Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Holy Children
The Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Holy Children, abbreviated Pr Azar, is a passage which appears after Daniel 3:23 in some translations of the Bible, including the ancient Greek Septuagint translation.
The passage is accepted by some Christian denominations as canonical.
In the Revised Standard Version and the English Standard Version this text is included as part of the Apocrypha, and titled "The Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Young Men".
The passage includes three main components. The first is the penitential prayer of Daniel's friend Azariah while the three youths were in the fiery furnace. The second component is a brief account of a radiant figure who met them in the furnace yet who was unburned. The third component is the hymn of praise they sang when they realized their deliverance. The hymn includes the refrain, "Praise and exalt Him above all forever...", repeated many times, each naming a feature of the world.
Texts and origin
The Prayer and accompanying Song are not found in the Hebrew and Aramaic text of the Book of Daniel, nor are they cited in any extant early Jewish writings.The origins of these writings are obscure. Whether the accounts were originally composed in Hebrew or in Greek is uncertain, although many modern scholars conclude on the basis of textual evidence that there was probably an original Semitic edition. The date of composition of these documents is also uncertain, although many scholars favor a date either in the second or first century BC.