King Nebuchadnezzar makes a large golden image and decrees everyone should worship it when they hear the official music. It could very well have been that he got this idea from the dream in which Daniel - and Daniel's God! - said that the head of gold of the statue was Babylon.
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refuse to worship this statue. Their enemies tell the king who questions them. They tell the king that they refuse to worship this statue and will rely on their God for deliverance.
This angers the king who throws them into a fiery furnace. The fire is so hot that it kills the soldiers that took the three Jews to the fiery pit. The king then notices that four individuals are walking around the fire and that one of them looks like the "son of the gods".
He releases them from the fiery furnace and there is no indication at all they were in the promising of fire, not even smoke on their clothes. The king then praises their God, and what seems to be a growing pattern for him, the king decrees that anyone who blasphemes their God be cut into pieces. He also promotes them as administrators within the empire.
The king was probably hoping that this fourth man come out and talk with the king. That would have been an interesting conversation. In the text, he later says that this figure was an angel sent to protect them and no longer describes him as a "son of the gods".
Daniel 3 presents another lesson for those in Babylonian captivity - do not worship the local gods.
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