Daniel 2:43

As you saw the iron mixed with clay, so the peoples will mix with one another, but will not hold together any more than iron mixes with clay.

BSB

Parallel translations

4 additional translations

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KJV

And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.

ASV

And whereas thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men; but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron doth not mingle with clay.

YLT

Because thou hast seen iron mixed with miry clay, they are mixing themselves with the seed of men: and they are not adhering one with another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.

DBT

And whereas thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men; but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron doth not mingle with clay.

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On this verse

But its feet and toes are partly of iron and partly of earthenware, a fact most clearly demonstrated at the present time. For just as there was at the first nothing stronger or hardier than the Roman realm, so also in these last days there is nothing more feeble, since we require the assistance of barbarian tribes both in our civil wars and against foreign nations.

Jerome· St. Jerome, Commentary on Daniel, CHAPTER TWO, 420patristic

Related commentary

And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men - Various explanations have been given of this verse, and it certainly is not of easy interpretation. The phrase “seed of men,” would properly denote something different from the original stock that was represented by iron; some foreign admixture that would be so unlike that, and that would so little amalgamate with it, as to be properly represented by clay as compared with iron. Prof.

Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869)evangelical

NEWTON, who understands the Roman empire to be parted into the ten kingdoms already (whereas TREGELLES makes them future), explains the "clay" mixture as the blending of barbarous nations with Rome by intermarriages and alliances, in which there was no stable amalgamation, though the ten kingdoms retained much of Rome's strength.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871reformed

But to Nebuchadnezzar, a heathen prince, they were represented by a gay and pompous image of a man, for he was an admirer of the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them. To him the sight was so charming that he was impatient to see it again.

Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710puritan

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Rabbinic commentary

How the Hebraic tradition has read this verse: and Marcus Brown’s own reading of it.

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Around this verse

Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread: the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.

Daniel in the Lions' Den — Gustave Doré, Doré's English Bible (1866), public domain

Daniel: A Hebrew exile at Babylonian and Persian courts sees empires rise and fall, a Son of Man coming with clouds, and seventy weeks locating Messiah in time. The canon's densest apocalyptic text, and its most interpretively contested.

Canon: Old Testament
Author: Daniel (traditional, Jesus cites ‘Daniel the prophet’ in Matt 24:15); critical scholarship dates composition to the 2nd c. BC Maccabean period (both positions surfaced)
Date: Traditional: 6th c. BC. Critical: c. 165 BC. Site default: traditional; critical view surfaced at depth 2

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