THE BABYLONIAN CEDAR, AND THE STRICKEN DESPOT Dan. Chapter 4 Vs. 1 to 37

 

Daniel 4:1-37

THE BABYLONIAN CEDAR, AND THE STRICKEN DESPOT

Nebuchadnezzar Praises God

Thrice already, in these magnificent stories, had Nebuchadnezzar been taught to recognise the existence and to reverence the power of God. In this chapter he is represented as having been brought to a still more overwhelming conviction, and to an open acknowledgment of God’s supremacy, by the lightning-stroke of terrible calamity.

The chapter is dramatically thrown into the form of a decree which, alter his recovery and shortly before his death, the king is represented as having promulgated to all people, nations, and languages that dwell in all the earth. But the literary form is so absolutely subordinated to the general purpose which is to show that where God’s “judgments are in the earth the inhabitants of the earth will learn righteousness,” (Isa. 26:9) that the writer passes without any difficulty from the first to the third person. Dan. 4:20-30 He does not hesitate to represent Nebuchadnezzar as addressing all the subject nations in favour of the God of Israel, even placing in his imperial decree a cento of Scriptural phraseology.

Readers unbiased by a priori assumptions, which are broken to pieces at every step, will ask, Is it even historically conceivable that Nebuchadnezzar to whom the later Jews commonly gave the title of Ha-Rashang, the wicked could ever have issued such a decree? They will further ask, is there any shadow of evidence to show that the king’s degrading madness and recovery rest upon any real tradition?

As to the monuments and inscriptions, they are entirely silent upon the subject; nor is there any trace of these events in any historic record. Those who, with the school of Hengstenberg and Pusey, think that the narrative receives support from the phrase of Berossus that Nebuchadnezzar fell sick and departed this life when he had reigned forty-three years, must be easily satisfied, since he says very nearly the same of Nabopolassar. Such writers too much assume that immemorial prejudices on the subject have so completely weakened the independent intelligence of their readers, that they may safely make assertions which, in matters of secular criticism, would be set aside as almost childishly nugatory.

It is different with the testimony of Abydenus, quoted by Eusebius. Abydenus, in his book on the Assyrians, quoted from Megasthenes the story that, after great conquests, "Nebuchadnezzar as the Chaldean story goes, when he had ascended the roof of his palace, was inspired by some god or other, and cried aloud, I, Nebuchadnezzar, announce to you the future calamity which neither Bel, my ancestor, nor our queen Beltis, can persuade the Fates to avert. There shall come a Persian, a mule, who shall have your own gods as his allies, and he shall make you slaves. Moreover, he who shall help to bring this about shall he the son of a Median woman, the boast of the Assyrian. Would that before his countrymen perish some whirlpool or flood might seize him and destroy him utterly; or else would that he might betake himself to some other place, and might be driven to the desert, where is no city nor track of men, where wild beasts seek their food, and birds fly hither and thither? Would that among rocks and mountain clefts he might wander alone? And as for me, may I, before he imagines this, meet with some happier end!’ When he had thus prophesied, he suddenly vanished.

I have phrased the passages which, amid immense differences, bear a remote analogy to the story of this chapter. Megasthenes flourished B.C. 323, and wrote a book which contained many fabulous stories, three centuries after the events to which he alludes. Abydenus, author of Assyriaca, was a Greek historian of still later, and uncertain, date. The writer of Daniel may have met with their works, or, quite independently of them, he may have learned from the Babylonian Jews that there was some strange legend or other about the death of Nebuchadnezzar. The Jews in Babylonia were more numerous and more distinguished than those in Israel and kept up constant communication with them. So far from any historical accuracy about Babylon in an Israel Jew of the age of the Maccabees being strange or furnishing any proof that he was a contemporary of Nebuchadnezzar, the only subject of astonishment would be that he should have fallen into so many mistakes and inaccuracies, were it not that the ancients in general, and the Jews particularly, paid little attention to such matters.

Aware, then, of some dim traditions that Nebuchadnezzar at the close of his life ascended his palace roof and there received some sort of inspiration, after which he mysteriously disappeared, the writer, giving free play to his imagination for didactic purposes, after the common fashion of his age and nation, worked up these slight elements into the stately and striking Midrash of this chapter. He too makes the king mount his palace roof and receive an inspiration: but in his pages the inspiration does not refer to the mule or half-breed, Cyrus, nor to Nabunaid, the son of a Median woman, nor to any imprecation pronounced upon them, but is an admonition to himself; and the imprecation which he denounced upon the future subversives of Babylon is dimly analogous to the fate which fell on his own head. Instead of making him vanish immediately afterwards, the writer makes him fall into a beast-madness for seven times, after which he suddenly recovers and publishes a decree that all mankind should honour the true God.

Ewald thinks that a verse has been lost at the beginning of the chapter, indicating the nature of the document which follows; but it seems more probable that the author began this, as he begins other chapters, with the sort of imposing overture of the first verse.

Like Assur-bani-pal and the ancient despots, Nebuchadnezzar addresses himself to all people in the earth, and after the salutation of peace. (Ezra 4:7; 7:12) says that he thought it right to tell them the signs and wonders that the High God hath wrought towards me. How great are His signs, and how mighty are His wonders! His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and His dominion is from generation to generation.

                          Nebuchadnezzar's Second Dream

He goes on to relate that, while he was at ease and secure in his palace, he saw a dream which affrighted him, and left a train of gloomy forebodings. As usual he summoned the whole train of Khakhamim, Ashshaphim, Mekash-shaphim, Kasdim, Chartummim, and Gazerim, to interpret his dream, and as usual they failed to do so. Then, lastly, Daniel, surnamed Belteshazzar, after Bel, Nebuchadnezzar’s god, and chief of the magicians, in whom was the spirit of the holy God, is summoned. To him the king tells his dream.

The writer probably derives the images of the dream from the magnificent description of the King of Assyria as a spreading cedar in Eze, 31:3-18: -

"Behold, the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches, and with a shadowing shroud, and of a high stature; and his top was among the thick boughs. The waters nourished him, the deep made him to grow therefore his stature was exalted above all the trees of the field; and his boughs were multiplied, and his branches became long by reason of many waters. All the fowls of the air made their nests in his boughs, and under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their young, and under his shadow dwelt all great nations. The cedars in the garden of God could not hide him nor was any tree in the garden of God like him in his beauty therefore thus saith the Lord God: Because thou art exalted in stature, I will deliver him into the hand of the mighty one of the nations and strangers, the terrible of the nations, have cut him off, and have left him. Upon the mountains and in all the valleys his branches are broken, and all the people of the earth are gone down from his shadow and have left him…I made the nations to shake at the sound of his fall."

We may also compare this dream with that of Cambyses narrated by Herodotus: He fancied that a vine grew from the womb of his daughter and overshadowed the whole of Asia The magian interpreter expounded the vision to fore show that the offspring of his daughter would reign over Asia in his stead.

So too Nebuchadnezzar in his dream had seen a tree in the midst of the earth, of stately height, which reached to heaven and overshadowed the world, with fair leaves and abundant fruit, giving large nourishment to all mankind, and shade to the beasts of the field and fowls of the heaven. The LXX adds with glowing exaggeration, The sun and moon dwelled in it, and gave light to the whole earth. And, behold, a watcher ‘ir and a holy one qaddish came down from heaven, and bade, Hew down, and lop, and strip the tree, and scatter his fruit, and scare away the beasts and birds from it, but leave the stump in the greening turf bound by a band of brass and iron, and let it be wet with heaven’s dews,-and then, passing from the image to the thing signified, and let his portion be with the beasts in the grass of the earth. Let his heart be changed from men, and let a beast’s heart be given unto him, and let seven times pass over him. We are not told to whom the mandate is given-that is left magnificently vague. The object of this sentence of the watchers, and utterance of the holy ones, is that the living may know that the Most High is the Supreme King, and can, if He will, give rule even to the lowliest. Nebuchadnezzar, who tells us in his inscription that he never forgave impiety, has to learn that he is nothing, and that God is all, that He pulleth down the mighty from their seat, and exalteth the humble and meek.

                        Daniel Interprets the Second Dream

This dream Nebuchadnezzar bids Daniel to interpret, because thou hast the spirit of a Holy God in thee.

Before we proceed let us pause for a moment to notice the agents of the doom. It is one of the never-sleeping ones an ‘ir and a holy one-who flashes down from heaven with the mandate; and he is only the mouthpiece of the whole body of the watchers and holy ones.

Generally, no doubt, the phrase means an angelic denizen of heaven. The LXX translates watcher by angel. Theodotion, feeling that there is something technical in the word, which only occurs in this chapter, renders it by alp. This is the first appearance of the term in Jewish literature, but it becomes extremely common in later Jewish writings as, for instance, in the Book of Enoch. The term a holy one Comp. Zech. 14:5 Psm. 89:8 connotes the dedicated separation of the angels; for in the Old Testament holiness is used to express consecration and setting apart, rather than moral stainlessness. See Job 15:15). The seven watchers are alluded to in the post-exilic Zechariah: Zech. 4:10. "They see with joy the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel, even those seven, the eyes of the Lord; they run to and fro through the whole earth. In this verse Kohut and Kuenen read watchers ‘irim for eyes ‘inim , and we find these seven watchers in the Book of Enoch (chapter 20.). We see as a historic fact that the familiarity of the Jews with Persian angelology and demonology seems to have developed their views on the subject. It is only after the Exile that we find angels and demons playing a more prominent part than before, divided into classes, and even marked out by special names. The Apocrypha becomes more precise than the canonical books, and the later pseudepigraphic books, which advance still further, are left behind by the Talmud. Some have supposed a connection between the seven watchers and the Persian amschashpands The shedim, or evil spirits, are also seven in number, -Seven are they, seven are they! In the channel of the deep seven are they, In the radiance of heaven seven are they!

It is true that in Enoch 90:91 the prophet sees the first six white ones, and we find six also in Eze. 9:2. On the other hand, we find seven in Tobit: I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels which present the prayers of the saints, and which go in and out before the glory of the Holy One. The names are variously given; but perhaps the commonest are Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, Raphael, and Raguel. In the Babylonian mythology seven deities stood at the head of all Divine beings, and the seven planetary spirits watched the gates of Hades.

To Daniel, when he had heard the dream, it seemed so full of portentous omen that he was astonished for one hour. Seeing his agitation, the king bids him take courage and fearlessly interpret the dream. But it is an augury of fearful visitation; so he begins with a formula intended as it were to avert the threatened consequences. My Lord, he exclaimed, on recovering voice, the dream be to them that hate thee, and the interpretation to thine enemies. The king would regard it as a sort of appeal to the averting deities the Roman Di Averrunci, and as analogous to the current formula of his hymns, From the noxious spirit may the King of heaven and the king of earth preserve thee! He then proceeds to tell the king that the fair, stately, sheltering tree it is thou, O king; arid the interpretation of the doom pronounced upon it that he should be driven from men, and should dwell with the beasts of the field, and be reduced to eat grass like the oxen, and be wet with the dew of heaven, and seven times shall pass over thee, till thou shalt know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will. But as the stump of the tree was to be left in the fresh green grass, so the kingdom should be restored to him when he had learnt that the Heavens do rule.

The only feature of the dream which is left uninterpreted is the binding of the stump with bands of iron and brass. Most commentators follow Jerome in making it refer to the fetters with which maniacs are bound, Mark 5:3 but there is no evidence that Nebuchadnezzar was so restrained, and the bands round the stump are for its protection from injury. This seems preferable to the view which explains them as the stern and crushing sentence under which the king is to lie. Josephus and the Jewish exegetes take the seven times to be seven years; but the phrase is vague, and the event is evidently represented as taking place at the close of the king’s reign. Instead of using the name of Jehovah, the prophet uses the distant periphrases of the Heavens. It was a phrase which became common in later Jewish literature, and a Babylonian king would be familiar with it; for in the inscriptions, we find Maruduk addressed as the great Heavens, the father of the gods.

Having faithfully interpreted the fearful warning of the dream, Daniel points out that the menaces of doom are sometimes conditional and may be averted or delayed. Wherefore, he says, O king, let my counsel be acceptable unto thee, and break off thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by showing mercy to the poor, if so be there may be a healing of thy error.

This pious exhortation of Daniel has been severely criticized from opposite directions.

The Jewish Rabbis, in the very spirit of bigotry and false religion, said that Daniel was subsequently thrown into the den of lions to punish him for the crime of tendering good advice to Nebuchadnezzar; and, moreover, the advice could not be of any real use; for even if the nations of the world do righteousness and mercy to prolong their dominion, it is only sin to them.

On the other hand, the Roman Catholics have made it their chief support for the doctrine of good works, which is so severely condemned in the twelfth of our articles.

Probably no such theological questions remotely entered into the mind of the writer. Perhaps the words should be rendered break off thy sins by righteousness, rather than as Theodotion renders them redeem thy sins by almsgiving. It is, however, certain that among the Pharisees and the later Rabbis there was a grievous limitation of the sense of the word tzedakah, righteousness, to mean merely almsgiving. In Mat. 6:1 it is well known that the reading alms has in the received text displaced the reading righteousness; and in the Talmud righteousness like our shrunken misuse of the word charity means almsgiving. The value of alms has often been extravagantly exalted. Thus we read: Whoever shears his substance for the poor escapes the condemnation of hell (Nedarim, f. 22, 1). In Baba Bathra, f. 10, 1, and Rosh Hashanah, f. 16, 2, we have alms delivered from death, as a gloss on the meaning of Prov. 11:4.

We cannot tell that the writer shared these views. He probably meant no more than that cruelty and injustice were the chief vices of despots, and that the only way to avert a threatened calamity was by repenting of them. The necessity for compassion in the abstract was recognized even by the most brutal Assyrian kings.

We are next told the fulfilment of the dark dream. The interpretation had been meant to warn the king; but the warning was soon forgotten by one arrayed in such absolutism of imperial power. The intoxication of pride had become habitual in his heart, and twelve months sufficed to obliterate all solemn thoughts. The Septuagint adds that he kept the words in his heart; but the absence of any mention of rewards or honours paid to Daniel is perhaps a sign that he was rather offended that impressed.

                            Nebuchadnezzar's Humiliation

A year later he was walking on the flat roof of the great palace of the kingdom of Babylon. The sight of that golden city in the zenith of its splendour may well have dazzled the soul of its founder. He tells us in an inscription that he regarded that city as the apple of his eye, and that the palace was its most glorious ornament. It was in the centre of the whole country; it covered a vast space and was visible far and wide. It was built of brick and bitumen, enriched with cedar and iron, decorated with inscriptions and paintings. The tower contained the treasures of my imperishable royalty; and silver, gold, metals, gems, nameless and priceless, and immense treasures of rare value, had been lavished upon it. Begun in a happy month, and on an auspicious day, it had been finished in fifteen days by armies of slaves. This palace and its celebrated hanging gardens were one of the wonders of the world.

Beyond this superb edifice, where now the hyena prowls amid miles of debris and mounds of ruin, and where the bittern builds amid pools of water, lay the unequalled city Its walls were three hundred and eighty feet high and eighty-five feet thick, and each side of the quadrilateral they enclosed was fifteen miles in length. The mighty Euphrates flowed through the midst of the city, which is said to have covered a space of two hundred square miles; and on its farther bank, terrace above terrace, up to its central altar, rose the huge Temple of Bel, with all its dependent temples and palaces. The vast circuit of the walls enclosed no mere wilderness of houses, but there were interspaces of gardens, and palm-groves, and orchards, and corn-land, sufficient to maintain the whole population. Here and there rose the temples reared to Nebo, and Sin the moon-god, and Mylitta, and Nana, and Samas, and other deities; and there were aqueducts or conduits for water, and forts and palaces; and the walls were pierced with a hundred brazen gates. When Milton wanted to find some parallel to the city of Pandemonium in Paradise Lost, he could only say, -

Not Babylon, nor great Alcairo such magnificence equaled in all their glories, to enshrine Belus or Serapis their gods, or seat their kings, when Egypt with Assyria strove in wealth and luxury.

Babylon, to use the phrase of Aristotle, included, not a city, but a nation.

Enchanted by the glorious spectacle of this house of his royalty and abode of his majesty, the despot exclaimed almost in the words of some of his own inscriptions, is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my treasures and for the honour of my majesty?

The Bible always represents to us that pride and arrogant self-confidence are an offence against God. The doom fell on Nebuchadnezzar while the haughty boast was still in the king’s mouth. The suddenness of the Nemesis of pride is closely paralleled by the scene in the Acts of the Apostles in which Herod Agrippa I is represented as entering the theatre at Caesarea to receive the deputies of Tyre and Sidon. He was clad, says Josephus, in a robe of intertissued silver, and when the sun shone upon it he was surrounded with a blaze of splendour. Struck by the scene, the people, when he had ended his harangue to them, shouted, it is the voice of a god, and not of a man! Herod, too, in the story of Josephus, had received, just before, an ominous warning; but it came to him in vain. He accepted the blasphemous adulation, and immediately, smitten by the angel of God, he was eaten of worms, and in three days was dead.

And something like this we see again and again in what the late Bishop Thirlwall called the irony of history the very cases in which men seem to have been elevated to the very summit of power only to heighten the dreadful precipice over which they immediately fall. He mentions the cases of Persia, which was on the verge of ruin, when with lordly arrogance she dictated the Peace of Antalcidas; of Boniface VIII, in the Jubilee of 1300, immediately preceding his deadly overthrow; of Spain, under Philip II, struck down by the ruin of the Armada at the zenith of her wealth and pride. He might have added the instances of Ahab, Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar, and Herod Antipas; of Alexander the Great, dying as the fool dieth, drunken and miserable, in the supreme hour of his conquests; of Napoleon, hurled into the dust, first by the retreat from Moscow, then by the overthrow at Waterloo.

While the word was yet in the king’s mouth, there fell a voice from heaven. It was what the Talmudists alluded to so frequently as the Bath Qol, or daughter of a voice, which came sometimes for the consolation of suffering, sometimes for the admonition of overweening arrogance. It announced to him the fulfilment of the dream and its interpretation. As with one lightning-flash the glorious cedar was blasted, its leaves scattered, its fruits destroyed, its shelter reduced to burning and barrenness. Then somehow the man’s heart was taken from him. He was driven forth to dwell among the beasts of the field, to eat grass like oxen. Taking himself for an animal in his degrading humiliation he lived in the open field. The dews of heaven fell upon him. His unkempt locks grew rough like eagles’ feathers, his uncut nails like claws. In this condition he remained till seven times some vague and sacred cycle of days-passed over him.

His penalty was nothing absolutely abnormal. His illness is well known to science and national tradition as that form of hypochondriasis in which a man takes himself for a wolf lycanthropy, or a dog kynanthropy, or some other animal. Probably the fifth-century monks, who were known as Boskoi, from feeding on grass, may have been, in many cases, half maniacs who in time took themselves for oxen. Cornill, so far as I know, is the first to point out the curious circumstance that a notion as to the points of analogy between Nebuchadnezzar thus spelt and Antiochus Epiphanes may have been strengthened by the Jewish method of mystic commentary known in the Talmud as Gematria, and in Greek as Isopsephism. That such methods, in other forms, were known and practised in early times we find from the substitution of Sheshach for Babel in Jer. 25:26; 51:41, and of Tabeal by some cryptogram for Remaliah in Isa. 7:6; and of lebh kamai them that dwell in the midst of them for Kasdim Chaldeans in Jer. 51:1. These forms are only explicable by the interchange of letters known as Athbash, Albam, etc. Now Nebuchadnezzar = 423:-

n= 50;

b= 2;

w= 6;

k= 20;

d= 4;

n= 50;

a= 1;

x= 90;

r= 200 = 423.

And Antiochus Epiphanes: 423:

a=1;

n= 50;

f= 9;

y= 10;

w= 6;

k= 20;

w= 6;

s= 60

a= 1

p= 70;

y= 10;

p= 70;

n= 50;

s= 60.

Total = 423

The madness of Antiochus was recognized in the popular change of his name from Epiphanes to Epimanes. But there were obvious points of resemblance between these potentates. Both of them conquered Jerusalem. Both of them robbed the Temple of its holy vessels. Both of them were liable to madness. Both of them tried to dictate the religion of their subjects.

What happened to the kingdom of Babylon during the interim is a point with which the writer does not trouble himself. It formed no part of his story or of his moral. There is, however. no difficulty in supposing that the chief mages and courtiers may have continued to rule in the king’s name a course rendered all the easier by the extreme seclusion in which most Eastern monarchs pass their lives, often unseen by their subjects from one year’s end to the other. Alike in ancient days as in modern witness the cases of Charles VI of France, Christian VII of Denmark, George III of England, and Otho of Bavaria a king’s madness is not allowed to interfere with the normal administration of the kingdom.

                               Nebuchadnezzar Restored

When the seven times whether years or brief periods were concluded, Nebuchadnezzar lifted up his eyes to heaven, and his understanding returned to him. No further light is thrown on his recovery, which as is not infrequently the case in madness was as sudden as his aberration. Perhaps the calm of the infinite azure over his head flowed into his troubled soul and reminded him that as the inscriptions say the Heavens are the father of the gods. At any rate, with that upward glance came the restoration of his reason.

He instantly blessed the Most High, and praised and honoured Him who liveth for ever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom is from generation to generation. Exo. 17:16 And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing; and He doeth according to His will (Psm. 45:13) in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay His hand, or say unto Him, What doest Thou?

Then his lords and counsellors reinstated him in his former majesty; his honour and brightness returned to him; he was once more that head of gold in his kingdom. Dan. 2:38.

He concludes the story with the words: Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honour the King of heaven, all whose works are truth and His ways judgment; Psm. 33:4 and those that walk in pride He is able to abase. Exo. 18:11.

He died B.C. 561, and was deified, leaving behind him an invincible name.

THE IDOL OF GOLD, AND THE FAITHFUL THREE Dan. Chapter 3 Vs. 1 to 30

 

Daniel 3:1-30

THE IDOL OF GOLD, AND THE FAITHFUL THREE

Regarded as an instance of the use of historic fiction to inculcate the noblest truths, the third chapter of Daniel is not only superb in its grandeur, but still more in the manner in which it sets forth the piety of ultimate faithfulness, and of that of death-defying utterance of truth which is the essence of the most heroic and inspiring forms of martyrdom. I have always regarded it as one of the most precious among the narrative chapters of Scripture. It is of priceless value as illustrating the deliverance of undaunted faithfulness as setting forth the truth that they who love God and trust in Him must love Him and trust in Him even till the end, in spite not only of the most overwhelming peril, but even when they are brought face to face with apparently hopeless defeat. Death itself, by torture or sword or flame, threatened by the priests and tyrants and multitudes of the earth set in open array against them, is important to shake the purpose of God’s saints. When the servant of God can do nothing else against the banded forces of sin, the world, and the devil, he at least can die, and can say like the Maccabees, Let us die in our simplicity! He may be saved from death; but even if not, he must prefer death to apostasy, and will save his own soul. That the Jews were ever reduced to such a choice during the Babylonian exile there is no evidence; indeed, all evidence points the other way, and seems to show that they were allowed with perfect tolerance to hold and practice their own religion. But in the days of Antiochus Epiphanes the question which to choose-martyrdom or apostasy became a very burning one. Antiochus set up at Jerusalem the abomination of desolation, and it is easy to understand what courage and conviction a tempted Jew might derive from the study of this splendid defiance. That the scripture is of a kind well fitted to haunt the imagination and is shown by the fact that Firdausi tells a similar story from Persian tradition of a martyr hero who came unhurt out of a fiery furnace.

This immortal chapter breathes exactly the same spirit as the forty-fourth Psalm.

"Our heart is not turned back, neither our steps gone out of Thy way: No, not when Thou hast smitten us into the place of dragons and covered us with the shadow of death. If we have forgotten the Name of our God, and holden up our hands to any strange god, shall not God search it out? For He knoweth the very secrets of the heart."

"Nebuchadnezzar the king," we are told in one of the stately overtures in which this writer rejoices, "made an image of gold, whose height was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof six cubits, and he set it up in the plains of Dura, in the province of Babylon."

                     Nebuchadnezzar's Golden Image

No date is given, but the writer may well have supposed or have traditionally heard that some such event took place about the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, when he had brought to conclusion a series of great victories and conquests. Nor are we told whom the image represented. We may imagine that it was an idol of Bel-merodach, the patron deity of Babylon, to whom we know that he did erect an image; or of Nebo, from whom the king derived his name. When it is said to be of gold, the writer, in the grandiose character of his scripture, may have meant his words to be taken literally, or he may merely have meant that it was gilded, or overlaid with gold. There were colossal images in Egypt and in Nineveh, but we never read in history of any other gilded image ninety feet high and nine feet broad. The name of the plain or valley in which it was erected Dura has been found in several Babylonian localities.

Then the king proclaimed a solemn dedicatory festival, to which he invited every sort of functionary, of which the writer, with his usual and rotundity of expression, accumulates the eight names. They were: -

1. The princes, satraps, or wardens of the realm.

2. The Governors. (Dan. 2:48)

3. The captains.

4. The Judges.

5. The Treasurers or Controllers.

6. The Counselors.

7. The Sheriffs.

8. All the Rulers of the Provinces.

Any attempts to attach specific values to these titles are failures. They seem to be a catalogue of Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian titles, and may perhaps as Ewald conjectured be meant to represent the various grades of three classes of functionaries civil, military, and legal.

Then all these officials, who with leisurely stateliness are named again, came to the festival, and stood before the image. It is not improbable that the writer may have been a witness of some such splendid ceremony to which the Jewish magnates were invited in the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes.

Then a herald kerooza cried aloud a proclamation to all peoples, nations, and languages. Such a throng might easily have contained Greeks, Phoenicians, Jews, Arabs, and Assyrians, as well as Babylonians. At the outburst of a blast of boisterous janizary music they are all to fall down and worship the golden image.

Of the six different kinds of musical instruments, which, in his usual style, the writer names and reiterates, and which it is neither possible nor very important to distinguish, three the harp, psaltery, and bagpipe are Greek; two, the horn and sackbut, have names derived from roots found in both Aryan and Semitic languages; and one, the pipe, is Semitic. As to the list of officials, the writer had added and all the rulers of the provinces; so here he adds and all kinds of music.

Anyone who refused to obey the order was to be flung, the same hour, into the burning furnace of fire. Professor Sayce, in his Hibbert Lectures, connects the whole scene with an attempt, first by Nebuchadnezzar, then by Nabunaid, to make Merodach who, to conciliate the prejudices of the worshippers of the older deity Bel, was called Bel merodach the chief deity of Babylon. He sees in the king’s proclamation an underlying suspicion that some would be found to oppose his attempted centralization of worship.

The music burst forth, and the vast throng all prostrated themselves, except Daniel’s three companions, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

We naturally pause to ask where then was Daniel? If the narrative be taken for literal history, it is easy to answer with the apologist that he was ill; or was absent; or was a person of too much importance to be required to prostrate himself; or that the Chaldeans were afraid to accuse him. Certainly, says Professor Fuller, had this chapter been the composition of a pseudo-Daniel, or the record of a fictitious event, Daniel would have been introduced and his immunity explained. Apologetic literature abounds in such fanciful and valueless arguments. It would be just as true, and just as false, to say that certainly, if the narrative were historic, his absence would have been explained; and all the more because he was expressly elected to be in the gate of the king. But if we regard the chapter as a noble Haggada, there is not the least difficulty in accounting for Daniel’s absence. The separate stories were meant to cohere to a certain extent; and though the writers of this kind of ancient literature, even in Greece, rarely trouble themselves with any questions which lie outside the immediate purpose, yet the introduction of Daniel into the story would have been to violate every vestige of verisimilitude. To represent Nebuchadnezzar worshipping Daniel as a god, and offering oblations to him on one page, and on the next to represent the king as throwing him into a furnace for refusing to worship an idol, would have involved an obvious incongruity. Daniel is represented in the other chapters as including his part and bearing his testimony to the God of Israel; this chapter is separately devoted to the heroism and the testimony of his three friends. Observing the defiance of the king’s edict, certain Chaldeans, actuated by jealousy, came near to the king and accused the Jews. Dan. 6:13-14 The word for accused is curious and interesting. It is literally eating the pieces of the Jews, evidently involving a metaphor of fierce devouring malice. Reminding the king of his decree, they inform him that three of the Jews to whom he has given such high promotion thought well not to regard thee; thy god will they not serve, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up. Nebuchadnezzar, like other despots who suffer from the vertigo of autocracy, was liable to sudden outbursts of almost spasmodic fury. We read of such storms of rage in the case of Antiochus Epiphanes, of Nero, of Valentinian I, and even of Theodosius. The double insult to himself and to his god on the part of men to whom he had shown such conspicuous favour transported him out of himself. For Bel-merodach, whom he had made the patron god of Babylon, was, as he says in one of his own inscriptions, the lord, the joy of my heart in Babylon, which is the seat of my sovereignty and empire. It seemed to him too intolerable that this god, who had crowned him with glory and victory, and that he himself, arrayed in the plenitude of his imperial power, should be defied and set at naught by three miserable and ungrateful captives.

He puts it to them whether it was their set purpose that they would not serve his gods or worship his image. Then he offers them a locus poenitentiae. The music should sound forth again. If they would then worship but if not, they should be flung into the furnace, and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?

The question is a direct challenge and defiance of the God of Israel, like Pharaoh’s "And who is Jehovah, that I shall obey His voice?" or like Sennacherib’s "Who are they among all the gods that have delivered their land out of my hand?" Exo. 5:2 Isa. 36:20 2Chr. 32:13-17. It is answered in each instance by a decisive interposition. The answer of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego is truly magnificent in its unflinching courage. It is O Nebuchadnezzar; we have no need to answer thee a word concerning this. If our God whom we serve be able to deliver us, He will deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and out of thy hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up. By the phrase if our God be able no doubt as to God’s power is expressed. The word able merely means able in accordance with His own plans. The three children knew well that God can deliver, and that He has repeatedly delivered His saints. Such deliverances abound on the sacred page, and are mentioned in the Dream of Gerontius: -

"Rescue him, O Lord, in this his evil hour, As of old so many by Thy mighty Power: Enoch and Elias from the common doom; Noe from the waters in a saving home; Abraham from the abounding guilt of Heathenness', Job from all his multiform and fell distress; Isaac, when his father’s knife was raised to slay; Lot from burning Sodom on its judgment day; Moses from the land of bondage and despair; Daniel from the hungry lions in their lair; David from Goliath, and the wrath of Saul; And the two Apostles from their prison thrall."

But the willing martyrs were also well aware that in many cases it has not been God’s purpose to deliver His saints out of the peril of death; and that it has been far better for them that they should be carried heavenwards on the fiery chariot of martyrdom. They were therefore perfectly prepared to find that it was the will of God that they too should perish, as thousands of God’s faithful ones had perished before them, from the tyrannous and cruel hands of man; and they were cheerfully willing to confront that awful extremity. Thus regarded, the three words and if not are among the sublimest words uttered in all Scripture. They represent the truth that the man who trusts in God will continue to say even to the end, Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him. They are the triumph of faith over all adverse circumstances. It has been the glorious achievement of man to have attained, by the inspiration of the breath of the Almighty, so clear an insight into the truth that the voice of duty must be obeyed to the very end, as to lead him to defy every combination of opposing forces. The gay lyrist of heathendom expressed it in his famous ode, -

"Justum et tenacem propositi virum Non civium ardor prays jubentium, Non vultus instantis tyranni, Mente quatit solida."

It is man’s testimony to his indomitable belief that the things of sense are not to be valued in comparison to that high happiness which arises from obedience to the law of conscience, and that no extremities of agony are commensurate with apostasy. This it is which, more than anything else, has, in spite of appearances, shown that the spirit of man is of heavenly birth, and has enabled him to unfold

"The wings within him wrapped, and proudly rise

Redeemed from earth, a creature of the skies."

For wherever there is left in man any true manhood, he has never shrunk from accepting death rather than the disgrace of compliance with what he despises and abhors. This it is which sends our soldiers on the forlorn hope, and makes them march with a smile upon the batteries which vomit their crossfires upon them; and so die by thousands the unnamed demigods. By virtue of this it has been that all the martyrs have, with the irresistible might of their weakness, shaken the solid world.

                                     The Fiery Furnace

On hearing the defiance of the faithful Jews absolutely firm in its decisiveness, yet perfectly respectful in its tone the tyrant was so much beside himself, that, as he glared on Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, his very countenance was disfigured. The furnace was probably one used for the ordinary cremation of the dead. He ordered that it should be heated seven times hotter than it was wont to be heated, and certain men of mighty strength who were in his army were bidden to bind the three youths and fling them into the raging flames. So, bound in their hosen, their tunics, their long mantles, and their other garments, they were cast into the seven-times-heated furnace. The king’s commandment was so urgent, and the tongue of flame was darting so fiercely from the horrible kiln, that the executioners perished in planting the ladders to throw them in, but they themselves fell into the midst of the furnace.

The death of the executioners seems to have attracted no special notice, but immediately afterwards Nebuchadnezzar startled in amazement and terror from his throne, and asked his chamberlains, did we not cast three men bound into the midst of the fire?

True, O king, they answered.

Behold, he said, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt, and the aspect of the fourth is like a son of God!

Then the king approached the door of the furnace of fire, and called, Ye servants of the Most High God, come forth. Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came out of the midst of the fire; and all the satraps, prefects, presidents, and court chamberlains gathered round to stare on men who were so completely untouched by the fierceness of the flames that not a hair of their heads had been singed, nor their hosen shriveled, nor was there even the smell of burning upon them. According to the version of Theodotion, the king worshipped the Lord before them, and he then published a decree in which, after blessing God for sending His angel to deliver His servants who trusted in Him, he somewhat incoherently ordained that every people, nation, or language which spoke any blasphemy against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, should be cut in pieces, and his house made a dunghill : since there is no other god that can deliver after this sort.

Then the king as he had done before promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the province of Babylon.

Henceforth they disappear alike from history, tradition, and legend; but the whole magnificent Haggada is the most powerful possible commentary on the words of Isa. 43:2: "When thou walkest through the fire thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon thee."

How powerfully the scripture struck the imagination of the Jews is shown by the not very apposite Song of the Three Children, with the other apocryphal additions. Here we are told that the furnace was heated "with rosin, pitch, tow, and small wood; so that the flame streamed forth above the furnace forty and nine cubits. And it passed through and burned those Chaldeans it found about the furnace. But the angel of the Lord came down into the furnace together with Azarias and his fellows and smote the flame of the fire out of the oven; and made the midst of the furnace as it had been a moist whistling wind, so that the fire touched them not at all, neither hurt nor troubled them."

In the Talmud the majestic limitations of the Biblical scripture are sometimes enriched with touches of Jewish literature, but more often coarsened by tasteless exhibitions of triviality and Rancour. Thus in the Vayyikra Rabba Nebuchadnezzar tries to persuade the youths by fantastic misquotations of Isa. 10:10, Eze. 23:14. Deut. 4:28, Jer. 27:8; and they refute him and end with clumsy plays on his name, telling him that he should bark nabach like a dog, swell like a water-jar cod, and chirp like a cricket tsirtsir, which he immediately did- i.e., he was smitten with lycanthropy.

In Sanhedrin f. 93, 1, the story is told of the adulterous false prophets Ahab and Zedekiah, and it is added that Nebuchadnezzar offered them the ordeal of fire from which the Three Children had escaped. They asked that Joshua the high priest might be with them, thinking that his sanctity would be their protection. When the king asked why Abraham, though alone, had been saved from the fire of Nimrod, and the Three Children from the burning furnace, and yet the high priest should have been singed, Zec. 3:2 Joshua answered that the presence of two wicked men gave the fire power over him, and quoted the proverb, Two dry Sticks kindle one green one.

In Pesachin, f. 118, 1, there is a fine imaginative passage on the subject, attributed to Rabbi Samuel of Shiloh: -

"In the hour when Nebuchadnezzar the wicked threw Hananiah, Mishrael, and Azariah into the midst of the furnace of fire, Gorgemi, the prince of the hail, stood before the Holy One blessed be He! and said, Lord of the world, let me go down and cool the furnace. No, answered Gabriel; ‘all men know that hail quenches fire; but I, the prince of fire, will go down and make the furnace cool within and hot without, and thus work a miracle within a miracle. The Holy One blessed be He! said unto him, Go down. In the self-same hour Gabriel opened his mouth and said, And the truth of the Lord endureth for ever."

Mr. Ball, who quotes these passages from Wunsche’s Bibliotheca Rabbinica in his Introduction to the Song of the Three Children, very truly adds that many Scriptural commentators wholly lack the orientation derived from the study of Talmudic and Midrashic literature which is an indispensable preliminary to a right understanding of the treasures of Eastern thought. They do not grasp the inveterate tendency of Jewish teachers to convey doctrine by concrete stories and illustrations, and not in the form of abstract thought. The doctrine is everything; the mode of presentation has no independent value. To make the scripture the first consideration, and the doctrine it was intended to convey an afterthought, as we, with our dry Western literalness, are predisposed to do, is to reverse the Jewish order of thinking, and to inflict unconscious injustice on the authors of many edifying narratives of antiquity.

The scripture by Daniel in the apocryphal Story of Susanna is probably suggested by the meaning of his name: Judgment of God. Both that story and Bel and the Dragon are in their way effective fictions, though incomparably inferior to the canonical part of the Book of Daniel.

And the startling decree of Nebuchadnezzar finds its analogy in the decree published by Antiochus the Great to all his subjects in honour of the Temple at Jerusalem, in which he threatened the infliction of heavy fines on any foreigner who trespassed within the limits of the Holy Court.

THE DREAM IMAGE OF RUINED EMPIRES Dan. Chapter 2 VS. 1-49

 

Daniel 2:1-49

THE DREAM - IMAGE OF RUINED EMPIRES

"With thee will I break in pieces rulers and captains." - Jer. 51:23

Nebuchadnezzar's Dream

The Book of Daniel is constructed with consummate skill to teach the mighty lessons which it was designed to bring home to the minds of its readers, not only in the age of its first appearance, but forever. It is a book which, so far from being regarded as unworthy of its place in the Canon by those who cannot accept it as either genuine or authentic, is valued by many such critics as a very noble work of inspired genius, from which all the difficulties are removed when it is considered in the light of its true date and origin. This second chapter belongs to all time. All that might be looked upon as involving harshness's, difficulties, and glaring impossibilities, if it were meant for literal history and prediction, vanishes when we contemplate it in its real perspective as a lofty specimen of imaginative fiction, used, like the parables of our Blessed Lord, as the vehicle for the deepest truths. We shall see how the imagery of the chapter produced a deep impress on the imagination of the holiest thinkers-how magnificent a use is made of it fifteen centuries later by the great poet of medieval Catholicism. It contains the germs of the only philosophy of history which has stood the test of time. It symbolizes that ultimate conviction of the Psalmist that God is the Governor among the nations. No other conviction can suffice to give us consolation amid the perplexity which surrounds the passing phases of the destinies of empires.

The first chapter serves as a keynote of soft, simple, and delightful music by way of overture. It calms us for the contemplation of the awful and tumultuous scenes that are now in succession to be brought before us.

The model which the writer has had in view in this Haggadah is the forty-first chapter of the Book of Genesis. In both chapters we have magnificent heathen potentates-Pharaoh of Egypt, and Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. In both chapters the kings dream dreams by which they are profoundly troubled. In both, their spirits are saddened. In both, they send for all the Chakamim and all the Chartummim of their kingdoms to interpret the dreams. In both, these professional magicians prove themselves entirely incompetent to furnish the interpretation. In both, the failure of the heathen oneirologists is emphasized by the immediate success of a Jewish captive. In both, the captives are described as young, gifted, and beautiful. In both, the interpretation of the King’s dream is rewarded by the elevation to princely civil honours. In both, the immediate elevation to ruling position is followed by life-long faithfulness and prosperity. When we add that there are even close verbal resemblances between the chapters, it is difficult not to believe that the one has been influenced by the other.

The dream is placed in the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. The date is surprising; for the first chapter has made Nebuchadnezzar a king of Babylon after the siege of Jerusalem in the third year of Jehoiakim; and setting aside the historic impossibilities involved in that date, this scene would then fall in the second year of the probation of Daniel and his companions, and at a time when Daniel could only have been a boy of fifteen. The apologists get over the difficulty with the ease which suffices superficial readers who are already convinced. Thus Rashi says the second year of Nebuchadnezzar, meaning the second year after the destruction of the Temple, i.e., his twentieth year! Josephus, no less arbitrarily, makes it mean the second year after the devastation of Egypt. By such devices anything may stand for anything. Hengstenberg and his school, after having made Nebuchadnezzar a king, conjointly with his father-a fact of which history knows nothing, and indeed seems to exclude-say that the second year of his reign does not mean the second year after he became king, but the second year of his independent rule after the death of Nabopolassar. This style of interpretation is very familiar among harmonists, and it makes the interpretation of Scripture perpetually dependent on pure fancy. It is perhaps sufficient to say that Jewish writers, in works meant for spiritual teaching, troubled themselves extremely little with minutiae of this kind. Like the Greek dramatists, they were unconcerned with details, to which they attached no importance, which they regarded as lying outside the immediate purpose of their narrative. But if any explanation be needful, the simplest way is, with Ewald, Herzfeld, and Lenormant, to make a slight alteration in the text, and to read in the twelfth instead of in the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar.

There was nothing strange in the notion that God should have vouchsafed a prophetic dream to a heathen potentate. Such instances had already been recorded in the case of Pharaoh, (Gen. 41:1-57) as well as of his chief courtiers; (Gen. 11:1-32) and in the case of Abimelech (Gen. 20:5-7)-It was also a Jewish tradition that it was in consequence of a dream that Pharaoh Necho had sent a warning to Josiah not to advance against him to the Battle of Megiddo. Such dreams are recorded in the cuneiform inscriptions as having occurred to Assyrian monarchs. Ishtar, the goddess of battles, had appeared to Assur-bani-pal, and promised him safety in his war against Teumman, King of Elam; and the dream of a seer had admonished him to take severe steps against his rebel brother, the Viceroy of Babylon. Gyges, King of Lydia, had been warned in a dream to make alliance with Assur-bani-pal. In Egypt Amen-meri-hout had been warned by a dream to unite Egypt against the Assyrians. Similarly in Persian history Afrasiab has an ominous dream and summons all the astrologers to interpret it; and some of them bid him pay no attention to it. Xerxes (Herod., 3:19) and Astyages (Herod., 1:108) have dreams indicative of future prosperity or adversity. The fundamental conception of the chapter was therefore in accordance with history-though to say, with the Speaker’s Commentary, that these parallels endorse the authenticity of the Biblical narratives, is either to use inaccurate terms, or to lay the unhallowed fire of false argument on the sacred altar of truth. It is impossible to think without a sigh of the vast amount which would have to be extracted from so-called orthodox commentaries, if such passages were rigidly reprobated as a dishonour to the cause of God.

Nebuchadnezzar then-in the second or twelfth year of his reign-dreamed a dream, by which as in the case of Pharaoh his spirit was troubled, and his sleep interrupted. His state of mind on waking is a psychological condition with which we are all familiar. We awake in a tremor. We have seen something which disquieted us, but we cannot recall what it was; we have had a frightful dream, but we can only remember the terrifying impression which it has left upon our minds.

Pharaoh, in the story of Joseph, remembered his dreams, and only asked the professors of necromancy to furnish him with its interpretation. But Nebuchadnezzar is here represented as a rasher and fiercer despot, not without a side-glance at the raging folly and tyranny of Antiochus Epiphanes. He has at his command an army of priestly prognosticators, whose main function it is to interpret the various omens of the future. Of what use were they, if they could not be relied upon in so serious an exigency? Were they to be maintained in opulence and dignity all their lives, only to fail him at a crisis? It was true that he had forgotten the dream, but it was obviously one of supreme importance; it was obviously an intimation from the gods: was it not clearly their duty to say what it meant?

So, Nebuchadnezzar summoned together the whole class of Babylonian augurs in all their varieties-the Chartummim, magicians, or book-learned; the Ashshaphim, enchanters; the Mekashaphim, sorcerers; and the Kasdim, to which the writer gives the long later sense of dream-interpreters, which had become prevalent in his own day. In later verses he adds two further sections of the students-the Khakhamim, wise men, and the Gazerim, or soothsayers. attempts have often been made, and most recently by Lenormant, to distinguish accurately between these classes of magi, but the attempts evaporate for the most part into shadowy etymologies. It seems to have been a literary habit with the author to amass a number of names and titles together. It is a part of the stateliness and leisureliness of style which he adopts, and he gives no indication of any sense of difference between the classes which he enumerates, either here or when he describes various ranks of Babylonian officials.

When they were assembled before him, the king informed them that he had dreamed an important dream, but that it produced such agitation of spirit as had caused him to forget its import. He plainly expected them to supply the failure of his memory, for a dream not interpreted, say the Rabbis, is like a letter not read.

Then spake the Chaldeans to the king, and their answer follows in Aramaic Aramith, a language which continues to be used till the end of chapter 7. The Western Aramaic, however, here employed could not have been the language in which they spoke, but their native Babylonian, a Semitic dialect more akin to Eastern Aramaic. The word Aramith here, as in Ezra. 4:7, is probably a gloss or marginal note, to point out the sudden change in the language of the Book.

With the courtly phrase, O king, live forever, they promised to tell the king the interpretation, if he would tell them the dream.

That I cannot do, said the king, for it is gone from me. Nevertheless, if you do not tell me both the dream and its interpretation, you shall be hacked limb by limb, and your houses shall be made a dunghill.

The language was that of brutal despotism such as had been customary for centuries among the ferocious tyrants of Assyria. The punishment of dismemberment, dichotomy, or death by mutilation was common among them, and had constantly been depicted on their monuments. It was doubtless known to the Babylonians also, being familiar to the apathetic cruelty of the East. Similarly, the turning of the houses of criminals into drought-houses was a vengeance practised among other nations. On the other hand, if the Chaldeans arose to the occasion, the king would give them rewards and great honours. It is curious to observe that the Septuagint translators, with Antiochus in their mind, render the verse in a form which would more directly remind their readers of Seleucid methods. If you fail, they make the king say, you shall be made an example, and your goods shall be forfeited to the crown.

With nervous servility the magi answer to the king’s extravagantly unreasonable demand, that he must tell them the dream before they can tell him the interpretation. Ewald is probably not far wrong in thinking that a subtle element of irony and humour underlies this scene. It was partly intended as a satirical reflection on the mad vagaries of Epiphanes.

For the king at once breaks out into fury and tells them that they only want to gain lit. buy time; but that this should not avail them. The dream had evidently been of crucial significance and extreme urgency; something important, and perhaps even dreadful, must be in the air. The very raison d’etre of these thaumaturgists and stargazers was to read the omens of the future. If the stars told of any human events, they could not fail to indicate something about the vast trouble which overshadowed the monarch’s dream, even though he had forgotten its details. The king gave them to understand that he looked on them as a herd of impostors; that their plea for delay was due to mere tergiversation; and that, in spite of the lying and corrupt words which they had prepared in order to gain respite till the time be changed that is, until they were saved by some lucky day or change of fortune (Est. 3:7) there was but one sentence for them, which could only be averted by their vindicating their own immense pretensions, and telling him his dream.

The Chaldeans naturally answered that the king’s request was impossible. The adoption of the Aramaic at this point may be partly due to the desire for local colouring. No king or ruler in the world had ever imposed such a test on any Kartum or Ashshaph in the world. No living man could possibly achieve anything so difficult. There were some gods whose dwelling is with flesh; they tenant the souls of their servants. But it is not in the power of these genii to reveal what the king demands; they are limited by the weakness of the souls which they inhabit. It can only be done by those highest divinities whose dwelling is not with flesh, but who haunt the lucid inter-space of world and world and are too far above mankind to mingle with their thoughts.

Thereupon the unreasonable king was angry and very furious, and the decree went forth that the magi were to be slain en masse.

How it was that Daniel, and his companions were not summoned to help the king, although they had been already declared to be ten times wiser than all the rest of the astrologers and magicians put together, is a feature in the story with which the writer does not trouble himself, because it in no way concerned his main purpose. Now, however, since they were prominent members of the Magian guild, they are doomed to death among their fellows. Thereupon Daniel sought an interview with Arioch, the chief of the bodyguard and asked with gentle prudence why the decree was so harshly urgent. By Arioch’s intervention he gained an interview with Nebuchadnezzar and promised to tell him the dream and its interpretation, if only the king would grant him a little time-perhaps but a single night.

God Reveals Nebuchadnezzar's Dream

The delay was conceded, and Daniel went to his three companions, and urged them to join in prayer that God would make known the secret to them and spare their lives. Christ tells us that if two shall agree on earth as touching anything that they ask, it shall be done for them. The secret was revealed to Daniel in a vision of the night, and he blessed the God of heaven. Wisdom and might are his. Not dependent on lucky or unlucky days, He changeth the times and seasons; He setteth down one king and putteth up another. By His revelation of deep and sacred things-for the light dwelleth with Him He had, in answer to their common prayer, made known the secret.

Accordingly, Daniel bids Arioch not to execute the Magians, but to go and tell the king that he will reveal to him the interpretation of his dream.

Then, by an obvious verbal inconsistency in the story, Arioch is represented as going with haste to the king, with Daniel, and saying that he had found a captive Jew who would answer the king’s demands. Arioch could never have claimed any such merit, seeing that Daniel had already given his promise to Nebuchadnezzar in person, and did not need to be described. The king formally puts to Daniel the question whether he could fulfil his pledge; and Daniel answers that, though none of the Khakhamim, Ashshaphim, Chartummim, or Gazerim could tell the king his dream, yet there is a God in heaven-higher, it is implied, than either the genii or those whose dwelling is not with mortals who reveals secrets, and has made known to the king what shall be in the latter days. Comp. Gen. 20:3, 41:25 Num. 22:35.

The king, before he fell asleep, had been deeply pondering the issues of the future, and God, the revealer of secrets. Comp. Gen. 41:45 had revealed those issues to him, not because of any supreme wisdom possessed by Daniel, but simply that the interpretation might be made known.

The king had seen a huge, gleaming, terrible colossus of many colours and of different metals, but otherwise not unlike the huge colossi which guarded the portals of his own palace. Its head was of fine gold; its torso of silver; its belly and thighs of brass; its legs of iron; its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. But while he gazed upon it as it reared into the sunlight, as though in mute defiance and insolent security, its grim metallic glare, a mysterious and unforeseen fate fell upon it. The fragment of a rock broke itself loose, not with hands, smote the image upon its feet of iron and clay, and broke them to pieces. It had now nothing left to stand upon, and instantly the hollow multiform monster collapsed into promiscuous ruins; Its shattered fragments became like the chaff of the summer threshing-floor, and the wind swept them away; (Psm. 1:4 Isa. 41:15 Jer. 51:33, etc.) but the rock, unhewn by any earthly hands, grew over the fragments into a mountain that filled the earth.

Daniel Interprets the Dream

That was the haunting and portentous dream; and this was its interpretation: -

The head of gold was Nebuchadnezzar himself; the king of what Isaiah had called the golden city (Isa. 14:4) a King of kings, ruler over the beasts of the field, and the fowls of heaven, and the children of men.

After him should come a second and an inferior kingdom, symbolized by the arms and heart of silver.

Then a third kingdom of brass.

Finally, a fourth kingdom, strong and destructive as iron. But in this fourth kingdom was an element of weakness, symbolized by the fact that the feet are partly of iron and partly of weak clay. An attempt should be made, by intermarriages, to give greater coherency to these elements; but it should fail, because they could not intermix. In the days of these kings, indicated by the ten toes of the image, swift destruction should come upon the kingdoms from on high; for the King of heaven should set up a kingdom indestructible and eternal, which should utterly supersede all former kingdoms. The intense nothingness and transitoriness of man’s might in its highest estate, and the might of God’s kingdom, are the chief subjects of this vision.

Volumes have been written about the four empires indicated by the constituents of the colossus in this dream; but it is entirely needless to enter into them at length. The vast majority of the interpretations have been simply due to a priori prepossessions, which are arbitrary and baseless. The object has been to make the interpretations fit in with preconceived theories of prophecy, and with the traditional errors about the date and object of the Book of Daniel. If we first see the irresistible evidence that the Book appeared in the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, and then observe that all its earthly predictions culminate in a minute description of his epoch, the general explanation of the four empires, apart from an occasional and a subordinate detail, becomes perfectly clear. In the same way the progress of criticism has elucidated in its general outlines the interpretation of the Book which has been so largely influenced by the Book of Daniel the Revelation of St. John. The all-but-unanimous consensus of the vast majority of the sanest and most competent exegetes now agrees in the view that the Apocalypse was written in the age of Nero, and that its tone and visions were predominantly influenced by his persecution of the early Christians, as the Book of Daniel was by the ferocities of Antiochus against the faithful Jews. Ages of persecution, in which plain-speaking was impossible to the oppressed, were naturally prolific of apocalyptic cryptographs. What has been called the futurist interpretation of these books which, for instance, regards the fourth empire of Daniel as some kingdom of Antichrist as yet unmanifested is now universally abandoned. It belongs to impossible forms of exegesis, which have long been discredited by the boundless variations of absurd conjectures, and by the repeated refutation of the predictions which many have ventured to base upon these erroneous methods. Even so elaborate a work as Elliott’s Horae Apocalypticae would now be regarded as a curious anachronism.

That the first empire, represented by the head of gold, is the Babylonian, concentrated in Nebuchadnezzar himself, is undisputed, because it is expressly stated by the writer. (Dan. 2:37-38)

Nor can there be any serious doubt, if the Book be one coherent whole, written by one author, that by the fourth empire is meant, as in later chapters, that of Alexander and his successors the Diadochi, as they are often called.

For it must be regarded as certain that the four elements of the colossus, which indicate the four empires as they are presented to the imagination of the heathen despot, are closely analogous to the same four empires which in the seventh chapter present themselves as wild beasts out of the sea to the imagination of the Hebrew seer. Since the fourth empire is there, beyond all question, that of Alexander and his successors, the symmetry and purpose of the Book prove conclusively that the fourth empire here is also the Graeco-Macedonian, strongly and irresistibly founded by Alexander, but gradually sinking to utter weakness by its own divisions, in the persons of the kings who split his dominion into four parts. If this needed any confirmation, we find it in the eighth chapter, which is mainly concerned with Alexander the Great and Antiochus Epiphanes; and in the eleventh chapter, which enters with startling minuteness into the wars, diplomacy, and intermarriages of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid dynasties. In Dan. 8:21 we are expressly told that the strong he-goat is the King of Grecia, who puts an end to the kingdoms of Media and Persia. The arguments of Hengstenberg, Pusey, etc., that the Greek Empire was a civilizing and an ameliorating power, apply at least as strongly to the Roman Empire. But when Alexander thundered his way across the dreamy East, he was looked upon as a sort of shattering liven-bolt. The interconnection of these visions is clearly marked even here, for the juxtaposition of iron and miry clay is explained by the clause they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: Comp. Jer. 31:27 but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay. This refers to the same attempts to consolidate the rival powers of the Kings of Egypt and Syria which are referred to in Dan. 11:6-7; 11:17. It is a definite allusion which. becomes meaningless in the hands of those interpreters who attempt to explain the iron empire to be that of the Romans. That the Greek Empire is to be the last of the Gentile empires appears from Dan. 8:17, where the vision is said to refer to the time of the end. Moreover, in the last vision of all Daniel chapters 10-12, the rise and progress of the Greek Empire are related with many details, but nothing whatever is said of any subsequent empire. Thus to introduce the Roman Empire into the Book of Daniel is to set at naught the plainest rules of exegesis.

The reason of the attempt is to make the termination of the prophecy coincide with the coming of Christ, which is then-quite unhistorical regarded as followed by the destruction of the fourth and last empire. But the interpretation can only be thus arrived at by a falsification of facts. For the victory of Christianity over Paganism, so decisive and so Divine, was in no sense a destruction of the Roman Empire. In the first place that victory was not achieved till three centuries after Christ’s advent, and in the second place it was rather a continuation anti defence of the Roman Empire than its destruction. The Roman Empire, in spite of Alaric and Genseric and Attila, and because of its alliance with Christianity, may be said to have practically continued down to modern times. So far from being regarded as the shatterers of the Roman Empire, the Christian popes and bishops were, and were often called, the Defensores Civitatis. That many of the Fathers, following many of the Rabbis, regarded Rome as the iron empire, and the fourth wild beast, was due to the fact that until modern days the science of criticism was unknown, and exegesis was based on the shifting sand. If we are to accept their authority on this question, we must accept it on many others, respecting views and methods which have now been unanimously abandoned by the deeper insight and advancing knowledge of mankind. The influence of Jewish exegesis over the Fathers erroneous as were its principles and fluctuating as were its conclusions was enormous. It was not unnatural for the later Jews, living under the hatred and oppression of Rome, and still yearning for the fulfilment of Messianic promises, to identify Rome with the fourth empire. And this seems to have been the opinion of Josephus, whatever that may be worth. But it is doubtful whether it corresponds to another and earlier Jewish tradition. For among the fathers even Ephraem Syrus identifies the Macedonian Empire with the fourth empire, and he may have borrowed this from Jewish tradition. But of how little value were early conjectures may be seen in the fact that, for reasons analogous to those which had made earlier Rabbi's regard Rome as the fourth empire, two medieval exegetes so famous as Saadia the Gaon and Abn Ezra had come to the conclusion that the fourth empire was-the Mohammedan!

Every detail of the vision as regards the fourth kingdom is minutely in accord with the kingdom of Alexander. It can only be applied to Rome by deplorable shifts and sophistries, the untenability of which we are now more able to estimate than was possible in earlier centuries. So far indeed as the iron is concerned, that might by itself stand equally well for Rome or for Macedon, if Dan. 7:7-8; 8:3-4; 11:3 did not definitely describe the conquests of Alexander. But all which follows is meaningless as applied to Rome, nor is there anything in Roman history to explain any division of the kingdom Dan. 2:41 or attempt to strengthen it by intermarriage with other kingdoms (Dan. 2:43). In the divided Graeco-Macedonian Empires of the Diadoehi, the dismemberment of one mighty kingdom into the four much weaker ones of Cassander, Ptolemy, Lysimachus, and Seleucus began immediately after the death of Alexander B.C. 323. It was completed as the result of twenty-two years of war after the Battle of Ipsus B.C. 301. The marriage of Antiochus Theos to Berenice, daughter of Ptolemy Philadelphus, B.C. 249, Dan. 11:6 was as ineffectual as the later marriage of Ptolemy V Epiphanes to Cleopatra, the daughter of Antiochus the Great B.C. 193, to introduce strength or unity into the distracted kingdoms. Dan. 11:17-18.

The two legs and feet are possibly meant to indicate the two most important kingdoms-that of the Seleucidae in Asia, and that of the Ptolemies in Egypt. If we are to press the symbolism still more closely, the ten toes may shadow forth the ten kings who are indicated by the ten horns Dan. 7:7.

Since then, we are told that the first empire represents Nebuchadnezzar by the head of gold, and since we have incontestably verified the fourth empire to be the Greek Empire of Alexander and his successors, it only remains to identify the intermediate empires of silver and brass. And it becomes obvious that they can only be the Median and the Persian. That the writer of Daniel regarded these empires as distinct is clear from Dan. 5:31; 5:6.

It is obvious that the silver is meant for the Median Empire, because, closely as it was allied with the Persian in the view of the writer, Dan. 6:9; 6:13; 6:16; 8:7 he yet spoke of the two as separate. The rule of Darius the Mede, not of Cyrus the Persian, is, in his point of view, the other smaller kingdom which arose after that of Nebuchadnezzar. Dan. 5:31 Indeed, this is also indicated in the vision of the ram; Dan. 8:3 for it has two horns, of which the higher and stronger the Persian Empire rose up after the other the Median Empire; just as in this vision the Persian Empire represented by the thighs of brass is clearly stronger than the Median Empire, which, being wealthier, is represented as being of silver, but is smaller than the other. Further, the second empire is represented later on by the second beast, (Dan. 7:5) and the three ribs in its mouth may be meant for the three satrapies of Dan. 6:2.

It may then be regarded as a certain result of exegesis that the four empires are-

(1) the Babylonian.

(2) the Median.

(3) the Persian.

(4) the Graeco-Macedonian.

But what is the stone cut without hands which smote the image upon his feet? It brake them in pieces and made the collapsing debris of the colossus like chaff scattered by the wind from the summer threshing-floor. It grew till it became a great mountain which filled the earth.

The meaning of the image being first smitten upon its feet is that the overthrow falls on the iron empire.

All alike are agreed that by the mysterious rock-fragment the writer meant the Messianic Kingdom. The mountain out of which as is here first mentioned the stone is cut is the Mount Zion. It commences in the days of these kings. Its origin is not earthly, for it is cut without hands. It represents a kingdom which shall be set up by the God of heaven, and shall destroy and supersede all the kingdoms, and shall stand for ever.

Whether a personal Messiah was definitely prominent in the mind of the writer is a question which will come before us when we consider the seventh chapter. Here there is only a Divine Kingdom; and that this is the dominion of Israel seems to be marked by the expression, the kingdom shall not be left to another people.

The prophecy probably indicates the glowing hopes which the writer conceived of the future of his nation, even in the days of its direst adversity, in accordance with the predictions of the mighty prophets his predecessors, whose writings he had recently studied. Very few of those predictions have as yet been literally fulfilled; not one of them was fulfilled with such immediateness as the prophets conceived, when they were wrapped into future times. To the prophetic vision was revealed the glory that should be hereafter, but not the times and seasons, which God hath kept in His own power, and which Jesus told His disciples were not even known to the Son of Man Himself in His human capacity.

Antiochus died, and his attempts to force Hellenism upon the Jews were so absolute a failure that, in point of fact, his persecution only served to stereotype the ceremonial institutions which not entirely proprio motu but misled by men like the false high priests Jason and Menelaus he had attempted to obliterate. But the magnificent expectations of a golden age to follow were indefinitely delayed. Though Antiochus died and failed, the Jews became by no means unanimous in their religious policy. Even under the Hasmonaean prince's fierce elements of discord were at work in the midst of them. Foreign usurpers adroitly used these dissensions for their own objects, and in B.C. 37 Judaism acquiesced in the national acceptance of a depraved Edomite usurper in the person of Herod, and a section of the Jews attempted to represent him as the promised Messiah!

Not only was the Messianic prediction unfulfilled in its literal aspect in the days of these kings, but even yet it has by no means received its complete accomplishment. The stone cut without hands indicated the kingdom, not as most of the prophets seem to have imagined when they uttered words which meant more than they themselves conceived of the literal Israel, but of that ideal Israel which is composed, not of Jews, but of Gentiles. The divinest side of Messianic prophecy is the expression of that unquenchable hope and of that indomitable faith which are the most glorious outcome of all that is most Divine in the spirit of man. That faith and hope have never found even an ideal or approximate fulfilment save in Christ and in His kingdom, which is now, and shall be without end.

But apart from the Divine predictions of the eternal sunlight visible on the horizon over vast foreshortened ages of time which to God are but as one day, let us notice how profound is the symbolism of the vision-how well it expresses the surface glare, the inward hollowness, the inherent weakness, the varying successions, the predestined transience of overgrown empires. The great poet of Catholicism makes magnificent use of Daniel’s image and sees its deep significance. He too describes the ideal of all earthly empire as a colossus of gold, silver, brass, and iron, which yet mainly rests on its right foot of baked and brittle clay. But he tells us that every part of this image, except the gold, is crannied through and through by a fissure, down which there flows a constant stream of tears. These effects of misery trickle downwards, working their way through the cavern in Mount Ida in which the image stands, till, descending from rock to rock, they form those four rivers of hell, -

"Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate.

Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep.

Cocytus, named of lamentation loud heard on the rueful stream.

fierce Phlegethon whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage."

There is a terrible grandeur in the emblem. Splendid and venerable looks the idol of human empire in all its pomp and pricelessness. But underneath its cracked and fissured weakness drop and trickle and stream the salt and bitter runnels of misery and anguish, till the rivers of agony are swollen into overflow by their coagulated scum.

                                         Daniel Is Promoted

It was natural that Nebuchadnezzar should have felt deeply impressed when the vanished outlines of his dream were thus recalled to him, and it's awful interpretation revealed. The manner in which he expresses his amazed reverence may be historically improbable, but it is psychologically true. We are told that he fell upon his face and worshipped Daniel, and the word worshipped implies genuine adoration. That so magnificent a potentate should have lain on his face before a captive Jewish youth and adored him is amazing. It is still more so that Daniel, without protest, should have accepted, not only his idolatrous homage, but also the offering of an oblation and sweet incense. That a Nebuchadnezzar should have been thus prostrate in the dust before their young countryman would no doubt be a delightful picture to the Jews, and if, as we believe, the story is an unconnected Haggada, it may well have been founded on such passages as Isa. 49:23, "Kings shall bow down to thee with their faces toward the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet": together with Isa. 52:15, "Kings shall shut their mouths at him: for that which had not been told them shall they see; and that which they had not heard shall they perceive."

But it is much more amazing that Daniel, who, as a boy, had been so scrupulous about the Levitic ordinance of unclean meats, in the scruple against which the gravamen lay in the possibility of there having been offered to idols, Comp. Rom. 14:23 Acts 15:29 1Cor. 8:1-13: 1Kgs. 2:14; 2:20 should, as a man, have allowed himself to be treated exactly as the king treated his idols! To say that he accepted this worship because the king was not adoring him, but the God whose power had been manifested in him, is an idle subterfuge, for that excuse is offered by all idolaters in all ages. Very different was the conduct of Paul and Barnabas when the rude population of Lystra wished to worship them as incarnations of Hermes and Zeus. The moment they heard of it they rent their clothes in horror, and leapt at once among the people, crying out, Sirs, why do ye such things? We also are men of like passions with you and are preaching unto you that ye should turn from these vain ones unto the living God. Acts 14:14-15.

That the King of Babylon should be represented as at once acknowledging the God of Daniel as a God of gods, though he was a fanatical votary of Bel-merodach, belongs to the general plan of the Book. Daniel received in reward many great gifts and is made ruler of all the wise men of Babylon, and chief of the governors signin over all the wise men of Babylon. About his acceptance of the civil office there is no difficulty; but there is a quite insuperable historic difficulty in his becoming a chief Magian. All the wise men of Babylon, whom the king had just threatened with dismemberment as a pack of impostors, were, at any rate, a highly sacerdotal and essentially idolatrous caste. That Daniel should have objected to particular kinds of food from peril of defilement, and yet that he should have consented to be chief hierarch of a heathen cult, would indeed have been to strain at gnats and to swallow camels!

And so great was the distinction which he earned by his interpretation of the dream, that, at his further request, satrapies were conferred on his three companions; but he himself, like Mordecai, afterwards sat in the gate of the king.