And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, fell down in the midst of the burning fiery furnace. _And they walked in the midst of the fire, singing the praise of God, and blessing the Lord. And the king’s servants, that put them in, ceased not to make the furnace hot with naphtha, pitch, tow, and small wood; so that the flame streamed forth above the furnace forty and nine cubits. And it spread and burned those Chaldæans whom it found about the furnace. But the angel of the Lord came down into the furnace together with Azarias and his fellows, and he drove the flame of the fire out of the furnace; and he made the midst of the furnace as it had been a moist whistling wind, so that the fire touched them not at all, neither hurt nor troubled them._ Then Nebuchadnezzar, the king, was astonied, and rose up in haste; he spake and said unto his counsellors, Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire? They answered and said unto the king, True, O king. He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the aspect of the fourth is like a son of the gods. The words printed in italics are from the Septuagint, the rest from the canonical Daniel. There are two things that strike us here: firstly, we get the reason for Nebuchadnezzar’s astonishment; and secondly, we are told how it was that four instead of three men were seen in the furnace. The reference to the fourth person in the furnace, as given in the canonical text, is abrupt; that will be allowed. The whole narrative, as just given, runs smoothly and naturally. We contend, therefore, that this narrative addition of the Septuagint represents—it may not be the exact translation—an original portion of the canonical Daniel. It will be remarked that part of the addition, namely that which refers to the burning of the Chaldæans, is already represented in verse 22 of the canonical Daniel, viz., “the flame of the fire slew those men that took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego”; but these words do not occur in the one manuscript, mentioned above, of the Septuagint proper which we possess, nor in Theodotion’s Version; they are added in the Alexandrian manuscript, but are evidently a later addition as this manuscript also contains the reference to the Chaldæans as given in the quotation above.