to throw something into a place with force, and so also to put a thing in position or lay a payment on someone
This is a verb of decisive motion. Someone takes hold of a thing, or of a person, and sends it where it is going. In the Aramaic chapters of Daniel it is the working word for what soldiers do to prisoners: men are tied up and pitched into a blazing furnace, or lowered into a pit of lions. The roughness is carried by the verb itself, so the storyteller never has to add that the men were handled violently.
Daniel 3 sets the verb against its opposite. Anyone who will not fall down (נְפַל) in front of the king's statue will be thrown into the fire. One word is for going down willingly, the other for being sent down by somebody else, and the whole test of loyalty turns on which of the two a person chooses.
The same verb also handles quieter work. When Daniel sees the heavenly courtroom open, the thrones are put in place with this word, not hurled anywhere: the furniture of judgment is set where it belongs so the session can begin. And in Ezra's decree the picture moves into the world of tax collectors, where no official is permitted to lay a levy on the temple staff. English does the same thing when it speaks of imposing a tax or laying a burden on someone, so the stretch from throwing to charging is one a reader can follow.
Hebrew tells these stories with its own verb for throwing (שָׁלַךְ) where the Aramaic writers reach for this one, and the New Testament uses the Greek verb for throwing (βάλλω) when it describes people cast into prison or into the fire.