Hippolytus of Rome : And so the Babylonians, seeing the three boys hymning in the furnace, did not cease to heat the furnace with resin, pitch, tar, and brushwood and the flame climbed forty-nine cubits above the furnace and spread out against they who fought against the mighty God. Scripture says, "The fire broke out and engulfed those whom it found around the furnace of the Chaldeans." See how the fire itself was prudent and recognized and punished the culpable? For it did not singe the slaves of God, but consumed the faithless and godless of the Chaldeans, and those who were within the furnace were besprinkled by an angel, but those careless ones who imagined that they stood outside of the furnace, they were destroyed by fire. — Commentary on Daniel 2.31.1-3 Ishodad of Merv : The flames killed because the slanderers, being carried away by their joy, approached the furnace to observe the burning of their [victims], but through divine intervention they were consumed by the heat of the furnace. So also, in order that the king and the Babylonians might not think that because of a hallucination or illusion those youths made the fire harmless, God caused many of those who had gathered around the furnace to be consumed while the youths felt just like the king in his bedroom. — COMMENTARY ON Daniel 3:22 Jerome : Verse 22. "Then those same men who had cast Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were slain by the fiery flame." Of course this meant the same men of whom it was said above, "And he commanded the strongest men in his army to bind the legs of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and cast them into the burning furnace of fire (another reading: into the furnace of flaming fire)." And so they were not any chance servants of his whom Nebuchadnezzar destroyed, but men who of all his army were strong and most ready for war. Not only was it intended that the miracle should strike terror but also that his own army might experience injury. — St. Jerome, Commentary on Daniel, CHAPTER THREE