Boyd’s Bible Dictionary:
The people of that country having Babylon for its capital (Dan. 1:4; 5:15; 9:1).
“Chaldeans, Chaldees” From Concise Bible Dictionary:
After the mention of Ur of the Chaldees in Genesis 11:28, 31 and Genesis 15:7; and the Chaldeans who fell upon Job’s camels (Job 1:17) we do not read of them for some fifteen hundred years, when God sent them to punish Judah (2 Kings 24:2). Then, however, they cannot be distinguished from the Babylonians. Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon was called a Chaldean (Ezra 5:12), and on the taking of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar it was the Chaldeans who destroyed the city (2 Kings 25); and in 2 Chronicles 36:17 Nebuchadnezzar is called “the king of the Chaldees.” It is evident therefore that the Babylonians are called Chaldees; and at one time the Assyrians were associated with the Babylonians. We read “Behold the land of the Chaldeans; this people was not, till the Assyrian founded it for them that dwell in the wilderness” (Isa. 23:13). This passage has been variously interpreted. The meaning appears to be that it was the Chaldeans that were going to destroy Tyre. They were a people that had not been reckoned among the nations until the Assyrians consolidated them into a nation. They had formerly dwelt in the wilderness—as when they fell upon Job’s camels (Job 1:17). This was the people that would bring Tyre to ruin. Lowth translates the verse thus: “Behold the land of the Chaldeans; this people was of no account; (the Assyrian founded it for the inhabitants of the desert; they raised the watch towers, they set up the palaces thereof): this people hath reduced her to a ruin.” Herodotus says “the Assyrians built the towers and temples of Babylon” (Isa. 48:14,20; Jer. 21:4, 9-10: Ezek. 23:14; Dan. 5:30; Dan. 9:1).
It has been judged that the Hebrew word Kasdim, translated “Chaldeans,” is from the Assyrian word Kasadu, “to conquer,” and is applied to those who “conquered” the Chaldean plain. The earlier inhabitants had an agglutinative language, such as the descendants of Cush would have: whereas the Chaldeans spoken of in the Old Testament were a Semitic race, who then possessed the land. At first they were a number of tribes in South Babylonia, but were afterward united and increased. They became merged by the mixing of races and living together, so as not to be distinguishable from the Babylonians.
“Chaldeans (Wise Men)” From Concise Bible Dictionary:
These are mentioned repeatedly in Daniel along with magicians, astrologers, and soothsayers. These Chaldeans were a particular class of learned men, forming with others the Magi, or wise men of Babylon. In Daniel 5:11 it is said that Daniel had been made “master” of them, doubtless because it had been discovered that he had more wisdom than all of them. When the Chaldeans, were called in before the king to interpret the writing on the wall, Daniel was not among them, and we may be sure he kept himself aloof from such. See MAGI.
“Chaldean Language” From Concise Bible Dictionary:
At Babylon Daniel and his companions had to acquire “the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans,” that is, their ancient literature and language (Dan. 1:4). The question is what was that language? In Daniel 2:4 we find that the wise men answered the king in the Syriac language, that is Aramaic: (Compare Ezra 4:7). The Hebrew language is held to be closely related to the Aramaic: that the two are not the same is evident from Isaiah 36:11, where the Jewish leaders asked Rabshakeh to speak in the Syrian language, and not in the Jews’ language, that the Jews generally should not understand what was said. There must be some reason why in Daniel it is said the wise men answered the king in “Aramaic”; this is held to be not the learned and court language, but the common language of the people; and the wise men may have used it that all who heard it might judge of the reasonableness of what they said, though the king might condemn them. The language spoken at court would be different and has been judged by some to be a branch of the Aryan dialect, the ancient language of Central Asia; or perhaps it may have been the ancient Accadian.
As to the writing, the inscriptions found at Assyria, Babylon, and Persia are cut in stone or stamped on bricks in the cuneiform (that is, wedge-shaped) characters. It is known that there was an earlier mode of writing by hieroglyphics which could easily be painted upon papyrus, but which could not without great labor be cut in hard stone, and it is probable that this led to the adoption of the wedge-shaped characters, in which there are no curves: by the variation in position, and number of short and long wedges every sound could be represented, and every proper name spelled. Darius is thus represented on a Persian inscription at Behistun.
Darius
Strong’s Dictionary of Hebrew Words:
Jackson’s Dictionary of Scripture Proper Names:
gentilic of Chaldea