The first six chapters of Daniel are concerned with the victory of the young descendants of God's degraded elect over Satan's further devices. In this message we will consider their victory over the demonic diet.
The issue of the degradation of God's elect was the captivity to Babylon (1:1-2). Daniel 1:2 tells us that "the Lord gave" Jehoiakim king of Judah into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon "with some of the vessels of the house of God." The word gave here indicates that the king of Judah and the vessels were a present given to Nebuchadnezzar by God.
For the children of Israel to be taken captive to Babylon means that they were captured back to the place of the worship of idols (Jer. 50:38).
When God's people were captured back to the place of the worship of idols, they were taken back to Babel, to the original place of the worship of idols by their forefather Abraham (Josh. 24:2-3). The origin of Babylon was Babel in the land of Shinar—Chaldea—Babylon (Gen. 11:2, 9; 10:10; 11:28). Abraham was called by God out of Chaldea to Canaan to worship God (Gen. 11:31). By this, the worship of the unique God, which had been lost through Adam's fall, was resumed.
The people of Israel did not exist during the period of human history from Adam to Abraham. The history of Israel began with Abraham, the first Hebrew. Under the leadership of Moses, Abraham's descendants made their exodus from Egypt, and forty years later they entered the land of Canaan. Eventually, God's people were taken back to the original place of the worship of idols, the very place out of which their forefather Abraham had been called.
The captivity to Babylon was the utter destruction of the testimony of God's elect in the worship of the unique God, Jehovah, by the carrying of some of the vessels of the temple of God into the land of Shinar and their being put into the temple of idols (2 Chron. 36:6-7).