... The deliverance of two more characters in the Hebrew Bible rounds out the quick tour of salvation history. The well-known story of Daniel’s rescue appears in Daniel 6 and with bizarre additional details in Bel and the Dragon 31–42. Daniel serves particularly well as an example of deliverance in the present context because the destruction that threatened him involved beasts (verse 7). The same word was used by Philopator in his threatening rant against Hermon (5:31) and a similar word has been used repeatedly for Philopator’s elephants (5:23, 29, 42, 45, 47). In addition, in the case of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the punishment that was intended for Daniel was ultimately inflicted on his opponents (Daniel 6:24; Bel 42), again foreshadowing the retribution in 3 Maccabees. The deliverance of Jonah is likewise a useful rhetorical example. “Wasting away” would be an apt description of the emotional deterioration of the Alexandrian Jews over the previous three days. Verse 8 says that God “looked upon” Jonah (rare in the Septuagint, but compare Jonah 4:5), and a similar word is used twice in this very prayer in the imperative (verses 3, 12). Restoration to one’s kin, a feature not mentioned in the biblical account of Jonah (but compare Josephus, Antiquities 9.214), is also a possible outcome in the present context if we remember that not all Jews have been herded into the hippodrome (4:17–18) ...