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Prayer of Azariah
AZARIAH, PRAYER OF ăz’ ə rī’ ə (προσευχὴ ̓Αζαρίου). A Gr. addition to the Book of Daniel, which, together with its companion piece the Song of the Three Children, was inserted between 3:23 and
The Prayer of Azariah (who is also known by his Babylonian name, Abednego) is put on the lips of Azariah (
The fact that there is nothing specific which refers to the immediate circumstances in which Azariah and his friends found themselves seems to indicate that the prayer had its own history independent of, and prior to, its insertion into the text of Daniel by a later editor. It has been plausibly conjectured that the expression of despair and national contrition contained in the prayer could well find its background in the climax of the attempts of Antiochus IV (epiphanes) to completely “hellenize” the Jewish nation (c. 168-165 b.c.).
The piety of the prayer is thoroughly Jewish, and certain phrases of it bear striking resemblance to material in the Psalms (cf. esp. the reference to the sacrifice of a contrite heart and humble spirit with
The Prayer (and Song) is generally available in Eng. as a part of the Apoc. The Gr. text, which is practically identical in both LXX and Theodotionic recensions, is available in editions of the LXX, often not only as an insertion in
See Book of Daniel.
Bibliography
W. H. Bennett in R. H. Charles, APOT, I (1913), 625-637; W. O. E. Oesterley, The Books of the Apocrypha (1915), 386-390; E. J. Goodspeed, The Story of the Apocrypha (1939), 31-36; R. H. Pfeiffer, History of New Testament Times with an Introduction to the Apocrypha (1949), 433f.; 444-448; B. M. Metzger, An Introduction to the Apocrypha (1957), 99-105; L. H. Brockington, A Critical Introduction to the Apocrypha (1961), 93-99; O. Eissfeldt, The Old Testament: An Introduction (1965), 588ff.