King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon set up a golden image sixty cubits high on the plain of Dura, and commanded all the peoples of his empire to fall down and worship it whenever they heard the sound of horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, drum, and entire musical ensemble. Whoever did not bow would be thrown into a fiery furnace.
Three young Jewish exiles — Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego — refused. They answered the king: 'If our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire and out of your hand, O king, let him deliver us. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods and we will not worship the golden statue' (Daniel 3:17–18).
Nebuchadnezzar had the furnace heated seven times hotter than usual, so that the soldiers who threw them in were themselves killed by the flame. Yet the king then rose in amazement: 'Was it not three men that we threw bound into the fire?... But I see four men unbound, walking in the middle of the fire, and they are not hurt; and the fourth has the appearance of a god' (Daniel 3:24–25). The three came out — and 'the fire had not had any power over the bodies of those men; the hair of their heads was not singed, their tunics were not harmed, and not even the smell of fire came from them' (Daniel 3:27). The Church reads the fourth figure as a Christophany — a pre-incarnate appearance of the Son of God.