daniel 2, when he is young. The king wakes from a dream he cannot remember and orders his wise men to tell him both the dream and what it means, and when they cannot, he orders every one of them put to death, Daniel and his three friends included. Daniel asks for time, prays with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, and that night is shown the statue with a head of gold and feet of iron and clay, and the stone that grows into a mountain. Before he tells anyone, he stops to thank God. It runs about eight and a half minutes.

Nebuchadnezzar Looks Up, from Daniel 4, is about six minutes and is told as the king's own letter. He dreams of a great tree cut down with only its stump left, and Daniel, grown up and in charge of the wise men by now, has to tell him the tree is him. A year later the king boasts over Babylon and is sent out to live in the fields like an animal, eating grass, until he lifts his eyes to heaven and his understanding comes back. The stump is the thread to follow: God kept his kingdom for him and gave it all back.

Daniel and the Writing on the Wall, from Daniel 5, is five minutes at King Belshazzar's feast. The guests drink from the gold and silver cups taken from God's temple, and a hand appears and writes four words on the plaster. None of the wise men can read them until the queen mother remembers Daniel, old by now, who turns down the purple robe and the gold chain and reads the words anyway. By morning Babylon has a different ruler.

Daniel in the Lions' Den is seven minutes from Daniel 6. Jealous officials trick King Darius into a thirty-day law against praying to anyone but him, Daniel goes home and prays at his window exactly as he always has, and the king, who loves him, cannot undo his own law. The night in the den is told as quiet rather than tense: an angel shuts the lions' mouths, and all night long nothing happens at all. At first light the king runs to the den himself, not a servant or a soldier.

The Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego story is filed under the three friends rather than Daniel, who does not appear in it. Every page here has a free audio preview, the memory verse from the World English Bible, discussion questions, a prayer and a note for parents.