Just before Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of Venice in 1597, the Book of Daniel permeated the cultural consciousness of early modern England. The life of the young Judean living under Babylonian captivity offered an instrumental model, since the struggle to maintain religious identity in a hostile environment resonated for both Catholics and Protestants. Reverberations of Daniel’s life appear throughout Shakespeare’s play on both the grand scale, such as the parallel with Shylock as a Jew residing under gentile rule, and on a local scale, such as Shylock’s refusal to dine with his gentile neighbors. This essay examines how the story of Daniel, and its exegetical reception, serves as a model for Shakespeare’s engagement with the Bible in his conspicuously scriptural drama. By drawing on representations of Daniel to dramatize the complicated status of Hebraic scripture in the Christian tradition, Shakespeare’s play explores the opportunities and risks of hermeneutic engagements.