19. But Daniel began to laugh and said to the king, “Before you enter the temple, look at the floor and tell me whose footprints you see there.”
20. “I see the footprints of men, women and children,” said the king,
21. and he became so angry that he had the priests and their families arrested and brought to him. They showed him the secret doors through which they had come in each night to eat the food placed on the table.
22. So the king had the priests put to death, and he gave Bel to Daniel, who destroyed the idol and tore down its temple.
23. There was also a huge dragon which the Babylonians worshipped.
24. One day the king said to Daniel, “You can't tell me that this god is not alive. So worship him!”
25. “I worship the Lord,” replied Daniel. “He is the only living God.
26. And if Your Majesty will give me permission, I will kill this dragon of yours without using a sword or a club.”“You have my permission,” answered the king.
27. So Daniel took some tar, some fat, and some hair and boiled them all together. He made cakes out of the mixture and fed them to the dragon. When the dragon ate them, it swelled up and burst open. “That's the kind of thing you Babylonians worship,” said Daniel.
28. When the people of Babylon heard what had happened, they staged an angry demonstration against the king. “The king has become a Jew,” they shouted. “First he destroyed Bel and slaughtered the priests, and now he has killed our dragon.”
29. They went to the king and demanded that Daniel be handed over to them. “If you refuse,” they warned the king, “we will put you and your family to death.”
30. When the king saw that they meant what they said, he was forced to hand Daniel over to them.
31. They threw him into a pit filled with lions, where they left him for six days.
32. There were seven lions in the pit, and normally they were fed two human bodies and two sheep each day. But they were given nothing to eat during these six days, in order to make sure that Daniel would be eaten.
33. At that time the prophet Habakkuk was in the land of Judah. He had cooked a stew and crumbled bread into it. He was carrying a bowl of it to the workers who were out in the fields harvesting corn,