Here is the perfect wedding of Biblical commentator and text. Poet, priest, and activist Daniel Berrigan unfolds the many meanings in this Old Testament saga about "the conflicts of conscience in opposition to the sordid will of the powers." Berrigan calls the prophet Daniel an artful dodger, an icon in his time, a mystic, and a heroic image of fidelity. He struggles against the power, the greed, the lust, and the violence of tyrants.
Berrigan, of course, has spent a lifetime speaking out against the war-making ethic of America — especially when it is disguised as a peacekeeping mission. And like Daniel, he has been a truth-teller no matter what the consequences. Berrigan sees the theme of this Old Testament story as "deflation of overweening pride." In contrast to the hubris of the powers that be, consider the humility and integrity of the poems that garnish the book, such as Berrigan's "My Brother's Battered Bible, Carried Repeatedly into Prison."