Daniel — Chapter 1
Lapide begins his commentary on Daniel with extensive Prolegomena on the book's authenticity, structure, and canonical status. He defends the Greek additions (Prayer of Azariah, Song of the Three Young Men, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon) as deuterocanonical Scripture against Protestant objections, citing Augustine, Jerome, and the Council of Carthage. He notes that Josephus and the Fathers regard Daniel as the greatest of prophets because his prophecies are the most precise chronologically.
Verse 1
In the third year of Jehoiakim's reign, Nebuchadnezzar came to Jerusalem and besieged it: Lapide gives a careful historical note reconciling this with Jeremiah 25:1 (fourth year), explaining the difference between Babylonian and Jewish reckoning of regnal years. He uses this to model the careful harmonistic method required in biblical scholarship.
Verse 4
Young men without blemish, handsome, and skillful in all wisdom: Lapide reads the selection criteria as a type of the ideal conditions for theological formation — natural gifts consecrated by grace. He warns that being chosen for the king's service (worldly advancement) was a spiritual danger the four young men overcame only by fidelity to God's law.
Verse 8
Daniel proposes not to defile himself with the king's food and wine: Lapide reads this as the foundational virtue of the entire book — the observance of God's law even under maximum worldly pressure. He develops an extensive treatment of the obligation to maintain religious practice in a hostile pagan environment, applicable to Catholics under Protestant or Islamic rule in his own day.
Verse 17
God gave Daniel and his companions knowledge, wisdom, and understanding in all visions and dreams: Lapide reads this as the supernatural gift of prophecy and mystical intelligence, given in reward for fidelity. He cites Thomas Aquinas on the connection between moral purity and intellectual illumination — the pure heart sees God (Mt. 5:8).
Verse 20
In every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters: Lapide reads the tenfold superiority of Daniel and his companions as the supernatural excellence of faith-formed reason over merely natural learning. He cites Thomas Aquinas's Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate on the elevation of natural knowing by divine faith.