and the chief of the eunuchs said to Daniel, “I fear my lord the king, who assigned your food and your drink; for why should he see that you were in worse condition than the youths who are of your own age? So you would endanger my head with the king.”
Daniel suffers a repulse from the prefect; and truly, as I have lately remarked, his humanity is not praised through his listening to Daniel’s wish and prayer; but through his burying in silence whatever might have brought him into difficulties.
Daniel kept his conscience clean, refusing the king's meat and wine, though his name was changed by his captors. God gave him favour with the official, and his steadfast principle, not sullenness, but genuine scruple, showed that a tractable spirit and firm religion are not opposed but joined together.
AI summary
Commenting on Daniel 1:8-16
worse liking--looking less healthy. your sort--of your age, or class; literally, "circle." endanger my head--An arbitrary Oriental despot could, in a fit of wrath at his orders having been disobeyed, command the offender to be instantly decapitated.