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Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Holy Children - Overview

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This narration is from a previous version of the study and may include a combined recording of multiple chapters.

The Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Holy Children teaches the Church how to pray inside the furnace. The heart becomes an altar when sacrifice is unavailable. Confession asks for mercy without surrendering to despair. Praise begins before the door opens and grows until creation itself becomes a choir. Coptic Psalmody keeps this passage in the Church’s ordinary prayer, and Bright Saturday hears it in the light of Christ’s saving Passion and Resurrection.

This book is a liturgical and spiritual companion to the full Daniel 3 study, which follows Greek Daniel 3:1-97. It does not supply a second running commentary on the whole narrative. The five sessions linger over repentance, the Third Hoos, divine presence, and Paschal hope. The Scripture is printed where each session studies it, not repeated in this Overview.

Five movements and a five-session map

Greek Daniel’s furnace passage has five movements after the youths are cast into the fire:

  1. Praise in the flame, Daniel 3:24. Session 1, Why This Passage Is in Our Bible and Our Hymns, keeps 3:19-25 as the hinge from the narrative into prayer. For the image and refusal in 3:1-18, use the Daniel 3 study.
  2. Azariah’s prayer, Daniel 3:25-45. Session 2, The Prayer of Azariah, follows blessing, confession, covenant mercy, and the offering of a contrite heart.
  3. The angel’s descent and one-mouth praise, Daniel 3:46-51. Session 3, The Angel in the Furnace, considers presence before release.
  4. The Song, Daniel 3:52-90. Session 4, The Song and the Third Hoos, prints the complete hymn and follows creation’s summons to bless the Lord.
  5. The king’s astonishment and confession, Daniel 3:91-97. Session 3’s second unit returns to the narrative after the Song. The king witnesses deliverance, though his habits of coercion are not yet healed.

Session 5, Bright Saturday, gathers these movements within the night’s larger chain of prophetic prayers and the Resurrection Gospel. It is the liturgical synthesis, not a sixth movement of the biblical passage.

Why Greek Daniel is longer

Greek Daniel survives in two ancient forms, conventionally called Old Greek and Theodotion. Both contain the furnace prayer and Song. Theodotion’s form largely displaced Old Greek in Christian transmission and became the usual Greek Daniel received in the Church. The familiar phrase “Septuagint Daniel” therefore names a Church-received tradition with a more specific textual history.1

The manuscripts are not identical with modern editions. Papyrus 967 is an important early witness to Old Greek. Medieval Codex Chisianus, Ra 88, preserves Old Greek Daniel and also a separate Theodotion Daniel. The modern Göttingen edition, edited by Joseph Ziegler and revised for Old Greek by Olivier Munnich, prints the two textual forms; the NETS English translation presents them separately.2 These distinctions prevent us from treating every Greek wording as the same. At the fourth figure, for example, NETS renders Old Greek as “the likeness of a divine angel” and Theodotion as “like a divine son.” The Christian interpretation of that figure must not be passed off as wording identical in every manuscript.

The shorter Hebrew and Aramaic Daniel preserved in the Masoretic tradition does not contain the prayer and Song. Standard NKJV editions follow that textual tradition and the Protestant Old Testament canon. Greek Daniel places the longer unit after 3:23 because it opens the interval inside the furnace: the youths have fallen into the fire, and the king has not yet called them out. The presence or absence of this unit reflects different transmitted forms of Daniel, not a stray verse accidentally skipped by an English translator. The surviving evidence does not require us to invent a lost Hebrew original or an undocumented account of how the shorter form arose.

For the Orthodox reader, reception includes the passage’s life in Scripture, worship, and prayer. The Church does not sing it to win a dispute about another Christian’s Bible. She sings it because these words have taught her to repent and praise.

Numbering note for the Scripture in these sessions

The sessions use the continuous Greek Daniel frame, matching the Daniel 3 study: praise begins at 3:24, the prayer and Song occupy 3:25-90, and the narrative returns at 3:91-97. Brenton presents this material differently in his main Daniel and separate Prayer of Azarias:3

  • Brenton’s separate Prayer of Azarias has verses 1-67, beginning with Azarias standing to pray. It contains the prayer and the hymn, but its divisions are not a constant verse-offset from the continuous Greek frame.
  • In Brenton’s main Daniel 3:23, the youths’ fall and the clause “and walked in the midst of the flame” belong to one verse. These sessions display the walking and praise clause as Greek Daniel 3:24.
  • Brenton numbers the king’s astonishment, confession, and the youths’ promotion Daniel 3:24-30, the same numbered narrative span as NKJV 3:24-30. Here that return is labeled Greek Daniel 3:91-97. Matching numbers do not imply identical wording.

The embedded wording follows Brenton’s English LXX tradition within that stated Greek frame. In the continuous frame used here, the Song’s sequence at 3:66-73 is fire and heat; winter and summer; dews and storms of snow; ice and cold; frost and snow; nights and days; light and darkness; lightnings and clouds. Session 4 prints these invocations in full. They are not missing verses or a combined “frost and heat” invocation.

The Church’s Voice in Worship ⛪

The Third Hoos and the Psali

In Coptic Midnight Psalmody, the First Hoos sings Exodus 15, the deliverance through the sea. The Second Hoos is Psalm 136 (LXX 135), with its repeated thanksgiving for enduring mercy. The Third Hoos receives the youths’ Song as the Church’s own praise. The Psali for the Three Saintly Children follows it and explicitly confesses Christ’s Cross, burial, and Resurrection.4

The familiar refrain is transliterated here consistently as Hos erof ari ho oo shasf sha ni eneh. Its repeated return trains the worshipper to name the created world before God rather than let the trial become the whole world. The complete Song and the Psali’s opening line have their home in Session 4.

Bright Saturday and the prophetic prayers

Coptic Reader, the Southern-US Diocese’s public service app, places these Daniel readings in Bright Saturday’s Midnight Praises, within the prophetic-prayer sequence:5

  • Prayer of Daniel, Daniel 9:4-19, followed here in Session 5.
  • Vision of Daniel and the Three Youth in the Fiery Furnace, Daniel 3:1-23, linked to the Daniel 3 study. The service heading ends at 23; the body also includes the walking and praise clause labeled 24.
  • Prayer of Azarias, Daniel 3:25-51, the prayer developed in Session 2 and the descent developed in Session 3. This study calls this Part 1.
  • Prayer of Azariah, Daniel 3:91-97, the deliverance narrative studied in Session 3’s second unit. This study calls it Part 2; Reader’s heading does not. The title is a service heading, not an assertion that Azariah speaks the king’s confession.

The Third Canticle, Greek Watos Psali, and Song of the Three Saintly Children stand between the 3:25-51 prayer and the return to the narrative. Coptic Reader also names a Watos Psali after Susanna. These are hymn components, not additional verse-addressed readings. This Bright Saturday material is read from the Holy Week (Pascha) service book rather than the annual Katameros. Its location must not be confused with the readings of the Divine Liturgy.

The same company includes Jonah’s prayer, the Prayer of Manasseh, and Susanna. Session 5 follows Daniel’s place within this larger chain. Jonah is not only a spiritual parallel to Azariah: his prayer is heard on the same night.

The Matins Gospel is Matthew 27:62-66, the guarding of the tomb. The Liturgy Gospel is Matthew 28:1-20, with 1 Corinthians 15:1-22, 1 Peter 1:1-9, and Acts 3:12-21. Coptic Reader separately directs the reading of Revelation on Apocalypse Night. Revelation 15’s song of Moses and the Lamb is discussed here as a resonance within that complete Apocalypse reading, not as a specially highlighted three-verse appointment.

The saints’ yearly memory

On Bashans 10, commonly May 18, the Synaxarium commemorates the Departure of the Three Holy Young Men Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael and recounts their deliverance from the furnace.6 This is a Synaxarium commemoration only. The day’s readings follow the Holy Fifty Days, not a fixed Daniel appointment. Session 1 considers how the Church’s yearly remembrance deepens the personal names already carried in the Song.

Iconography Connection 🖼️

Levantine icon of the Three Holy Children in the furnace Source: sixteenth-century Levantine icon, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shadrach,_Meshach,_and_Abednego_icon.jpg.

Three clothed youths stand within the furnace with their hands raised, while a winged figure stands among them. The flames surround living, prayerful bodies. These visible details keep the image close to the passage’s confession: the place built for death has become a place of worship.

The youths’ raised hands and intact bodies direct attention to prayer and deliverance. The Christological reading is explained through Hippolytus in Session 3, alongside the biblical descriptions of the fourth figure. The Lord’s saving presence is the theological center; the icon is not a promise that all faithful sufferers will remain physically untouched.

The other images have separate homes: Doré’s Western biblical engraving in Session 1, and the early Christian catacomb painting in Session 2. Their different visual languages serve the same passage without being mistaken for the same kind of evidence.

Spiritual Fruit 🍇

The heart as altar, praise before the door opens, confession without despair, and creation as choir belong together. Azariah does not have to choose between repentance and hope. The youths do not have to choose between acknowledging danger and blessing God. Their prayer receives everything from the One whom Babylon cannot command.

A simple way into the book is to let each session give one practice: receive Scripture gratefully, confess truthfully, seek Christ’s presence, return creation in thanksgiving, and wait in Paschal hope. The practices do not buy God’s help. They make room to receive His mercy and to serve the person beside us without turning suffering into a religious performance.

Footnotes

  1. R. Timothy McLay, “Daniel: To the Reader,” in A New English Translation of the Septuagint (NETS), pp. 991-993, with Old Greek and Theodotion presented separately: https://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/nets/edition/40-daniel-nets.pdf. ↩

  2. Göttingen Septuagint manuscript catalogue, Ra 967, https://septuaginta.uni-goettingen.de/catalogue/Ra_967; Ra 88, https://septuaginta.uni-goettingen.de/catalogue/Ra_88. NETS identifies its critical-edition base as Ziegler/Munnich, Susanna Daniel Bel et Draco, second edition (1999). ↩

  3. Brenton, Daniel 3, main Daniel transcription, https://www.ccel.org/b/brenton/lxx/htm/16.iii.htm; separate Prayer of Azarias 1-67, https://ebible.org/eng-Brenton/S3Y01.htm. The continuous Greek Daniel display is a distinct versification frame, https://ebible.org/eng-Brenton/DAG03.htm; the Song here follows the same text and numbering as the Daniel 3 study. ↩

  4. Tasbeha.org, Praises Explained, for the refrain transliteration, https://tasbeha.org/content/articles/praises_explained.php; Second Hoos, https://tasbeha.org/hymn_library/view/1239; Third Hoos, St. Antony Monastery English translation, https://tasbeha.org/hymn_library/view/1241; Psali for the Three Saintly Children, https://tasbeha.org/hymn_library/view/1242. ↩

  5. Coptic Reader, Diocese of the Southern United States, Special / Pascha / Saturday, Praises (Midnight Praises), Matins, Revelation, and Liturgy of the Word, Joyous Saturday edition: https://copticreader.org/app/. The app is stateful; select the named service rather than treating the opening screen as the reading. ↩

  6. Coptic Synaxarium, Bashans (Bashons) 10, entry 1, “The Departure of the Three Hebrew Young Men Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael”: https://www.copticchurch.net/synaxarium/9_10.html. ↩

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