'God is my judge' — a Judean of noble birth taken to Babylon in the first deportation (605 BC) and given the Babylonian name BELTESHAZZAR (1:7). Trained for the royal court, he refuses the king's food, is found ten times wiser than the magicians, and rises to rule the province of Babylon after revealing and interpreting Nebuchadnezzar's dream (ch 2) — the first of a series in which he reads what no wise man can: the writing on Belshazzar's wall, and his own visions of the four beasts, the seventy weeks, and the resurrection. Delivered from the lions' den under Darius, he serves into the Persian period. The book bears his name and, from chapter 7, speaks in his own voice ('I, Daniel'). His three friends are SHADRACH, MESHACH, and ABEDNEGO.