It was a challenging time for the children of God who knew their Bibles. It was a time when it had to be made very clear whether the Lord really would be the God who keeps his Word, and whether he was able to do what he had promised.

The Lord promised his people in Judah that the exile would last about seventy years. The great power of Babylon, which had started with Nebuchadnezzar, was broken and the end of the exile would be very near. We read about these things in Jeremiah 25:1–38 and Jeremiah 29:1–32. By the time we get to Daniel 6, the Babylonian Empire had existed for about seventy years and its power had been destroyed by the Medes and Persians. You can clearly see this when you read Daniel 5:30–31, That very night Belshazzar the Chaldean king was killed. And Darius the Mede received the kingdom, being about sixty-two years old.

God’s people in exile lived in the expectation and the suspense that the Lord would fulfill his promise of deliverance. The devil was well aware of God’s promise to his people. He had not managed to Babylonize the entire people of God during those seventy years. There was still a believing remnant among the Jews. The devil would do everything in his power to make sure that God would not be able to fulfill his promise. This is also the context of this chapter of Daniel.

In this verse, Darius ensures that what used to be the Babylonian Empire is now firmly in the hands of the Medes and Persians. He appoints 120 satraps. They are some sort of regional wardens or governors who rule over a portion of the Empire, as it was divided into 120 provinces (satrapies). It is their task to ensure that the king’s orders are carried out in their regions.