a binding law or royal decree: an authoritative rule issued and enforced by a king, or ascribed to God.
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
This is a Persian administrative word, borrowed into biblical Aramaic, and it turns up only in the Aramaic parts of Ezra and Daniel. It is the official word of the empire for a binding rule, and it stretches across a wide range: from a single order the king issues on the spot to a permanent, standing body of law.
That range is easiest to see in three settings:
In Daniel 2 it is a fresh royal sentence, the decree that goes out that the wise men are to be executed.
In Daniel 6 it is fixed imperial law, the famous "law of the Medes and Persians," which even the king cannot revoke once it is issued.
In Ezra 7 it is the law of God, the Scripture Ezra is sent to teach and enforce, formally recognized by the Persian crown.
The striking thing is that one and the same word names both the king's law and God's law. Ezra 7:26 sets them side by side, warning that whoever will not keep "the law of your God and the law of the king" will be punished. Because it is the empire's own legal term, it frames Israel's Scripture as the officially acknowledged law of the restored community, which is a different flavor from the Hebrew word for covenant teaching, תּוֹרָה. Its close Hebrew twin, the same borrowed word (דָּת), fills the book of Esther with the decrees of the Persian court.
Nuances
1aa royal decree or edict: a specific binding order or sentence issued by the crown.
TranslatabilityDirect
Dan 2:9Dan 2:13Dan 2:15
1ban established law: a standing, binding legal code, whether the empire's fixed law or the law of God.
names not only a standing code but a single binding edict issued on the spot, as when the order to kill the wise men goes out.Dan 2:13
carries the sense of a fixed, irrevocable royal statute that the king himself cannot repeal.Dan 6:8
Both
both name an authoritative, binding rule that people are obligated to obey.Ezr 7:26
Only law
the English word "law" suggests an abstract, impersonal legal system, missing that this word is always someone's issued, enforceable decree, the act of a specific authority.
“decree”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“edict”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How dat differs from similar Aramaic words
קְיָםa fresh interdict or royal statute enacted for a set purpose or span of time; in Daniel 6 this newly made statute is set against the unchanging established law it must conform to.
Reaches all the way to the law of God, the sacred instruction Ezra carries, teaches, and enforces, not merely a royal command.Ezr 7:12Ezr 7:14Dan 6:5
Names a whole standing body of law, the fixed "law of the Medes and Persians" that no one may alter, rather than any single enactment.Dan 6:8Dan 6:12
Can also narrow to one royal order or sentence issued on the spot, such as the king's decree that the wise men be put to death.Dan 2:13Dan 2:15
Both
Both name binding royal law of the Medo-Persian court that, once issued, cannot be revoked or changed, and Daniel 6:15 sets the two side by side.Dan 6:15
Points to a single ordinance that officials draft and the king formally sets up, stressing the act of making one rule stand firm.Dan 6:7
Functions as the freshly enacted "statute" set beside a companion ban, the specific interdict against praying to anyone but the king.Dan 6:15
אֱסָרa binding prohibition or ban, the specific interdict against praying to anyone but the king in Daniel 6, where this word is the wider body of law behind it.
Names a standing body of law that officials teach and enforce over time: "the law of your God" and "the law of the king" that Ezra is charged to administer.Ezr 7:25Ezr 7:26
Reaches into religious life, denoting the ongoing observance of "the law of his God" that shaped how Daniel lived and that his enemies plotted against.Dan 6:5Dan 7:25
Can also be a one-off royal decree with the force of a verdict, as when the king's "decree" condemns the wise men to death.Dan 2:13Dan 2:15
Both
Both issue from royal authority and are binding once pronounced: in Daniel 6 the king sets up the interdict, and it stands under the unchangeable law of the Medes and Persians.Dan 6:8
The two are named side by side as the enemies press the king to lock the ban in place so that not even he can revoke it.Dan 6:15Dan 6:12
Names a single, time-limited ban on one specific act: no one may petition any god or man except the king for thirty days.Dan 6:7Dan 6:9
Backed by a stated penalty for whoever breaks it, so it functions as a prohibition with a fixed sanction rather than a body of standing rules.Dan 6:7Dan 6:13
טְעֵםan administrative order, command, or authorization issued by an official, where this word is the formal, codified law itself.
Names a fixed, unalterable body of law rather than a one-time order: the standing statute of the Medes and Persians that, once set, cannot be changed.Dan 6:8Dan 6:15Dan 7:25
Denotes the enduring "law of God" as a recognized legal corpus, the religious law Ezra is commissioned to teach and enforce.Ezr 7:12Ezr 7:14Ezr 7:25Dan 6:5
Both
In the Persian administrative world both can name a binding royal pronouncement that must be obeyed: one as the king's standing law, the other as the king's issued decree.Ezr 7:26Ezr 6:8
The two stand side by side in one verse, where the king's decree enforces compliance with the law of God, showing how closely a royal order and established law operate together.Ezr 7:21
Names a specific issued decree or order, the executive act of a ruler who "makes a decree," rather than a permanent statute.Ezr 6:8Ezr 6:11Dan 3:10Dan 3:29Dan 4:6
Ranges into everyday senses that "law" never carries: good "discretion" or prudence in speech, and even the concrete "taste" of wine.Dan 2:14Dan 5:2
Supplies an administrative title, the "commander" (literally the master of the order), naming the official who carries authority rather than the rule itself.Ezr 4:8Ezr 4:9Ezr 4:17
פִּתְגָּםa pronouncement, reply, or matter that may carry the force of a ruling, where this word is specifically binding law or edict.
Names a standing, unalterable body of law that people live by and are judged against, most famously "the law of the Medes and Persians, which does not change."Dan 6:8Dan 6:15
Used for the law of God as a taught corpus that a scribe knows, a people is instructed in, and a nation must obey.Ezr 7:12Ezr 7:25Ezr 7:26
Can name an enduring appointed order beyond human statute, as in the plan to "change the times and the law."Dan 7:25
Both
Both can name an authoritative decree issued by a ruler that carries binding force and a penalty for breaking it.Dan 2:13Ezr 6:11
Both are Persian loanwords that belong to the Aramaic of the Persian court and appear only in Ezra and Daniel.Ezr 7:14Ezr 5:7
Names a standing body of law that can be written down, carried, studied, and taught: Ezra is "scribe of the law of the God of heaven", he is sent to act by that law, and he appoints judges over everyone who knows it.Ezr 7:12Ezr 7:14Ezr 7:21Ezr 7:25
Names a fresh order the king issues, which then runs on its own until someone carries it out: one sentence covers all the royal advisers, it goes out for their execution, and Daniel asks why it is so harsh.Dan 2:9Dan 2:13Dan 2:15
Its whole force can lie in being unchangeable: the law of the Medes and Persians "does not pass away", so once it is signed neither the king nor anyone else can undo it.Dan 6:8Dan 6:12Dan 6:15
Names the settled rule a person's whole life is measured against, and so a target a hostile power sets out to alter: Daniel's enemies can find fault with him only over the law of his God, and the arrogant king plans to change the appointed times and the law.Dan 6:5Dan 7:25
Both
Both belong to one chain of enforcement and stand in a single sentence of the Persian king's letter: whoever will not obey the law is the man on whom judgment is carried out, with death, banishment, seizure of property, or prison named as the penalties.Ezr 7:26
Both cover God's authority and the crown's authority with no change of vocabulary: the one verse names the law of God and the law of the king, and the one judgment that backs them alike.Ezr 7:26
Names a court in session, the judging itself pictured as taking its seat: thrones are set and the books are opened, and later that same court sits again and a boastful power loses its rule for good.Dan 7:10Dan 7:26
Names the decision a hearing produces, handed down in someone's favor: the ruling goes for the holy ones, and they then take possession of the kingdom.Dan 7:22
Can describe the character of a ruler's dealings rather than any rule on the books, which is why a pagan king ends his story saying that all God's ways are "just".Dan 4:37
is the binding rule itself, the standing authority a person is judged by: whoever will not carry out the law of God and the law of the king faces death, banishment, loss of property, or prison, and the law of the Medes and Persians is what makes a royal order impossible to reverse.Ezr 7:26Dan 6:15
names a whole body of religious instruction that a person can master and teach, so Ezra is called its scribe, judges are appointed from those who know it, and Daniel's enemies can find no charge against him except in this area of his life.Ezr 7:12Ezr 7:25Dan 6:5
can be a single ruling handed down for one occasion, a sentence the king has already settled on: the wise men face one fixed verdict, the order to kill them goes out, and Daniel asks why it is so severe and so rushed.Dan 2:9Dan 2:13Dan 2:15
stands for the settled order of a people's life, named alongside their sacred seasons, so an arrogant power bent on remaking the world sets out to alter times and law.Dan 7:25
Both
both stand behind one unalterable royal order in the same sentence: the officials ask the king to sign the document and appeal to the law of the Medes and Persians so that the ban can never be changed.Dan 6:8
both can name the authority that governs Israel's worship and administration, one as the law of God that Ezra carries with him, the other as the written arrangement in the book of Moses that sets the priests and Levites in their divisions.Ezr 7:14Ezr 6:18
both name something that only takes effect once it has gone public, whether a sentence that has already gone out and is being carried out, or a ban that Daniel learns has been signed.Dan 2:13Dan 6:10
is a physical text, visible marks left on a surface by a hand, and the narrative can quote it back word for word so the reader sees exactly what stood there.Dan 5:24Dan 5:25
has to be read before it can do anything, which makes it something a person can fail at: the king's experts cannot read it, and reading it is the feat Daniel is offered a reward for and finally performs.Dan 5:8Dan 5:16Dan 5:17
is the document a king puts his name to, so it pins a decision to a moment in time and can be reported afterwards as having been signed.Dan 6:9Dan 6:10
can mean not the document but the wording set down in one, or a quantity fixed on paper: the priests are stationed as the book of Moses has it, and salt is supplied with no written limit on how much.Ezr 6:18Ezr 7:22
dat in the other biblical languages
דָּתHebrew“law”the Hebrew form of the very same borrowed word, carrying the identical sense of royal edict and law, at home in the Persian court of Esther.
תּוֹרָהHebrew“instruction”the central Hebrew word for God's instruction or teaching; where that word frames law as covenant teaching, this one frames it as an issued, enforceable decree.
Names the unchangeable imperial statute of the Persian empire, a royal ruling so fixed that not even the king who signed it can revoke it, famously "the law of the Medes and Persians".Dan 6:8Dan 6:12Dan 6:15
Names a royal command issued on the spot and carrying lethal force, the king's binding order that the wise men be put to death.Dan 2:9Dan 2:13Dan 2:15
Both
Both are standardly rendered "law" and both can name the authoritative law of God that the community is bound to obey: in Aramaic Ezra it is "the law of your God", and in Hebrew it is the LORD's instruction Israel must keep.Ezr 7:14Deu 30:10
Both function as a binding written standard by which conduct is judged and penalties fall: breaking either brings sanctions, whether the imperial punishments attached to the decree or the covenant curses written against the teaching.Ezr 7:26Deu 28:58
Labels priestly ritual instruction, the specific teaching for each offering and each cleansing, as in "this is the law of the burnt offering".Lev 6:9Lev 7:1Lev 7:37Lev 14:2
Names the covenant teaching the LORD gave through Moses, written in a book to be read aloud, learned, and kept by the whole nation.Deu 31:9Deu 31:11Deu 17:18Deu 17:19
חֹקHebrew“statute: decree”a prescribed statute or ordinance, something fixed or engraved; this word is the broader Persian-era term for an authoritative law or royal edict.
The word of empire. It is the Aramaic term the Persian court uses for its own decrees, and its signature note is irreversibility: the "law of the Medes and Persians" is fixed once it is signed, so that not even the king who issued it can undo it once Daniel is caught by it.Dan 6:8Dan 6:12Dan 6:15
Names even the "law of your God" as something the imperial crown recognizes and enforces. In Ezra's commission the God of heaven's law and the king's own authority stand on one footing, both backed by the empire's penalties, so the term frames divine law from the outside, as an administrative charge given to a returning official.Ezr 7:12Ezr 7:14Ezr 7:26
Both
Both can name the binding law of God as a fixed, authoritative code that his people must obey: the one as the "law of your God" carried back to Jerusalem, the other as the statutes God lays on Israel to keep.Ezr 7:14Deu 4:1
Both can name a decree issued by a human ruler that carries the force of the throne: the one a royal edict that goes out from the king, the other an ordinance a leader lays down over a land or a people.Dan 2:13Gen 47:26
Stretches well past "decree" into an allotted portion: the standing due of the offerings assigned to the priests, and the daily ration of food or the fixed quota of work a person is given. The Aramaic word never means a share of this kind.Exo 29:28Lev 7:34Gen 47:22
Names a fixed limit set in the created order: the boundary God appointed for the sea so it may not pass, and the bound placed on the span of a human life. This natural, God-set boundary sense has no counterpart in the language of royal decrees.Job 38:10Pro 8:29Job 14:5
The covenant vocabulary of Israel: God's statutes given to his people to keep, listed alongside his commandments and judgments as the law delivered at Sinai and rehearsed in Deuteronomy. It is the word for the law Israel lives under from within the covenant, not a decree handed down by a foreign court.Deu 4:1Exo 15:26Lev 10:11
νόμοςGreek“law”the standard Greek word for law, including God's law; this word is its closest Aramaic counterpart for both divine and royal law.
Names an unchangeable imperial statute whose whole force is that no one, not even the king who issued it, may revoke it: "the law of the Medes and Persians."Dan 6:8Dan 6:15
Covers a fresh royal command issued from the throne over a single crisis and enforced at once, carrying the death penalty.Dan 2:13Dan 2:15
Both
Both name an authoritative law of God that a community is bound to keep: the Aramaic word for "the law of your God" administered under imperial authority, the Greek word for the law God gave through Moses.Ezr 7:14Jhn 7:19
Names the whole law of Moses given at Sinai, the covenant instruction Israel lived under, not a single administrative order.Jhn 1:17Rom 7:12
Serves as the title of a division of Scripture, regularly paired with "the Prophets" to mean the sacred writings as a whole.Mat 5:17Luk 24:44
Stretches to mean an inner governing principle or ruling force at work in a person, not a written statute at all.Rom 7:23Rom 8:2
δόγμαGreek“decree”a decree or edict issued by authority, such as the emperor's decree in Luke 2:1; it matches this word's royal-decree sense in particular.
Carries the note of fixed, irrevocable statute: the law of the Medes and Persians that cannot be altered once issued, binding even the king who signed it. The word itself implies a decree that stands unchangeable.Dan 6:8Dan 6:15
Denotes God's own law as the abiding rule by which the people are governed and taught, set alongside the king's law as its equal in authority for the returning exiles.Ezr 7:12Ezr 7:25
Both
Both are the standard word for a sovereign's binding edict, an order issued from the top that subjects must obey: in Greek the census decree of Caesar Augustus, in Aramaic the royal law of the Persian court.Luk 2:1Dan 2:13
Reaches beyond a monarch to a deliberative body: the binding decisions the apostles and elders reached at Jerusalem, which the churches were then to keep. The authority is a council settling a question, not a king issuing an order.Act 16:4
Names the written regulations of the Mosaic law as a body of ordinances, and specifically the ones Christ set aside: the record of legal demands standing against people that he cancelled and the wall of separating rules he abolished.Col 2:14Eph 2:15
What scholars say about dat
The standard lexicons of biblical Aramaic (HALOT, BDB) treat this word as a loanword from Old Persian data, "law, that which is laid down," and gloss it "decree, law." It is confined to the Aramaic sections of Ezra and Daniel, where it ranges from a single royal edict or judicial sentence (Daniel 2:9, 13, 15) to a permanent, immutable legal code, whether the imperial "law of the Medes and Persians" (Daniel 6:8, 12, 15) or the law of God that Ezra is commissioned to teach and enforce (Ezra 7:12-26). In its administrative setting it stands alongside other Aramaic terms of the Persian chancery, such as qeyam (a freshly enacted statute or interdict), esar (a binding prohibition), and te'em (an official order or authorization). The word's meaning is not in dispute; the one much-discussed instance is Daniel 7:25, where the horn seeks to change "times and law," widely read as the sacred calendar and religious law of God's people (so Collins, Goldingay). TDOT includes an entry treating the term and its Persian background.