I pulled both the main collection of sayings from the Church Fathers on the Matthew passage and every English language resource on the Daniel verse in the Sefaria app (i.e. the Jewish commentaries) and found nothing drawing attention to this contrast…very interesting. The Jewish commentaries make clear that Daniel was risking his life here, which suggests there might not be some underlying difference of circumstance…perhaps it was even that it was permissible in both cases to eat but that God, for His greater glory, gave Daniel the desire (or made use of Daniel’s desire) to challenge the king’s servants and to demonstrate God’s power by eating less rich food and yet faring better than the others. It’s interesting to think about whether Daniel understood his action to be obligatory or a choice…since if the former perhaps God even made use of Daniel’s mistake…or honored his zeal. If I’m on the money here it lines up with the talk in the course about the importance of not resigning ourselves to history – God making good out of a righteous man’s foolish action.
