7. All of us who administer your empire — the supervisors, the governors, the lieutenant-governors, and the other officials — have agreed that Your Majesty should issue an order and enforce it strictly. Give orders that for thirty days no one be permitted to request anything from any god or from any human being except from Your Majesty. Anyone who violates this order is to be thrown into a pit filled with lions.
8. So let Your Majesty issue this order and sign it, and it will be in force, a law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be changed.”
9. And so King Darius signed the order.
10. When Daniel learnt that the order had been signed, he went home. In an upstairs room of his house there were windows that faced towards Jerusalem. There, just as he had always done, he knelt down at the open windows and prayed to God three times a day.
11. When Daniel's enemies observed him praying to God,
12. all of them went together to the king to accuse Daniel. They said, “Your Majesty, you signed an order that for the next thirty days anyone who requested anything from any god or from any human being except you, would be thrown into a pit filled with lions.”The king replied, “Yes, a strict order, a law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be changed.”