Daniel 6:10: why he kept praying after the decree
10Now when Daniel learned of this, namely, that the law had been established, he entered his house, and, opening the windows in his upper room towards Jerusalem, he knelt down three times a day, and he adored and gave thanks before his God, as he had been accustomed to do previously.
The decisive words come at the end: Daniel kept doing what had long been his custom. The courage here is not an act invented under threat; it is an old habit that simply did not stop.
Short answer
Daniel 6:10 records what Daniel did when he learned of the decree banning petitions to any god for thirty days: he went into his house, opened the windows facing Jerusalem, and knelt three times a day, as he had done before. The text stresses continuity, not a gesture of defiance improvised under pressure.
- Written by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 2 min read
The scene is usually remembered for what follows — the sentence, the king’s sleepless night, the rescue at dawn. But the verse that decides the story is this one, before any of it. It describes a decision taken quietly, indoors, by a man who was already old and held high office.
Where this verse appears
Daniel serves in the Persian administration and draws the envy of the other officials, who can find no fault in his conduct and decide to attack him through his religion. They persuade King Darius to sign an irrevocable decree forbidding, for thirty days, any petition addressed to anyone but the king himself. Verse 10 reports what Daniel did once the law was in force.
What it says
Three details carry the weight. He goes into his house — no public demonstration. He opens the windows — no hiding either. And he kneels three times a day, facing Jerusalem, which had always been his practice. The verse closes by saying exactly that: this was already his settled custom.
That last clause changes the reading. Daniel did not improvise a heroic response to the decree. He simply failed to interrupt something he had been doing for years. The steadiness on display was built across thousands of ordinary days, when no lion was involved and nobody was watching.
What the verse does not claim matters just as much. It makes no promise that faithfulness averts punishment — in the narrative Daniel is reported, condemned and made to bear the sentence. Prayer is not presented as a shield against consequences, but as the thing he was unwilling to suspend in order to avoid them.
What to do with it today
Almost nobody decides, on the day of pressure, to be a different person from the one they have been. That is why this verse is more useful today, on a day without a crisis, than on the hard day itself. Whatever you repeat now is what will be available when someone demands that you give it up.
There is also a note on discretion here. Daniel made no spectacle of it, and he also did not pretend he had stopped. Between bravado and concealment there is a third road: carrying on as usual, neither hiding it nor announcing it.
A prayer to carry with you
Lord, I would like to be steady when the moment comes, but I know steadiness is built earlier. Help me keep today the little I already do — the usual hour, the usual place — so that I do not have to invent courage on the day it is demanded of me. Amen.