“Nebuchadnezzar spake and said unto them, Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed–nego, do not ye serve my gods, nor worship the golden image which I have set up?”
Nebuchadnezzar offers a chance for obedience: Now if you are ready when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, to fall down and worship the image that I have made, good. But if you do not worship, you shall immediately be thrown into a furnace of blazing fire; and who is the god that will deliver you out of my hands? The offer is both generous and contemptuous: the king gives them a second chance yet frames it as implicitly absurd to refuse. His concluding question—who is the god that will deliver you out of my hands?—asserts his ultimate power and implicitly denies that any god could intervene. The rhetorical question challenges the youths to name a power capable of resisting the king; Nebuchadnezzar's tone suggests that he considers no such power exists.
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