Daniel4chapter 4

Daniel 4:1-3

Nebuchadnezzar's own decree opens the chapter, unto all people, nations, and languages, that dwell in all the earth, Peace be multiplied unto you, the pagan world's own chancery form turned to declare the God of Israel's signs and wonders; the bench notes this is the one chapter of Scripture written in a gentile emperor's first person throughout. His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and his dominion is from generation to generation states in verse three the doxology the whole chapter will earn the hard way, a confession placed at the start so the reader already knows where the king's long humbling ends.

Daniel 4:4-6

I Nebuchadnezzar was at rest in mine house, and flourishing in my palace opens the narrative proper at the peak of the king's security, the same complacency chapter two's dream once shattered now settled again into comfort. A second troubling dream drives him to the same guild that failed him before, all the wise men of Babylon summoned by decree, though the bench notes he has learned nothing structural from the earlier failure, still trying the same court first.

Daniel 4:7-9

The magicians, astrologers, Chaldeans and soothsayers hear the dream told and did not make known unto me the interpretation thereof, the guild failing a second time exactly as it failed in chapter two. Daniel comes in last, called by his Babylonian name Belteshazzar after the king's own god, and the king's own words, in whom is the spirit of the holy gods, credit Daniel's gift to Babylon's pantheon even while seeking the one true answer no pagan art can give. Gill reads the king's confidence in Daniel here as built on the record of chapter two, a trust earned rather than assumed.

Daniel 4:10-12

The tree in the midst of the earth grows until its height reaches unto heaven and its sight to the end of all the earth, an image the bench reads against the ancient world's own common figure of a king as a great tree sheltering his people, meat for all, shadow for the beasts, boughs for the birds. The picture is entirely benevolent before the watcher ever speaks, which is itself the point Henry marks, greatness is not the sin the vision comes to judge; what the tree becomes in the king's own heart is.

Daniel 4:13-15

A watcher and an holy one comes down from heaven with a sentence rather than a warning, hew down the tree, and cut off his branches, and the bench reads watcher as this book's own term for the angelic order that later Jewish literature expands well beyond what Daniel states. The stump of his roots left in the earth, banded with iron and brass, is mercy inside the judgment, Keil notes, a guarantee written into the sentence itself that the kingdom will return once the lesson is learned.

Daniel 4:16-18

Let his heart be changed from man's, and let a beast's heart be given unto him sets the punishment's shape, a king reduced not merely in circumstance but in the very reason that makes a man a man, for seven times, a period the bench reads as years rather than days given the scale of what follows. The purpose clause is the chapter's own theology stated in advance, to the intent that the living may know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, the same sentence Daniel will repeat almost unchanged at verse 25 and the voice from heaven at verse 32. The king lays the whole dream before Daniel by name, all the wise men of my kingdom are not able, but thou art able, an admission from Babylon's throne that its own arts have already lost this contest twice.

Daniel 4:19-22

Daniel is astonied for one hour, the bench reading his silence as compassion rather than confusion, a man who already sees the judgment and dreads to speak it to the king who has been kind to him. My lord, the dream be to them that hate thee is not evasion but genuine reluctance, and when Daniel does speak the identification is immediate and unadorned, it is thou, O king, no allegory softening what the tree's greatness and the axe both mean. Gill notes that Daniel's grief here matches the compassion other prophets show even while delivering a sentence they cannot alter.

Daniel 4:23-24

Daniel repeats the watcher's sentence nearly word for word before he will apply it, hew the tree down, and destroy it, yet leave the stump, a pattern the bench reads as deliberate, the interpreter binding himself to the vision's own words rather than his own gloss. This is the interpretation, O king, and this is the decree of the most High states plainly that what follows is not Daniel's opinion but a sentence already passed in heaven and only now announced on earth.

Daniel 4:25-26

They shall drive thee from men states in full what the tree's felling pictured, the king reduced among the beasts of the field eating grass as oxen, till thou know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, the sentence's own refrain now given for the second of its three occurrences in the chapter. The stump left standing carries its own promise forward, thy kingdom shall be sure unto thee, after that thou shalt have known that the heavens do rule, mercy written into the judgment from the first watcher's word, not added afterward.

Daniel 4:27

Daniel's counsel is the one word of pastoral appeal in the whole scene, break off thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by shewing mercy to the poor, a call to repentance offered as the one door left before the sentence falls, if it may be a lengthening of thy tranquillity. The bench reads Daniel's if as genuine hope rather than formality, the prophet who has just pronounced unavoidable judgment still pressing for the king's own choice to soften what is coming.

Daniel 4:28-30

All this came upon the king Nebuchadnezzar, but not for twelve months, a delay the bench reads as God's own patience giving the counsel of verse 27 its full season to be taken up or refused. The king is found walking in his own palace naming his own achievement, is not this great Babylon, that I have built, the pride the whole vision existed to answer spoken aloud in the very words the sentence was meant to prevent. Barnes notes the irony of the timing, judgment falling in the same breath as the boast that provoked it.

Daniel 4:31-33

While the word was in the king's mouth a voice falls from heaven, the kingdom is departed from thee, judgment arriving mid-sentence to answer pride at the exact moment it is spoken. The same hour was the thing fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar, the bench marking the speed as itself part of the lesson, no gradual decline but an immediate reversal, hairs grown like eagles' feathers and nails like birds' claws describing a man left to the wild with no human care at all.

Daniel 4:34-35

At the end of the days I Nebuchadnezzar lifted up mine eyes unto heaven, and mine understanding returned unto me, the restoration beginning at the same instant as the recognition, sanity and worship arriving together rather than one before the other. His confession, all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing, and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou, is the fullest statement of divine sovereignty in the king's own voice anywhere in the book, the very lesson the tree was sent to teach him now spoken without prompting.

Daniel 4:36-37

At the same time my reason returned unto me closes the circle from verse 33, the kingdom, honour and brightness restored once the heart that had been given a beast's has been given back a man's, and counsellors and lords sought him out the moment his sanity is confirmed. The chapter's last word is the doxology it opened preparing, I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honour the King of heaven, all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment, and the final line names the lesson without needing another sentence to explain it, those that walk in pride he is able to abase.