“... On account of their beauty and intellect, Daniel and his friends are selected to serve in the palace by Ashpenaz, the “overseer of the eunuchs” (רב סריסים Daniel 1:3; שר הסריסים Daniel 1:7–11, 18). The heroes’ apparent status as eunuchs in the foreign court amounts to the reader’s introduction to these protagonists, such that this unique status holds in the narrative a strong measure of rhetorical stress, a circumstance amenable to the detection of allusion. I propose that the text presents the deportation of the four Judean youths as fulfilment of Isaiah 39:7, which promises that the sons of Hezekiah would be “eunuchs” (סריסים) in the palace of the king of Babylon (מלך בבל; compare Daniel 1:1). And like the non-Israelite eunuch living among the people Israel (Isaiah 56:3–5), these Israelite eunuchs will be anticipated by the reader to enjoy a “name better than sons and daughters,” an “everlasting name” (Isaiah 56:5) not to be “cut off,” one contrasting with the ephemeral Babylonian names assigned them by the overseer of the eunuchs (Daniel 1:7). ...”