¹⁸ Now get to work.^(A) You will not be given any straw, yet you must produce your full quota of bricks.”

⁹ If you do not tell me the dream, there is only one penalty^(A) for you. You have conspired to tell me misleading and wicked things, hoping the situation will change. So then, tell me the dream, and I will know that you can interpret it for me.”^(B)

¹⁰ The astrologers^(C) answered the king, “There is no one on earth who can do what the king asks! No king, however great and mighty, has ever asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or astrologer.^{(D) 11} What the king asks is too difficult. No one can reveal it to the king except the gods,^(E) and they do not live among humans.”

¹² This made the king so angry and furious^(F) that he ordered the execution^(G) of all the wise men of Babylon. ¹³ So the decree was issued to put the wise men to death, and men were sent to look for Daniel and his friends to put them to death.^(H)

¹⁸ But his father will die for his own sin, because he practiced extortion, robbed his brother and did what was wrong among his people.