Daniel is old now — probably in his eighties — and still at the top of his game. A new king, Darius the Mede, has just taken Babylon, and he appoints Daniel as one of three governors over the entire empire. Daniel is so good at his job that Darius is thinking about putting him over everything. His colleagues can't stand it. They look for something to use against him and find nothing. His record is clean. So they target the one thing they know they can't take from him: his prayer life.

They trick Darius into signing a law — no petitions to any god or man for thirty days, only to the king. Darius signs it without realizing what he's done. Daniel hears about it, goes home, opens his windows toward Jerusalem, and prays. Three times a day, exactly as he always has. The law doesn't change his routine by a single degree.

Darius is trapped. He likes Daniel. He spends the rest of the day trying to find a legal way out. There isn't one. At dusk he has Daniel thrown into the lions' den, seals it with a stone, and spends the night fasting — unable to eat, unable to sleep. At first light he runs to the den and calls out: O Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to deliver you?

Daniel's voice comes back: the angel shut the lions' mouths. He is lifted out without a scratch. The men who accused him — along with their families — are thrown in instead. Darius issues a decree to his entire empire praising the God of Daniel.

Read it again slowly and you'll notice something: a righteous man condemned by envy, found with no fault, sealed in a stone tomb at dusk, discovered alive at dawn while his accusers are destroyed. The story is doing something on purpose. Chapter 6 is the Easter question asked five centuries before Easter.